That is the question posed by Ian Atkins in a recent ticket for WordPress. “I’ve experienced a few plugins change ownership, and it’s really not clear as a user, developer, and maintainer of sites when that has happened,” he wrote in the ticket. “Whilst having a plugin continue to be developed is admirable — I…
The “version 1.0” launch of block patterns in WordPress 5.5 was overall successful. However, it was easy to overlook the problems while waiting for this feature to land after months of anticipation. Now that we have had a couple of months of seeing the block pattern system baked into core WordPress, it is time to…
WordPress development company POSIMYTH is getting set to announce its venture into block development in the coming days. The new plugin, The Plus Addons for Gutenberg, is a collection of blocks, templates, and additional features for building sites with the block editor. The plugin is currently awaiting review for inclusion in the WordPress.org plugin directory.…
A few days ago, I came across a small library of blocks. As always, I was interested in seeing what this new plugin brought to the table. Would it surprise me with a block that has not been done before? Would it present a new take on some old ideas? Or, would it be the…
In yesterday’s twice-monthly meeting, the WordPress Themes Team made a couple of important changes to the official theme directory guidelines. They removed a requirement of some CSS classes that have long been sitting on the chopping block. They also implemented the third stage in their long-term plan to make all WordPress themes accessibility-ready. For years,…
Earlier today, release lead Josepha Haden announced the team was pushing back the release of WordPress 5.6 Beta 4 to Thursday, November 12. The beta release was slated to go live today. Questions around the readiness of the auto-updates feature held the beta update back. However, those questions are now resolved. Haden followed up the…
WordPress 5.6 will ship with the latest jQuery library next month. This is a major update that all plugin and theme developers should begin testing against. Last week, Marius Jensen announced the change on the Make Core blog. The following jQuery-related libraries are expected to ship in the update (WordPress Trac ticket): jQuery 3.5.1 jQuery…
Yesterday, Munir Kamal released version 2.1 of the Editor Plus plugin. The biggest change is a complete overhaul of its design controls. The developer also added a new Lottie animation block. I probably sound like a broken record after covering the last several releases of the plugin, but Kamal is doing some amazing things with…
Automattic released over 100 block patterns to its users on WordPress.com last week. Patterns are a set of blocks that users can insert into their posts or pages for predefined yet customizable sections of content. Most of WordPress.com’s new patterns are general enough in design to cover a range of uses. However, the choices also…
Version 9.3 of the Gutenberg plugin dropped earlier today. It is the first version of the plugin during the WordPress 5.6 release cycle that will not see its new features land in the core platform. However, bug fixes have been backported to WordPress 5.6 beta 2 and 3. Much of the work for the release…
Last Thursday, Automattic announced its new Spearhead theme to WordPress.com users, which primarily focuses on podcasters. However, the team has marketed it toward content creators in general. It is a child theme of the company’s recently-released Seedlet theme. Cece Yu originally created the design for the Spearhead podcast, which is currently in use on the…
These plain canvas-like themes have until now been a choice for those who prefer it (those who like to design their own thing), but this article makes it sound like these types of themes should be the only choice in the future of WP. This is worrisome to me as a non-designer who looks for…
Last Friday, Themes Team representative Carolina Nymark announced the Twenty Twenty-One Blocks theme project. It is a block-based version of the Twenty Twenty-One default theme that is shipping along with WordPress 5.6. It will work with the site editor available in the Gutenberg plugin. Developers will work on the two themes as separate projects. The…
Last week, WP Busters released its first plugin titled Passwordless WP. It is a project from full-stack developer Ilya Zolotov that allows end-users to log into their WordPress websites via Touch ID, Face ID, or pin. The goal is to make accessing a site easier and more secure. Zolotov built the plugin after checking his…
In what seems to be a never-ending onslaught of new features, Munir Kamal has released some major new features to his EditorPlus plugin in the last two updates. Version 2.0, which landed earlier today, includes a set of seven new blocks. The previous release showcased a create-a-block feature that puts more customization options in the…