Welcome back to a special Monday edition of The Lab Report!
Halloween usually marks the start of the busiest time of the year in the web design/tech world.
It’s the foreplay leading up to Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the whole holiday season.
This means that over the next few weeks, we’re going to see a lot of major product updates and some scary good deals 👻.
(My gf told me to include that last part in the newsletter. It’s lame, I know. Hopefully she doesn’t see this).
I’ve actually managed to cut back on a lot of my software spending this year – especially on LTDs that I “might use one day.”
But I do still love picking up a good deal on the tools I use every day.
Anyways, let’s get into this week’s newsletter!
🎃 SureMembers lifetime deal ends tomorrow
This was quite a popular topic in last week’s newsletter, so I’m including it first here.
SureMembers extended their launch offer a few days, ending tomorrow November 1st.
The launch pricing is:
- $199 for 1 site
- $299 for 20 sites
- $499 for unlimited sites
As for what the pricing will look like or whether an LTD will remain after November 1st, I’m not sure it’s been decided yet.
“We are not sure what we will be doing. The current offer is as low as it will ever be though.”
In case you missed it, I wrote an in-depth review of SureMembers here.
The TLDR is that SureMembers is a lightweight membership plugin that is simple to use but still has all the features you need to build a membership site.
Personally, it’s what I would use if I was building a new membership site today. MemberPress would be my runner-up.
You can grab the SureMembers LTD launch offer until November 1st here.
🕸 WordPress 6.1 comes out tomorrow
This is WordPress’ first major release since v6.0 came out in May earlier this year.
The main highlights from this release include:
- More spacing and border controls for certain blocks
- A new Twenty Twenty-Three theme
- Access to more Full Site Editing templates
- Fluid typography and spacing support inside of themes
- Content-only block editing
- A simple Table of Contents block
- Minor UI changes to the Settings sidebar
This release was also supposed to include automatic JPEG to WebP image conversion, but that didn’t end up happening.
Most of these changes will be felt when you’re using the Gutenberg editor. Not so much a page builder.
I have been using the beta on a local site for a couple of weeks, and I will say the editor feels a bit more fluid now.
There was this really nasty bug in 6.0 where selecting a parent container would quickly jump to a child element in Firefox, but that looks to finally be resolved now.
If you want to see more of what’s coming, you can read this, watch this, or tweep this.
⚰️ A list of the best Halloween deals
These are the best deals I’ve come across for products that I have either used or know have a good reputation:
SureMembers – LTD Launch Offer
https://newpulselabs.com/go/suremembers/
WP Grid Builder – 30% off including LTD plans
https://newpulselabs.com/go/wp-gridbuilder/
NinjaTables – Up to 49% off on lifetime deals
https://newpulselabs.com/go/ninjatables/
WPManageNinja – 30% off on their other products like Fluent Forms, Fluent CRM, and WP Social Ninja
https://newpulselabs.com/go/wpmanageninja/
CartFlows – Up to 45% off
https://newpulselabs.com/go/cartflows/
WP Rocket – 20% off
https://newpulselabs.com/go/wp-rocket/
BetterLinks – 25% off including LTD plan
https://newpulselabs.com/go/betterlinks/
Cloudways – 30% off for 3 months using code TREAT22
https://newpulselabs.com/go/cloudways/
😈 Import web pages into Figma
I recently came across a free new plugin that lets you convert any website into an editable Figma file.
It’s not going to be 100% perfect – especially when there are animations or JS involved – but overall it does a surprisingly good job.
What can you use a tool like this for?
- better understanding how designs are made
- using the page structure of an existing landing page to create your own
- remixing designs into your own creations
What you shouldn’t use it for?
Hopefully this is obvious, but… stealing other people’s work.
(I’ve actually come across a couple sites that are blatant knock-offs of the NewPulse Labs site. Not cool 👎).
💬 Closing Comments
That’s all for this week.
If you ever want to discuss any of the topics in this newsletter, I post a dedicated thread each week inside of the NewPulse Labs Facebook group.
You can also suggest any topics you think I should cover there, so be sure to join 🙂
Stay warm and talk soon!
