Widgets make WordPress stand out as one of the most user-friendly CMS options available. The ability to easily place content blocks and features into a widgetized area has made website customization possible for millions of people who don’t know how to code. As mobile browsing has increased over the past few years, widget design is…
When the Inline Documentation project was started in July at WordCamp San Francisco, a handful of contributors set out to tackle a massive list of hooks in 195 files. This effort continues and the team is hoping that they will have the hook documentation completed in time with the WordPress 3.8 release in December. Kim…
Today was an important day for nailing down the features that will be moving forward in WordPress 3.8. In an epic three hour planning and decisions meeting, Matt Mullenweg opened up the discussion by asking plugin leaders to provide a status for their proposed features. I’ve summarized a few of the highlights.
At the beginning of this year there were just a handful of WordPress themes available for Zurb’s Foundation framework. Most of these were basic starter themes for developers. As we near the end of 2013, Foundation is rapidly becoming more popular with front-end developers and the demand for WordPress themes is also increasing. In addition…
When you embed a YouTube video in a WordPress post, it is generally added to illustrate your content. Sometimes your video is the main focal point of the post. Chances are that you don’t want to be sending users to related videos after viewing the embedded one. You want to keep the reader’s attention on…
WP Test is a site that any WordPress theme or plugin developer will want to bookmark. Created by WordPress developer Michael Novotny, WP Test exists to provide test data for WordPress themes and plugins. The site is very simple and includes only a download and a demo button. What’s in the download package? WP Test…
BuddyPress 1.9 is right around the corner and should be released in early November. The initiative to improve the BuddyPress codex has inspired a number of new pages and tutorials. Documentation leaders @hnla and @mercime have restructured the codex so that pages are not so deeply nested. They’ve also been organizing the addition of new…
Looking for a quick and convenient way to add the ManageWP.org button to your WordPress site? If you’re using the Jetpack sharing module, the new ManageWP.org Sharing For Jetpack plugin will automatically add it for you. Plugin developer Jeremy Herve was inspired by Jeff’s recent tutorial, which includes a walkthrough on the steps to adding…
German WordPress developer Frank Bültge has spent many long hours creating a plugin that encapsulates more than a dozen enhancements often requested by multisite super admins. His Multisite Enhancements plugin has been hosted on github for some time, which made it rather obscure. WordPress plugins hosted on github are often very difficult to find unless…
WordPress.com is passing milestones left and right. The site is now the 7th most trafficked website in the United States. This comes a month after WordPress.com slid into the #8 spot, passing Yahoo, Microsoft, Yelp, Pinterest, and Tumblr for a place in the top 10.
WordPress versions 3.7 and 3.8 have been under simultaneous development. This is the first time the project has undergone a tandem release cycle and the results so far have been very positive. The project’s momentum is at an all time high with a successful 3.7 release and some exciting core updates right around the corner…
Most WordPress maintenance releases are nothing to write home about, but WordPress 3.7.1 is one for the history books. This is the first maintenance release where users don’t have to lift a finger to get their sites upgraded. Sites already running WordPress 3.7 will soon be automatically upgraded to the latest and greatest. The release…
This is a simple thing but it bears mentioning. Many major WordPress theme providers offer the ability to easily add Google Analytics or other tracking code via the theme’s options panel. The idea stems from wanting to market a theme with everything needed to create the website that you see in the demo. Theme developers…
WordPress is getting its own style guide. Helen Hou-Sandí is working on a new plugin called WordPress Style Guide to serve as a reference for building WordPress admin UI components. This is very much a work in progress and its purpose will evolve, as Helen notes on the plugin’s github page: “This plugin is not…
When Tom McFarlin released his WordPress Plugin Boilerplate on github last November, he has no idea how many developers would jump on board to contribute to this open source learning resource. The plugin has received a ton of support from the community, including commits from more than 26 contributors. McFarlin will soon be putting out…