Scheduled to take place May 7-8th, 2015 at Westin Lake in Las Vegas, NV, LoopConf is a conference dedicated to WordPress developers. The two-day event has six speakers confirmed with more on the way. They include: Joost de Valk Jenn Schiffer John O’ Nolan Helen Hou-Sandí Andrew Nacin Syed Balkhi LoopConf is a single…
The default theme slated to ship with WordPress 4.1 dubbed “Twenty Fifteen” has officially been added to the development version of WordPress. In sharp contrast to Twenty Fourteen, Twenty Fifteen is a simple, two column, blog focused theme. The typography features Google’s Noto Serif and Sans, a font family designed to be visually harmonious across…
Mark your calendars and schedule some free time on Friday, October 17th for the first “Rate and Review a WordPress Plugin Day“. On October 17th, visit the page of your favorite plugin in the WordPress.org plugin directory, give it a star rating, and write a review. Why The Special Day? If you’re anything like me,…
Over the weekend, the Easy Digital Downloads team launched a new side project called WP Tally. WP Tally is a tool that displays the total download count for plugins attached to a WordPress.org username. The project is the result of a conversation about the lack of an easy way to determine the total amount of…
Providing WordPress support is an important but often, thankless job. From support forums to IRC, there’s no shortage of people who need help with WordPress. However, participating in the various support channels is one of the easiest ways to contribute back to WordPress. In particular, if you’re interested in becoming a volunteer on the support…
How many times have you found reviews of webhosting companies only to discover they’re filled with affiliate links? The presence of an affiliate link leaves the validity of content in question. HostingReviews.io by Steven Gliebe, hopes to solve this problem by documenting micro reviews without any affiliate links attached. HostingReviews.io works by documenting what people…
iThemes has announced that WebDesign.com is now called iThemes Training. According to the announcement, this change will lessen confusion and place everything under the iThemes umbrella. We’re making this transition in order to bring everything we do at iThemes under one roof (themes, plugins & training) and eliminate confusion caused by having multiple domain names…
October 3rd, 2014 will live in the history books as the day when the first conference devoted to Pods took place. Organized by Scott Kingsley Clark, PodsCamp not only focused on the Pods plugin, but it was also the first time the development team was in the same physical location. In the following interview, Clark…
Since there is no guest this week, Marcus Couch and I used this opportunity to spend more time than usual with the news. We spend a considerable amount of time discussing WordPress contributions and I provide insight into my distinction between direct and indirect contributions. I share my experience of attending the first WordCamp event…
By default, if a post or page uses a title that’s already been used, WordPress appends a -2 to the end of the slug to prevent conflicts. Not only do duplicate titles cause conflicts, they’re not good for SEO. Developed by wallfa_hm, the Duplicate Title Validation plugin checks the title and displays a notice if…
Developed by Hyyan, Flexible Widget Title is a new plugin that enables users to hide widget titles from the frontend of WordPress. When activated, apply brackets to the titles you want to hide. For example, [A Text Widget Title]. Although the same effect can be accomplished by leaving the title field blank, it makes administering…
After a busy weekend of WordPress conferences, among those that took place is the first ever WordCamp Ann Arbor. Situated on the University of Michigan campus at the Michigan League, nearly 150 people from all walks of life gathered to learn about WordPress. Beginner’s Guide to WordCamps I started the day with a session by…
WordPress development agency, WebDevStudios, has acquired Maintainn for an undisclosed amount. According to the announcement, the acquisition enables WebDevStudios to provide better maintenance and support to clients. Founded in 2012 by Shayne Sanderson, Maintainn provides maintenance services including 24/7 security monitoring, daily off-site backups, weekly updates to WordPress core, themes and plugins, a dedicated WordPress…
During a session at WordCamp Europe, Matt Mullenweg was asked how companies contribute back to WordPress, how they’re doing it, and what companies should do more of. He responded to the question in-depth in a blog post entitled Five for the Future. In the post, he outlines 5% as being a good rule of thumb…
This weekend is a busy time for WordPress conferences. One event to keep an eye on is WordCamp Tampa. They have been selected as one of the first to participate in a live stream pilot program using new equipment purchased by the WordPress Foundation. Depending on the outcome of the experiment at this and other events,…