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March 28th was supposed to mark the release of WordPress 6.2. But a date formatting bug has delayed release for a day. The new target is Wednesday, March 29 at 1pm EST.

The issue could potentially impact core features like date-based permalinks. But it might also negatively affect other functionality that relies on the correct date – think event bookings and eCommerce transactions. Over at WP Tavern, Sarah Gooding provided a summary of the issue and the ensuing discussion it stirred among developers.

When WordPress 6.2 is released, you’ll find plenty of new features to experiment with. The Block and Site Editors will receive a boost with the Style Book, support for sticky blocks, and an easier to use Navigation block.

For more details on WordPress 6.2, check out the official Field Guide, and a handy reference provided by Dan Knauss over at iThemes.

Links You Shouldn’t Miss

WordPress developers are starting to implement artificial intelligence (AI) into their products and using it to write code. That has raised a few concerns. Last week, we reported on the WordPress Plugin Review Team’s reminder that AI-generated code must be GPL compatible. Sarah Gooding recently dove further into the subject at WP Tavern. Even though we’re in the early stages of this AI revolution, Gooding says “it’s not too early to establish some best practices for using code generators.”

The ever-popular Yoast SEO plugin is looking to reduce the web’s carbon footprint. This week they integrated their crawl optimization feature into the free version of the plugin. The WP Minute’s Eric Karkovack spoke with Yoast’s Taco Verdonschot about the feature and how bot traffic negatively impacts the environment.

MasterWP’s Rob Howard published a look at WordPress plugin pricing over a six month period. Howard tracked a handful of popular plugins by taking daily screenshots of their pricing pages. The report shows that some plugins may be using deceptive pricing practices. For instance, stating that a product is on sale when it may have never been sold at the quoted “regular” price. Howard also shared some disagreement with The WP Minute’s recent editorial regarding tactics used by development firm Awesome Motive.

WordPress Developer and core contributor Nick Diego recently announced that his Block Visibility plugin is now completely free. As of version 3.0, all premium features have been merged into the free version. Be on the lookout for more coverage of this story from The WP Minute.

Classifieds listings buy yours

• BuddyBoss Brace yourself for an exciting update to WordPress! Big changes are coming, and you won’t want to miss it. Stay tuned for the big reveal!
• CastAsync Too Busy to produce audiobooks, podcasts, or any audio content? With CastAsync, you can do it by spending only 5 minutes per day.

From the Grab Bag

Now it’s time to take a look at some other interesting topics shared by our contributors.

• Gutenberg project head Matias Ventura has outlined the next phase of development: collaboration.
• Development firm iThemes is set for a rebrand. They recently posted a teaser video on Twitter and are set to make an announcement in the near future.
• The WordPress Community Team has shared highlights from its Contributor Working Group Inaugural Mentorship Chat. The group’s focus is to develop a project-wide mentorship program.
• Looking for a new block theme to experiment with? Mike McAlister of tutorial site Ollie has released a free theme of the same name.

New Members This Week

• Anne-Mieke Bovelett, follow @Bovelett

If you’re not a member yet, go to thewpminute.com/support/ to join.

Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: 

• Jeff Chandler
• Courtney Robertson