When Dumitru Brinzan launched AcademiaThemes in early 2014, he did so with the goal of providing high quality themes for the education sector. With one year under his belt, I reached out to Brinzan to find out how the business is doing. The first year was rough, thanks in large part to algorithm changes implemented…
Throughout the course of a year, several new ideas, products, and businesses are launched in the WordPress ecosystem. However, not all of them are destined for success. Here are five WordPress initiatives launched in 2014 that didn’t make the cut. WPKindness Launched in early 2014 and created by Ryan Bell, WPKindness shared acts of kindness…
WordSesh 3 attracted more than 3,000 unique viewers from 89 countries. This equates to nearly three times the amount of people who attended WordCamp Europe 2014. With so many people interacting with the WordSesh site and 24 hours of live video sessions, it’s imperative that a webhost be able to deliver great performance. For the…
WordPress 1.0 introduced search engine friendly permalinks using mod_rewrite. Setting your site to use pretty permalinks is usually one of the first things that administrators do after installation. WordPress 4.2 will add a new function that will automatically enable pretty permalinks, if the server supports it, at the time of installation. This means that in…
If you’ve ever clicked on a screenshot in the WordPress plugin directory and received a download prompt, you’re not the only one. In fact, it’s a widespread issue that affects a number of plugins. Screenshots are important as they help with troubleshooting, previewing features, and give users a sense of what to expect when it’s…
This special episode of WordPress Weekly doesn’t have any news or plugin picks of the week. Instead, it’s dedicated to the late Kim Parsell. I describe the experience of January 2nd where Brian Layman and I drive to Kim Parsell’s house to check on her. After telling the story, I share a couple of funny…
Web accessibility guidelines are constantly in flux, making it difficult for site administrators to keep pace. Even if you have a decent grasp on the basics, changes to your theme, plugins, and content can introduce new accessibility issues that you didn’t anticipate. Legal requirements may soon put publishers under the gun for accessibility compliance. Plugin…
This week the world mourns with Parisians following yesterday’s terrorist attack at the headquarters of satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Masked gunmen, claiming to be Yemeni al-Qaida, killed 12 people, including eight journalists and two police officers. The attackers targeted Charlie Hebdo’s daily editorial meeting, in protest of the publication’s controversial satirical depictions of religious figures.…
For the Advanced WordPress group on Facebook, 2014 was a great year. The group added key admins Joost de Valk and Danny van Kooten to cover the European time zone. It took two and a half years to reach 7,500 members, but after highlighting the group on the Tavern, membership skyrocketed from 7,500 members to…
WordPress for Android is starting 2015 with a big update. Version 3.5 was released today, introducing major changes to the app’s overall design. This release follows Google’s new Material design principles, which was created to unify the experience of apps across platforms and devices. The design spec includes basic tenets for the various aspects of…
When migrating a WordPress site to a new domain, you’ll have to update every instance of the site’s URL in the database. Some developers prefer to use tools like WP-CLI or WP Migrate DB to handle this, while others opt for a general database search and replace plugin with a UI in the WordPress admin.…
Happy Joe is launching its first planned WP Boot Camp in San Antonio, TX on January 23, 2015. The non-profit organization helps US military veterans re-enter the workforce through training in WordPress and the web technology industry in general. Happy Joe was started by former service member James Dalman, who will be presenting at the…
Last week, moderators from the WordPress Development StackExchange (WPSE) posted a short summary of stats from 2014, which demonstrate the remarkable growth and success of the community surrounding the site. This past year WPSE pulled in approximately 15,000 new users, bringing the total to 45,000. The site received a total of 17 million page views…
The traditional use of widgets in WordPress is to set it and forget it. After placing and configuring a widget, it stays in the widgetized area until manually removed. Many plugins have extended widgets to add visibility settings that are based on the page or post where the widget appears. But what if you could…
Emil Uzelac’s new WordPress Theme Review service is the first of its kind. As a four-year veteran of the WordPress.org Theme Review Team, he is uniquely qualified to operate a service that focuses on theme standards and quality control. Uzelac plans to assist developers with theme reviews for client projects, commercial themes, and free themes…
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