Less than two weeks after publishing about the broken user experience of the former Dark Mode plugin being renamed and repurposed, another plugin development company decided to do the same. The consensus seems to be that this is a bad idea. However, the ProfilePress Team forged ahead and repurposed the WP User Avatar plugin. Instead…
Over the weekend, Anariel Design co-founder Ana Segota tweeted that she was nearly ready to submit the company’s first block theme into the WordPress directory. There are only five such experimental themes available for download in the repo right now, and I have been patiently awaiting more. The Naledi theme is in the review queue,…
WordSesh 2021, a free virtual event targeted at WordPress professionals, is less than one week away. Sessions will be broadcast May 24-28, followed by hands-on workshops May 27 – June 4. The event is hosted by Brian Richards, creator of the WordPress video training website WPSessions. It features an impressive lineup of curated speakers whose…
As has almost become ritual at this point, I am always looking forward to the next testing round for Full Site Editing (FSE). Spearheaded by core contributor Anne McCarthy, the FSE Outreach Program’s fortnightly user tests are usually fun and offer everyone a chance to get involved, regardless of their experience level. This latest testing…
The WordPress community is eager to return to in-person events and organizers are discussing a path to ensure the safety of resuming meetups as a first step before considering WordCamps. Previous discussions led to the creation of a checklist to assist local organizers in determining if their chapter is eligible to proceed. Noticeably absent from…
The Gutenberg development team has taken massive strides in the latest release. Version 10.6 of the plugin introduces several user-facing features and changes that upgrade the block-editing experience. The new duotone filter for images is just downright fun to play with. The UIs for the Query pattern selector and template-editing mode have been overhauled. Plus,…
AccessiBe and other similar tools are coming under fire after more than 400 accessibility advocates and developers signed an open letter calling on the industry to unite against the use of accessibility overlay products. These overlay “widgets” are technologies that apply third-party code to the front end in an attempt to automate repairs after sites…
Yesterday, StudioPress announced several changes to its themes and marketplace coming on or around June 8. For those outside its community, the company will be making its Genesis Framework available for free. The company is overhauling its marketplace, no longer selling individual themes. StudioPress’s selection of themes will soon be available only through a Genesis…
Core contributor Jeff Ong announced an upcoming virtual hangout around the concept of universal themes. The meeting could cover much ground for theme authors learning how new and upcoming tools will fit into their workflows, businesses, and more. For an invitation, attendees should leave a comment on the announcement post or message Ong directly. The…
GiveWP, one of the most popular donation and fundraising plugins with more than 100,000 active installs, has been acquired by Liquid Web. The team behind the plugin will be joining Liquid Web as part of the asset sale, which includes the whole company, products, and leadership. GiveWP made its debut in 2015 with a 0%…
In today’s WP Briefing podcast episode, The Commons of Images, host Josepha Haden Chomphosy discussed the Openverse project with WordPress lead Matt Mullenweg. Automattic recently paid the non-profit Creative Commons organization for their Creative Commons Search engine. However, WordPress.org will host it, and there will be a community-run team. Openverse will be the name of…
I began my journey into remote work while teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) in South Korea. I was 23 years old at the time. By day, I spent my time wrangling elementary and middle-school kids. At night, I was writing tutorials, building themes and plugins, and taking any work that landed on my…
Yesterday, WordPress released a core plugin named Classic Widgets. Core contributors Tonya Mork and Andrew Ozz created the plugin under the WordPress Contributors account. It allows end-users to disable the upcoming block-based widgets system. Support is expected through 2022 or as long as necessary according to the plugin description. Decided last month by a small…
Last year, I asked Tavern readers if WordPress should notify end-users when a plugin’s owner changes. The post was not entirely based on theory. There have been some cases of real-world confusion. The consensus from the comments on that post seemed to be that, yes, such notifications would be welcome. When I wrote that post,…
Jetpack 9.7 was released today with updates under the hood that ensure the plugin’s blocks are compatible with the full-site editing features coming in WordPress 5.8. It also changes how sites access features that require the WordPress.com infrastructure. A pull request merged in version 9.7 changes the connection flow to make Jetpack active as soon…
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