iThemes, one of the oldest brands in WordPress that originally launched around theme products nearly 15 years ago, is rebranding to SolidWP. Over the years, the company’s products became increasingly centered on plugins, yet the old brand had so much name recognition that its leadership was not quick to change it. “iThemes is known today…
Twitter suspended WordPress.com’s access to the Twitter API without notice yesterday. Representatives at WordPress.com do not know why their access is currently blocked but are working to regain it. The API enables features like Jetpack Social’s Twitter connection. Users who rely on this Jetpack module to auto-tweet their published posts will see errors in the…
Designer and developer Anders Norén has released a new free block theme called Abisko, created to fully support the new design features available in the latest WordPress 6.2 release. The theme was named for one of Norén’s favorite stomping grounds, Abisko national park, where he hikes every summer. Abisko places a strong emphasis on both…
WooCommerce has announced a 24-hour virtual contributor day that will happen on April 19, 2023. Contributors will be working on the WooCommerce Core and WooCommerce Blocks repositories. To give better coverage over time zones, organizers will have two kickoff times (0 UTC and 12 UTC). WooCommerce hasn’t had a WooConf in-person conference since 2017, opting instead for virtual events…
Over the past year a group of WordPress contributors have been working on making it easier for developers to build interactive blocks. These are the kinds of experiences that allow visitors to submit a form and get feedback without reloading the page, load paginated content without refreshing, and improve e-commerce stores with more dynamic responses…
WordPress 6.2 “Dolphy” was released today, named in honor of American jazz alto saxophonist, bass clarinetist, and flautist Eric Allan Dolphy Jr. This is the first of three planned major releases in 2023. It includes more than 900 enhancements and bug fixes, with a strong focus on improving the site editing experience. One of the major…
WP Engine’s Pattern Manager is now available in the WordPress Plugins Directory. The plugin gives WordPress professionals a dedicated interface for browsing, designing, and organizing patterns with categories, keywords, descriptions, and more. It is still in beta and not recommended for use in production. Although it can be used on a lived website, the plugin’s…
WordPress 6.2 was scheduled for release today, but contributors discovered a bug with date formats during the 24-hour freeze that they believe could have a significant impact on functionality like bookings, date permalinks, and e-commerce stores. The decision was made this morning to delay with a consensus to apply a revert and release a silent…
Gutenberg Phase 3 is officially in the planning stage, as the Site Editor is set to exit the beta in 6.2 and the major tasks of Phase 2 are nearing completion. Gutenberg lead architect Matias Ventura published a preliminary outline of what is planned to be included in the next “Collaboration” phase of the project.…
WordPress contributor and developer Nick Diego has released version 3.0.0 of his Block Visibility plugin, which allows users to conditionally display blocks based on specific user roles, logged in/out, specific users, screen sizes, query strings, ACF fields, and more. The biggest change in this update is that Diego has decided to merge the Pro version…
WooCommerce Payments, a plugin that allows WooCommerce store owners to accept credit and debit card payments and manage transactions inside the WordPress dashboard, has patched an Authentication Bypass and Privilege Escalation vulnerability with a 9.8 (Critical) CVSS score. The plugin is active on more than 500,000 websites. Beau Lebens, WooCommerce’s Head of Engineering, published an…
The world is learning new ways of moving faster with the help of AI, as the increased availability of the technology is poised to transform the way humans work. Generitive AI is decades old but recent advances and new tools like DALL-E (launched in January 2021) have made AI more accessible to the public. When…
The Mercantile, WordPress’ official swag store, was closed for updates but has relaunched with the highly anticipated limited edition 20th anniversary swag. In celebration of the milestone, the store has added an array of keepsakes, including sweatshirts, pennants, a “Code is Poetry” t-shirt, stainless steel tumbler, pet bandana, commemorative sticker sheets, and more. What WordPress…
The Admin Menu Tree Page View plugin, which adds a tree-view layout of content in the WordPress admin, has been refactored to support more content types. The plugin is an admin utility similar to Hierarchy or the commercial OrganizeWP plugin that reworks the CMS to show content in one place, but it offers a simpler…
More than 6,000 people are attending CloudFest in Europa-Park, Germany, this week. A strong contingent of WordPress developers and contributors are among them. During the Hackathon portion of the event, web professionals gather for a friendly competition, tackling problems for existing not-for-profit, OSS projects, creating solutions with a concentrated effort at a quicker pace than…