I reach over to grab my phone to check the time. I am debating whether I should stay awake and watch one more episode of The Walking Dead — it would be my fourth, maybe fifth, binge of the series. 11:12 pm. I noticed that Slack was blowing up my phone. I had it on…
The Gravity Forms team formally announced version 2.5 of its form plugin yesterday. The product, owned by Rocketgenius, promises an overhauled experience that is more in line with the core block editor. The team also wanted to put accessibility at the forefront of this release. The design is fresh, ditching pieces of the older WordPress…
WordPress theme development company Themix released its third free theme to the official directory this week. Churel is described as a theme for organizations and businesses that also works for traditional blogging. The development team has a keen eye for modern color schemes and font families. The theme has a refreshing design that is rare…
Now that COVID-19 vaccinations are becoming more widespread, many hope that in-person WordCamps can once again be a reality. There is no official path forward just yet, and decisions will likely be locally based in the coming months. Angela Jin, a community organizer for Automattic, announced an open discussion around the topic. Currently, all WordCamps…
Earlier this week, Plausible Analytics released version 1.2 of its WordPress plugin. The update includes a missing feature that should make it more appealing to end-users. The plugin now supports an “embedded mode” that displays a site’s stats directly in the WordPress admin interface. Without counting the self-hosted users of its open-source project, Plausible Analytics…
Any time I see a new block-ready WordPress theme, I am like a toddler in a toyshop. I cannot wait to bring it home, rip off the packaging, and play with it. Sometimes it is the type of fun that will create lasting, years-long memories. Other times, the toy is not all it is cracked…
For much of WordPress’s history, the foundational elements of building a theme have been slow to change. Every so often, developers would get a new feature, such as child themes, featured images, nav menus, and template parts. Each of these was epic in its own way. However, theme authors had ample time to adapt to…
Patchstack, which recently rebranded from WebARX, released its 2020 security whitepaper. The report identified a total of 582 security vulnerabilities. However, only 22 of the issues came from WordPress itself. Third-party plugins and themes accounted for the remaining 96.22%. “These are all security issues disclosed by the Patchstack internal research team, Patchstack Red Team community,…
I simply do not understand it. For at least the better part of a decade, theme authors have asked for the tools to create more complex layouts with WordPress. They have asked for the ability to allow end-users to more easily recreate their demos. They have wanted methods to bypass the “restrictive” theme review guidelines.…
Sometimes a theme’s description is so moving that one must install, activate, and test the project. I often rail against the obviously keyword-stuffed text in the free WordPress theme directory. But, I am pleasantly surprised from time to time. Enō is an elegant, modern and functional WordPress theme. Probably this is the best blogging theme…
Today, Josepha Haden Chomphosy announced the results of yesterday’s “go/no-go” demo and decision on whether Full Site Editing (FSE) would land in WordPress 5.8. The site editor and global styles are not landing in the next release. However, several other features should launch and allow users to build their sites with blocks in new ways.…
The Full Site Editing (FSE) outreach program is chugging along. Since December, it has called for and completed four rounds of testing. The latest round asks volunteers to provide feedback on the Query block, arguably one of the most crucial pieces of the FSE-puzzle. Automattic Developer Relations Wrangler Anne McCarthy has been overseeing the program…
You are the team manager at a WordPress development company. You just spent the last couple of months directing the group of highly skilled developers that you oversee to create the latest and greatest block library for WordPress. Your developers just spent those two months recreating what has already been done at least a couple…
PhonicScore, a company out of Vienna, recently released its OpenSheetMusicDisplay (OSMD) plugin. It is a WordPress block built for rendering digital sheet music in the browser. The OSMD plugin is built on top of the team’s JavaScript library of the same name, a project officially released in 2016. It is a bridge between VexFlow and…
Yesterday, Josepha Haden Chomphosy announced the roadmap for deciding whether Full Site Editing (FSE) will land in WordPress 5.8. After the launch of Gutenberg 10.4 on April 14, a small group of core leads will participate in a go/no-go demo. The following people will be on the call: Matias Ventura – Gutenberg Project Lead who…