WordPress global usage on the web is now at 23%, and this year marked the first time that non-English downloads surpassed the number of English downloads. Major internationalization improvements coming in 4.0 will open up the platform even more for those publishing in different languages. While discussing the upcoming language-related improvements at WordCamp Seattle this…
BuddyPress 2.1 is right around the corner with Beta 1 landing in the hands of eager testers today. The upcoming release includes several improvements that make BuddyPress easier to use, more secure, and faster than ever. BP 2.1 is set to introduce a totally revamped @mentions interface with built-in auto-suggestion and beta testers will want…
WordPress 4.0 release lead Helen Hou-Sandà recently gave an in-depth preview of the upcoming release at the WordPress NYC Meetup. Her presentation gives a complete overview of the new features that you will see in the official release next week. Part of Hou-SandÃ’s responsibility as the release lead is to help shape the scope, goals…
Easy Digital Downloads launched its open source download delivery system for WordPress in 2012 and has since grown to amass a global network of contributors and developers. The project’s marketplace, which now boasts more than 100 extensions and dozens of themes, shows no signs of slowing down. With global WordPress usage on the rise and…
The WordPress plugin installer page is about to get more colorful. The upcoming 4.0 release completely revamps the plugin search and installation process with plugin cards arranged in a new grid view. Andrew Nacin announced today that plugins will also have their own icons in the installer. Plugin authors are at liberty to create their…
The folks at WordPress.com VIP are continuing to add to Documattic, a repository dedicated to sharing presentations and resources with the WordPress community. While the repository already contains some solid resources for WordPress in enterprise and government, today’s addition may have the widest reach, as it pertains to user education. The WordPress.com VIP Superuser Training…
If you’re managing a multisite network where you’ve created a long list of sites, the “My Sites” menu in the admin bar can get so lengthy that it becomes difficult to navigate. 10up engineer Kailey Lampert designed an elegant solution to this problem. The My Sites Search plugin does exactly what it says on the…
Akismet announced a redesign and complete update of the account dashboard today. Finding out what’s going on with your Akismet account is no longer a cryptic process thanks to the new additions to the dashboard. It now includes helpful stats and a full listing of all your active sites. Each active account links to a…
If you try to upload an SVG in WordPress, you’ll discover that it doesn’t yet have native support for adding SVGs to the media library. However, it’s easy to add them to WordPress’ allowed mime types to remove the restriction via a plugin. Many users are eager to use SVGs, especially for logos, because of…
WordPress’ native customizer has evolved considerably since its early days when it when it was introduced for adding live previews to themes. WordPress 3.9 added widgets to the customizer and the 4.0 release is set to expand the role of the feature into other aspects of WordPress with support for a wider array of controls.…
If you’re a Google chrome user, there are many free extensions out there that are useful for getting other applications to work with WordPress. Earlier this year we shared a collection of Chrome extensions for WordPress users, many of which are specifically tailored toward content creation. Send to WordPress is a handy new extension that…
If you’re obsessed with improving your site’s loading time then you’ve probably already looked into caching and server optimizations. Frontend optimization is often further down on the list but can have a tremendous effect on performance. One of the most common frontend optimization techniques is to concatenate and minify your resources, which reduces the number…
The Underscores WordPress starter theme has seen a flurry of activity in recent days, adding support for Sass and automated testing with Travis CI. The theme has been forked more than 1300 times on GitHub with many interesting variations created to support various theme features and frameworks. One fork in particular is getting WordPress theme…
Semplice has soft-launched its new WordPress-powered portfolio system. The commercial project popped up on our radar after debuting its extraordinary implementation of the WordPress content editor. Founded by German designers Michael Schmidt and Tobias van Schneider, Semplice is breaking onto the scene with high impact designs and its own radically simplified content editor. “Semplice is…
Here’s a quick tip for WordPress.org plugin authors and users, courtesy of Paul de Wouters: With the help of a task automation service like Zapier or IFTTT, you can automatically send out a tweet every time an updated version of your plugin is available. Simply set up an RSS -> Twitter action, like this one…