In June 2022, WordPress.org’s Themes Team began strongly urging theme authors to switch to locally hosted webfonts, following a German court case, which fined a website owner for violating the GDPR by using Google-hosted webfonts. For years, theme authors have been… Continue Reading →
WooCommerce Blocks 8.6.0 was released yesterday with support for a new block that displays cross-sells for products that are based on the current product in the customer’s cart. For example, if a customer is purchasing a new gardener’s kit, the… Continue Reading →
Molten is a new block theme from first-time WordPress.org theme author Paul Truong, designed for chefs and restaurateurs to showcase their work. The theme puts the spotlight on food photography offset with bold typography featuring the Playfair Display font for… Continue Reading →
Automattic-sponsored core contributor Adam Zielinski published a demo today of WordPress running in the browser with no PHP server. This is accomplished using WebAssembly (WASM), a format for a stack-based virtual machine that enables deployment on the web for client… Continue Reading →
After a seven-month long effort across multiple contributor teams, the Twenty Twenty-Two (TT2) default theme will be tagged as “Accessibility-Ready” when WordPress 6.1 ships in November. It is the first block theme to meet the requirements for gaining this distinction…. Continue Reading →
PublishPress, a company that develops free and commercial publishing and permissions plugins for WordPress, has acquired MetaSlider from Extendify. The plugin is used on more than 700,000 sites to build sliders, slideshows, carousels, and galleries. The company’s mission is to… Continue Reading →
Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) has announced the availability of version 6.0, an update that applies to both the free and pro versions of the plugin. This release introduces a refreshed admin UI that ACF product manager Iain Poulson said users… Continue Reading →
WordPress 6.1 beta 1 was released today, and testing has begun with the general release expected in just under six weeks on November 1. Versions 13.1 – 14.1 of the Gutenberg plugin will be rolled into core for 6.1. This… Continue Reading →
The count for WordPress block themes has reached 137. It’s a far cry from the 500 block themes WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden-Chomphosy set as a goal for 2022, but the number is steadily climbing as theme authors find their… Continue Reading →
Last month, the plan for WordPress to generate WebP images by default for new JPEG image uploads was put on hold for the upcoming 6.1 release after objections from lead developers. The original proposal had been merged into core at… Continue Reading →
AI image generation has quickly become more accessible over the past few months and is making its way into different industries that require asset creation. Although it’s still somewhat limited, AI image generators can create breathtaking photorealistic images from complex… Continue Reading →
SiteGround launched a new managed Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) hosting product today, the first of its kind among WordPress hosts. The company currently powers more than 2,800,000 domains and is targeting small businesses and digital product creators with new plans… Continue Reading →
Gutenberg 14.1 was released today with some much-needed improvements to the Navigation block, which still seems to be on rocky journey towards better usability. Contributors are moving functionality around the Navigation interface to figure out where it works best. The… Continue Reading →
WordPress users looking for a block theme for blogging will have no shortage of options while Anders Norén is on a run with back-to-back theme submissions. Beaumont, his second theme release this month, is another one designed for personal sites… Continue Reading →
In the most recent BuddyPress developers’ chat, contributors discussed progress on the upcoming 11.0.0 release, which is expected on December 14, 2022. Mathieu Viet, one of BuddyPress’ lead developers who spearheaded the effort to get the BP Attachments API into… Continue Reading →
Members of the WordPress 6.1 release squad recently gathered for a product walkthrough on Zoom, where Gutenberg lead architect Matías Ventura gave an informal tour of some of the new features coming in the next release. After the success of… Continue Reading →
If you watched Matt Mullenweg’s Q&A session at WordCamp US last weekend, it’s evident that there are significant parts of the community still clinging to the Classic Editor who would be happy for it to be supported indefinitely. For whatever… Continue Reading →
WordCamp US 2022 has concluded after two days of presentations and a contributor day last weekend. Some attendees are still making their way home with hearts full of good memories until the next time they can gather in person again…. Continue Reading →
During WordCamp US’ contributor day this weekend, Matt Mullenweg published a renewed call for WordPress’ Make teams to adopt a plugin-first approach when developing new features for core. He revived the notion of canonical plugins, first introduced to the WordPress… Continue Reading →
Automattic published its bi-annual transparency report this week, which highlights the different information and takedown demands received across the company’s services. Historically, Automattic has used these reports as an opportunity to publicly reaffirm its commitment to actively pushing back against… Continue Reading →
WordCamp US 2022 is underway in San Diego, California, following last night’s welcome party for speakers, sponsors, organizers, and volunteers. For many attendees, this is their first in-person WordPress event since 2019, before the pandemic began shutting down conferences. Good… Continue Reading →
WordPress’ design team has announced the winners of the challenge to create a style variation for the upcoming Twenty Twenty-Three (TT3) default theme. Organizers received 38 submissions from 19 contributors (some submitted multiple variations) hailing from eight countries. Given the… Continue Reading →
WordPress theme author Anders Norén is at it again with a new minimal block theme for blogs and personal websites. Björk is the 129th block theme to hit the directory and Norén’s 25th free WordPress theme. It follows the release of Poe,… Continue Reading →
BackupBuddy, a commercial plugin from iThemes that performs scheduled backups with remote storage options, has patched a vulnerability that allowed for arbitrary file download by unauthenticated users. iThemes published an advisory for its users, indicating that the vulnerability affects versions… Continue Reading →
WordPress’ Security Team announced it will be dropping support for versions 3.7 through 4.0 on December 1, 2022. To give some context for how old these versions are, in 2013, WordPress 3.7 introduced automatic background updates and 3.8 updated the… Continue Reading →
During last week’s Editor chat meeting, Automattic-sponsored Gutenberg contributor Andrei Draganescu reported that he is “slowly but definitely going to introduce distraction free mode,” a project he has been working on since early explorations began in February. The PR he referenced… Continue Reading →
Wouldn’t it be convenient to select a sentence or paragraph and instantly wrap it with quotes by tapping on the quote key? This is a fun little feature that was tucked into the Gutenberg 13.9 changelog last month with very… Continue Reading →
WP Super Cache, one of the oldest and most widely used static caching plugins for WordPress, is changing hands. After 15 years, the plugin’s author, Donncha Ó Caoimh, is handing over maintenance and development to Jetpack’s performance team. If you… Continue Reading →
Yesterday, we published allegations from Gijo Varghese against UpdraftPlus, the makers of WP-Optimize. Varghese is founder of FlyingProxy, a competing company, and identifies himself as a “performance enthusiast.” He accused the plugin of “cheating Pagespeed and other tools” by hiding… Continue Reading →
Gijo Varghese, a developer who calls himself a “web performance enthusiast,” shocked WordPress users around the world over the weekend when he tweeted a screenshot of how WP-Optimize is explicitly preventing select JavaScript files from loading when users test their… Continue Reading →
