During the 2022 State of the Word, Matt Mullenweg highlighted a few examples of how Gutenberg adoption is growing beyond WordPress and how he believed it could become “bigger than WordPress itself.” Engine Awesome, a Laravel-based SaaS application, is one example he cited that is using the block editor to allow customers to build their own…
Will WordPress be ready to remove the Beta label from the Site Editor in the upcoming 6.2 release? The project’s Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy addressed this question in her latest WP Briefing podcast episode titled “What Does Concluding a Gutenberg Phase Really Mean?“ “All of the projects, with the exception of two, I believe,…
As part of the big picture goals for WordPress in 2023, the project is embarking on an effort to work through old tickets that are stuck due to no consensus, missing decisions, or multiple possible solutions. WordPress Core Committer Jb Audras has organized Trac triage sessions dedicated to moving these tickets forward or closing the…
OpenLogic, a company that provides technical support for enterprise open source infrastructure, and the Open Source Initiative (OSI), the nonprofit stewards of the Open Source Definition (OSD) have published the 2023 State of Open Source Report. The annual vender-neutral survey received 872 qualified responses from people in more than 20 major industries. Responses indicate that open source adoption…
WordPress and Matrix contributors are proposing a new Meta team subproject that would explore replacing Slack communication with Matrix, an open source federated chat system. Matrix already powers a variety of communication tools, including Element, the most mature Matrix client – a universal chat app that is often described as “a Slack alternative.” In 2020, Automattic…
WordPress’ Performance Team is working on unbundling the Performance Lab plugin after feedback from Matt Mullenweg who requested large features become their own community plugins with the possibility of becoming canonical plugins. As part of this effort, the new SQLite database integration is now available for testing as a standalone plugin. Yoast-sponsored contributor Ari Stathopoulos,…
Yoast SEO version 20.0 was released today with a new admin settings interface that also reorganizes the menu to into four main sections: General, Content types, Categories and Tags, and Advanced. In this update, the plugin did not add new features and settings but rather moved them to better match user workflows. The new sidebar…
Awesome Motive has acquired Thrive Themes, its second acquisition of 2023 following the Duplicator plugin deal that was announced earlier this month. Thrive’s premium plugin suite reports more than 200,000 users. This includes Thrive Architect, a visual drag and drop page builder, an LMS course builder, and other marketing-focused plugins for generating leads, creating quizzes…
WP Migrate, formerly known as WP Migrate DB and recently acquired by WP Engine, has long since expanded beyond its initial release as a database migration tool. Users may be familiar with the push/pull workflow of installing the plugin on two sites and migrating database, media, themes, and plugin changes back and forth. The most…
Although GitHub is primarily used for code collaboration, WordPress’ Community team is considering adopting the platform to standardize their project management tools. Contributing to open source can already be challenging but when it requires signing up for multiple services in order to access the team’s many spreadsheets, trello boards, Slack groups, and other modes of…
Gutenberg 15.0 was released this week with some exciting new features for working with blocks and an improved UI for managing controls in the inspector panel. This release marks the end of the block inspector tabs experiment, which is now stabilized in the plugin. Users will notice that some blocks will now have separate tabs…
WooCommerce Blocks maintainers are asking the developer community to share feedback on any performance issues they are experiencing with the Cart and Checkout blocks. “We’re aware there is work to be done in this area and we want to improve,” WooCommerce developer Alex Florisca said. “We’re specifically interested in any performance related issues that may…
WordCamp Europe announced the first batch of tickets on sale for the 2023 event that will be hosted in Athens, Greece, June 8-10. General tickets are € 50.00, a fraction of their true cost, which is heavily subsidized by sponsors. It includes admission to the two-day event, lunches, coffee, snacks, Contributor Day, a commemorative t-shirt, and…
WooCommerce Blocks version 9.4.0 was released with support for a new block-powered Local Pickup option under shipping settings. The feature plugin offers users early access to new blocks and improvements to existing blocks before they become available in WooCommerce core. Local Pickups introduces two new blocks: a shipping method toggle block that allows shoppers to…
WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy published a summary of the project’s “big picture” goals for 2023. The goals fall into three major categories: CMS, Community, and Ecosystem. WordPress development will focus on completing the remaining tasks for Phase 2 (Customization), and will move on to begin exploring Collaboration in Phase 3. “As we prepare…
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