The WP Feature Notifications project, formerly know as WP Notify, is making progress towards creating a better way to manage and deliver notifications in the WordPress admin. Core contributor Jonathan Bossenger started the project in 2019 with a proposal to build a unified notification center in WordPress that would replace the chaos caused by developers…
WordPress developer Mike McAlister has launched Ollie, his first block theme, into public beta. McAlister, whose theme company Array Themes was acquired by WP Engine in 2018, along with the Atomic Blocks plugin, recently departed from his role at the company to pursue other projects. Ollie supports all the latest Site Editor features, including global…
CertifyWP has launched its first credentialing exam for a WordPress Management and Design Credential. The non-profit organization was founded by Talisha Lewallen with the goals of helping job seekers better demonstrate their skills to potential employers and giving businesses a way to understand prospective employees’ skills. The new credential costs $150 for the exam and…
Virtuozzo, the software company behind the virtualization and cloud management capabilities of many popular hosting service providers, has launched version 2.0 of its WordPress platform. The company’s 450+ customers include GoDaddy, IONOS, InMotion hosting, and other hosts. Virtuozzo’s WordPress platform enables service providers to sell containerized hosting as a service. The most recent update introduces…
WordPress contributors are making progress on officially supporting SQLite in core, a project that would benefit less complex sites (small to medium sites and blogs) that don’t necessarily require WordPress’ standard MySQL database. In a recent update, Yoast-sponsored core contributor Ari Stathopoulos said the SQLite Database Integration feature plugin has been rewritten, with the help…
Gutenberg 15.6 is now available with a new Details block tucked under the Experiments menu. Once enabled, it can be used to toggle the visibility of hidden content. This can be useful for presenting things like text transcripts for video blocks or simple spoiler alerts. By default the toggle is open in the block editor…
WooCommerce has launched Woo Express, a new managed hosting product that uses WordPress.com’s infrastructure and relieves store owners of the responsibilities of hosting and maintenance. The company soft-launched Woo Express in early March with a small selection of visitors but has concluded that phase and opened it up to the public. Woo Express provides a…
Atarim is hosting its 4th annual Web Agency Summit from April 25-28. The virtual event is geared towards web agencies and WordPress professionals, with topics focused on web trends, scaling an agency or freelance business, attracting high-paying clients, and building recurring revenue. Web Agency Summit was born out of the organizers’ frustration with the first…
In early 2023, WordPress and Matrix contributors proposed a new Meta team subproject to explore replacing Slack communication with Matrix, an open source federated chat system. After the team’s most recent meeting, Automattic-sponsored contributor Alex Kirk published an update on the status of recent experiments in migration. After researching more on migrating public messages, Kirk said the team…
Preparations for WordCamp Europe (WCEU) 2023 in Athens are moving forward as the team will soon be contacting speakers selected for the event. Organizers have launched a Speaker Support Program aimed at encouraging more diversity on stage by connecting speakers with companies that are willing to financially support them. WCEU has also opened registration for…
Representatives of the BuddyPress core team will be hosting a contributor day alongside the French WordPress Community Contributor Day in Paris on April 20, 2023. This in-person event has filled up its registration and posted its schedule already, but BuddyPress core developer Mathieu Viet is inviting people to join online to contribute to BuddyPress. “As we’re…
WooCommerce 7.6 was released today with two new blocks merged from the WooCommerce Blocks plugin. The Single Product Details block and the “Add to Cart” Form block are now available to store owners who want to use the Site Editor to design their own Single Product Templates. Along with the button, the “Add to Cart”…
Yoast SEO 20.5 was released this week with several security fixes and an improved Google SERP preview. The preview shows mobile and desktop snippets with Google’s current styling so users can see exactly how their snippets will look and tweak how they optimize them for Google Search results. Another highlight of this release is that…
WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy is coordinating a second women and nonbinary release squad for the 6.4 release, which is anticipated to land in November 2023. In 2020, WordPress 5.6 “Simone” was led by an all-women and non-binary identifying release squad, a first in WordPress’ history, and Haden Chomphosy is proposing the project go…
Wordfence has published a security advisory about a severe unauthenticated stored Cross-Site Scripting vulnerability in the Limit Login Attempts plugin, which is active on more than 600,000 WordPress sites. The security issue was discovered by Wordfence security researcher Marco Wotschka in January 2023. It was submitted to the WordPress Plugin Security Team, which acknowledged receipt…