WordCamp Europe 2019 is 66 days away. The event will be held in Berlin on June 20-22, occupying 13,000m² of the Estrel Congress Center. More than 2,266 tickets have been sold so far, roughly 100 tickets short of what the event sold last year. All 59 speakers have now been announced and the schedule is…
Quirk is a new GPL-licensed Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) app for iOS and Android built in React Native/Expo. The app helps users challenge their “automatic thoughts,” a term that refers to thoughts that come to a person spontaneously in response to a trigger, which can often be negative. Quirk lets users record a quick thought…
The WPGraphQL project, a plugin that provides an extendable GraphQL schema and API for WordPress sites, has been gaining momentum over the past several months. Creator and maintainer Jason Bahl put the project up on Open Collective last week after people frequently asked how the community can support the project. WPGraphQL already has five backers,…
The next edition of WordSesh is scheduled for Wednesday, May 22, 2019, from 10am-8pm EDT (UTC-4) – just a little over one month away. For the past six years, the virtual conference for WordPress professionals has consistently delivered high quality sessions from industry experts. Last year’s event inspired viewing parties across the globe in Belgium,…
WooCommerce 3.6 RC2 was released today with changes to the planned Marketplace Suggestions feature after core developers received overwhelmingly negative feedback on its implementation. This RC removes the ads from the product listings, which was one of the most controversial placements for them. It also adds a new setting to turn Marketplace Suggestions off entirely.…
GoDaddy has acquired CoBlocks, ThemeBeans, Block Gallery and Block Unit Tests, one of the leading Gutenberg product lines in the WordPress ecosystem. Founder Rich Tabor is joining GoDaddy as Senior Product Manager of WordPress Experience and will lead a team dedicated to understanding users’ needs and expanding the company’s Gutenberg-related products. Tabor’s fellow CoBlocks founders…
In the wake of last week’s Pipdidg scandal, the WordPress blogger and developer communities have been working together to help the company’s customers get on new themes and ensure the safety of their websites. Pipdig has been reported to various UK and internet authorities and is currently under investigation. Pipdig’s hosting provider has proactively disabled…
The Gutenberg team has published a Blocks in Widget Areas RFC (request for comments) document, detailing a technical approach that brings blocks to the wp-admin/widgets.php screen and the Customizer. This is one of the goals on the roadmap Matt Mullenweg outlined in his 9 Projects for 2019 post. Based on the requirements outlined in the…
Earlier this month, Jetpack 7.1 added suggestions to the plugin search screen, a controversial change that has sparked debate this week. When users search for a plugin that matches a term for an existing Jetpack feature, the plugin now inserts an artificial, dismissible search result into the first plugin card slot, identifying the corresponding Jetpack…
In one of the most unpopular changes in the history of the WooCommerce open source project, version 3.6 will introduce “Marketplace Suggestions.” The update adds suggestions to the products admin screen, which vary based on whether it’s an empty state or within the list of products. “They are contextual mentions of official extensions that may…
Yesterday the discussion surrounding Jetpack’s implementation of feature suggestions in the plugin search screen became heated after developers pointed out that Automattic is also using these suggestions to promote paid upgrades. You can test this by searching for “backups” where you find that Jetpack’s commercial offering takes the place of the first result, pushing all…
Over the weekend, Pipdig, a small commercial theme company, has been at the center of a scandal after multiple reports exposed a litany of unethical code additions to its Pipdig Power Pack (P3) plugin. On Friday, March 29, Wordfence threat analyst Mikey Veenstra published a report with code examples of the backdoors Pipdig built into…
Jetpack 7.1 was released earlier this month with new blocks for WordAds, Business Hours, Contact Info, Slideshows, and Videos. This release also quietly added suggestions to the plugin search screen, a change that has not been well-received by the developer community. If a user searches for a plugin that has a feature that is already…
Automattic has released Happy Schedule, the first in a new line of products called “Happy Tools,” created to solve problems for distributed teams. The products have grown out of internal tools that Automattic uses with its distributed team of more than 850 employees in 68 countries. Most employee scheduling tools are designed for more traditional…
The organizers of WordCamp Asia, a brand new regional WordCamp, have published a proposal for making Bangkok, Thailand, the host city for a 2-3 day event in early 2020. They are currently planning for February or March to avoid clashing with other regional WordCamps (WCEU, WCUS). The camp has been informally discussed since 2015 while…