Generated social images seem to be all the rage now. Automattic scooped up Daniel Post’s Social Image Generator last month for eventual inclusion in Jetpack. There is a proposal to dynamically generate them for plugins and themes hosted on WordPress.org. And, there is a new player in town: Branded Social Images. Admittedly, I have had…
Two weeks ago, Cate and Topher DeRosia launched the HeroPress Network, a centralized website that would host various projects for helping people with WordPress. Today, the duo announced the opening of Find It WP, a new site that is part of the collective. It will serve as a database or archive of all things WordPress.…
A few weeks ago, WP Ninjas announced it was stepping into the media optimization plugin market. The team released its Remove Unused Media plugin as a commercial project for tidying storage space. I received a full copy of it and put it through the ropes. With so many commercial plugins, I am accustomed to the…
A friend and I were discussing the need for more one-off block plugins earlier today. He had mentioned that WordPress has this powerful block search feature that rarely turns up anything useful. Most are part of collections that do not appear in the results. This was part of a more wide-ranging conversation that I am…
Something on my radar right now is third-party plugins that have settings in the Customizer. What I gather of friends who are the devs working on Customizer and front-end stuff within a few plugin companies, global styles and block styles are not yet on their radar. So what happens if someone installs Twenty Twenty-Two or…
Released yesterday, Gutenberg 11.7 is one of the more exciting releases we have had in a while. The Global Styles system iterations continue to impress. The lighter nav experience makes adding links easier, and a spacing control for the Columns block delivered one of my oldest wish list items. The Site Logo block supports duotone…
As usual, I am always on the lookout for plugins that allow users to have fun with their websites. I like to mix it up from time to time here on the Tavern and not be all-business-all-the-time. And, that is where the new Adrian plugin comes in. Its goal is to take all of the…
Things move fast on social media. You get mere seconds to impress those who happen upon your posts promoting your latest project. You must also pack a lot of information into a small window that would potentially draw in an array of different users. WordPress has not been doing any favors for plugin and theme…
Should developers bundle block patterns with their themes or submit them to the WordPress.org directory? That is the question that some will likely need to answer in the future. Currently, submissions are not open for the block pattern directory. However, that will change as the contributors eventually wrap up the pattern creation process. The milestone…
WPCloudDeploy recently launched version 4.10.5 of its rapidly-maturing WordPress plugin of the same name. The project is a WordPress-native replacement for SaaS services like Cloudways, Ploi, SpinupWP, and others. Customers still need to hook up to a cloud server provider, such as Digital Ocean, Linode, AWS, or elsewhere. However, the project seeks to cut out…
Jamie Marsland, the founder of Pootlepress, reached out a few weeks ago, asking for feedback on a beta version of Block Injector. It was a commercial plugin his team at Pootlepress was gearing up to launch. Earlier this week, they released an updated version that he said he was happy with as an initial release.…
Husband-and-wife duo Topher and Cate DeRosia announced the launch of the The HeroPress Network earlier today. It is a collection of content from various sites they are working on in a centralized location. “Its overarching goal is to be a hub,” said Cate DeRosia. “It will display the newest items from around the HeroPress Network,…
The GiveWP team announced an extension of its flagship donation plugin for allowing peer-to-peer (P2P) fundraising in late September. The solution should make the project even more appealing than before for those looking to break from third-party donation services and go the self-hosted route. The first version rolls out individual and team fundraising pages, leaderboards,…
Last week, under its news section, The Next Web published what could only be described as a hit piece: Developers hate WordPress — and so should marketers. The claim was that, despite its current 40% market share, folks should start looking at alternatives for a better experience. The first developer interviewed for this piece was…
Launched by Ralph Morris and Steve Burge in June this year, Logtivity is a plugin and service that allows site owners to track everything that happens on their WordPress installs. The duo has made continual updates to the plugin since. In the past couple of months, they have added deep integration with Easy Digital Downloads.…