Sarah Gooding

  • W3C Selects Craft CMS for Redesign Project

    W3C Selects Craft CMS for Redesign Project

    W3C has selected Craft CMS over Statamic for its redesign project, after dropping WordPress from consideration in an earlier round of elimination: In the end, our decision mostly came down to available resources. Craft had already committed to reach AA compliance in Craft 4 (it is currently on version 3.5, the release of version 4…

  • Fuxia Scholz First to Pass 100K Reputation Points on WordPress Stack Exchange

    Fuxia Scholz First to Pass 100K Reputation Points on WordPress Stack Exchange

    Fuxia Scholz, a prolific WordPress Stack Exchange (WPSE) contributor, is the first member to reach 100,000 reputation points. The popular Q&A community site rewards expert advice by floating the highest quality answers to the top, allowing users to earn reputation points. The gamified help community has proven to be more motivating for developers than many…

  • W3C Drops WordPress from Consideration for Redesign, Narrows CMS Shortlist to Statamic and Craft

    W3C Drops WordPress from Consideration for Redesign, Narrows CMS Shortlist to Statamic and Craft

    The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the international standards organization for the web, is redesigning its website and will soon be selecting a new CMS. Although WordPress is already used to manage W3C’s blog and news sections of the website, the organization is open to adopting a new CMS to meet its list of preferences and requirements.…

  • WordPress Contributors Debate Dashboard Notice for Upcoming Facebook oEmbed Provider Removal

    WordPress Contributors Debate Dashboard Notice for Upcoming Facebook oEmbed Provider Removal

    WordPress contributors are discussing different strategies for responding to Facebook and Instagram dropping unauthenticated oEmbed support on October 24. WordPress will be removing both Facebook and Instagram as oEmbed providers. When a user attempts to embed content by pasting a URL as they have in the past, they may not understand why it no longer works. They…

  • WordPress Mobile Engineers Propose Dual Licensing Gutenberg under GPL v2.0 and MPL v2.0

    WordPress Mobile Engineers Propose Dual Licensing Gutenberg under GPL v2.0 and MPL v2.0

    During a Q&A session at WordCamp Europe 2020 online, Matt Mullenweg mentioned that Gutenberg contributors were considering dual licensing for embedding Gutenberg in mobile apps, along with the requirement that they would need to get an agreement from all contributors. WordPress mobile engineer Maxime Biais has just published a proposal for discussion, recommending dual licensing…

  • Matt Mullenweg and Jamstack Community Square Off, Making Long-Term Bets on the Predominant Architecture for the Web

    Matt Mullenweg and Jamstack Community Square Off, Making Long-Term Bets on the Predominant Architecture for the Web

    Over the past two weeks, Matt Mullenweg and Jamstack community leaders have forged a new rivalry, after Mullenweg told The New Stack that he sees Jamstack as “a regression for the vast majority of the people adopting it.” “The usability and functionality is actually lower,” Mullenweg said to Richard MacManus in an email. “Even rebuilding…

  • Matt Mullenweg Clarifies Jamstack Remarks

    Matt Mullenweg Clarifies Jamstack Remarks

    Two weeks ago, Matt Mullenweg made some pointed remarks in an article from The New Stack, calling Jamstack “a regression for the vast majority of the people adopting it.” In preparation for an upcoming article that will include comments from leaders across both the WordPress and Jamstack communities, I asked Mullenweg if he stands by…

  • Gutenberg 9.0 Brings Major Improvements to Navigation Screen and Query Block

    Gutenberg 9.0 Brings Major Improvements to Navigation Screen and Query Block

    If you haven’t played around with Gutenberg’s experiments lately, the Navigation block is getting some exciting updates. Version 9.0 was released today with drag-and-drop support added to the list view of navigation items. Contributors have been working through several different prototypes aimed at unifying the controls and simplifying the menu building process. The Navigation screen…

  • Upcoming API Change Will Break Facebook and Instagram oEmbed Links Across the Web Beginning October 24

    Upcoming API Change Will Break Facebook and Instagram oEmbed Links Across the Web Beginning October 24

    In an extraordinarily inconvenient API change, Facebook and Instagram will be dropping unauthenticated oEmbed support on October 24, breaking content across millions of websites. The change will force users to generate an app ID with a developer account in order to continue embedding links via oEmbed: Changes to tokenless access for User Picture and FB/IG OEmbed endpoints: By October…

  • Podcasting During the Pandemic: Castos Sees 300% Growth in New Podcasters

    Podcasting During the Pandemic: Castos Sees 300% Growth in New Podcasters

    Podcasting, like many other industries during the pandemic, is seeing a strong shift over the past six months, which has resulted in more shows and fewer listeners. While some avid podcast fans have taken solace in listening to their favorite shows to stay connected, many listeners who previously had podcasts built into their routines have…

  • WordPress Themes Directory Adds New “Delist” Status for Non-Compliant Themes

    WordPress Themes Directory Adds New “Delist” Status for Non-Compliant Themes

    In August, following the suspension of the popular Astra theme, WordPress Meta contributors opened a ticket to add a new “delisting” status for non-compliant themes. Astra’s infraction, breaking the directory’s ban on affiliate links, put more than a million users at risk of not getting theme updates just as WordPress 5.5 was on deck for…

  • AMP Plugin 2.0 Adds Onboarding Wizard and Expanded Reader Mode

    AMP Plugin 2.0 Adds Onboarding Wizard and Expanded Reader Mode

    The official AMP plugin for WordPress recently crossed the 2.0 milestone, a major release that closed 141 issues and merged 174 pull requests. The release was originally planned for v1.6 but due to the number of major changes the team decided to bump it to 2.0. One of the most significant updates in this release…

  • Deque Systems to Host Axe-Con Virtual Accessibility Conference, March 10-11, 2021

    Deque Systems to Host Axe-Con Virtual Accessibility Conference, March 10-11, 2021

    Deque Systems, a widely respected accessibility firm that has contributed to setting up automated accessibility testing for WordPress core, will be hosting a new “Axe-con” virtual conference focusing on digital accessibility. Axe-con is named for the company’s axe-core project, an open source library and accessibility testing engine that can be customized to integrate with all…

  • Jetpack Launches Email Marketing Tools with Creative Mail Integration, WooCommerce-Triggered Store Emails Coming Soon

    Jetpack Launches Email Marketing Tools with Creative Mail Integration, WooCommerce-Triggered Store Emails Coming Soon

    Jetpack is firing up a new suite of email marketing tools in partnership with Endurance International Group’s Constant Contact brand. Last week version 8.9 of the plugin introduced a new newsletter signup form inside its Form block, based on an integration with the Creative Mail plugin that Constant Contact recently launched as a solution tailored…

  • WordPress Support Team Seeks to Curb Support Requests for Commercial Plugins and Themes

    WordPress Support Team Seeks to Curb Support Requests for Commercial Plugins and Themes

    WordPress’ Support Team contributors are discussing how they can curb support requests for commercial products on the official WordPress.org forums. Users sometimes seek help for commercial product upgrades on the forums of the free version, not knowing that the moderators’ official policy is to refer them to the extension’s commercial support channel. In other instances,…