Earlier this month WordPress developer Morten Rand-Hendriksen released Simone, a free theme based on Underscores. Like many themes, Simone is responsive, wired for translation, utilizes the customizer, and includes editor styles. One feature, however, sets Simone apart – a heavy emphasis on accessibility. Rand-Hendriksen believes that the accessibility-ready tag should be required for all WordPress…
Hookr.io, the WordPress developer resource that launched earlier this year has undergone a series of improvements. The search engine now shows results as your typing. The detailed results page has been completely redesigned making it easier to read. If the source code contains indexed objects such as actions, filters, functions, etc, those items are hyper-linked…
WordPress 3.9 made huge strides toward improving the theme customization experience by adding widgets to the customizer for live previews. But have you ever thought about the possibility of setting up your WordPress menus within the customizer? Nick Halsey is tackling this as part of his Google Summer of Code 2014 Project and has just…
WordPress themes are getting simpler and bolder this year. Bloggers are gravitating toward designs that feature large typography and scaled back post meta in order to allow the visitor to focus on the main content. To compliment this design style, many theme developers are opting to keep the peripherals (widgets, menus, etc) hidden from view.…
When I wrote about the VersionPress project and campaign last week, a major sticking point with people was whether the project would be licensed under the GPL. After a few consultation emails and deliberation, the developers have decided the plugin will be 100% GPL licensed. When we set off with VersionPress and the crowd-funding campaign…
Typically when reading interviews people have done with Matt Mullenweg, I don’t learn anything new. That’s the not the case with the extended interview he did with J.J. Colao of Forbes.com. In the interview, Mullenweg goes into detail about his role of CEO at Automattic and emphasized how important mobile is within the company. Here…
BuddyPress Groups are one of the more social components of the plugin, as they’re used primarily for bringing members together around a shared interest, goal, or collaborative project. In some ways groups are like their own mini-networks within a social network, each having its own homepage, activity stream, member directory and administrative panel. Groups are…
If you’re running WordPress trunk, then you may have noticed a new addition to the plugins screen. A “Beta Testing” tab now lists all available Feature Plugins that are currently ready for testing, including the WP API, Press This, and WordPress Frontend Editor plugins. Andrew Nacin added the tab to all development builds of WordPress.…
ThemeFurnace relaunched this week with a complete overhaul of its theme collection. The shop was founded in 2012 by Oliver Dale, a Manchester-based designer and entrepreneur. In addition to a new website and pricing structure, Dale and his team have recoded all of their existing themes to remove the old options panel in favor of…
Marcus Couch and I were joined by VersionPress developer, Borek Bernard, to give us the scoop on not only the VersionPress campaign, but what the aim is for the plugin. He answered several questions, including the controversy surrounding the indecision of whether or not the plugin will be open-source licensed. After the show, Bernard published…
Creating responsive device mockups for products or portfolios can be a pain. Ordinarily, you might first search for a Photoshop template for the specific devices that you need for your mockups. Then you’d most likely take screenshots, cut them up and place them within the Photoshop file. Fortunately, if your site is running on WordPress,…
When WordPress 3.7 introduced automatic updates, a segment of users pushed back arguing they should be opt-in instead of opt-out. The main concern being that a website administrator wouldn’t have any time to test the update to make sure it doesn’t break anything. Several users said they would be fine with automatic updates if there…
When developing locally without an internet connection, it doesn’t make much sense for WordPress to load external files like fonts or Gravatars. This can slow you down unnecessarily. WP Local Dev Environment is a plugin created by Andrew Norcross for developers who are working locally without an internet connection. It removes / unhooks the loading…
In the past, adding subtitles to WordPress posts always required something a little hacky. Sometimes theme authors would hijack post excerpts or use custom fields in order to accomplish it, but these methods made process of adding a subtitle confusing for users. Subtitles is a new free plugin created by WordPress developer Philip Arthur Moore.…
Clef, the two-step authentication service that replaces usernames and passwords has announced a strategic partnership with Softaculous. Softaculous is similar to Fantastico in that it contains several scripts that can be auto installed on a webhosting account. The partnership enables automated WordPress installs from Softaculous to have Clef support out of the box. In one…
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