In order to see the post meta boxes using Distraction-free Writing Mode in WordPress 4.1, you have to move the cursor away from the post editor. During the editing process, you may need to preview a post several times. Since the preview button is only available when the publish meta box is shown, you have…
Jetpack is a WordPress plugin maintained by Automattic and has more than 30 different modules. The modules provide a variety of features including, contact forms, stats, and related posts. Part of Jetpack’s reputation in the WordPress community is that it’s bloated and slows down websites. Sam Hotchkiss, who is part of the Jetpack team, has…
This is part two of a two part series looking back at WordPress news in 2014. There was plenty of action to write about with over 900 posts published in 2014. Browse through the list and if a particular story had an impact on you, let us know in the comments. The stories included here…
This year the WordPress plugin directory crossed 35,000 plugin listings and is rapidly approaching one billion total downloads. WordPress 4.0 added custom icons to the plugin installer in the admin, which helps developers to differentiate their plugins in this massive sea of extensions. Plugin branding is useful for standing out in the initial results of…
WordPress’ sticky posts feature was introduced six years ago in the 2.7 release. It was added to enable users to stick important posts to the front page so that they won’t disappear in a blog’s steady stream of chronologically ordered content. By default, a sticky post is sticky indefinitely and requires you to manually uncheck…
Dan Griffiths, who is known on Twitter as Ghost1227 and one of the creators of WP Tally, recently found himself in an emergency situation. Due to personal reasons, details of the situation have been withheld but it required Griffiths to come up with $2,500 within a 24 hour time span. Griffiths is a military Veteran…
In the course of a year, a lot of things happen in the WordPress ecosystem and in 2014, the Tavern published over 900 posts. I’ve created a list of headlines from the first-half of 2014 where you can see the progression of stories, businesses, and products at a glance. The list indicates it was a…
Maintaining a library of code snippets can save you time when coding similar tasks in the future. Although there are countless sites online where you can host code snippets, it’s more convenient to have them at your fingertips when writing a blog that includes code. Plugin developer Justin Sternberg recently released Code Snippets CPT, a…
Looking back on the theme landscape of 2014, a clear design trend emerged that highlights WordPress’ roots as a blogging platform. Minimalist, content-centric themes took center stage in the official WordPress Themes Directory, outpacing their more visually-bloated commercial counterparts. This past year saw a major renaissance in themes for the personal blogger, particularly designs that…
The Google web fonts library has over 650 fonts and without a keen eye for design, it can be difficult to find complimentary fonts. After we highlighted how you can customize Twenty Fifteen with over 650 free fonts, some readers questioned whether customizing fonts should be left up to designers. Typography Project Beautifully Illustrates Complimentary…
Those who use a Managed WordPress hosting plan from either GoDaddy or MediaTemple might have noticed a new addition to the WordPress Dashboard. If you saw a bright orange button with the text Help Me, it wasn’t a hack, but is part of the SIDEKICK plugin. However, at least one customer thought it was a…
Varying Vagrant Vagrants 1.2.0 was released last week after nine months in development. As of VVV 1.2.0, new instances of VVV will have the database entirely contained inside the virtual machine, as opposed to previous versions where it was mapped to a persistent local location. VVV project leader Jeremy Felt recommends a full vagrant destroy…
Have you ever wondered what WordPress looked like back in the early days, before it was used by millions of website around the web? Ryan Hellyer has created a series of static representations of the very early versions of WordPress. The Historic WordPress project aims to showcase both the frontend and backend of the software…
The new WordPress default theme, Twenty Fifteen, looks great and provides a lot of flexibility, but one thing it lacks is the option to customize fonts. A free plugin called Typecase, by UpThemes, solves this problem by giving users easy access to over 650 different fonts. Typecase uses the Google webfonts library, which has slowly…
Dashicons is an icon font that first shipped with WordPress 3.8. Since then, the core development team has routinely added new icons as necessary. WordPress 4.1 includes more than 20 new icons, specifically for the built-in media player and inline image editing tools. There’s also a few miscellaneous icons including, a palm tree, tickets, a…
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