In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I recap the news and headlines of the first half of 2016. Part two will be recorded on January 4th, 2017, where we’ll look back at the headlines during the second half of 2016, give our predictions for 2017, and share what we’re looking forward to…
The BuddyPress development team has released BuddyPress 2.7.4 to address a security vulnerability that affects all versions back to 2.0. According to John James Jacoby, lead developer of BuddyPress, “This version patches a vulnerability to the BuddyPress core attachments API that could allow arbitrary file deletion on certain installation configurations.” The vulnerability was responsibly disclosed by…
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I discuss the news of the week including, WooCommerce’s 42% market share, the redesign concept of WordPress.org, and two plugin acquisitions. I also share details of a side project I’m working on that involves BuddyPress. Last but not least, we briefly discuss Jeff King’s impact on…
One of the first things I recommend users do after installing WordPress is to either close user registration or install a plugin that protects the site against spam registrations. A friend of mine recently started a new WordPress site that has BuddyPress installed. After two weeks, I chipped in to help him out and discovered…
For the past two weeks, I’ve been helping a friend build his site. The site uses WordPress and BuddyPress and is the first opportunity I’ve had to use BuddyPress for a project. The site is dedicated to a Hockey League league that’s specific to a video game. The league has a number of players and…
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I are joined by Tony Perez, co-founder and CEO of Sucuri. It’s easy to tell from this episode that Perez is extremely passionate about web security. We discussed a wide range of topics related to security including, trends involving WordPress, the FUD factor, messaging surrounding HTTPS,…
Seriously Simple Podcasting, created by Hugh Lashbrooke in 2012, has been acquired by Podcast Motor. The plugin is actively installed on nearly 20K sites and out of 104 reviews, has an average rating of 4.9 stars. Lashbrooke no longer has the time to dedicate to the project, “I am in fact selling the plugin (along…
UpdraftPlus, a European company that maintains a backup plugin by the same name with nearly 1M active installs, has acquired the WP-Optimize plugin. WP-Optimize was created eight years ago by Ruhani Rabin and is actively installed on more than 500K sites. Its primary function is to clean and optimize databases. WP-Optimize will become part of…
When Matt Mullenweg, co-creator of the WordPress open source project, announced that design would lead the way for WordPress development in 2017, utilizing user research and mockups, the first thing that came to my mind was WordPress 2.7. That release was the culmination of effective leadership and effort from Jen Mylo and Liz Danzico. In…
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I are joined by Weston Ruter and Nick Halsey, lead developers of the Customize component in WordPress. I invited Ruter and Halsey on the show to give us some insight into its origin and why it was created. We also discuss its evolution since WordPress 3.6…
This is a guest post written by Tony Perez, co-founder and CEO of Sucuri. Sucuri is a website security platform that helps clean and protect websites. I would consider us a small mid-sized company. Our annual sponsorship budget is in the range of $300 – $400k per calendar year (CY). One of the industry events…
Nearly 2,000 people descended on Philadelphia, PA to attend WordCamp US last week. On the night before WordCamp US took place, Pantheon’s sponsorship was revoked and advertising materials, including the company’s booth, were hidden in a storage room inside the venue. The move generated a lot of controversy on social media and at the event.…
In October, Let’s Encrypt was managing more than 10 million active SSL certificates. That number doubled to 20 million in November as large providers continue to partner with the organization to manage their customers’ certificates. In 2014, Google announced that HTTPS is a ranking factor. Earlier this year, the Google Chrome security team announced that Chrome 56 will mark HTTP…
The WordPress Foundation has announced that Elizabeth Shilling, one of three co-founders of the Women Who WP meetup group, is the second recipient of the Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship. The scholarship was created in 2015 to remember Kim Parsell and provide an opportunity for a woman who may not have the financial means to attend the…
Among the many enhancements in WordPress 4.7 are improvements to the media component. Previous to 4.7, users who uploaded files to the media library and changed the title could not search for them by file name. Four years since the ticket was created, users will be able to search for media by filename. PDFs are…