Sarah Gooding

  • Hybrid Core 5.0 Offers a More Modern, Modular Approach to WordPress Theme Development

    Hybrid Core 5.0 Offers a More Modern, Modular Approach to WordPress Theme Development

    Version 5.0 of Hybrid Core, one of the longest-running WordPress theme frameworks, is now available. Justin Tadlock celebrated 10 years with his Theme Hybrid community last month and released his new Mythic starter theme into beta. Mythic was built on top of Hybrid Core and developed in tandem with version 5.0. The framework has been…

  • Yoast SEO 8.2 Adds How-To and FAQ Gutenberg Blocks with Structured Data

    Yoast SEO 8.2 Adds How-To and FAQ Gutenberg Blocks with Structured Data

    Yoast SEO 8.2 was released last week with the plugin’s first tools designed specifically for Gutenberg. It includes two new How-To and FAQ structured data content blocks for early adopters of the new editor. Structured data is content that can be marked up with a shared vocabulary, such as the one provided by Schema.org. Content…

  • Drupal Gutenberg Project Receives Enthusiastic Reception at Drupal Europe

    Drupal Gutenberg Project Receives Enthusiastic Reception at Drupal Europe

    The Drupal Gutenberg project is gaining momentum after Per André Rønsen and Marco Fernandes gave a presentation at Drupal Europe this week titled “Introducing the Gutenberg content editor for Drupal 8.” Rønsen and Fernandes are representatives of Frontkom, a digital services agency based in Norway that has ported WordPress’ Gutenberg editor over to Drupal for…

  • WordPress 4.9.9 Release Focus Items Include Site Health Project and Gutenberg Preparation

    WordPress 4.9.9 Release Focus Items Include Site Health Project and Gutenberg Preparation

    The WordPress 4.9.9 release leads published a roadmap for the release this week. The minor release will be led by Anthony Burchell and Alain Schlesser. It is targeted for November 5 with the first beta arriving near the end of October. The leads identified four key focus areas for the upcoming release: accessibility, internationalization, the…

  • Official WooCommerce Android App Now in Beta

    Official WooCommerce Android App Now in Beta

    The first official WooCommerce Android app is now in open beta. The companion mobile app allows users to manage their WooCommerce stores on the go. Store owners who want to test the unreleased version of the mobile app can sign up with the Google Play Store. The WooCommerce app requires Jetpack to connect stores to…

  • MetaSlider Plugin Adds Gutenberg Block for Inserting Sliders

    MetaSlider Plugin Adds Gutenberg Block for Inserting Sliders

    If you search for “slider” in the WordPress plugins directory, MetaSlider is the first result that comes up. The plugin, created by the team at UpdraftPlus, is active on more than 900,000 sites, more than any other free slider plugin, and averages a 4.7-star review. It includes four different types of sliders: Flex 2, Nivo…

  • Marcel Bootsman is Walking 700km to WordCamp Europe to Raise Funds for DonateWC

    Marcel Bootsman is Walking 700km to WordCamp Europe to Raise Funds for DonateWC

    In May 2019, Marcel Bootsman will be lacing up a pair of hiking boots and walking 700km (435 miles) from his home in Rotterdam to WordCamp Europe in Berlin. Bootsman, a WordPress consultant and WordCamp organizer, is walking to raise funds and awareness for the DonateWC organization. The DonateWC initiative provides a global fund for…

  • Hemingway Theme Adds Gutenberg Support

    Hemingway Theme Adds Gutenberg Support

    Anders Norén has added Gutenberg support to his popular Hemingway theme in the latest update, version 1.66. The theme has a simple, timeless design that appeals to both bloggers and business owners alike. It is active on more than 30,000 websites and some of those site administrators are using Gutenberg. What does Gutenberg support look…

  • Biratnagar, Nepal to Host Its First WordCamp – December 22, 2018

    Biratnagar, Nepal to Host Its First WordCamp – December 22, 2018

    Biratnagar, one of the oldest cities in Nepal, is gearing up to host its first WordCamp on December 22, 2018. The local community organized its first meetup in 2011 with 40 participants. Since that time the community has grown and recently hosted 250 members for a two-day meetup in January 2018. “WordPress Biratnagar has a…

  • The State of JavaScript 2018 Survey is Now Open

    The State of JavaScript 2018 Survey is Now Open

    The annual State of JavaScript 2018 Survey is in its third year running and is now open for participants. Sacha Greif, an Osaka-based web designer and developer, said he created the survey to get more data about recent trends after hearing all the online discussion about “JavaScript fatigue.” Last year’s survey had more than 20,000…

  • Pootlepress Previews Upcoming Storefront Blocks Plugin for WooCommerce

    Pootlepress Previews Upcoming Storefront Blocks Plugin for WooCommerce

    At the end of 2017, WooCommerce published some of their “Wootenberg experiments”, one of the first previews of what e-commerce might look like in the Gutenberg era. Gutenberg’s handling of meta boxes has greatly evolved since that time and the WooCommerce Gutenberg Products Block feature plugin is now active on more than 20,000 sites. The…

  • AMP for WordPress Plugin to Introduce User-Friendly Theme Support Settings in Upcoming 1.0 Release

    AMP for WordPress Plugin to Introduce User-Friendly Theme Support Settings in Upcoming 1.0 Release

    In October, Google’s open source AMP project (Accelerated Mobile Pages) will be heading into its third year. The initiative aims to improve performance on the mobile web and currently boasts usage on 25 million domains across publishing, advertising, e-commerce, and business websites. WordPress had a rocky beginning with its official AMP plugin, which was originally…

  • Distributor Plugin Now Publicly Available, Adds Gutenberg Support

    Distributor Plugin Now Publicly Available, Adds Gutenberg Support

    10up’s Distributor plugin has exited beta and is now publicly available. The free plugin syndicates content across WordPress multisite networks and the web. It went into beta last year and 10up reports that more than 100 organizations and developers participated in the beta program. “We’ve already integrated many improvements contributed by beta testers, including 10up…

  • Gutenberg Contributors Considering a “Focus Mode” for Writing

    Gutenberg Contributors Considering a “Focus Mode” for Writing

    After overwhelming feedback from testers indicating that Gutenberg is not well suited for simply writing posts, the project’s contributors are considering a few options for improving the writing flow. These proposals are spread across several tickets on GitHub. Two weeks ago, Gutenberg technical lead Matias Ventura submitted a PR exploring the possibility of introducing a…

  • New WP Glossary Site Translates WordPress Techspeak into Plain English

    New WP Glossary Site Translates WordPress Techspeak into Plain English

    Anders Norén has launched a new website called WP Glossary that contains definitions for terms that people encounter when using WordPress. The resource was born out of a need to provide documentation for client projects. “The last time I updated the glossary for a new client documentation, in the middle of May this year, it…