The Menu Customizer plugin was merged into WordPress trunk today and will be one of the headline features of the 4.3 release. Roughly a week ago the feature plugin was tentatively approved for merge, pending an a11y audit and PHP and JS tests. Following an overwhelming amount of negative feedback from the community, core contributors…
Yesterday Nick Haskins, creator of Aesop Story Engine, released a new search plugin for WordPress. WP Live Search utilizes the new WP REST API, in combination with Backbone.js and Underscore.js, to deliver live search results as the user types in a search query. The result is instantaneous searching that doesn’t require pressing enter or refreshing…
WordPress developers Roy Sivan and John James Jacoby have taken a keen interest in reviving the BackPress project. They will be discussing their plans to bring it back to life on a live Google Hangout at 1PM PST (8pm UTC) today, June 16. BackPress is a PHP library of core functionality for web applications. It…
Over the weekend Postmatic version 1.2.3 was released with a new importer for the Subscribe to Comments plugin. Founder Jason Lemieux and his team launched the 100% email-based commenting service in April and have been steadily adding importers for users of other various comment subscription plugins. Postmatic launched with importers for Mailpoet, Mailchimp, and one-click…
This weekend at WordCamp Denver, Kevin Conboy announced that Automattic’s long-awaited O2 project is now publicly available on GitHub. In a recent interview with WP Tavern, Matt Mullenweg confirmed that the o2 development team is shifting its focus to WordPress.com’s core products but that the o2 code would be public for anyone to use. o2…
WP Site Care recently launched its new WP Featherlight plugin on WordPress.org. While there are already hundreds of lightbox plugins available for WordPress, this one may prove to be the “lightest” of them all. The plugin is essentially a wrapper for the Featherlight jQuery lightbox script created by Noel Bossart. Featherlight.js was designed to be…
This week HHVM developers shared the results of their first ever open source performance lockdown. HHVM is Facebook’s open source PHP execution engine, originally created to help make its infrastructure more efficient. WordPress managed hosts, including WP Engine, Pagely, and SiteGround, have added HHVM hosting options within the last year to cater to customers who…
StackExchange community members have proposed a new Q&A site for users and developers of WooCommerce. The proposal is currently in the “Definition” phase, which means that participants are working to design the community by proposing hypothetical questions that embody the topic’s scope. So far for WooCommerce, popular hypothetical questions include: How do I handle the…
One option that users often appreciate in themes is the ability to control typography without having to modify any code. Justin Tadlock has been experimenting with adding a typography control class for the WordPress customizer. Instead of writing a lengthy tutorial, he opted to create a a proof-of-concept plugin that demonstrates how theme authors might…
Ryan Boren published a post to the Make/WordPress Core blog this afternoon, titled Trust, Live Preview, and Menus in the Customizer. In it he clarified the reasons why he and several other core contributors are committed to iterating the customizer and identified the feature as a means of building user trust through live previews. Being…
WordPress agencies provide a critical connection point between users and the software by building custom solutions and guiding some of the more complex implementations. Yet client work is challenging, and many developers who work in it are concurrently planning their escape into product businesses. Growing an agency reliably is one of the more difficult business…
BuddyPress fans, mark your calendars! BuddyCamp Brighton, Europe’s very first BuddyPress conference, is just two months away. The event will be held at Clearleft’s 68 Middle Street venue on August 8, 2015. This venue has a maximum capacity of 60 people, so tickets are likely to sell out fast. BuddyPress lead developer Paul Gibbs and…
The WordPress Theme Review Team (TRT) is currently seeking feedback via three separate surveys on the review process, themes, and the directory. After weathering several months of increasingly negative community feedback, the team is now looking to users and theme authors to help shape its roadmap for the future. The team’s controversial decision to require…
WordPress 4.3 release lead Konstantin Obenland posted notes from this week’s core development chat, confirming that the Menu Customizer plugin has been conditionally approved to merge. The approval is pending a few conditions that will be required before officially merging it: Complete a11y audit. Address possible blockers. Merge php tests. Add JS tests. One of…
One of the most exciting features added in BuddyPress 2.3 is the new BP Attachments API. It provides a BP core-supported method of managing user-submitted files and opens up a world of possibilities for plugin developers. The API powers the new avatar uploads UI, but it can also be used to extend BuddyPress to add…