The BuddyPress 2015 survey results are now available. This year’s survey did not have the same community penetration as 2013 and 2014, with 37.5% fewer respondents, but the information is still valuable for gauging how and where people are using the plugin. Volunteers collected feedback from 211 participants in 42 different countries. Feedback this year…
Gazette is a new WordPress magazine theme from the folks at Automattic, designed by Thomas Guillot. Since the majority of themes produced for WordPress.com are well-suited to single author blogs, Gazette’s fine-tuned focus on digital publications is a welcome addition to the collection. Magazine themes are generally few and far between, because they have to…
I attend WordCamps on a regular basis and have often joked with attendees as well as organizers that there should be a WordCamp where people camp out. GoDaddy’s WordPress evangelist, Mendel Kurland, is taking it upon himself to turn the joke into reality. He’s in the preliminary stage of planning CampPress. CampPress is a 2-3…
This week contributors on the TGM Plugin Activation (TGMPA) library published a roadmap for the future of the project. TGMPA is widely used by WordPress developers to require and recommend plugins for themes (and other plugins). The library is recommended by Themeforest, CodeCanyon, and the WordPress.org Theme Review Team as an alternative to bundling everything…
BuddyPress 2.3 beta 1 is now available. Project lead John James Jacoby encouraged site administrators and BP plugin/theme developers to jump in and test the new features. One of the highlights in the upcoming release is the new Attachments API, which makes it possible for developers to create components that manage uploads. You can see…
On this episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I discuss the news of the week. We inform you of the recent security vulnerability discovered in Jetpack and the Twenty Fifteen theme. We also discuss a new crowdfunding campaign to create a server manager built on top of WordPress called HostPress. I shared a personal…
Jetpack and the Twenty Fifteen default theme have been updated after a DOM-based Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability was discovered. According to Sucuri, any plugin or theme that uses Genericons is vulnerable due to an insecure file included within the package. Genericons ships with a file called example.html which is vulnerable to attack from the Document…
WordPress lead developer Andrew Nacin spoke at the php[world] 2014 conference on “Challenging Your WordPress Assumptions from 2009.” The video was recently published on YouTube and provides an excellent overview of the major ways WordPress has changed over the past six years. Nacin explores common assumptions, such as “WordPress is insecure,” “WordPress doesn’t scale,” and…
Over the past couple years, BuddyBoss has emerged as a leader in the BuddyPress products marketplace. Founder Michael Eisenwasser launched the business in 2010 after discovering BuddyPress while building an international job site to help online workers find employment. “BuddyPress blew me away,” Eisenwasser said. “It allowed for a sophisticated and fully customizable membership site…
When it comes to hosting, there are predominately two choices to manage your account or server; Plesk and cPanel. Dan Griffiths wants to shake things up by adding a third choice with HostPress. HostPress is an open-source, extensible server control panel built on top of WordPress. Griffiths has started an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to generate…
Every WordPress administrator has different needs when navigating the admin. For example, one may require frequent access to the Posts menu and rarely touch the Appearance menu. Another admininistrator may have a certain custom post type that is accessed more frequently than any other menu item. In some cases plugin developers take their liberties placing…
Sven Lehnert, CEO of Themekraft, published his company’s experience migrating from a custom theme options page to the theme customizer. He describes how difficult it was to move between the two and how it caused user frustration. “I’m sorry for the trouble some users are experiencing. We receive positive as well as frustrated feedback and…
Two years ago, BuddyPress 1.7 introduced WordPress theme compatibility, which meant that sites no longer required a BuddyPress-specific theme in order to run the plugin. The vast majority of themes that use WordPress’ standard template loading should be compatible with BuddyPress. However, some themes still need a little help to make the BuddyPress UI elements…
WordCamp Miami, one of the largest and longest running WordPress events in the US, is gearing up to celebrate its 6th year on May 29-31. Last year the event brought together 770 attendees and tickets for 2015 are selling fast. “We have sold over 600 tickets, and we see a sell-out on the horizon,” organizer…
The Theme Review Team’s controversial decision to require the use of the Customizer API for building theme options unearthed a wave of criticism and concern about the capabilities of the customizer. In response to more than 150 comments debating on the topic, Nick Halsey, who has worked extensively on the feature in WordPress core, stopped…