WPExperts, a Pakistan and Egypt-based WordPress development agency with more than 120 employees, has acquired the Post SMTP plugin from its former developer, Yehuda Hassine. This is the agency’s second acquisition this year, after picking up Rich Tabor’s Login Designer plugin in January. The Post SMTP plugin is a fork of the Postman SMTP plugin,…
The Kyiv Independent, a new English-language media outlet powered by WordPress, is seeking donations to continue their reporting at this critical time in Ukraine’s struggle against Russian invasion. The fledgling publication is just three months running and its staff is already plunged into what may be some of the most important reporting of their lifetimes.…
The WooCommerce development team released the first RC for version 6.3 this week. The upcoming major release is expected on March 8, 2022, and is set to introduce an exciting, long-awaited feature: a new lookup table that will offer the ability the accurately filter products by attributes. Shop owners who sell variable items have been…
The third edition of WordFest Live is coming up on March 4, 2022. The online event will feature more than 60 sessions over the course of 24 hours, as well as workshops, socials, and celebrations. Sessions will be focused on WordPress, remote working, and mental wellbeing. Topics include leadership, freelancing, website performance, podcasting, WooCommerce, dealing…
Elastic has resolved a trademark infringement lawsuit related to usage of the term “Elasticsearch.” Amazon has agreed to drop the term from its product line. “We believe this resolution will remove confusion in the marketplace and provide much-needed clarity to our community and customers,” Elastic CEO Ashutosh Kulkarni said in the announcement. “There is only…
Today we are continuing on with our new Building with Blocks series, where we demonstrate some fun things you can create with blocks. In this tutorial I am going to show you how to build a simple vCard website with a video background in under five minutes. I wanted to build a website like this…
UpdraftPlus, a plugin that allows users to backup to various cloud providers, has patched a severe security vulnerability that would allow logged-in users to download a site’s latest backups. The patched version (1.22.3) was sent out via a forced auto-update, a measure reserved for severe vulnerabilities that affect a large number of users. UpdraftPlus is active…
Piklist, a development framework that helped people build things faster with WordPress, is shutting down. Its creators, Steve Bruner and Kevin Miller, launched the framework on June 12, 2012, at WordCampNYC. Over the next nine years it gained a devoted following. The framework was used by developers to speed up tasks such as creating fields…
WordPress.org’s News section is sporting a new design with a bold color scheme and updated typography. The design was created by Automattic-sponsored contributor, Beatriz Fialho, who unveiled earlier versions of the update in June 2021. Fialho selected Inter, an open source font, for paragraphs and functional text, and EB Garamond for headings. As design trends change on the…
The ball is moving on a nine-year-old effort to migrate BuddyPress’ custom URI parser to use WordPress’ Rewrite API. BuddyPress currently requires sites to use pretty permalinks in order to be compatible with its URL parser. The plugin analyzes the URL for whatever component you are viewing and performs internal checks to decide what to…
Gutenberg design contributors are exploring how the template creation UI can be updated to expand the types of templates that user can create using the Site Editor. In WordPress 5.9 users can edit any template that a theme includes, but template creation is limited to a few basics: Front page Single Page Archive Search 404…
The WordPress Photo Directory is taking off, growing to more than 1,400 approved free photos in under two months. After a successful call for testers and volunteer photo moderators, the directory has an enthusiastic team of contributors ready to move the project forward. Angela Jin’s pitch for photo moderators resonated with a lot of people…
Kadence Blocks, a popular block collection plugin, added a new Lottie Animations block today in version 2.2.4. Most of the blocks in the plugin offer commonly used page building features like rows, buttons, galleries, and testimonials. The Lottie Animations block introduces something a little more fun and whimsical. Developed by the design team at Airbnb,…
WordPress Community Support (WPCS), the subsidiary of the WordPress Foundation that handles financial and legal support for official WordPress events, has published an overview of the program’s current finances and a summary of 2020. Harmony Romo, a financial wrangler at Automattic, reported that WPCS ended the year with approximately $1.2M of cash on hand. $293,000…
WordPress hosting company Convesio has raised $5 million from private investors. This funding round includes some of the company’s original investors who participated in Convesio’s 2019 Wefunder crowdfunding campaign, which brought in more than $1 million from 800+ investors. “I started Convesio because legacy hosting providers have not evolved their technology, struggled to provide high…