Now that BuddyPress 2.0 has been released, the core development team is refining its workflow to make use of Grunt, the Javascript task runner that the WordPress project adopted last year. The BuddyPress development trunk will be adopting a similar Grunt-powered build system that will automate many tedious tasks. The BuddyPress trunk will be reorganized…
BuddyPress 2.0 “Juliana” arrived on schedule today, less than a week after the plugin crossed two million downloads. This release focused heavily on improving BuddyPress performance, adding new administrative tools and enhancing the activity stream. It’s named for Juliana’s Pizza in Brooklyn, NY, a pizza joint that is special to members of the core development…
Social networks come and go but your blog lives forever. The advent of social media brought a revolution in how people communicate, but it has also chained us to data silos that house many of our important thoughts, writings and memories. That is, unless you have your own blog or website as your home for…
WordPress sites that publish academic or scholarly articles often need to provide information to help readers know how to cite articles correctly. Cite is a new plugin that tackles this requirement using dynamic tags to generate the date, site name, post title and permalink. Post authors can easily post citation instructions by using the [cite]…
Jonathan Atkinson has been selling WordPress themes on Themeforest for the past five years. Through hard work and customer support, he’s learned how to make a living on Themeforest without having to pack hundreds of options into his products. Over the past year, Atkinson and his team at Cr3ativ.com have made an effort to convert…
Despite the fact that Gravatar is the default avatar service built into WordPress, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. There are times when you may want to use a different avatar on a specific site but don’t want to change your Gravatar image. In some instances WordPress site admins choose to disable the service for…
BuddyPress reached a major milestone today, crossing the two million download mark just a week ahead of the official 2.0 release. The plugin, known as “a social network in a box,” now has more than 500 related community extensions. Over the past 7 years, BuddyPress has developed a strong international community of users and contributors.…
Akismet 3.0 is currently in development and the official release will likely coincide with WordPress 3.9 on April 16th. The upcoming 3.0 release represents a major rewrite of the plugin and the Akismet team is inviting everyone to help test the release candidate. This version will introduce a few new features and will remove much…
For the past four years, BuddyPress developer Brajesh Singh has maintained a popular tutorial for allowing BuddyPress activity as a wire. This was the default behavior for activity during the early 1.x era of BuddyPress, which allowed users to “write on each other’s walls” without having to use @mentions. Singh’s updated tutorial shows you how…
In the aftermath of the Heartbleed bug and a week filled with critical security updates, it’s time for some good news. The wildly popular and hopelessly addictive 2048 game can now be embedded in WordPress. The 2048 WordPress plugin is based on the open source game created by Gabriele Cirulli. The game has been cloned…
Jetpack released version 2.9.3 today. This is a critical security update that fixes a potentially serious threat that has been present in Jetpack since version 1.9, released in October 2012. George Stephanis explained the vulnerability in the release announcement: During an internal security audit, we found a bug that allows an attacker to bypass a…
One of the best things about BuddyPress is that it gives you the ability to bring together people who share a common goal or interest. Sometimes this requires getting people together at the same time for a meeting or rendezvous. With just the bare basics you could try to mention specific members in the activity…
Automattic announced its acquisition of Longreads today. Since 2009, the Longreads service has helped people find and share the best fiction and nonfiction longform content on the web, curated by its team of editors and the #longreads hashtag. Longreads defines longform content as anything over 1,500 words, the type of articles that are most often…
If you’re interested in WordPress project stats, WP Central has a collection of interactive visualizations for everything from download stats to version usage to internationalization. The site, created by WordPress contributor Marko Heijnen, has been in development for several months and is gradually adding more data. The homepage of the site features stats for the…
The dates for WordCamp NYC were announced today. The event will be held August 2-3, 2014 at the New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge in downtown Brooklyn. Tickets will go on sale within the next few weeks. Traditionally, WordCamp NYC has sold out every year. In 2009, 2010, and 2012 the event brought together…