The original Monster Widget plugin is a handy tool created by Automattic to assist theme developers with testing. Essentially, it allows you to quickly drop all core widgets into your sidebar at once, saving you the trouble of having to add them individually. Now you can get the same for bbPress and BuddyPress, thanks to…
The life of a frontend developer has changed a great deal over the past few years, with the introduction of new technologies for authoring CSS and automating tasks. We’re starting to see that trickle down into every new WordPress starter theme. These days you’ve got to npm install allthiscrazystuff just to get started on a…
If you’re not a fan of the admin bar or it’s disabled and you want a shortcut to edit posts in WordPress, you might be interested in a new plugin called Slash Edit. Developed by Ronald Huereca, Slash Edit adds the ability to edit the following items by adding /edit to the end of a…
Jason Schuller, the original founder of the Press75 theme company, has been off the radar for a few years as he pursued experiments with alternative publishing platforms. He officially exited the commercial WordPress theme business earlier this year when Press75 was acquired by Westwerk, following a sharp decline in the shop’s monthly revenue. Prior to…
Thanks to everyone who participated in the first “Rate and Review a plugin day”. After reviewing the #wppluginreviewday hashtag on Twitter, it’s clear that a lot of people submitted reviews to their favorite plugins. Based on an estimate by Richard Tape, 455 reviews were published on October 17th. When compared to 254 reviews on October…
Some Like it Neat is a new starter theme for WordPress, based on the popular ultra-minimal Underscores theme. It also incorporates Bourbon, a lightweight mixin library for Sass. On top of that it adds Neat, which applies a semantic grid framework for Sass and Bourbon, enabling you to build any responsive layout that you can…
Version 1.0 of the Themosis development framework is now available. Belgium-based application developer Julien Lambé created Themosis in order to accelerate object-oriented development with WordPress. It offers a routing system for managing WordPress behavior on an application level and also includes a Laravel-esque templating engine for view files. Last week Lambé announced that the framework…
Some of the sessions recorded at WordCamp Europe are now available to watch on WordPress.TV. The rest of the sessions will be added in the coming weeks. Included in the first batch of videos is the question and answer session between Matt Mullenweg and Om Malik. The session is an hour long and includes Mullenweg’s…
Emoji One is a new open source emoji set that is the first of its kind, designed specifically for the web. The set boasts more than 840 emoji. It was created to solve the perennial problem of translating emoji code from mobile devices while legally displaying the corresponding emoji icon on the web. The idea…
Back in September, Stream 2.0 was released with some significant changes. The most notable change is the transition from a plugin into a service. In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I are joined by the project lead For XWP, Frankie Jarrett. Jarrett goes in-depth on the decision to turn Stream into a…
Scheduled to take place May 7-8th, 2015 at Westin Lake in Las Vegas, NV, LoopConf is a conference dedicated to WordPress developers. The two-day event has six speakers confirmed with more on the way. They include: Joost de Valk Jenn Schiffer John O’ Nolan Helen Hou-Sandí Andrew Nacin Syed Balkhi LoopConf is a single…
The default theme slated to ship with WordPress 4.1 dubbed “Twenty Fifteen” has officially been added to the development version of WordPress. In sharp contrast to Twenty Fourteen, Twenty Fifteen is a simple, two column, blog focused theme. The typography features Google’s Noto Serif and Sans, a font family designed to be visually harmonious across…
Mark your calendars and schedule some free time on Friday, October 17th for the first “Rate and Review a WordPress Plugin Day“. On October 17th, visit the page of your favorite plugin in the WordPress.org plugin directory, give it a star rating, and write a review. Why The Special Day? If you’re anything like me,…
Over the weekend, the Easy Digital Downloads team launched a new side project called WP Tally. WP Tally is a tool that displays the total download count for plugins attached to a WordPress.org username. The project is the result of a conversation about the lack of an easy way to determine the total amount of…
Providing WordPress support is an important but often, thankless job. From support forums to IRC, there’s no shortage of people who need help with WordPress. However, participating in the various support channels is one of the easiest ways to contribute back to WordPress. In particular, if you’re interested in becoming a volunteer on the support…