Today, Ahmad Awais launched WP Continuous Deployment, a continuous deployment pipeline for updating plugins hosted on WordPress.org via GitHub actions. It is a Node.js-based CLI script that simplifies the process of keeping plugins updated. Developers only need to type out a single line in their terminal or command prompt. Other than setting up a couple…
In collaboration with the core design and editor teams, the WordPress theme review team will begin hosting biweekly (fortnightly) meetings on the future of themes. The meetings will be held every other Wednesday on the #themereview WordPress Slack channel at 16:00 UTC. The first meeting is on February 5. Phase 2 of the Gutenberg project…
It seems to be the week for dropping news of WordPress feature plugins. Felix Arntz, WordPress core committer and developer programs engineer at Google, announced a plan to push a lazy loading feature to the platform. If testing goes well, this feature could land in WordPress 5.4 in March. The concept of lazy loading allows…
Thierry Muller, a Developer Relations Program Manager at Google, and several contributors posted an update on the XML sitemaps feature that may land in WordPress this year. After seven months of development, the team has made the XML Sitemaps feature plugin available on GitHub. It is currently open for testing and feedback. The plugin should…
In December of 2019, Nick Hamze, the owner of Sorta Brilliant, quietly launched Block Garden with a proposal for plugin authors to build block-based plugins off concepts, called seeds, from his site. He has since written extensively on the block editor and has shared a multitude of ideas, many of which are sorta brilliant. It…
David Vongries, creator of the Page Builder Framework theme, launched the Swift Control plugin last week. The plugin is billed as a replacement for the core WordPress toolbar (admin bar). It allows site owners to customize the front-end control panel’s appearance and what links are displayed. Swift Control adds a new button on the front…
On Tuesday, 10up released its Autoshare for Twitter plugin. The plugin is designed to automatically tweet blog posts as they are published. By default, it will send the post title, featured image, and link to Twitter. Users can also add a custom message. The plugin is available in the WordPress plugin directory. If you threw…
The Gutenberg team announced version 7.3 of the plugin yesterday. This was the second release of the year, which included 159 contributions from 56 people. The major changes to the plugin include settings for changing the navigation block’s text and background colors, a new Block Collections API for developers, and placeholder blocks for post elements.…
GiveWP plugin users raised $106 million in donations in 2019. This is the first time donation amounts have crossed the $100 million threshold in a year. Matt Cromwell, GiveWP’s COO, made the announcement on Facebook last week. This is a jump from the $88 million and $41 million raised in 2018 and 2017, respectively. “I’m…
GoDaddy launched its Go WordPress theme last week. It has been publicly available through its GitHub repository for several months, but the theme review team finally approved and set it live in the theme directory. Thus far, the theme has garnered 7,000 active installs and is likely to hit the popular list, given GoDaddy’s history…
The Fields API. Never heard of it? That’s OK. Outside of the inner development community, it is not widely known. The average WordPress user does not need to know about it. Before understanding how the Fields API fits into Gutenberg’s future, you must first understand what it is and the problems it was meant to…
Creative Themes dropped version 1.6.8 of its Blocksy WordPress theme yesterday. It was an update to a theme that is quickly becoming popular, having garnered 58 five-star reviews and one thousand active installs since it first went live in the WordPress theme directory. The theme is specifically built to work with the block editor and…
After a 10-year hiatus, WordCamp Houston will return in 2020. The event will run from May 9-10 at the Hilton Houston NASA Clear Lake and expects 250-300 attendees. The team behind the Texas-based WordCamp is still in the process of putting the event together and is looking for volunteers, speakers, and sponsors. With 10 years…
As the WordPress theme review team wound down their team meeting yesterday, they were finalizing what their focus area for 2020 would be. The general agreement among members was that block-based themes should be at the top of the list. There was some pushback from a minority that did not want to see block-based themes…
Stratus5, a company that specializes in cloud container management and business service automation, launched Dollie today. Dollie is a cloud-based eCommerce solution for WordPress developers looking to provide white-label hosting services to their customers. The platform allows developers and agencies to sell custom, pre-configured WordPress solutions to their clients. Dollie is built on top of…