After considerable pushback from the Plugin Review team, WordPress.org has removed a plugin called Zamir, which was created by a Russian developer to display the Z symbol in support of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The plugin gained attention after Gravity Forms founder and CEO Carl Hancock noticed that it was listed under the “New”…
WordPress managed hosting company WP Engine has joined Acquia, Fastly, Gatsby, Netlify, and Pantheon to begin booting Russian companies off their platforms. In addition to the joint protest, each organization has also pledged support to the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), a non-profit that documents internet censorship around the world. “As part of that…
In today’s edition of our Building with Blocks series, we’re going to explore one example of building a single-product sales page. There is by no means one approach for building something like this. This particular example aims to demonstrate a fast way to start selling a single product online, while using free plugins and themes…
The pandemic has dramatically slashed the number of in-person WordPress events that volunteers are organizing and events have been slow to start up again. This has caused the WordPress Community Team to reconsider the guidelines for hosting regional WordCamps. Historically, these guidelines have generated lengthy discussions, as many vocal opponents found them to be needlessly…
Newfold Digital, the parent company of Bluehost, Yoast, and Web.com, has acquired YITH, a WordPress plugin company with more than 100 WooCommerce extensions. YITH’s has more than 2.3 million active installs across its suite of products. The company hosts 31 plugins on WordPress.org, many that are lite versions with commercial upgrades. YITH’s most popular product,…
WordPress.org’s contributors are preparing to open the doors of the Pattern Directory to public submissions. Patterns’ transformative effect on page building in the block editor has made the feature important enough to earn its own directory in July 2021. For the past nine months, it has been limited to a small, curated selection of patterns…
CSS-Tricks has been acquired by DigitalOcean, a cloud hosting provider popular among developers. Chris Coyier started the site in 2007 and will be working with DigitalOcean as an advisor during the transition before stepping back to focus on his other projects. “CSS-Tricks deserves more human muscle behind it than I’ve been able to provide for…
Background tools in Gutenberg are currently limited to the Cover block, but contributors are working on expanding support so that any block can opt into it. Discussions about the best way to do this have been happening for the past two years and now are gaining some momentum. “Right now it’s possible to add video…
Koji, a popular “link in bio” platform that provides apps to the creator economy, has launched a WordPress plugin for the block editor. The San Diego-based startup has raised $36.1M, most recently securing $20M in a funding round led by Jump Capital. Koji has attracted 150,000 users since its official launch in March 2021. It…
Patchstack has published its State of WordPress Security whitepaper with a summary of threats to the WordPress ecosystem recorded in 2021. The whitepaper aggregates data from multiple sources, including the Patchstack Vulnerability Database, the Patchstack Alliance (the company’s bug bounty platform), and publicy reported CVEs from other sources. In 2021, Patchstack recorded nearly 1,500 vulnerabilities,…
WPExperts has acquired the Password Protected plugin from WordPress developer Ben Huson, author of nearly 20 plugins on WordPress.org. Password Protected was by far his most popular one with more than 300,000 active installs. The acquisition is hot on the heels of the company’s purchase of the Post SMTP plugin two weeks ago, another product…
WordPress’ performance team has released a new feature plugin called Performance Lab that includes a set of performance-related improvements for core. The team, which formed just five months ago, is led by Yoast and Google-sponsored core contributors, and has had more than 250 people join its Slack channel, with many participating regularly in weekly chats.…
WordPress core committer Jonny Harris merged a patch into WordPress core for a 12-year-old ticket that he says has the potential to bring “a massive effect on performance for custom pages.” The change, which will be included in the upcoming 6.0 release, stops unnecessary queries when developers are using the do_parse_request filter, thanks to a refreshed patch…
While Russia is decimating Ukrainian cities in an unlawful attempt to occupy the country, WordPress companies and individuals are seeking ways to help refugees fleeing the violence, as well as those who have stayed behind to fight. We are living in one of those rare times in history where events have captured the attention and…
Strattic, a WordPress hosting company that creates static files managed via a headless install, has acquired WP2Static, an open source plugin for generating a static WordPress site. Leon Stafford, the plugin’s creator, has been working for the company for the past nine months and will continue to maintain WP2Static. In 2020, Stafford removed WP2Static from…