While much of the world is currently suspended in the uncertainty caused by the pandemic, WordCamp Europe delivered a surprisingly decisive announcement today regarding the status of the 2021 event in Porto. Organizers moved to make it a virtual conference, 10 months in advance of the planned dates, June 3-5, 2021: After careful consideration, and…
Unless I’m trying to be aware of it, I don’t see the WordPress admin anymore. When you work inside it every day, it becomes a means to an end, like a subway ride to work. You scan your ticket (log in) and you’re on your way to whatever admin business is the order of the…
This week WordPress’ Documentation team announced a ban on links to commercial websites in a revision to its external linking policy: During discussion about external linking policy, we came to conclusion that we won’t allow, at least in the beginning and for the time being, any commercial blogs. So before you start arguing that some…
OSI (Open Source Initiative) is hosting a new 24-hour, virtual conference called State of the Source Summit, September 9-10. The non-profit organization plays an important role in the open source ecosystem as stewards of the Open Source Definition (OSD). OSI is responsible for reviewing and approving licenses as OSD-conformant, which indirectly helps mediate community conflicts. As part…
Jetpack 8.7 was released this week with an exciting new feature that allows users to “unroll” a tweetstorm and publish it in a post. The feature works inside the Tweet block. After a user embeds a tweet, it will automatically detect a tweetstorm and display a prompt to fetch the rest of the tweets. It…
Gatsby announced its new source plugin (v4) for WordPress is now in beta. The plugin has been completely revamped to improve headless WordPress setups where Gatsby powers the frontend. It also integrates with Gatsby Cloud to provide real-time previews and incremental builds. The Gatsby team has had a long journey towards creating an integration for WordPress sites…
WordProof, the company behind the WordProof Timestamp plugin for WordPress, has received a €1 million grant from the European Commission as the reward for winning a competition called “Blockchains for Social Good.” The Dutch startup beat 175 other participants from around Europe. The competition was designed to reward developers’ efforts in exploring decentralized applications of blockchains…
The new navigation block and navigation and widget screens that were originally planned for WordPress 5.5 have been pushed back to the next release. These projects are currently available in the Gutenberg plugin experiments screen but are not yet ready to land in core. Converting the widget-editing areas and updating the widgets UI to use the block…
WordPress developers Milana Cap and Jonathan Bossenger are starting a fundraiser for improving Gutenberg developer documentation. The conversation began yesterday when Cap tweeted about how documentation is often overlooked when companies hire full-time contributors to work on WordPress. “When your community is unable to learn your software then you have no contributors,” Cap said. “Documentation…
Flywheel has relaunched Local Pro, the commercial upgrade for its free local WordPress development product. The first version of Local Pro, launched in July 2019, was heavily geared towards Flywheel customers, but the tool has gradually evolved to be more host-agnostic. This major update focuses on pre-launch features that allow developers to check links, optimize…
As the pandemic and lockdown measures have caused major shifts in consumer behavior, accelerating the trend towards e-commerce, many WooCommerce-powered stores have seen a significant boost in sales. Major retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Target have strained to meet the increase in consumer demand, creating an unprecedented opportunity for independent stores. According to the latest…
Tulsa’s first ever WordCamp, which was scheduled for August 29-30, 2020, has officially been canceled due to uncertainty surrounding the pandemic. The event would have been the second WordCamp in Oklahoma in four years, following WordCamp OKC in 2016. “We were trying to go for a hybrid event that was live streamed and included an…
WordPress contributors are currently discussing adopting friendlier terms for some of the trac ticket resolutions to create a more welcoming environment for participants and newcomers. Since trac resolutions are not set in stone, organizations can customize these terms for different workflows. During a recent core developers chat, Sergey Biryukov proposed that WordPress trac rename “invalid,”…
WordCamp Denver begins Friday this week and tickets are free for anyone who wants to join June 26-27. The event has been running since 2012, but like many other conferences, it is going virtual in 2020, as the pandemic continues to worsen around the globe. Attendees will have to forego the city’s extraordinary landscapes, friendly…
In response to recent events, where American police officers have been charged with murder for the deaths of George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks, along with the protests led by the Black Lives Matter movement, many repository owners are rejecting the use of the term ‘master’ for the default branch as oppressive terminology. As Git-based repository…