Jetpack 5.3 was released with compatibility for PHP 7.1, a task the Jetpack team has been working on since January 2017 after they received multiple reports of failures with PHP 7.1 when opcache was enabled. This interfered with XML-RPC requests and some users reported issues managing their sites from WordPress.com and connecting to third-party apps.…
While attending WordCamp Grand Rapids I had the opportunity to interview developers and business owners about their first impressions of the new Gutenberg editor. Many attendees I spoke to had not yet heard of the project but were intrigued and decided to install the plugin on a test site. A few attendees were developers who…
The 4th edition of WordCamp Grand Rapids was held last weekend at Grand Valley State University’s downtown Pew Campus. After a brief hiatus following previous events in 2012, 2013, and 2014, the WordCamp is back in action with first-time lead organizer Cate DeRosia at the helm. Tickets sold out shortly before the event and the…
Gutenberg 1.0.0 was released this week as another iteration in the beta period that will continue on with 1.1 next week. Design lead Tammie Lister said the team decided “not let numbers set expectations” and will carry on at the same pace with weekly releases. One of the most visible UI updates in version 1.0…
Although WordPress core currently maintains backwards compatibility with PHP 5.2.4+, plugin and theme authors are not required to do so. When developers include features that require more recent versions of PHP, it can break sites or cause otherwise unexpected behavior. As part of a larger effort to encourage users to upgrade their PHP versions, WordPress.org…
Matt Mullenweg published an appeal to WordPress users over the weekend in a post titled “We Called it Gutenberg for a Reason.” In it he offers a better look at his vision for Gutenberg, which he contends will be as transformative for WordPress’ future as the first movable type printing was for Europe’s printing revolution.…
Last month React users petitioned Facebook to relicense the project (and its other open source projects) after the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) added Facebook’s BSD+Patents license to its Category X list of disallowed licenses for Apache PMC members. Participants and subscribers to the GitHub thread waited weeks for a decision on re-licensing while Facebook’s engineering…
WordPress’ Core PHP team has created a new GitHub organization for initiatives focused on improving the use of PHP in the project. The first one they are tackling is a new page on WordPress.org dedicated to educating users about the benefits of upgrading PHP. Contributors are collecting third-party articles and tutorials on PHP upgrades to…
Google Search Console has started sending out notices to sites that have not yet migrated to HTTPS. Chrome 61 is now in beta and version 62 is on track to begin marking HTTP pages as “NOT SECURE” beginning in October. It will show the warning if it detects any forms on the page that transmit…
ThemeBeans founder Rich Tabor released Merlin WP on GitHub in public beta this week. The project provides a beautiful experience for installing and setting up WordPress themes with all of their plugin dependencies, Customizer settings, widgets, demo content, and more. “I was inspired by David Baker’s Envato Theme Setup Wizard and was working to add…
Over the past few months the WordPress Support Team has been brainstorming ways to improve support across various aspects of the community. One new idea they are pursuing is hosting workshops where WordPress.org theme and plugin authors can present how they approach supporting their free, open source products that have been released to the community.…
Wider Gravity Forms Stop Entries is a new plugin that helps website owners protect the privacy of form submissions by preventing entries from being stored in the database. The plugin was created by UK-based web developer Jonny Allbut for internal use at Wider, a company he set up for handling WordPress clients’ needs. One aspect…
The WordPress mobile apps are sporting a new login experience that Automattic’s mobile designers and developers released in the latest versions. The login flow has been completely redesigned to provide a more unified experience for connecting both self-hosted and WordPress.com-hosted sites. These flows were completely separate in the past and users were often confused about…
maekit, a cloud-based platform that handles the business aspect of web design, has acquired WP Remote from Human Made. Two years after Human Made began searching for a buyer, maekit purchased WP Remote to integrate it with the company’s existing platform that caters to designers managing multiple clients. “WP Remote had remained a much-loved product…
Gutenberg 0.8.0 was released over the weekend with five new blocks, major improvements to existing blocks, and support for more publishing features that have been missing from the new editor’s sidebar. The release also carries out the controversial decision to remove the opt-in usage tracking code from the plugin. The new Categories block can be…