iA Writer 5 for iOS was released last week, nearly a year after version 4. This update is free for those who purchased version 4 from the iOS App Store. iA Writer 5 for Mac is still in the works. The free Android version of the app is receiving incremental improvements that will bring it…
If you didn’t watch the live stream or attend WooConf in-person, you’re in luck as videos from the event are starting to come online. The first talk highlights is the State of the Woo by Todd Wilkens, Head of WooCommerce. Wilkens shares stats, provides an overview of projects the team is working on, what to…
The WP-SpamShield plugin was removed from the WordPress.org directory this week due to what the Plugin Review Team has deemed a violation of the guidelines and a possible miscommunication. Two weeks ago, the author of WP-SPamShield and the author of the Plugin Organizer plugin exchanged contentious remarks in a support forum thread where each accused…
Weglot, a SaaS-based multilingual plugin that entered the WordPress market last year, has passed €44,000 in monthly revenue. The company received €450K in seed funding in May 2017 and has nearly doubled its user base in the past six months. Co-founder Rémy Berda reports that the plugin is approaching 20,000 users and that more than…
Jetpack 5.5 was released yesterday with several important changes that ensure the plugin is compatible with the upcoming WordPress 4.9 release scheduled for November 14. The plugin will be able to shed some weight, as core improvements will make Jetpack’s syntax highlighting and gallery widget obsolete. WordPress 4.9 incorporates CodeMirror, which brings syntax highlighting, linting,…
Out-of-the-box, WordPress provides the ability to blacklist comments or configure a set of options to send comments to moderation. If all comments are moderated, there are no options to whitelist comments. Searching the plugin directory for comment whitelisting provides few, if any, solutions. However, a cursory search of Google led me to the Comment Whitelist…
The discussion surrounding the use of iframes for meta boxes in Gutenberg became more heated over the weekend, as concerned developers implored the team to consider the detriments of the current approach. Responses from Gutenberg’s leadership initially deflected concerns, presenting the iframe implementation as an experiment that “works ‘for now’” but isn’t what the team…
Six WordCamps were held over the weekend in cities across the globe, including two in Africa where WordPress events are just starting to take off. Harare and Nairobi hosted their second WordCamps in areas where the WordPress community was virtually non-existent two years ago. Harare’s first camp was part of the WordCamp Incubator program the…
WordCamp Europe 2018 has begun early bird ticket sales for its sixth edition in Belgrade, Serbia, June 14-16. Attendees who purchase a ticket before December 31, 2017, will receive a limited-edition swag item. WordCamp Europe has sold out in many previous years and organizers of the 2017 event in Paris anticipated that it would be…
A lively and productive discussion regarding Gutenberg’s use of iframes for meta boxes is happening on GitHub. Yesterday, WordPress developer Kevin Hoffman created an issue titled “Are iframes a viable long-term solution for meta boxes?” Gutenberg 1.5 introduced initial support for meta boxes. Hoffman identified several issues with iframes that have been popping up as…
The WordPress Foundation has awarded Bianca Welds with the Kim Parsell travel scholarship to attend WordCamp US 2017. Welds lives in Jamaica and has been using WordPress since 2005. We featured her on the Tavern in 2015 when she provided insight into the Jamaican WordPress community. Welds will be presenting at WordCamp US on how…
Press This, a tool that allowed users to quickly clip and publish content from web pages, is set to be removed from WordPress’ upcoming 4.9 release. The feature is being retired and will live out its remaining days as a canonical plugin. WordPress contributors opted to make a clean break by completely removing Press This…
GitHub launched its new community forums this week as another way for the platform’s 24 million developers to stay connected. The company built them on top of the Lithium SaaS community platform, a popular choice for enterprise customers, including Sony, Cisco, HP, Skype, Barclaycard, Symantec, Google, and PayPal. The first iteration of the forums includes…
The Gutenberg plugin’s Halloween release (version 1.6) includes major updates to the writing experience and many performance improvements. The block toolbar has been relocated to the top of the editor, a suggestion that was mocked up and described in detail in a post on the Yoast SEO blog proposing an alternative approach for Gutenberg. Prior…
In this episode, John James Jacoby and I discuss the news of the week including, a behind the scenes look at how WordPress 4.8.3 was released, WordPress 4.9 RC1, and Patreon launching an app directory along with a free WordPress plugin. We also talk about the difficulties of surveys, from asking the right questions, to…
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