Jeff Chandler

  • User Role Editor 4.25 Patches Critical Security Vulnerability

    User Role Editor 4.25 Patches Critical Security Vulnerability

    Vladimir Garagulya, developer of the User Role Editor has patched a critical security vulnerability. User Role Editor is used to edit, manage, and create user roles and capabilities and is active on more than 300K sites. User Role Editor 4.24 and below allows any registered user to gain administrator access. Wordfence, a popular security plugin…

  • In Case You Missed It – Issue 6

    In Case You Missed It – Issue 6

    There’s a lot of great WordPress content published in the community but not all of it is featured on the Tavern. This post is an assortment of items related to WordPress that caught my eye but didn’t make it into a full post. Jen Mylo Moves on From Automattic Jen Mylo, formerly known as Jane…

  • Features-as-Plugins First Transitions Into Features-as-Projects

    Features-as-Plugins First Transitions Into Features-as-Projects

    Last year, I identified key factors that suggested the features-as-plugins first model was falling apart. A lack of communication, direction, buy-in from core developers, and synchronized development between plugins on Github and WordPress.org were some of the contributing factors highlighted. Features-as-Projects WordPress lead developer Helen Hou-Sandí has outlined a new strategy for the model transitioning…

  • bbPress 2.6 Expected Later This Year, Two Major Features Pushed Back to 2.7

    bbPress 2.6 Expected Later This Year, Two Major Features Pushed Back to 2.7

    There hasn’t been a lot of news about bbPress lately but earlier this week on the project’s development blog, John James Jacoby provided a status update on the progress of 2.6 and what to expect for 2.7. According to the post, the team has worked hard on 2.6 since 2.5’s release in 2013. Unfortunately, two…

  • WPWeekly Episode 228 – Communication is Key

    WPWeekly Episode 228 – Communication is Key

    We didn’t have a guest this week so Marcus Couch and I discuss the latest news and events happening in the WordPress community. We update listeners as to the status of the W3 Total Cache plugin. This segues into a conversation on whether caching plugins are necessary considering the improvements in technology in the last…

  • A Little Communication Goes a Long Way

    A Little Communication Goes a Long Way

    Whether you manage WordPress plugins, themes, or a service, a key component to keeping users happy is communication. Users and especially paying customers want to know what’s going on. Going an extended period of time without communicating leads to doubt, a feeling of abandonment, and speculation. Communicating is not hard and these days, developers have…

  • HeroPress Publishes Essays From 18 Countries in its First Year

    HeroPress Publishes Essays From 18 Countries in its First Year

    HeroPress.com, where inspirational essays are published each week from people across the world is one year old. In a post celebrating the milestone, Topher DeRosia highlights some of the site’s accomplishments throughout 2015. Authors from eighteen countries have published essays including, Lebanon, Nepal, New Zealand, Nigeria, and more. There are twice as many men as…

  • Versions of WP-CLI Prior to 0.23.0 Are Incompatible with WordPress 4.5

    Versions of WP-CLI Prior to 0.23.0 Are Incompatible with WordPress 4.5

    Daniel Bachhuber, maintainer of WP-CLI, a popular command line interface utility for managing WordPress sites, has released version 0.23.0. This release includes a number of bug fixes, improvements, and features, but the most important thing to note is that earlier versions of WP-CLI will not work with WordPress 4.5. According to Bachhuber, WordPress 4.5 loads…

  • WPWeekly Episode 227 – The HeroPress Story with Topher DeRosia

    WPWeekly Episode 227 – The HeroPress Story with Topher DeRosia

    In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I are joined by Topher DeRosia to learn about the origins of HeroPress. DeRosia explains his motivation for creating the site and why despite not reaching his crowdfunding goal, decided to press on. We also discuss the impact the essays are having on people across the…

  • Cast of Silicon Valley Nails The Meaning of Automattic on The First Try

    Cast of Silicon Valley Nails The Meaning of Automattic on The First Try

    Silicon Valley is a comedic television series on HBO about a group of six engineers who create a startup company in Silicon Valley. Wired.com sat down with the cast and gave them the names to real startup companies to see if they could guess what they do. Among the names mentioned is Automattic. Fast forward…

  • Frederick Townes Confirms W3 Total Cache is Not Abandoned

    Frederick Townes Confirms W3 Total Cache is Not Abandoned

    W3 Total Cache is a free, caching WordPress plugin created by Frederick Townes that’s active on more than one million sites. While the plugin’s core functionality is free to use, there’s a handful of services users can buy from within the plugin such as enhanced support to server and site configurations. A recent post by…

  • In Case You Missed It – Issue 5

    In Case You Missed It – Issue 5

    There’s a lot of great WordPress content published in the community but not all of it is featured on the Tavern. This post is an assortment of items related to WordPress that caught my eye but didn’t make it into a full post. Human Made Hires Siobhan McKeown Development firm, Human Made Ltd., announced that…

  • WPForms Aims to be the Most Beginner Friendly Forms Plugin for WordPress

    WPForms Aims to be the Most Beginner Friendly Forms Plugin for WordPress

    WPForms Lite is a new plugin developed by Syed Balkhi and Jared Atchison that aims to be the most beginner friendly form creation plugin in the market, “We made simple tasks EASY rather than letting the complex tasks define how hard simple will be,” Balkhi told the Tavern. I took the plugin for a test…

  • WPWeekly Episode 226 – Burnout

    WPWeekly Episode 226 – Burnout

    In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I discuss the symptoms of burnout and share tips on how to prevent it. We provide a status update on WordPress 4.5 and discuss my experience hooking up a site to Apple News Publisher. To round out the show, Marcus shares his experience using Shopify’s new…

  • How to Connect Your WordPress Powered Site to Apple News Publisher

    How to Connect Your WordPress Powered Site to Apple News Publisher

    When Apple News Publisher launched in September, 2015, it partnered with 20 publishers including, ESPN, The New York Times, and CNN. Today, publishers large and small are able to sign up to Apple’s News Publisher program which delivers content from sites to devices running iOS 9 or above. Since its launch, the service has garnered…