Issue #127 Loop WP

Hi, friend. 👋

Welcome to Issue #127 of Loop WP!

Last week, we finished our mini-series on WordPress Privacy by looking at a specific example of Privacy by Design using “Simple Cloudflare Turnstile”.

🐘 The elephant in the Room, chatting about what went down at WordCamp US and Matt Mullenweg’s speech, would be easy.

However, the dust is still settling, and more comments are being made for the first within the community, so I want to give some time to discuss those comments in detail.

🧠 I still need time to digest things, too, but in a special WordPress news section at the bottom of this email, I will share some important articles and comments that I feel are worth your attention.

This week, I have to admit, I was tempted to write about this (when Paul Charlton from WP Tuts gave me a heads-up), but I will leave that for another week.

Let’s go! 👇

YouTube Is Great…Right?

🚨 Well, kind of (You really shouldn't be uploading videos to your WordPress website anyway).

🧠 When adding it to your website, you must consider privacy issues, especially if you want to comply with GDPR (but that is for another newsletter).

It does have the benefits of taking the load off your server and saving you server space (therefore, saving you money).

YouTube can also act as a marketing and revenue channel for your business.

YouTube Is Slow

There are many plugins for adding a YouTube video to WordPress, and you can even add it simply with a Gutenberg block.

⚡️ The problem with most of these plugins, especially the native (Gutenberg) WordPress block, is performance.

Adding a YouTube video to your website instantly has a performance impact.

Check out the image comparisons below. 👇

Usually, when you embed a YouTube video, it will add a lot of junk to your website (javascript) that slows things down and some cookies for good measure, too!

So, how did I do this? 👇

How did I get my 15 points back?

The answer is simple!

WP YouTube Lyte is a free plugin that is easy to configure and works with other plugins, such as Elementor and the native WordPress YouTube block.

WP Rocket and Elementor can add Lazy Loading to YouTube, but neither works as well as WP YouTube Lyte.

How Does It Work?

🧠 WP YouTube Lyte allows you to “lazy load” your videos by inserting responsive “Lite YouTube Embeds”.

These look and feel like regular embedded YouTube videos, but when clicked on, they only call the “fat” YouTube player.

This reduces download size and rendering time substantially when embedding YouTube occasionally and improves page performance dramatically when you’ve got multiple YouTube videos on the same page.

🔐 The plugin can be configured locally to cache YouTube thumbnails, improving performance and privacy.

🎉 As such, LYTE-embedded YouTube videos do not require requests to the YouTube servers (I am not a lawyer), allowing for better GDPR compliance.

That’s it for this week 👋

⏭️ Depending on how things go, I might offer my thoughts on “that” WordCamp US speech by Matt Mullenweg, but we’ll see how the online commentary goes over the next week.

🚨 Remember last week I said, “I always enjoy a mini-series”, and I will do another one soon?

No one replied, and that’s OK, so I thought I’d ask one last time. 👇

Please reply to this email friend and let me know what you want the next mini-series to be on.

Weekly WordPress News & Tips

The links below do not represent my support or disagreement of an article or opinion.

It would be great if the links were chronological, but that is more time-consuming than worth it!

🚨 If I include an X/Twitter post, read the comments for more insights and antithesis to the post (there are two sides to every story).

• Context - The presentation and the posts. (Matt Mullenweg)

• 200,000 Hours - What would WordPress be like without Automattic. (Adam Pressier)

• Trademark Policy - Can we get “clear“ examples of trademark violations? (Tia Wood)

• Cease & Desist - Against WP Engine. (Automattic)

• Cease & Desist - Against Automattic. (WP Engine)

• Turning Point - The days when the individual starts a WP-related company and sees it through seem to be endangered. (Eric Karkovack)

• WTF - Is going on? (WP Tuts)

• Capitalism - Automattic needs money? (Jesse Hanely)

• He’s Back! - Let's build a bazaar, and do so unpaid. Then I'll use it to build a cathedral to match, to use for a hefty fee. (Morten Rand-Hendrickson)

• Ch, Ch, Changes - Updated Trademark Policy. (Katie Keith)

• 5FTF - I just learned that building free plugins for the repo - a major reason WP is so popular - isn’t considered part of 5FTF. Why wouldn’t it be? (Derek Ashaur)

• Community - We are WordPress. (Mike McAlister)

• If Only - The WCUS Closing I Wish We’d Had. (Brian Coords)

• Community - We are WordPress. (Mike McAlister)

• Discussion - WP Engine is not "yet another WordPress" company, but a $400M in annual revenue machine with only 1100 employees. (Noel Tock)

• Pointing the Finger - You Can’t Single Out Just WPEngine. (Jonathan Jernigan)

• The Price? - Freedom Isn’t Free. (James Giroux)

The above is not an exhaustive list of sources, and I have tried to be unbiased in listing as much helpful information as possible.

If you have a question about this email or WordPress, reply, and I will answer you as soon as possible.

👋 Until next time,