blocks

Video has quickly become one of the most engaging mediums on the internet. Whether you have a personal blog, virtual classroom, business vlog, collaboration website for your team, or something in between, there’s no doubt that you’ve come across video as a way to build and engage your following. By 2022, online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic – 15 times higher than in 2017! (Cisco)

Videos come in all shapes and sizes, and we know that the ability to easily add and embed them is important for engaging your audience. We’ve been hard at work making sure that you can add the video content you want to your WordPress.com website.

With our growing suite of payment features, we want to make it easier for you to earn money on WordPress.com. With the Donations block, you can now accept credit and debit card payments for all types of donations, earning revenue and growing your base of supporters. Collect donations, tips, and contributions on your website to fuel your creative and professional projects or to support and grow your business or organization.

Donations block example for an arts organization

The world is mobile, and your visitors and customers expect to be able to easily contact you using their mobile device. With WordPress.com’s new WhatsApp button, you can provide a one-click, secure way for people to open WhatsApp, with your phone number and a message pre-filled.

Have you ever written a Twitter thread, and then wished you could turn it into a blog post? You can now do it in seconds.

Writing Twitter threads, also known as tweetstorms, can be a great way to clarify your thoughts: keeping each paragraph under 280 characters forces you to focus on your message.

Threads are great for engagement and sudden bursts of inspiration. But when the thread is done, wouldn’t it be nice to have a quick way to capture the full conversation in one place — one page to read, one link to share, all your thoughts captured on a website you own?

Now, when you embed a tweet that’s part of a larger thread, you’ll see a new “Unroll” button on the block toolbar. Click or tap it to import the entire thread into your post.

Little details make a big difference. The latest block editor improvements incorporate some common feedback you’ve shared with us and make the editing experience even more intuitive than before.

We’ve also updated the categories we use to organize blocks, so you can find exactly what you need, fast. Read on to learn about recent changes you’ll notice next time you open the editor.

Move on quickly after citations and captions

Have you ever felt as if you were stuck inside a block after adding a citation? Now, when you hit Enter or Return at the end of the citation, you’ll be ready to start typing in a new text block.

The WordPress editor keeps expanding its library of blocks, adding new and exciting functionality to websites on a regular basis. After a crop of new business-related blocks last month, our most recent additions will appeal to three communities we hold close to our heart: podcasters, podcast lovers, and bloggers.

Use the Podcast Player block to spread the word about your favorite episodes

Podcasts have been an unstoppable cultural force for several years now — and the format seems to have only grown in popularity in recent months, as so many of us are at home and looking for entertainment and (occasionally?) enlightenment.

At the beginning of June we’ll be retiring our older WordPress.com editor and transitioning to the more recent (and more powerful) WordPress block editor. Want to know how this may affect your site and what you can expect? Read on.

If you’ve launched your WordPress.com site in the past year and a half you may have never seen our older editor and are likely already using the more recent WordPress editor. Those of you who have an older site, though, might recognize this editing experience:

From our support sessions with customers each month, we know that growing your brand or business is a top website goal. And in this unprecedented time in which more people around the world are staying at home, it’s important to promote your products and services online to reach a wider audience and connect with more people.

Our team has been hard at work improving the block editor experience. We’ve launched six new blocks that integrate WordPress.com and Jetpack-enabled sites with popular services — Eventbrite, Calendly, Pinterest, Mapbox, Google Calendar, and OpenTable — enabling you to embed rich content and provide booking and scheduling options right on your blog or website.

Ready to explore the possibilities with the block editor? WPBlockTalk is a free and live virtual event that will bring together designers, developers, and other WordPress enthusiasts from across the WordPress community.

Topics to expect:

• Building the block editor: what it takes to develop the block editor, what features are on the roadmap, and how you can contribute
• Developing blocks: inspiration and ideas for developing your own custom blocks
• Designing with blocks: learn more about using blocks to make powerful and versatile layouts and templates

If you’re passionate and curious about the future of WordPress, then this April 2 event is for you!

If you’re busy that day, don’t worry — all the talks will also be published on WordPress.tv for you to watch (and re-watch) whenever you like.

This blogpost is the result of me looking into how postgres works, and specifically the database blocks. The inspiration and essence of this blogpost comes from two blogs from Jeremiah Peschka: https://facility9.com/2011/03/postgresql-row-storage-fundamentals/ and https://facility9.com/2011/04/postgresql-update-internals/
I am using Oracle Linux 7u3 and postgres 9.6 (current versions when this blogpost was written).

Postgres is already installed, and a database cluster is already running. Let’s create a database ‘test’ for the sake of our tests:

$ createdb test

Once the database is created, logging on is done with ‘psql’: