WordPress enthusiasts around the world tuned into Matt Mullenweg’s annual State of the Word address this week, delivered virtually for the first time. Mullenweg recognized the community’s efforts in working together during a global pandemic, without the benefit of periodic in-person events that have traditionally re-energized collaboration on the project. During a most unusual year…
Contact Form 7 has patched a critical file upload vulnerability in version 5.3.2, released today by plugin author Takayuki Miyoshi. The plugin is installed on more than five million WordPress sites. “An unrestricted file upload vulnerability has been found in Contact Form 7 5.3.1 and older versions,” Miyoshi said. “Utilizing this vulnerability, a form submitter…
Mapbox GL JS, formerly an open source JavaScript library for interactive, customizable vector maps, has adopted a proprietary license in its recent version 2 update: mapbox-gl-js is no longer under the 3-Clause BSD license. By upgrading to this release, you are agreeing to Mapbox terms of service. Refer to LICENSE.txt for the new licensing terms and details.…
WordPress.org has officially launched its new “Learn WordPress” platform, a free educational resource that includes courses, workshops, quizzes, lesson plans, and discussion groups. The material spans the spectrum of WordPress experience from beginners to advanced, and and allows users to learn asynchronously at their own pace. After a successful beta launch in August, the platform…
Fast, a startup backed by Stripe, has just added WooCommerce support to its new Fast Checkout experience. The company was co-founded in March 2019, by Domm Holland and Allison Barr Allen, with investment from Stripe, Index Ventures, Susa Ventures, and Global Founders Capital. It has received $22.5M in funding to reduce the friction that remains…
BuddyPress 7.0.0 “Filippi” was released this week, following WordPress 5.6 to ensure compatibility. This version was named for Filippi’s Pizza Grotto in California. It requires WordPress 4.9+, but sites that are not using the block editor will miss out on many of the new features that make BuddyPress websites easier to customize. The first set of community…
GitHub Universe, the company’s annual marquee product and community event, took place this week, bringing users a flurry of new features. Dark mode is now in public beta and can be activated under the Settings menu or set to follow system preferences. Discussions is a new feature that GitHub unveiled at its Satellite event in…
WordCamp US 2020, previously scheduled for October, was cancelled due to pandemic stress and online event fatigue. Organizers did not opt for running it as an online event, but Matt Mullenweg’s annual State of the Word address will be delivered virtually this year. It will be streamed on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter on Thursday, Dec 17th, 2020 at…
Automattic has acquired MailPoet, a popular email marketing solution for WordPress, to give WooCommerce store owners more integrated email management capabilities in the admin. The plugin is used by more than 300,000 websites for everything from building a mailing list to managing transaction and abandoned cart emails. The nine-year old company is now a team…
Easy WP SMTP has patched a vulnerability that allows attackers to capture the password reset link from the plugin’s debug log file and gain unauthorized access to the site. The plugin is used by more than 500,000 WordPress sites to configure and send all outgoing emails via a SMTP server so they are less likely…
The State of CSS 2020 survey results have just been published, with a summary of the tools, methodologies, frameworks, and libraries that are currently favored by CSS professionals. It includes data from 11,492 respondents in 102 countries, after the questions were translated for the first time into a dozen different languages. In the layout category,…
Although the promise of effective COVID-19 vaccines is shining a light at the end of a long tunnel, the world remains firmly in the virus’ grip until distribution can ramp up to cover at-risk groups as well as the general populace. As pandemic-weary communities muster the discipline to ride out the next few months under…
Multidots, a development agency and WordPress VIP Agency Partner, has released a plugin that brings content collaboration to the block editor. The Google-Doc Style Gutenberg Block Commenting plugin landed on WordPress.org in October and is just starting to gain traction. It adds inline commenting to the editor where users can highlight text or select entire…
Six months ago, Admin 2020 captured the attention of WordPress users with its fresh approach to skinning the admin screens. Version 2 of the plugin has been completely rewritten to support a modular architecture so users can enable or disable features, or selectively enable them by user role or username. Some users prefer the default menu…
Gutenberg 9.4.0 was released this week with many small improvements to existing features, while work on full site editing continues. This release will not be included in the upcoming WordPress 5.6 release but those who are using the Gutenberg plugin will have access to the improvements right away. The button block now has a width…