Jetpack 12.8 was released this week, introducing Jetpack Creator, a new product under the Growth category that sits alongside the recently launched Newsletter product. Jetpack Creator is aimed at users who want to monetize their content and subscribers. It supports e-books, courses, paid newsletters, advertising, paywalled access, and other content monetization options. The market size…
Adam Schweigert, an independent media and technology consultant, has released a plugin called Newspack Plugin Update Checker that enables self-hosted Newspack users to keep their plugins up-to-date. The Newspack project was launched in 2019 by WordPress.com, with support from the Google News Initiative, the Knight Foundation, and The Lenfest Institute. It provides local news organizations…
WordPress contributors have updated the Theme Handbook to include a new chapter on block templating. The chapter covers how the WordPress block template system works, how to build custom templates and parts and include them in a theme. This is critical documentation designed to provide a learning path for those who are building their first…
Nick Diego, a developer advocate at Automattic and core contributor, is the author of the popular Icon Block plugin that enables users to add custom SVG icons and graphics to the WordPress block editor. He is often asked if the plugin can add icons to the core Button block, but that is outside the scope…
Wordfence CLI 2.0.1 introduced free vulnerability scanning this week. The new CLI product was launched at WordCamp US two months ago with malware detection capabilities, but the latest update brings in the most highly requested feature – vulnerability scanning at scale. Wordfence is most well-known for its Web Application Firewall, malware scanner, and login security…
WooCommerce is rebranding to “Woo,” a shorter, more playful version of the company name that many customers are already using. Automattic acquired WooCommerce in 2015, along with WooThemes. The open source commerce platform now powers more than 4.4 million live websites, including 33% of the top 1 million online stores. The rebranding extends to the Woo…
Munich-based digital agency owner Hendrik Luehrsen has been tracking the usage of themes with the FSE tag (block themes) using a spreadsheet that pulls in data from the WordPress.org API. Wrangling the data in a spreadsheet became too cumbersome, so Luehrsen launched WP Data Dashboard over the weekend as a “centralized hub for exploring, analyzing,…
Delivering on an highly-requested feature, Gutenberg contributors have made it possible to rename almost any block in the List View. Version 16.9 was released this week with the new feature, which builds on Gutenberg 16.7‘s introduction of the ability to rename Group blocks. It works in a similar way to naming Photoshop layers. Users can…
The upcoming 6.4 release, expected on November 7, will disable attachment pages for new installations. Up until now, WordPress automatically created attachment pages when users upload a file through the media upload system. It has been treated as a special post type that holds information about the file and each attachment is accessible under its…
TaxoPress, a plugin that allows users to create and manage Tags, Categories, and taxonomy terms, has joined a growing number of WordPress products using AI to innovate and enhance user experience. The latest release adds support for OpenAI and IBM Watson to auto-detect the best taxonomy terms for content. “Honestly, I’m amazed how good these services are,” TaxoPress…
WordPress 6.4 RC2 was released this week with more than 25 issues resolved since RC1. These include a few cherry-picked commits from the Gutenberg repository, additional closed Trac tickets since RC 1, and more than a dozen housekeeping commits for Twenty Twenty-Four. The 6.4 Field Guide is now published with technical notes. It’s a lengthy…
Automattic has acquired Texts, an all-in-one messaging platform, for $50 million. Texts is a newer company founded in 2020 that creates a centralized inbox for all major messaging platforms, including iMessage, WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram, Signal, Twitter, LinkedIn, Slack, and Discord. The proliferation of messaging apps and inboxes has made responding to communication more complicated than…
The Open Source Initiative (OSI), a non-profit organization that plays an important role in the open source ecosystem as stewards of the Open Source Definition (OSD), has opened its 2024 State of Open Source survey. This is the third year OSI has published the survey in collaboration with OpenLogic by Perforce, who has sponsored it in previous…
The LiteSpeed Cache plugin, used on more than four million WordPress sites, has patched an XSS vulnerability in version 5.7. The plugin provides all-in-one site acceleration capabilities, server-level caching, and a collection of optimization features. It is compatible with WordPress multisite, and popular plugins like WooCommerce, bbPress, and Yoast SEO, which may contribute to its…
The Ollie block theme, created by Mike McAlister and Patrick Posner, now has a companion plugin available called Ollie Dash. The theme made headlines earlier this month after a contentious WordPress.org review process led its authors to remove the innovative onboarding features. Ollie was approved for WordPress.org but without the time-saving onboarding features its authors…