The BuddyPress 2015 survey results are now available. This year’s survey did not have the same community penetration as 2013 and 2014, with 37.5% fewer respondents, but the information is still valuable for gauging how and where people are using the plugin. Volunteers collected feedback from 211 participants in 42 different countries. Feedback this year…
Gazette is a new WordPress magazine theme from the folks at Automattic, designed by Thomas Guillot. Since the majority of themes produced for WordPress.com are well-suited to single author blogs, Gazette’s fine-tuned focus on digital publications is a welcome addition to the collection. Magazine themes are generally few and far between, because they have to…
This week contributors on the TGM Plugin Activation (TGMPA) library published a roadmap for the future of the project. TGMPA is widely used by WordPress developers to require and recommend plugins for themes (and other plugins). The library is recommended by Themeforest, CodeCanyon, and the WordPress.org Theme Review Team as an alternative to bundling everything…
BuddyPress 2.3 beta 1 is now available. Project lead John James Jacoby encouraged site administrators and BP plugin/theme developers to jump in and test the new features. One of the highlights in the upcoming release is the new Attachments API, which makes it possible for developers to create components that manage uploads. You can see…
WordPress lead developer Andrew Nacin spoke at the php[world] 2014 conference on “Challenging Your WordPress Assumptions from 2009.” The video was recently published on YouTube and provides an excellent overview of the major ways WordPress has changed over the past six years. Nacin explores common assumptions, such as “WordPress is insecure,” “WordPress doesn’t scale,” and…
Over the past couple years, BuddyBoss has emerged as a leader in the BuddyPress products marketplace. Founder Michael Eisenwasser launched the business in 2010 after discovering BuddyPress while building an international job site to help online workers find employment. “BuddyPress blew me away,” Eisenwasser said. “It allowed for a sophisticated and fully customizable membership site…
Every WordPress administrator has different needs when navigating the admin. For example, one may require frequent access to the Posts menu and rarely touch the Appearance menu. Another admininistrator may have a certain custom post type that is accessed more frequently than any other menu item. In some cases plugin developers take their liberties placing…
Two years ago, BuddyPress 1.7 introduced WordPress theme compatibility, which meant that sites no longer required a BuddyPress-specific theme in order to run the plugin. The vast majority of themes that use WordPress’ standard template loading should be compatible with BuddyPress. However, some themes still need a little help to make the BuddyPress UI elements…
WordCamp Miami, one of the largest and longest running WordPress events in the US, is gearing up to celebrate its 6th year on May 29-31. Last year the event brought together 770 attendees and tickets for 2015 are selling fast. “We have sold over 600 tickets, and we see a sell-out on the horizon,” organizer…
The Theme Review Team’s controversial decision to require the use of the Customizer API for building theme options unearthed a wave of criticism and concern about the capabilities of the customizer. In response to more than 150 comments debating on the topic, Nick Halsey, who has worked extensively on the feature in WordPress core, stopped…
Organizers of the very first WordCamp Belgrade are happy to report that the event was a smashing success. Serbia’s rapidly growing WordPress community started just two years ago with local meetups that became larger than some smaller WordCamps. “Our road from the first meetup back in April 2013 to the first WordCamp was brilliant,” organizer…
In March 2014, WordPress.com opened its marketplace to new theme authors. Prior to that time, new sellers were added via invitation only. A year ago there were only 300 themes available to WordPress.com users, but after having the marketplace open to new authors that count is up to 345. Recently the submission form disappeared from…
Toivo Lite is a new theme on WordPress.org that features a bold minimalist design that really shines on mobile. Sami Keijonen created the theme to be suitable for both business and blog sites. Toivo is Finnish and it means “hope” in English. It’s one of a very small number of WordPress themes listed as accessibility-ready…
WordPress 4.3 development kicked off this week with release lead Konstantin Obenland at the helm. The main focus of this release will be to improve the experience of using WordPress on touch and small-screen devices. Contributors will also be renewing efforts to improve the Admin UI and the Network Admin UI, particularly as it relates…
Postmatic publicly launched its email-based commenting service today and is now officially out of beta. The free plugin aims to increase comment engagement by allowing readers to subscribe to new posts/comments via email and leave comments by simply hitting reply. Postmatic also launched a commercial service alongside version 1.0. For $9/month customers can add additional…