The WordPress Community Team is discussing banning companies from sponsoring WordCamps if they advertise competitively against WordPress. A WordCamp organizing team recently brought the concern to community deputies regarding a potential sponsor that is advertising its product in such a way that it puts WordPress in “an unflattering light.” This particular instance is prompting community…
Earlier this week, Plausible Analytics released version 1.2 of its WordPress plugin. The update includes a missing feature that should make it more appealing to end-users. The plugin now supports an “embedded mode” that displays a site’s stats directly in the WordPress admin interface. Without counting the self-hosted users of its open-source project, Plausible Analytics…
Any time I see a new block-ready WordPress theme, I am like a toddler in a toyshop. I cannot wait to bring it home, rip off the packaging, and play with it. Sometimes it is the type of fun that will create lasting, years-long memories. Other times, the toy is not all it is cracked…
Google announced this week that it will be delaying the rollout of the new page experience ranking signal to mid-June 2021. Page experience will be included along with existing search signals like mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS-security, and intrusive interstitial guidelines. The rollout, previously planned to begin in May, will be gradual and page experience will not be in full force…
For much of WordPress’s history, the foundational elements of building a theme have been slow to change. Every so often, developers would get a new feature, such as child themes, featured images, nav menus, and template parts. Each of these was epic in its own way. However, theme authors had ample time to adapt to…
WordPress contributors are proposing the project take an active position on Google’s Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC). This particular mechanism is Google’s alternative to third-party cookies that doesn’t require collecting users’ browsing history. The GitHub repository for FLoC explains how Google will group people together and label them using machine learning: We plan to explore…
Patchstack, which recently rebranded from WebARX, released its 2020 security whitepaper. The report identified a total of 582 security vulnerabilities. However, only 22 of the issues came from WordPress itself. Third-party plugins and themes accounted for the remaining 96.22%. “These are all security issues disclosed by the Patchstack internal research team, Patchstack Red Team community,…
I simply do not understand it. For at least the better part of a decade, theme authors have asked for the tools to create more complex layouts with WordPress. They have asked for the ability to allow end-users to more easily recreate their demos. They have wanted methods to bypass the “restrictive” theme review guidelines.…
The Jetpack team has been quietly testing a new plugin called Jetpack Boost, which addresses website owners’ performance and SEO concerns. Version 1.0 was released today, one month after the final pre-release came out in March. Boost is a separate plugin under the Jetpack brand and it does not require Jetpack core to work. The…
The latest release of the Gutenberg plugin (10.4) brings block widgets into the Customizer. When customizing widget-enabled areas, a new block inserter icon is now available for dropping blocks into sidebars. This is the first iteration of block management in the Customizer, tackling the technical integration for editing blocks while also taking advantage of the…
Sometimes a theme’s description is so moving that one must install, activate, and test the project. I often rail against the obviously keyword-stuffed text in the free WordPress theme directory. But, I am pleasantly surprised from time to time. Enō is an elegant, modern and functional WordPress theme. Probably this is the best blogging theme…
Today, Josepha Haden Chomphosy announced the results of yesterday’s “go/no-go” demo and decision on whether Full Site Editing (FSE) would land in WordPress 5.8. The site editor and global styles are not landing in the next release. However, several other features should launch and allow users to build their sites with blocks in new ways.…
Zerodium, one of the most well-known security vulnerability brokers, announced that it is tripling payouts for remote code execution exploits on default WordPress installations. Payouts are typically $100K but have been temporarily increased to $300K. The company focuses on acquiring original and previously unreported zero-day research. It pays researchers for high-risk vulnerabilities and fully functional…
The Full Site Editing (FSE) outreach program is chugging along. Since December, it has called for and completed four rounds of testing. The latest round asks volunteers to provide feedback on the Query block, arguably one of the most crucial pieces of the FSE-puzzle. Automattic Developer Relations Wrangler Anne McCarthy has been overseeing the program…
WordCamp Europe 2021 will be taking place online, June 7-10. This will be the second year in a row that the event has not been held in person due to the pandemic, but organizers are incorporating feedback from the first edition to improve upon it. Speaker applications are now open and first-time speakers are encouraged…
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