After years of unpredictable development and support, it seemed the Edit Flow plugin had finally given up the ghost last week when an Automattic support representative confirmed that it is no longer being actively developed and recommended users switch to an alternative. Nick Gernert, head of WordPress.com VIP, has since commented on our post to…
The team behind the Meta Box plugin updated their MB Settings Page add-on to include support for the customizer and multisite. The customizer feature allows theme authors to integrate their custom settings into the customizer using framework-specific code. The multisite integration allows plugin authors to create a network settings page. The new features come on…
WordPress 5.3 Beta 3 was released this week and RC 1 is right around the corner, expected October 15. Core contributors have been publishing developer notes on new features landing in this release. One exciting enhancement that hasn’t received much attention yet is WordPress’ updated handling of large images. Many WordPress users don’t consider the…
MachoThemes, the WordPress development company behind the Modula Gallery plugin, has acquired three gallery plugins. The company is currently rolling the first two of the plugins, Final Tiles Grid Gallery Lite and PhotoBlocks Grid Gallery, into Modula. The third plugin, EverLightbox, will remain as a standalone project. The three plugins were purchased from Diego Imbriani…
EllisLab founder Rick Ellis announced yesterday that ExpressionEngine has been acquired by Packet Tide, the parent company of EEHarbor, one of the most successful EE add-on providers and development agencies in the community. A year ago EllisLab, the developers of EE core, was acquired by Digital Locations but Ellis said the company ended up not…
Rosa 2 is the sequel to Pixelgrade’s best-selling theme, Rosa. The new theme re-imagines its previous incarnation in the context of the block editor (Gutenberg). I was provided a copy of the theme for free to test and provide my thoughts. The theme sells for $75/year, or you can pay a one-time fee of $95…
As a child of the ’90s, I was growing up in one of the largest transitional periods in human history. The Internet Age was upon us. I was born and raised in a small community in rural Alabama. The country. The backwoods. To give you an idea of how small the place was, my entire…
GNU Project maintainers are working to oust Richard Stallman from his position as head of the organization. In a joint statement published yesterday morning, a collection of 22 GNU maintainers and developers thanked Stallman for his work and declared that he can no longer represent the project: We, the undersigned GNU maintainers and developers, owe…
The Google Security Team has announced a timeline for when Chrome will begin blocking mixed content by default in order to ensure that HTTPS browsing is more secure. Mixed content refers to HTTPS pages that load resources, such as images, videos, stylesheets, and scripts, over HTTP. The gradual rollout will begin with Chrome 79, which…
In what is seen as a win for accessibility advocates, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Domino’s petition to appeal a lower-court decision on whether the pizza chain’s website and mobile app must be accessible to those with disabilities. The earlier U.S. 9th Circuit court ruled that websites fall under Title III of the American with…
WooSesh is happening next week on October 9 and 10, and registration is now open. This is the second edition of the virtual WooCommerce event hosted by WPSessions. In addition to presentations focused entirely on e-commerce, the event will include a “Hallway Track” that offers opportunities for attendees to connect with each other, along with…
The WordPress.org SVN system received a version bump to 7.2 on October 3. This change means that plugin authors can now use newer PHP syntax in plugins they submit to the official plugin directory. In the future, the version maximum will match what’s running on WordPress.org. This should be good news for any plugin developers…
In what began as a heated conversation on Twitter, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg and Ruby on Rails creator and Basecamp co-founder David Heinemeier Hansson took to the airwaves to debate opposing viewpoints on market share, monopolies, and power in open source communities. Hansson reacted to a statement Mullenweg made in an interview after Salesforce Ventures…
The WordPress theme review team (TRT) is kicking off a review weekend October 5 and will begin at 10:00 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). These events, called “review shindigs,” are marathon sessions where the team joins together to review themes and teach best practices. The current plan is to hold the event on the first Saturday…
PHP 7.4 is slated for release on November 28, 2019. WordPress 5.3 will also include several commits that address deprecated features. It’s unlikely that most WordPress plugin and theme developers will be able to use the new PHP 7.4 features for a while except when working on setups where they have some measure of control…