The WordPress Foundation website is sporting a fresh coat of paint, based on the Twenty Fifteen default theme released with WordPress 4.1 last December. The foundation exists to further the mission of the open source project, most importantly by ensuring free access to the software for years to come. It also serves to protect the…
Akismet 3.1 is available for download and contains a bug fix that prevents it from inadvertently modifying a comment’s content during the spam filtering process. In addition to the bug fix, calls made to the Akismet API are now encrypted via SSL. While it may not seem like much on the surface, encrypting communications between…
A blind SQL injection vulnerability was discovered today in the popular WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast. WPScanVulnerability Database issued an advisory after responsibly disclosing the vulnerability to the plugin’s author: The latest version at the time of writing (1.7.3.3) has been found to be affected by two authenticated (admin, editor or author user) Blind SQL…
Finding and linking to previously published content on your site is a daily necessity for bloggers and content managers. Usually, you have to search the frontend of your site or search posts/pages in the admin to track down the content you’re trying to link. Mentionable is a handy tool, created by the folks at XWP,…
Delicious Brains, the creators of WP Migrate DB, published a guide that walks developers through the WordPress database. The guide describes every database table and there associated columns within WordPress single site. It also features an entity relationship diagram that explains the relationships between the various tables. Although the image was created for WordPress 3.8,…
CodeGuard, a service that specializes in automated backups to the cloud, has published the results of its 2015 WordPress survey. The survey took place between February 18th-20th and was answered by 503 WordPress users. Backing up is an important part of maintaining a website, so it’s a bit shocking to see such high percentages of…
Version 2.6.5 of the popular Antispam Bee plugin is out today with a new feature that allows administrators to trust commenters with a Gravatar. The idea for the function was suggested by Caspar Hübinger, a long-time user of the plugin. “Have you ever seen a spam comment with a Gravatar image? I haven’t,” Hübinger said…
Developers are anxious for WordPress to bump up the minimum PHP requirement for core, as it’s currently lingering at 5.2, which is no longer among the supported versions of PHP. As of August 2014, PHP 5.3 no longer receives patches for security vulnerabilities. Recent updates to WordPress.org stats indicate that 16.4% of WordPress sites are…
WordPress.com now supports oEmbeds for CartoDB, a tool used to create and share interactive maps. Simply copy and paste a CartoDB map URL into the WordPress.com post editor and a live preview will display. Here’s an example of a map using the standard HTML embed code. According to an announcement on the official CartoDB blog,…
WordPress theme author Anders Norén is back to releasing themes after a brief hiatus over the winder holidays. Lovecraft, is his 10th theme to be approved on WordPress.org. The Lovecraft design was inspired by the work of H.P. Lovecraft, an American horror fiction author known for his “weird realism” – the idea that reality is…
bbPress 2.5.5 is available for download. This release fixes three potential security vulnerabilities reported by J.D. Grimes and was pushed out within nearly 24 hours of being notified. Users should update as soon as possible as all previous 2.x versions are vulnerable. The patches have also been applied to the 2.6 development branch that will…
In August of 2013, Automattic was criticized for its role in taking down Oliver Hotham’s website after the Straight Pride UK group filed a DMCA takedown notice with WordPress.com. In the Guardian article, WordPress.com admitted that the takedown notice was an abuse of the law. In November of 2013, Automattic announced that it teamed up…
In November 2014, Onename announced that it would be extending its Openname protocol to support decentralized authentication. The company also open sourced the protocol and directory software so that developers can build their own infrastructure with it. We believe the future of identity will be decentralized, and for any identity system to be truly decentralized,…
As WordPress currently powers 23% of the web, the platform’s security is constantly under scrutiny. WordPress has long been a favorite target of hackers and spammers who want to get the most return on their efforts. Since the the platform powers millions of websites, a critical vulnerability with a popular plugin or WordPress core can…
During the 2013 State of the Word presentation at WordCamp San Francisco, Matt Mullenweg announced a new project called WordPress The Book. After nearly two years of writing, Siobhan McKeown has announced that version one is ready for review. She also states that the book will be produced in just over a month and that…