Jetpack 8.5 was released today with a new podcast player block for sharing audio content. Configuring the block is as simple as entering the podcast RSS feed URL. This will automatically bring in the cover art and recent episodes. Block options allow for further customization of the display, including the number of episodes, colors, and…
How do you know what blocks are in use on a WordPress site? I recently saw a tweet asking this question in regards to knowing whether it is safe to turn off a plugin. This seems like it could become a common question, especially for those who have hundreds or thousands of blog posts as…
The pandemic has caused economic hardships and upheaval in nearly every industry. Open source communities and contributors have been affected in a myriad of ways – whether it’s a loss of donations, the burden of nonrefundable travel expenses for canceled conferences, or severely diminished business and fundraising opportunities. FOSS Responders is a working group of…
WordCamp US 2020 organizers have cancelled the in-person event in favor of hosting it as an online-only conference. With more than a million confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. today, 63,000+ deaths, and 31 states set to partially reopen this weekend, the pandemic’s trajectory throughout the country has become increasingly uncertain. Many statewide stay-at-home orders…
Major retailers that are part of the critical infrastructure for distributing household essentials, healthcare items, and shelf-stable food, are raking in the cash during this pandemic. While consumer spending at bars, restaurants, and places of entertainment has dropped precipitously, spending at Amazon and Walmart has increased considerably in the past few weeks. The companies cannot…
WordCamp Europe 2020 is just 37 days away. Organizers announced in April that the event, which was supposed to be hosted in Porto, is moving to be 100% online this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. WCEU will kick off with a virtual Contributor Day on June 4, followed by two half days of talks…
While much of the world is in lockdown, public gatherings and conferences have been cancelled, leaving a void in the lives of people who enjoy meeting their fellow open source contributors and colleagues in person throughout the year. Virtual events, which were already on the rise, are enjoying a bit of a renaissance by necessity.…
Chatterbox is a new plugin with a fun and creative use for the block editor. It displays chat or text threads using blocks that are styled as conversations. Users can type in a record of a chat, including timestamps, with a live preview in the editor. Since written conversations are essentially little blocks of text…
Frontity, a free, open source framework for building WordPress themes with React, has raised €1M in funding in a round led by K Fund, with Automattic covering 22%. The team behind the framework officially made it open source in May 2019, after battle testing it internally. In one year the framework has more than 12,700…
Google announced today that it is bringing free listings to the Shopping tab in the United States before the end of April and will expand globally by the end of the year. Previously, merchants were required to pay for ad placement and product listings, which led to major online retailers dominating the Shopping tab. “Beginning…
Dashicons, the WordPress admin icon font, is now closed to new icon requests. After the block editor adopted the approach of using SVG icons directly, WordPress design contributors have recently reevaluated the efforts going into the Dashicons project. The team decided to wrap up existing tickets for new icons, push out a final release, and…
All of the recordings from the free WPBlockTalk virtual event are now available on WordPress.tv. In case you missed it, WPBlockTalk was a WordPress community event sponsored by Automattic, and produced by Brian Richards, creator of WPSessions. It took place earlier this month on April 2, though some of its momentum may have been lost…
As many countries around the world are currently in some form of lockdown to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, the hospitality industry has been one of the hardest hit by the new restrictions. Restaurants and breweries in particular have had to radically change how they do business and either lay off or furlough the…
Kioken Blocks creator Onur Oztaskiran is teaming up with Niklas Jurij Plessing, a Berlin-based developer and author of the Gutenslider plugin, to improve both products under the same roof. Oztaskiran said the partnership is not an acquisition but rather a unification of efforts that may eventually result in combining under the same name. “Our short…
Meetup, a subsidiary of WeWork, has announced a significant change to its pricing structure that will require members to pay a $2 fee in order to RSVP to events. The change will go into effect in October, ostensibly to distribute meetup costs more evenly between organizers and members. Some meetup organizers have received the following…