PressCastle launched this month with an ambitious goal: to put every WordPress theme in one place. The site currently has more than 13,000 themes that are categorized and searchable. The themes were collected from more than 250 sites and represent 400+ theme authors. If you visit the Themes section of the site you can filter…
WordPress 3.8.1 was released today with more than 30 tickets resolved for this milestone. Automatic background updates will be gradually rolled out over the next 24 hours. One of the most notable fixes was switching Twitter oEmbed to SSL. Twitter changed its API, which broke Twitter oEmbed links across all WordPress installations. If you’ve got…
The WordPress Plugin Directory currently lists more than 29,000 plugins. It’s the first stop for any WordPress user looking to extend the capabilities of the software. With over 585 million downloads and a massive worldwide user base, it takes a dedicated team to monitor the quality and security of so many extensions. I had the…
Six weeks from now between March 7th and 8th, WordCamp Dayton, Ohio will be underway. This is the first WordCamp to take place in the Dayton area and is one of three scheduled in the state of Ohio. Sessions range from Podcasting for WordPress to WordPress Version control. There are three tracks of sessions available…
The last time I spoke with Jason Schuller, it was 2008 at WordCamp Chicago. He had just launched his commercial theme company Press75. Since 2008, he’s launched a number of projects such as ThemeGarden, the first ever WordPress theme marketplace that gave 100% of the sale back to the theme author. Lately, Jason has been…
There are many factors that come into play when deciding where to host your open source WordPress plugin or theme. Who is your target audience? How much support do you want to offer? Is the project open for collaboration? For many developers this choice often comes down to WordPress.org vs. GitHub. In the past, hosting…
CodePen has released an official plugin for embedding pens in WordPress. If you haven’t yet discovered CodePen, it’s basically a virtual playground for frontend developers and browsing the site can be addictive. It’s a place where you can write HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code in your browser and then see an instant preview. Each collection…
Have you ever thought about switching your WordPress theme but then hesitated, wondering what might happen to your widgets? Although it may not be obvious, the good news is that WordPress remembers where you previously had your widgets and saves the settings. If you decide to revert back to your previous theme, WordPress will put…
Oli Dale of WPLift.com has published a great article that goes behind the scenes of SiteGround. SiteGround CEO, Tenko Nikolov, answered questions that provide insight into how the company operates on a day to day basis. I was surprised to learn that the company is just a few months younger than WordPress and will be…
The WordPress plugin repository hosts dozens of extensions for accepting donations and includes everything from plugins for creating donation forms to plugins that implement full-on CRM solutions for non-profits. But what if you just want to make it easy for supporters to buy you a coffee? tinyCoffee is a new plugin that caught my eye…
This week the WordPress Front-end Editor team posted its progress on the Make WordPress UI development blog. Front-end editing capabilities are being developed as a feature plugin and will hopefully be considered for inclusion in the core sometime this year. It currently looks a little something like this: The plugin has improved by leaps and…
Opus is a new WordPress theme for bloggers, now available in the official themes directory. Created by WordPress theme developer Fikri Rasyid, Opus takes a mobile first approach to responsive design and features a fluid layout. When he set out to create Opus, Rasyid wanted the theme to provide a great reading experience on any…
Andrew Ozz who is responsible for maintaining TinyMCE in WordPress has announced that TinyMCE 4.0 has been merged into core. The upgrade contains a number of changes including: New UI and UI API. New theme. Revamped events system/API. Better code quality, readability and build process. Lots of (inline) documentation. Overall improvements everywhere All of the…
The third official WordCamp Paris was held this past weekend, featuring 15 talks and seven workshops during Jan 17-18. From all accounts it seems to have been a stellar event. The first day focused on business and enterprise and the second day included a mix of talks and workshops focused on tech, design and community…
Checking for broken links using WordPress plugins can lead to intensive use of server resources and impact site performance. Plugins like Broken Link Checker are restricted on certain webhosts because of the performance issues they can introduce to a site. Thankfully, there are free programs available that off-load the process of checking links from the…