As developers and internet users become increasingly aware of the CO2 footprint of their data usage, renewed interest in carbon offsetting programs has cropped up in recent years. These programs allow individuals and organizations to “offset” their carbon dioxide emissions by funding environmental endeavors, which range from planting trees to clean energy projects, with lots…
The 8th annual WordCamp Europe is only 9 days away and organizers have just announced the schedule. Friday and Saturday sessions are split into two tracks that will run 30-minute talks simultaneously. Each talk is followed by a 10-minute Q&A. The schedule also mixes in a few 10-minute lightning talks, with 15-minute breaks every hour.…
Flywheel’s Local development app has received several major updates during the past month. The most recent release brings back support for Apache as a web server choice (version 5.5.1), in response to user feedback. This was the most highly requested feature on the app’s community voting board. Although nginx is the leader in web server…
In a 2017 speech titled “Stop trying to fix disability,” YouTube and motivational speaker Molly Burke says, “I live in a world that wasn’t built for me, but what if it was?” Burke was born with a rare, genetic eye disease that caused her to go blind. In this short but moving 8 minute video,…
One of the exciting things about WordCamps going virtual is the community gaining access to more events and presentations than ever before, from anywhere in the world. Even in this new online-only format, local camps still retain their unique character as they feature speakers from their respective communities. WordCamp Kent (Ohio) is one of these…
Ever on the hunt for a more beautiful, simplified writing experience inside WordPress, I jumped at the chance to beta test the new Iceberg plugin. Rich Tabor and Jeffrey Caradang, the same team behind CoBlocks, have created a new markdown editor built on top of Gutenberg that provides the best writing experience for WordPress since…
BuddyPress has entered the world of blocks with the release of version 6.0, the latest major update that has been in development since November 2019. The release, code-named “iovine’s” for a favorite pizza restaurant in Paris, introduces blocks for Groups and Members. It also marks the completion of the BP Rest API, adding the final…
iA Writer has been delighting users with its minimal writing experience for nearly a decade, racking up more than 3 million downloads. The most recent version 5.5 release for Mac and iOS moves the bar higher for competing writing apps with new support for previewing PDFs and improved support for publishing to self-hosted WordPress sites.…
In late April Wordfence discovered a critical vulnerability in Google’s Site Kit plugin for WordPress that would make it possible for any user on the site to gain full access to the Google Search Console without verifying ownership. Google patched the vulnerability and released the fix in version 1.8.0 on May 7, 2020. Wordfence published…
Last weekend I had the opportunity to interview Andy Fragen, a longtime member of the WordPress community and core contributor. He is also the author of the GitHub Updater plugin, which allows developers to enable automatic updates to their GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab, or Gitea hosted WordPress plugins, themes, and language packs. In the video below,…
Yesterday, GitHub added a new setting to user-owned repositories called “Account Successors.” It allows users to designate repository access to another user to maintain ownership continuity in the event of any kind of personal disruption. “Open source maintainers, you can now invite a trusted user to manage your open source projects in the event that…
The WordPress Accessibility Team is organizing a new online event called WP Accessibility Day that will take place on October 2, 2020. The event will feature 24 hours of educational sessions that focus on the intersection between WordPress and web accessibility. Inspired by the Polyglots’ Global Translation Day, which greatly expanded the team’s base of…
Matt Mullenweg joined Matías Ventura at WordCamp Spain yesterday for a lively Q&A session. The virtual event drew 5,000 registered users, and attendees came prepared with some thought-provoking questions about the future of WordPress. Here are a few highlights on some recent topics of interest. WordCamps around the globe have been going virtual, embracing the…
GitHub Satellite, the company’s annual product and community event, went virtual this year for the first time but marched forward with the usual major product announcements. GitHub is ramping up its offerings with four new products: an IDE, a discussion platform, code scanning, and private instances. Codespaces is the platform’s new built-in IDE that lets…
The third annual JavaScript for WordPress Conference is gearing up for three days of online talks and workshops on July 8-10, 2020. The event is free to attend and organizer Zac Gordon is working to put together a diverse speaker lineup. Day 1 will be devoted to workshops that help beginners get up and running…