Today’s release of Gutenberg brings a major improvement to the usability of the Group block. In previous versions of the editor, it wasn’t easy to see if a block had been inserted as a child block, especially since the default behavior was to insert an empty paragraph block. Gutenberg 5.7 brings more clarity to the…
WordPress 5.2, released last week, added two new pages to the WordPress backend to help users diagnose common configuration issues. The Site Health Check page runs a series of tests and categorizes the results as critical, recommended, and good. This helps users prioritize which issues require immediate attention. WordPress 5.2 adds filters for developers to…
Pressing Topics is a daily podcast hosted by Malcolm Peralty and myself. We discuss the news that’s making headlines in the WordPress ecosystem as well as related topics that catch our eyes. Generally speaking, if you listen to this show on a daily basis, you should have a good idea on what’s going on in…
Reakit is a new toolkit for building accessible web apps with React. Brazilian developer Diego Haz launched his MIT-licensed open source project this week with a stable version 1.0 now available to the public. The toolkit offers offers composable, themeable, and accessible UI components that strictly follow WAI-ARIA 1.1 standards. Out of the box, Reakit…
*Update* The previous mp3 attached to this post inadvertently ended around the 31 minute mark. I’ve reuploaded the episode and corrected the problem. The full episode is attached below. In this episode, John James Jacoby and I share what’s new in WordPress 5.2, discuss why not capitalizing one letter can make or break someone in…
For several years, Bear App users have eagerly requested the ability to publish their notes to WordPress. Bear features a zen writing experience blended seamlessly with note-taking capabilities, a combination that landed the app an Apple Design Award in 2017. People use Bear for everything from taking notes to writing chapters for books. Many users…
Submitting a theme to the WordPress.org theme directory is a great way to share your work and contribute to the WordPress community. Currently, there are over 7000 themes in the directory, the most popular of which exceeds 300,000 active installations. (Not including Twenty____ Themes which are packaged with WordPress and have install counts in the…
Pressing Topics is a daily podcast hosted by Malcolm Peralty and myself. We discuss the news that’s making headlines in the WordPress ecosystem as well as related topics that catch our eyes. Generally speaking, if you listen to this show on a daily basis, you should have a good idea on what’s going on in…
WordPress Translation Day 4 was held over the weekend. The 24-hour global event hosted 77 local events in 35 countries and the Polyglots team added 183 new contributors to their ranks. The team also designated 12 new GTEs (Global Translation Editor) and 14 PTEs (Project Translation Editor). Naoko Takano, a Polyglots Team Global Mentor and…
WordPress Trac is one of the more utilitarian and uninspiring interfaces that many contributors have to contend with in the process of giving back to the project. After growing tired of Trac’s mediocre search functionality, William Earnhardt set out to improve it with a new project called WPTracSearch that gave him an opportunity to play…
The following is a guest post written by Jennifer Bourn. With 21 years experience as a graphic designer, 15 years experience as a web designer, 14 years as a creative agency owner, and 11 years as a blogger, Jennifer Bourn has worked with hundreds of service-based businesses to build brands and establish profitable online platforms.…
Storefront, WooCommerce’s free flagship theme, has just released version 2.5.0 with updates that make it easier to setup and customize the homepage. In 2017, WooCommerce 2.2 introduced starter content to help users set up the homepage template, menus, widgets, and add some demo products. This content has been updated to incorporate the WooCommerce blocks that…
After six months in development, Advanced Custom Fields 5.8.0 was released yesterday with a new PHP-based framework for developing custom Gutenberg block types. ACF Blocks was announced in October 2018, to the great relief of many developers who didn’t know how they were going to keep pace with learning the JavaScript required to use WordPress’…
In this episode, John James Jacoby and I are joined by Rachel Cherry, Freelance software engineer, consultant, and director of WPCampus and Brian DeConinck, a front-end designer and developer with the OIT Design and Web Services team, part of the Office of Information Technology at NC State University. We learn how Tenon was chosen as the vendor to perform the…
Nevena Tomovic, a Business Developer at Human Made, is researching the most important skills for pursuing a career in WordPress. She is conducting a survey for professionals that is open to anyone working in a WordPress-related capacity, including writers, developers, marketers, UI & UX designers, illustrators, community drivers, evangelists, project managers, and creatives. The survey…