Last week, Yext launched its Yext Answers plugin to the WordPress community. The goal was to bring a platform that won the Best Software Innovation category of the 2020 Global Search Awards to WordPress. However, my experience was far from satisfactory. “For people searching on a WordPress website, the Answers Connector provides a seamless search…
Gutenberg 9.2 was released this week and is the last release of the plugin to be rolled into WordPress 5.6. It features the long-awaited video tracks functionality, closing a ticket that has been open for more than two years under development. Video tracks includes things like subtitles, captions, descriptions, chapters, and metadata. This update introduces…
ESLint, one of the most popular JavaScript linting utilities, quickly eclipsed more established early competitors, thanks to its open source license. The clear licensing enabled the project to become widely used but did not immediately translate into funds for its ongoing development. Despite being  downloaded more than 13 million times each week, its maintainers still…
Themes Team representative Ari Stathopoulos is now officially the first theme author to have a theme in the directory that supports full-site editing (FSE). With a slimmed-down beta release of FSE shipping in WordPress 5.6 this December, someone had to be the first to take the plunge. It made sense for someone intimately familiar with…
WordPress.org has pushed out a forced security update for the Loginizer plugin, which is active on more than 1 million websites. The plugin offers brute force protection in its free version, along with other security features like two-factor auth, reCAPTCHA, and PasswordLess login in its commercial upgrade. Last week security researcher Slavco Mihajloski discovered an…
Earlier today, MakeStories launched version 2.0 of its plugin for creating Web Stories with WordPress. In many ways, this is a new plugin launch. The previous version simply allowed users to connect their WordPress installs to the MakeStories site. With the new version, users can build and edit their stories directly from the WordPress admin.…
I was wrong. I assured our readers that “the block-based widget system will be ready for prime time when WordPress 5.6 lands” in my previous post on the new feature’s readiness. I also said that was on the condition of not trying to make it work with the customizer — that experience was still broken.…
Instagram’s checkout feature, which allows users to purchase products without leaving the app, has become an even more important part of Facebook’s long-term investment in e-commerce now that the pandemic has so heavily skewed consumer behavior towards online shopping. When Instagram introduced checkout in 2019, it reported that 130 million users were tapping to reveal…
Mel Choyce-Dwan, the Default Theme Design Lead for WordPress 5.6, kick-started 10 tickets around two months ago that would bring new features to the old default WordPress themes. The proposal is to add unique block patterns, a feature added to WordPress 5.5, to all of the previous 10 Twenty* themes. It is a lofty goal…
What comes as a surprise to few, Google has updated its content guidelines for its Web Stories format. For users of its recently-released Web Stories for WordPress plugin, they will want to follow the extended rules for their Stories to appear in the “richer experiences” across Google’s services. This includes the grid view on Search,…
The big news in the world of e-commerce today is Stripe’s acquisition of Paystack, a Nigeria-based payments system that is widely used throughout African markets. The company, which became informally known as “the Stripe of Africa” picked up $8 million in Series A funding in 2018, led by Stripe, Y Combinator, and Tencent. Paystack has…
Created by Donna Peplinskie, a Product Wrangler at Automattic, the Book Review Block plugin is nearly three years old. However, it only came to my attention during a recent excursion to find interesting block plugins. The plugin does pretty much what it says on the cover. It is designed to review books. It generally has…
WooCommerce 4.6 was released today. The minor release dropped during WooSesh, a global, virtual conference dedicated to WooCommerce and e-commerce topics. It features the new home screen as the default for all stores. Previously, the screen was only the default on new stores. Existing store owners had to turn the feature on in the settings.…
Starter content. It was a grand idea, one of those big dreams of WordPress. It was the new kid on the block in late 2016. Like the introduction of post formats in 2011, the developer community was all in for at least that particular release version. Then, it was on to the next new thing,…
Google announced an expansion of listener engagement metrics today for those using its Podcast Manager. Previously, audience insights included data about the types of devices listeners are using, where listeners tune in and drop off during a given episode, total number of listens, and listening duration, but the service lacked analytics regarding how visitors were…
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