If you’re a musician or a music teacher and want to show sheet music in WordPress, you might be interested in a new plugin developed by Paul Rosen called ABC Notation. ABC Notation uses ABCjs, an open source ABC music notation JavaScript library that renders sheet music. To render sheet music, simply add the string…
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I are joined by Lewis Howes, host of the School of Greatness podcast. Lewis shares his story of achieving his lifelong dream of becoming a professional football player, only to have it crushed by an injury. Without a backup plan in place and limited skills, Lewis…
Hew is Automattic’s 67th free theme release on WordPress.org. The new theme, designed by Ola Laczek, was inspired by Ryu, a classic among personal blogging themes. Ryu was released two years ago and for awhile it seemed like everyone was using it. Hew brings that same clean, identity-focused design that features the author’s Gravatar at…
The trend of WordCamps creating their own custom wapuu design is starting to catch momentum. The GPL-licensed creature originated in Japan and variations have been used to personalize branding for Japanese meetups and WordCamps for years. Last week we featured WordCamp London’s custom wapuu design, which is fondly dubbed “Wapuunk.” That same weekend WordCamp Philly…
When I wrote about enhanced plugin installs being removed from WordPress 4.2 last week, a few readers asked how I created the animated image that shows how shiny updates work. I used LICEcap by Çockos Incorporated, which is free, GPL licensed software available for Windows and OSX. LICEcap has an adjustable frame that you place over…
WordCamp London 2015 was packed full of excellent presentations, lightning talks, and panels. For several of the more technical sessions, attendees were actually turned away at the door due to the rooms being filled to capacity. This was the case for Jack Lenox’s presentation on Building Themes with the WP REST API. “I was overwhelmed…
Flickr announced on Monday, that it’s adding the ability for users to choose Public Domain and Creative Commons 0 (CC0) license designations. The new designations allow users to relinquish all forms of copyright on images. The move is in response to requests from its community and recognizing it has become an important repository of U.S.…
WordPress.org launched a new design for the Theme Directory just over a month ago and the meta team has continued to fix bugs and add enhancements. Preliminary stats and feedback indicate that the directory improvements have had a positive impact on users’ ability to hunt for themes. WordPress.org contributor Konstantin Obenland reports that user engagement…
If you’ve attended a WordCamp, you might be familiar with the term Happiness Bar. It’s an area within a WordCamp venue devoted to providing technical support for WordPress. Morten Rand-Hendriksen thinks it’s time to change the name to something more obvious. The most important task of giving a service a name is to ensure the…
For the past two years, the DerpPress Twitter account has been cranking out tweets to amuse followers with clever puns and subtle commentary on WordPress news and development. Of all the anonymous accounts devoted to tweeting WordPress-related humor, DerpPress is the most consistent and dependable source of timely wise cracks. You’ll find the account tweeting…
Mark Jaquith, one of the lead developers of WordPress, released Cache Buddy on WordPress.org over the weekend. His new plugin works alongside caching solutions, such as WP Super Cache, Batcache, and W3 Total Cache, to enable WordPress to better serve cached pages to logged-in users. Jaquith knows just about everything there is to know about…
Slack, which is used by thousands of people world-wide to communicate, recently suffered a security breach. According to Slack, the breach occurred during a four-day period in February. Hackers gained access to a central database used to store user names, email addresses, and one-way encrypted (“hashed”) passwords. In addition, the database contains information that users…
A few days ago, we highlighted how WordPress 4.2 radically improves the installation and update process for plugins. Several readers commented on the article expressing that automatically activating plugins after installation is a bad idea. A decision was made during the March 25th, WordPress core developer chat to remove enhanced plugin installs from WordPress 4.2…
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I are joined by Joshua Strebel, CEO of Pagely. We learn how Pagely was founded and the advantages of being an independently owned company. Strebel explains how he’s managed Pagely’s rapid growth while maintaining exceptional service. Last but not least, we discuss the competitive nature and…
The WordPress Theme Review team is encouraging all theme authors to take notice of Google’s upcoming change to its ranking algorithm, which will be put in place at the end of April: Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all…