The application process to be the host city for WordCamp US 2017 and 2018 is now open. A lot of work goes into making WordCamp US successful and planning needs to start as soon as possible. The goal is to have future host city organizers be involved in the second year’s planning to learn the…
This post was contributed by guest author Jenny Beaumont. Jenny Beaumont is co-organizer of WordCamp Paris & WordCamp Europe, a frequent speaker at WordCamps in France and abroad, and a contributor to a number of blogs. After 17 years building things in and around the web, she is taking a year-long sabbatical to get a…
Late in 2015, Arūnas Liuiza, a WordPress plugin developer, announced a new project called Measure Jetpack. Measure Jetpack is an independent, comprehensive series of benchmarks that will show how much impact Jetpack has on a site’s performance. Over the last few months, little information has been shared on the project’s status. I reached out to Liuiza…
Custom Contact Forms has just passed one million downloads after nearly six years in the WordPress Plugin Directory. Last year Taylor Lovett, Director of Web Engineering at 10up, released version 6.0, a completely rewritten version that made it one of the first plugins to incorporate the new WP REST API. It is now one of…
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I discuss the latest news in the WordPress ecosystem. On the first episode of 2016, I rant about the conspiracy theorists who believe Automattic owns and controls the WordPress project. I try to set the record straight and explain why it’s not the case. Later in…
Between posts and comments, WordPress.com is an enormous hub of activity. The service recently published its 2015 year in review and the numbers are staggering. Last year, users published 660M posts that generated more than 655M comments. The review looks back at posts that went viral, books published by authors, and coverage of world…
WordPress 4.5 development is now in full swing with Mike Schroder at the helm, leading the kickoff meeting today. Schroder is joined by newly named deputies, Mel Choyce and Adam Silverstein, who will help manage the release. The 4.5 project schedule is now posted. The merge window for feature plugins opens February 3rd and the…
Briar is a new minimalist theme that landed in the WordPress directory last month. It’s the type of bold, non-flashy theme that puts the spotlight on content and images without trying to stuff widgets into the reading experience. Briar was created by the folks at Slicejack, a Croatia-based development company and a brand new WordPress.org…
WordPress 4.4.1 is available for download and includes 52 fixes, one of which patches a cross site scripting vulnerability reported by Crtc4L. This release address two severe bugs and updates the polyfill used for emoji to support Unicode 8. Support for Unicode 8 adds new diversity emoji to WordPress. Other notable changes include the removal…
If you need to edit a lot of content and want to save time doing so, check out a new plugin called Destination After Save created by, Robert Whitis. Destination after save overrides WordPress’ default save behavior and creates a new meta box on the post and page creation screens. Users can choose what to…
Cloud hosting provider Linode has been combatting DDoS attacks since Christmas Day, which have caused multiple disruptions and service outages across its global data centers. The attacks are ongoing and the company is struggling to keep its status blog up to notify customers. In addition to the DDoS attacks, Linode has also confirmed a data…
The WordPress.org Theme Review Team has just wrapped up a busy year of adding new themes, approving updates, and overhauling procedures. In 2015, the team reviewed and approved 910 new themes with the help of 236 reviewers, according to TRT member Ulrich Pogson. Despite their best efforts, the team cannot keep up with the massive…
In 2014, we wrote about the trend of more people receiving commit access to WordPress core. Fast forward to the beginning of 2016 and a total of 35 people can commit code to the core of WordPress. Helen Hou-Sandí, WordPress Lead Developer, published the stat on Twitter and notes that 22 out of the 35…
WordCamp Miami 2016 organizers are ramping up for their 8th event to be held February 19-21 at the Florida International University School of Business. Ptah Dunbar is stepping up as the lead organizer for the event, which is expected to draw more than 700 attendees. BuddyCamp Miami will kick off the event on the 19th,…
On December 9th, 2015, WP Engine sent out an urgent notice to its customers regarding a security breach wherein customer credentials were exposed. This incident prompted an investigation, which is now complete. According to the most recent and final update, investigators determined that the security exposure came through one of the host’s cloud infrastructure providers.…