• First Look at The Twenty Nineteen Default Theme

    First Look at The Twenty Nineteen Default Theme

    Allan Cole, a WordPress Theme Imagineer at Automattic has published the first glimpses of the Twenty Nineteen default theme slated to ship with WordPress 5.0. Cole is leading the theme while Kjell Regstad who does Product and Editorial Design at Automattic will be a design coach. The theme takes a minimalist approach that’s a good…

  • ACF 5.8 Beta 1 Introduces Blocks Feature, Release Slated for November

    ACF 5.8 Beta 1 Introduces Blocks Feature, Release Slated for November

    Advanced Custom Fields is now actively testing its new block creation feature in ACF 5.8 beta 1, released this week. ACF Blocks is a feature aimed at PHP developers who have not taken the deep dive into JavaScript yet. It essentially offers a shortcut to creating custom blocks using PHP and HTML instead of JavaScript.…

  • WordPress Privacy Contributors Begin Work on V2 Roadmap, Form Cross-Platform Working Group

    WordPress Privacy Contributors Begin Work on V2 Roadmap, Form Cross-Platform Working Group

    Contributors to WordPress’ core Privacy component are collaborating on a V2 roadmap to address broader privacy and data protection issues that fall outside of legal requirements. The group organized at the beginning of the year to work on GDPR-specific objectives but has since expanded its scope to tackle concerns that are not attached to any…

  • Contributing to Gutenberg: A New Contributor’s Experience

    Contributing to Gutenberg: A New Contributor’s Experience

    The following is a guest post by Chris Van Patten who shares his experience learning and contributing to Gutenberg. There’s been a lot of talk of Gutenberg’s higher barrier to entry for new contributors. Van Patten is the founder of Tomodomo, a digital agency for magazine publishers. Over the past few months, but especially over…

  • WordCamp for Publishers Seeks Host City for 2019

    WordCamp for Publishers Seeks Host City for 2019

    WordCamp For Publishers’ distributed organizing team is looking for a new host city in 2019. The industry-focused camp gathers together professionals who use WordPress to manage publications. This year’s successful event hosted speakers who highlighted important topics, such as ethics in journalism, the open web, AMP, Gutenberg, and communication between tech and editorial teams. The…

  • Learn How to Build JavaScript Plugins for WordPress with Riad Benguella’s Starter Kit/Tutorial

    Learn How to Build JavaScript Plugins for WordPress with Riad Benguella’s Starter Kit/Tutorial

    Riad Benguella, the technical lead for phase 2 of the Gutenberg project, has published an educational resource to help WordPress developers get started building JavaScript plugins. The WordPress JavaScript Plugin Starter is unique in that it is built as a tutorial, not just a boilerplate. The GitHub repo contains eight commits that have been structured…

  • WordCamp Nordic 2019 to be Held in Helsinki, March 7-8

    WordCamp Nordic 2019 to be Held in Helsinki, March 7-8

    After many years of planning, WordPress’ Nordic communities are finally getting a regional WordCamp. The first WordCamp Nordic 2019 is set to be held in Helsinki, Finland the weekend of March 7-8 at the Paasitorni Congress Center. “Some folks from the Norwegian community came up with idea in 2016,” lead organizer Marco Martins said. “Then…

  • Tiny Raises $4M in Series A Funding, Publishes Gutenberg FAQ

    Tiny Raises $4M in Series A Funding, Publishes Gutenberg FAQ

    Tiny, the company formerly known as Ephox has raised $4M in Series A funding from BlueRun Ventures. Tiny is the company behind TinyMCE, a popular text editor used in many opensource projects, including WordPress. In addition to the funding, Jeff Tannenbaum, partner at BlueRun Ventures is joining Tiny’s board of directors. The company has also…

  • WPWeekly Episode 333 – Interview With Mike ‘Shredder’ Schroder

    WPWeekly Episode 333 – Interview With Mike ‘Shredder’ Schroder

    In this episode, John James Jacoby and I are joined by Mike Schroder. Schroder co-led the release of WordPress 3.9 and in 2016, he led the release of WordPress 4.5. In the interview, we learn his WordPress origin story, his thoughts on Gutenberg and whether or not he sees it as the future of WordPress, the…

  • Gutenberg 4.0 RC 1 Released, Testing Ramps Up Amid Critical Accessibility Concerns

    Gutenberg 4.0 RC 1 Released, Testing Ramps Up Amid Critical Accessibility Concerns

    A pre-release of Gutenberg 4.0 RC 1 is now available for testing. During today’s core developer chat, Matias Ventura, the project’s technical lead, said he plans to post a full changelog and a video tomorrow. In the meantime, a call for testing 4.0 RC 1 has been posted to the make.wordpress.org/test blog with a list…

  • Jetpack 6.6 Improves Site Verification Tools, Asset CDN Module Now in Beta, Gutenberg Blocks Coming Soon

    Jetpack 6.6 Improves Site Verification Tools, Asset CDN Module Now in Beta, Gutenberg Blocks Coming Soon

    Jetpack 6.6 was released today with an update to the Site Verification tools that enables one-click verification and sitemap.xml registration with Google. This release also introduces the beta of Jetpack’s Asset CDN. The new module, built on the same infrastructure as the Photon CDN, speeds up sites by cloud-hosting widely-used Jetpack and core WordPress scripts,…

  • WordPress Accessibility Team Lead Resigns, Cites Political Complications Related to Gutenberg

    WordPress Accessibility Team Lead Resigns, Cites Political Complications Related to Gutenberg

    WordPress Accessibility Team lead Rian Rietveld has resigned due to what she describes as political complications and problems with working on Gutenberg accessibility. “The last year, especially the last few weeks have been too politically complicated for me,” Rietveld said. “It’s better that someone else takes the lead now.” Her post outlines challenges the accessibility…

  • Alexis Lloyd and Riad Benguella Will Lead Phase Two of Gutenberg

    Alexis Lloyd and Riad Benguella Will Lead Phase Two of Gutenberg

    As activity ramps up to try to get WordPress 5.0 released in November, Matt Mullenweg has announced who will lead phase two of the Gutenberg project. Phase two focuses on Customization and entire site layouts. Alexis Lloyd, Head of Design Innovation at Automattic, will handle the design and product side. Riad Benguella, a JavaScript Engineer…

  • Miami WordPresser Todrick Moore Passes Away

    Miami WordPresser Todrick Moore Passes Away

    Fellow WordPresser Todrick Moore, a member of the Miami WordPress community and volunteer organizer of WordCamp Miami 2015 and 2016  passed away last week of Leukemia. “Todrick Moore was one of the kindest and strongest members of the South Florida WordPress community, and I still to this day remember meeting him first at his local…

  • How the Student-Owned Pelham Examiner Uses WordPress to Empower Young Journalists

    How the Student-Owned Pelham Examiner Uses WordPress to Empower Young Journalists

    When the News of Pelham became another casualty of the blighted newspaper industry, student journalist contributors lost a platform for their voices to be heard. Their advisor, Rich Zahradnik, called a meeting to address the paper’s closure. More than a dozen middle and high school kids showed up and decided to start their own paper:…