This special episode of WordPress Weekly doesn’t have any news or plugin picks of the week. Instead, it’s dedicated to the late Kim Parsell. I describe the experience of January 2nd where Brian Layman and I drive to Kim Parsell’s house to check on her. After telling the story, I share a couple of funny…
Web accessibility guidelines are constantly in flux, making it difficult for site administrators to keep pace. Even if you have a decent grasp on the basics, changes to your theme, plugins, and content can introduce new accessibility issues that you didn’t anticipate. Legal requirements may soon put publishers under the gun for accessibility compliance. Plugin…
This week the world mourns with Parisians following yesterday’s terrorist attack at the headquarters of satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Masked gunmen, claiming to be Yemeni al-Qaida, killed 12 people, including eight journalists and two police officers. The attackers targeted Charlie Hebdo’s daily editorial meeting, in protest of the publication’s controversial satirical depictions of religious figures.…
For the Advanced WordPress group on Facebook, 2014 was a great year. The group added key admins Joost de Valk and Danny van Kooten to cover the European time zone. It took two and a half years to reach 7,500 members, but after highlighting the group on the Tavern, membership skyrocketed from 7,500 members to…
WordPress for Android is starting 2015 with a big update. Version 3.5 was released today, introducing major changes to the app’s overall design. This release follows Google’s new Material design principles, which was created to unify the experience of apps across platforms and devices. The design spec includes basic tenets for the various aspects of…
When migrating a WordPress site to a new domain, you’ll have to update every instance of the site’s URL in the database. Some developers prefer to use tools like WP-CLI or WP Migrate DB to handle this, while others opt for a general database search and replace plugin with a UI in the WordPress admin.…
Happy Joe is launching its first planned WP Boot Camp in San Antonio, TX on January 23, 2015. The non-profit organization helps US military veterans re-enter the workforce through training in WordPress and the web technology industry in general. Happy Joe was started by former service member James Dalman, who will be presenting at the…
Last week, moderators from the WordPress Development StackExchange (WPSE) posted a short summary of stats from 2014, which demonstrate the remarkable growth and success of the community surrounding the site. This past year WPSE pulled in approximately 15,000 new users, bringing the total to 45,000. The site received a total of 17 million page views…
The traditional use of widgets in WordPress is to set it and forget it. After placing and configuring a widget, it stays in the widgetized area until manually removed. Many plugins have extended widgets to add visibility settings that are based on the page or post where the widget appears. But what if you could…
Emil Uzelac’s new WordPress Theme Review service is the first of its kind. As a four-year veteran of the WordPress.org Theme Review Team, he is uniquely qualified to operate a service that focuses on theme standards and quality control. Uzelac plans to assist developers with theme reviews for client projects, commercial themes, and free themes…
In the eight years I’ve covered the WordPress scene, only once have I written about someone passing away. It’s with a heavy heart and great sadness to inform you that Kim Parsell passed away last week at her home in Southern, Ohio. The cause of death is unknown and a small service is tentatively scheduled…
In order to see the post meta boxes using Distraction-free Writing Mode in WordPress 4.1, you have to move the cursor away from the post editor. During the editing process, you may need to preview a post several times. Since the preview button is only available when the publish meta box is shown, you have…
Jetpack is a WordPress plugin maintained by Automattic and has more than 30 different modules. The modules provide a variety of features including, contact forms, stats, and related posts. Part of Jetpack’s reputation in the WordPress community is that it’s bloated and slows down websites. Sam Hotchkiss, who is part of the Jetpack team, has…
This is part two of a two part series looking back at WordPress news in 2014. There was plenty of action to write about with over 900 posts published in 2014. Browse through the list and if a particular story had an impact on you, let us know in the comments. The stories included here…
This year the WordPress plugin directory crossed 35,000 plugin listings and is rapidly approaching one billion total downloads. WordPress 4.0 added custom icons to the plugin installer in the admin, which helps developers to differentiate their plugins in this massive sea of extensions. Plugin branding is useful for standing out in the initial results of…