The first official WooCommerce Android app is now in open beta. The companion mobile app allows users to manage their WooCommerce stores on the go. Store owners who want to test the unreleased version of the mobile app can sign up with the Google Play Store. The WooCommerce app requires Jetpack to connect stores to…
Hurricane Florence is forecast to make landfall as a major hurricane near Wilmington, North Carolina bringing potentially catastrophic flooding and strong winds to the region. Because of the hurricane, WordCamp Wilmington which was scheduled to take place September 22nd and 23rd has been cancelled. “We wish all of our WordCamp Wilmington enthusiasts a minimum of…
If you search for “slider” in the WordPress plugins directory, MetaSlider is the first result that comes up. The plugin, created by the team at UpdraftPlus, is active on more than 900,000 sites, more than any other free slider plugin, and averages a 4.7-star review. It includes four different types of sliders: Flex 2, Nivo…
In May 2019, Marcel Bootsman will be lacing up a pair of hiking boots and walking 700km (435 miles) from his home in Rotterdam to WordCamp Europe in Berlin. Bootsman, a WordPress consultant and WordCamp organizer, is walking to raise funds and awareness for the DonateWC organization. The DonateWC initiative provides a global fund for…
Anders Norén has added Gutenberg support to his popular Hemingway theme in the latest update, version 1.66. The theme has a simple, timeless design that appeals to both bloggers and business owners alike. It is active on more than 30,000 websites and some of those site administrators are using Gutenberg. What does Gutenberg support look…
The WordPress Community team has unveiled a new tool called Meetup Tracker. This tool replaces the Meetup Status Document and will enable Global Community Team members to more easily track all Meetup.com groups. There’s also a new application form available for organizers looking to join the WordPress Meetup Chapter Program. Groups that are part of…
The WordPress Coding Standards version 1.1.0 has been released on GitHub. This release includes more stringent function call formatting checks which are explained in the handbook. There’s also stricter checks for overrides of WordPress global variables. To see a full list of what was changed, fixed, and added, check out the changelog.
Biratnagar, one of the oldest cities in Nepal, is gearing up to host its first WordCamp on December 22, 2018. The local community organized its first meetup in 2011 with 40 participants. Since that time the community has grown and recently hosted 250 members for a two-day meetup in January 2018. “WordPress Biratnagar has a…
For the past year, Daniel James has been developing the Dark Mode plugin for WordPress. The plugin is actively installed on more than 1K sites. Dark Mode replaces the white and grey colors in the backend with darker colors that are easier on the eyes. James has published a proposal to merge the plugin into…
The annual State of JavaScript 2018 Survey is in its third year running and is now open for participants. Sacha Greif, an Osaka-based web designer and developer, said he created the survey to get more data about recent trends after hearing all the online discussion about “JavaScript fatigue.” Last year’s survey had more than 20,000…
At the end of 2017, WooCommerce published some of their “Wootenberg experiments”, one of the first previews of what e-commerce might look like in the Gutenberg era. Gutenberg’s handling of meta boxes has greatly evolved since that time and the WooCommerce Gutenberg Products Block feature plugin is now active on more than 20,000 sites. The…
In October, Google’s open source AMP project (Accelerated Mobile Pages) will be heading into its third year. The initiative aims to improve performance on the mobile web and currently boasts usage on 25 million domains across publishing, advertising, e-commerce, and business websites. WordPress had a rocky beginning with its official AMP plugin, which was originally…
Gutenberg 3.7 is available for download and contains a number of changes. The Fixed Toolbar has been renamed Unified Toolbar. This is an optional mode that fixes all of the toolbar icons to the top of the editor, similar to the Classic editor. The team discovered that experienced users who don’t mind the disconnect between…
In this episode, John James Jacoby and I discuss the news of the week. We have a candid conversation about what it would be like if Gutenberg were merged into WordPress trunk earlier versus developed as a plugin. We also talk about Classic Editor install numbers, praising forks of WordPress, and some new tools that…
10up’s Distributor plugin has exited beta and is now publicly available. The free plugin syndicates content across WordPress multisite networks and the web. It went into beta last year and 10up reports that more than 100 organizations and developers participated in the beta program. “We’ve already integrated many improvements contributed by beta testers, including 10up…