Sarah Gooding

  • Human Made Releases Publication Checklist Plugin Designed for the Block Editor

    Human Made Releases Publication Checklist Plugin Designed for the Block Editor

    Human Made has created a Publication Checklist plugin built specifically for the block editor. It was developed as a headline feature of Altis, the company’s enterprise publishing platform based on WordPress, but is also available as a standalone plugin that developers can customize for their own particular use cases. Ryan McCue, Human Made’s Director of…

  • WordPress 5.3 to Introduce New Admin Email Verification Screen

    WordPress 5.3 to Introduce New Admin Email Verification Screen

    WordPress 5.3 is set to introduce an admin email verification screen that will be shown every six months after an admin has logged in. The feature was proposed seven months ago in a ticket that contributor Andrei Draganescu opened as part of the Site Health component improvements. Draganescu said the idea came from discussions in…

  • Google Search Console Adds Breadcrumbs Report, Sends Out Warnings for Structured Data Errors

    Google Search Console Adds Breadcrumbs Report, Sends Out Warnings for Structured Data Errors

    Google recently announced a new Breadcrumbs report available in the Search Console to inform site owners about markup issues. In 2015, Google introduced support for schema.org structured data, including the breadcrumbs URL structure, in order better present URLs in search results. The Search Console’s new report uses this data to help site owners fix any…

  • WordPress Community Contributors to Host Free Online Diversity Workshop Ahead of WordCamp US

    WordPress Community Contributors to Host Free Online Diversity Workshop Ahead of WordCamp US

    WordCamp US will debut a new Community Track in November that will feature sessions and workshops on topics like meetups, WordCamps, diversity and inclusion, and kids/youth. Jill Binder, Allie Nimmons, Aurooba Ahmed, and David Wolfpaw will be hosting a workshop called “Creating a Welcoming and Diverse Space” at the event. In order to adequately prepare…

  • Automattic Raises $300M in Series D Investment Round, Valuation Jumps to $3 Billion

    Automattic Raises $300M in Series D Investment Round, Valuation Jumps to $3 Billion

    Automattic announced another round of funding today, a $300 million Series D investment from Salesforce Ventures, giving the company a $3 billion valuation post-funding. The last time Automattic raised money was $160 million in a Series C round in 2014. Since that time the company has grown to more than 950 employees and made strategic…

  • Gutenberg 6.5 Adds Experimental Block Directory Search to Inserter and New Social Links Block

    Gutenberg 6.5 Adds Experimental Block Directory Search to Inserter and New Social Links Block

    Gutenberg 6.5 was released today with a rough prototype that adds one-click search and installation of blocks from the block directory to the inserter. Selected blocks are automatically installed as a plugin in the background and inserted into the editor with one click. The pull request for the experiment indicates that it’s still very much…

  • GPL Author Richard Stallman Resigns from Free Software Foundation

    GPL Author Richard Stallman Resigns from Free Software Foundation

    Richard Stallman, free software movement activist and originator of the “copyleft” concept, has resigned from his position as director of the board and president of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), which he established in 1985. This resignation comes on the heels of his resignation from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) after remarks…

  • New Attock WordPress Meetup Empowers Pakistani Women Freelancers and Business Owners

    New Attock WordPress Meetup Empowers Pakistani Women Freelancers and Business Owners

    WordCamp Lahore is getting rebooted on November 30 – December 1, at the National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences. The first edition of the event was planned for 2016 but was derailed by local disagreements and ultimately canceled. For the past three years organizers have worked to strengthen their local meetup groups and follow…

  • Local Lightning Now in Public Beta with Major Performance Improvements

    Local Lightning Now in Public Beta with Major Performance Improvements

    Flywheel put its new Local Lightning app into public beta this week. The app is an improved version of the company’s local WordPress development tool, formerly known as Pressmatic before Flywheel acquired it from Clay Griffiths and renamed it to “Local by Flywheel.” Since its acquisition in 2016, Local has gained many fans, particularly developers…

  • WPHindi Plugin Instantly Converts Text from English to Hindi in the Block Editor

    WPHindi Plugin Instantly Converts Text from English to Hindi in the Block Editor

    Hindi is one of the world’s top languages, with more than 520 million native and non-native speakers, and is the fastest growing language in India. In a region where English is also commonly spoken, many Hindi publishers have the unique requirement of being able to switch back and forth between the two languages when writing…

  • Richard Best Releases Free Audio and Ebook: “A Practical Guide to WordPress and the GPL”

    Richard Best Releases Free Audio and Ebook: “A Practical Guide to WordPress and the GPL”

    If you’re itching to go deeper into the legal aspects of navigating WordPress’ relationship to the GPL license, Richard Best has recently made his ebook (and the audio version) called “A Practical Guide to WordPress and the GPL” available for free. Best, a technology and public lawyer based in New Zealand, had previously sold the…