Overnight, the Meta Team for WordPress.org flipped the switch for a new plugin author feature in the official directory. It allows plugin authors to opt into confirming plugin updates via email. Release confirmations will strengthen security and make sure any updates sent in are intentional. Dion Hulse opened the original ticket six weeks ago with…
I could hardly sleep last night. Once in a blue moon, I have an idea I want to try out. While my day job as a writer means I spend far less time breaking sites through the rigorous trials and errors of building plugins and themes, some problems bug me with WordPress, the sort that…
“Organize your quarantine-inspired baking blog with a ‘Recipe’ block!” read the opening description of Kelly Choyce-Dwan’s new plugin, Recipe Block. That was enough to pique my interest. I love food. I love baking — mostly pizza and bread. Food-related plugins and themes almost inspire me to spin up a recipe blog of my own. Almost.…
On August 26, Automattic launched a new theme titled Seedlet that focused on integrating with the WordPress block editor. A few days later, it was also live in the WordPress.org theme directory. The theme development team wanted to produce a theme that would be in a good position to transition to full-site editing later this…
What level of control should users have over their WordPress support forum topics? That is the question at the heart of a recent discussion opened by Mika Epstein on the Make Support blog. The goal is to grant more power to users, particularly when they post private or privileged information to the public forums. The…
Last Tuesday, iThemes announced it had acquired the Restrict Content Pro plugin from Sandhills Development. iThemes is part of the Liquid Web family of brands. Pippin Williamson, Managing Director at Sandhills, said the company had no intention of selling the plugin last October when talks of the acquisition began. However, moving forward has created some…
On Wednesday, September 2, Gutenberg 8.9 launched with a set of new features, enhancements, and several bug fixes. The development team took the block-based widgets system out of its experimental stage, making it the default experience for all plugin users. Block-based widgets have taken months upon months of work. The team has surpassed some of…
On May 4, the StudioPress development team made a small but significant user-facing change to its Atomic Blocks plugin (now rebranded to Genesis Blocks). It removed the “AB” branding from its block titles. This minor update changed block titles such as AB Accordion and AB Button to Accordion and Button, respectively. On the surface, this…
Jeremey Herve, a Jetpack developer at Automattic, announced the release of Jetpack 8.9 earlier today. The update brings several major features to the plugin’s users. Jetpack now sports a new social preview option in the block editor, a newsletter signup form type, and a block for handling donations. Version 8.9 also adds support for the…
One year ago today, Elmastudio launched a beta version of its Aino WordPress theme and Aino Blocks plugin. While the team pushed the theme live in the theme directory earlier this year, it wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago that they officially released their blocks plugin. Elmastudio’s beta launch was one of the first…
Mario Peshev, the CEO of WordPress agency DevriX, officially announced he had acquired the WP-CRM System plugin this week. Formally, his company Premium WP Support is taking the reins for the project. Scott DeLuzio, the creator and previous owner of the plugin, published the news on his blog last month. DeLuzio originally built the plugin…
Elementor version 3.0 was launched on Tuesday. This release is the first major update to the plugin in over two years and is one of the largest upgrades in its history. The new version focuses on a design system, a new theme builder, and performance improvements. The driving motivation behind this release was to create…
Juliette Reinders Folmer released a proposal for WordPress to drop old PHP version support on a fixed schedule. She wrote the proposal after Matt Mullenweg, WordPress co-founder and project lead, reached out to discuss solutions. This was after he closed a Trac ticket last week that sought to drop support for PHP 5.6 and bump…
Ben Gillbanks decided to put an old idea into motion. After the discussion over Gravatar privacy concerns and local avatars in WordPress reignited a couple of weeks ago, he went to work building Pixel Avatars, a generated avatar solution that requires no connection to a third-party service. Gravatar solves a huge problem. It creates a…
Joe Casabona, a freelance web developer and educator, launched WordPress: A Year in Review last week. The project was born out of his passion for helping others and a longing for attending WordCamp US, which has been canceled because of the stress of the pandemic and online event fatigue. He wanted to do something to…