Sarah Gooding

  • WordPress Trunk Adds New Beta Testing Tab to Plugins Screen

    WordPress Trunk Adds New Beta Testing Tab to Plugins Screen

    If you’re running WordPress trunk, then you may have noticed a new addition to the plugins screen. A “Beta Testing” tab now lists all available Feature Plugins that are currently ready for testing, including the WP API, Press This, and WordPress Frontend Editor plugins. Andrew Nacin added the tab to all development builds of WordPress.…

  • ThemeFurnace Relaunches, Introduces Lifetime Club Membership

    ThemeFurnace Relaunches, Introduces Lifetime Club Membership

    ThemeFurnace relaunched this week with a complete overhaul of its theme collection. The shop was founded in 2012 by Oliver Dale, a Manchester-based designer and entrepreneur. In addition to a new website and pricing structure, Dale and his team have recoded all of their existing themes to remove the old options panel in favor of…

  • How to Create Responsive Device Mockups with WordPress

    How to Create Responsive Device Mockups with WordPress

    Creating responsive device mockups for products or portfolios can be a pain. Ordinarily, you might first search for a Photoshop template for the specific devices that you need for your mockups. Then you’d most likely take screenshots, cut them up and place them within the Photoshop file. Fortunately, if your site is running on WordPress,…

  • WordPress Tip: Use the WP Local Dev Environment Plugin to Disable External Data Calls

    WordPress Tip: Use the WP Local Dev Environment Plugin to Disable External Data Calls

    When developing locally without an internet connection, it doesn’t make much sense for WordPress to load external files like fonts or Gravatars. This can slow you down unnecessarily. WP Local Dev Environment is a plugin created by Andrew Norcross for developers who are working locally without an internet connection. It removes / unhooks the loading…

  • New Plugin Adds Subtitles to WordPress Posts, Pages and Custom Post Types

    New Plugin Adds Subtitles to WordPress Posts, Pages and Custom Post Types

    In the past, adding subtitles to WordPress posts always required something a little hacky. Sometimes theme authors would hijack post excerpts or use custom fields in order to accomplish it, but these methods made process of adding a subtitle confusing for users. Subtitles is a new free plugin created by WordPress developer Philip Arthur Moore.…

  • PressWork to Relaunch Under New Ownership

    PressWork to Relaunch Under New Ownership

    PressWork made a big splash in the WordPress theme world when it launched its free HTML5/CSS3 framework in the summer of 2011. The theme boasted a unique drag and drop front-end editor which allowed users to customize their sites without having to touch any code. Brendan Sera-Shriar and Chris Bavota put a great deal of…

  • WP Engine to Sponsor Two Full-Time WordPress Core Contributors

    WP Engine to Sponsor Two Full-Time WordPress Core Contributors

    WP Engine is currently on the hunt to hire two developers to work on the open source WordPress project full-time. This is a relatively new trend that has caught on among companies that sell WordPress products and/or services. Last November, 10up announced that it would be sponsoring Helen Hou-Sandi to work full-time on WordPress core.…

  • Editor: A Beautiful Free WordPress Theme for Writers

    Editor: A Beautiful Free WordPress Theme for Writers

    Array, the WordPress theme shop formerly known as Okay Themes, has branched out into WordPress.org with the release of Editor, a beautiful new blogging theme. Editor is stamped with Array’s trademark simplicity and bold style. It was designed to have images, videos, and text scale down nicely for reading on any mobile device. Editor includes…

  • Why Comments Still Matter

    Why Comments Still Matter

    Earlier this year Copyblogger set the blogosphere ablaze with its controversial decision to turn off comments. The announcement cited the burden of moderation, spam, and the availability of other conversation “outposts” as the main reasons for closing comments. It also gave the impression that Copyblogger had in many ways outgrown comments: Blog comments are an…

  • So Simple: A Free Minimalist WordPress Theme from Press75

    So Simple: A Free Minimalist WordPress Theme from Press75

    Last week the big news in the world of WordPress themes was Westwerk’s acquisition of Press75, one of the oldest theme shops originally founded by Jason Schuller in 2008. The folks at Westwerk began implementing changes immediately and announced new pricing options the same day the shop’s new owner was introduced. Single theme purchases are…

  • WordPress Multi-Environment Config: Work Seamlessly Between Development, Staging, and Production Sites

    WordPress Multi-Environment Config: Work Seamlessly Between Development, Staging, and Production Sites

    WordPress doesn’t have built-in support for developers working in multiple environments, i.e. local, staging, and production. It’s no surprise, given that this workflow isn’t part of the vast majority of users’ lives when publishing with WordPress. Nevertheless, running a separate development site can be a complex and tedious endeavor and WordPress doesn’t make it very…

  • bbPress 2.5.4 Security Release Available: Immediate Update Recommended

    bbPress 2.5.4 Security Release Available: Immediate Update Recommended

    If you have a WordPress site with a bbPress-powered forum, you may want to set aside a few minutes this weekend to perform updates. bbPress 2.5.4 was released today with five bug fixes, including an important fix for a security vulnerability. bbPress project lead John James Jacoby announced the release, crediting IT Security Reaseacher Mazen…

  • New Plugin Adds Syntax Highlighting to the WordPress Plugin and Theme Editors

    New Plugin Adds Syntax Highlighting to the WordPress Plugin and Theme Editors

    The WordPress plugin and theme editors have a basic, bare bones implementation of a text editor. They function well but are rather plain and limited in features. This may be due in part to the fact that many WordPress contributors cannot agree on whether or not the admin plugin and theme editors should be included…

  • WordPress for Android 2.9 Debuts Blog Discovery Feature

    WordPress for Android 2.9 Debuts Blog Discovery Feature

    Version 2.9 of the WordPress for Android app was released today, debuting its Blog Discovery feature as a new part of the Reader. Blog Discovery can be found by clicking the tag icon in the top right corner of the Reader. This feature helps users find new blogs to read, based on recommendations, and allows…

  • Preview the “Press This” Bookmarklet Redesign, Alpha Plugin Now Ready for Testing

    Preview the “Press This” Bookmarklet Redesign, Alpha Plugin Now Ready for Testing

    The “Press This” browser bookmarklet in WordPress is on its way to a complete redesign via the features-as-plugins development path. If you’ve never used it before, the feature allows you to make quick posts to your WordPress site from anywhere on the web. It’s actually a pretty smart tool for posting and can automatically detect…