Between posts and comments, WordPress.com is an enormous hub of activity. The service recently published its 2015 year in review and the numbers are staggering. Last year, users published 660M posts that generated more than 655M comments. The review looks back at posts that went viral, books published by authors, and coverage of world…
WordPress 4.4.1 is available for download and includes 52 fixes, one of which patches a cross site scripting vulnerability reported by Crtc4L. This release address two severe bugs and updates the polyfill used for emoji to support Unicode 8. Support for Unicode 8 adds new diversity emoji to WordPress. Other notable changes include the removal…
If you need to edit a lot of content and want to save time doing so, check out a new plugin called Destination After Save created by, Robert Whitis. Destination after save overrides WordPress’ default save behavior and creates a new meta box on the post and page creation screens. Users can choose what to…
In 2014, we wrote about the trend of more people receiving commit access to WordPress core. Fast forward to the beginning of 2016 and a total of 35 people can commit code to the core of WordPress. Helen Hou-Sandí, WordPress Lead Developer, published the stat on Twitter and notes that 22 out of the 35…
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I wrap up our year in review. We look back at the biggest stories from July-December of this year. Thank you to everyone who listened to the show throughout 2015. Marcus and I plan to expand beyond WordPress in 2016 to discuss mental health, distributed worker…
Budding Windows App Studio developers who want an easy way to create a Windows application of their WordPress sites are in luck. In the December update, the Windows App Team announced a couple of new features including, a WordPress data source and template. Windows App Studio is a template-driven, drag-and-drop software development tool that enables…
Earlier this year, WordPress 4.2 added the ability to install and update plugins in-place. This feature is known as “Shiny Updates”. I’m a big fan of this feature because it’s substantially quicker than updating plugins via the updates page. Here’s what it looks like in action. Due to complications near the end of the 4.2…
On the Advanced WordPress Facebook group, a member recently raised the issue of display banner advertising in plugins. After installing Ultimate WooCommerce Brands developed by MagniumThemes, a large admin notice appears with an affiliate linked display banner for Bluehost. Ultimate WooCommerce Brands is a freemium plugin and while I’m not against plugin authors making a…
There’s a lot that happens in the WordPress ecosystem throughout the course of a year. In this episode, Marcus Couch and I run down our selection of big news stories from January to June. One trend we noticed is that there were quite a few unsuccessful crowdfunding campaigns. Listen in to find out if any…
When I founded WP Tavern in 2009, comments were an important part of the site’s initial success. After six years, the site has published its 30,000th comment. At a time where large websites such as Copyblogger and the Toronto Star are closing down comments in favor of social media, the Tavern continues to be a…
Earlier this year Steven Gliebe, founder of Churchthemes.com, launched Pro Plugin Directory, a site that lists commercial WordPress plugins for a variety of categories including, forms, performance, and security. After accumulating more than 170 plugins in five months, Gliebe decided to sell the site in November citing a lack of time to devote to the project.…
Over time, features and user interface elements in WordPress are removed or hidden from view. This generally occurs after a significant amount of discussion. Since WordPress is used by so many people, even a small percentage of users who depend on those features is a significant amount. Thankfully in most cases, features can be restored…
When the WordPress theme review team announced it would require theme authors to use the customizer to build theme options, many voiced their displeasure in the comments. Bruce Wampler, lead developer of the Weaver Xtreme WordPress theme, commented that his theme received a death sentence due to the requirement. Eight months later, Wampler has changed…
During Matt Mullenweg’s State of The Word presentation at WordCamp US, he said everyone in the community should make an effort to learn JavaScript deeply. I visited Barnes and Noble today and discovered that some books are heeding Mullenweg’s call and are doing their part to encourage people to learn JavaScript in addition to WordPress.…
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I are joined by Jeff Matson who writes and maintains documentation for Rocketgenius. Matson tells us how he became involved with WordPress and the community. We learn how he’s transitioned from working in an office everyday to an office being optional. Last but not least, we…