Meetup.com has removed its accessibility overlay, a recent addition to the company’s website that raised concerns with the WordPress community and the broader community of accessibility professionals. The overly was powered by EqualWeb, a product which claims to provide automated compliance with accessibility standards but doesn’t address inaccessibility at the root of the problem. WordPress Community…
As the American Thanksgiving holiday is coming up, I am so grateful for all of our Tavern readers and the people who make WordPress – 800 in the most recent 6.1 release with 35 percent of them being new contributors. This community has made remarkable progress this year, while navigating changes and uncertain times. Committed…
BuddyPress will soon be improving the way it loads its JavaScript and CSS assets so that they are only loaded on community pages. Previously, the plugin would load them indiscriminately on every page. BuddyPress lead developer Mathieu Viet said he’s not sure there is a specific reason explaining why this was kept in place. Before…
Earlier this year, WordPress’ Themes Team began urging theme authors to switch to locally hosted fonts after a German court case decision, which fined a website owner for violating the GDPR by using Google-hosted webfonts. Since that ruling, German website owners have continued to receive threats of fines for not having their fonts hosted locally. The…
WordPress.org will soon be launching a blog for developers. The blog went into beta at the end of last week and resides on a subdomain of the main site. It is sporting a design similar to WordPress’ general News blog. One of the big picture goals that WordPress’ Executive Director Josepha Haden-Chomphosy identified for 2022…
Matt Mullenweg’s annual State of the Word (SOTW) address will be delivered in New York City this year before a live audience, on December 15. The event format is similar to last year where a small group of invited guests will join in person. Traditionally, the State of the Word has been given at WordCamp…
Divi, the popular commercial WordPress theme and page builder created by Elegant Themes, has announced major changes coming in version 5.0 that constitute a complete rewrite of Divi’s core technologies. The update, which is expected to be released in beta next year, will focus on performance, stability, scalability, and extendability, but it will not introduce…
Jetpack Search, a plugin that enhances WordPress’ search capabilities, has added a free tier and a three-month free trial to what was previously only available as a paid upgrade. The plugin uses WordPress.com’s infrastructure to provide instant, more relevant search results without reloading the page, with real-time indexing, integration with WooCommerce, spelling correction, and more.…
Automattic has released a new block theme called Loudness that is available on both WordPress.com and WordPress.org. It’s an artistic and opinionated theme based on the company’s Block Canvas starter theme. Although Loudness’ brief description suggests the theme was created for “music and learning,” the design and custom patterns lend themselves to a variety of different…
WordCamp Asia 2023, the first flagship event to take place in Asia, is just a few months away, scheduled for February 17-19, 2023, in Bangkok, Thailand. Organizers have announced the first round of speakers, a diverse selection of WordPress professionals from Asia and across the globe. The event has also unveiled its wapuu mascot. After…
Meetup.com raised some concerns with the WordPress community (and the broader community of accessibility professionals) this week after it added an accessibility overlay to its website. The overlay, powered by EqualWeb, displays a list of settings that can be toggled, ostensibly to address various accessibility needs. Accessibility overlay products are often marketed as a quick…
WordPress.com has expanded its library of blocks to include a new Pocket Casts block that makes it easy to embed any show or episode in the WordPress editor. The block is branded for Pocket Casts and will display a podcast player and a selection of episodes when the show URL is selected. Alternatively, users can…
WordPress lead developer Helen Hou-Sandí has proposed using GitHub Codespaces to improve the contributor experience. GitHub recently announced the availability of GitHub Codespaces, its quick launch cloud-based developer environment, for all users, with 60 hours free per month for Free users and 90 hours for Pro users. Codespaces makes it possible to launch any GitHub…
WordPress’ Create Block Theme plugin, which is used for creating a new theme, blank theme, child theme, or style variation, has a dedicated screen for managing fonts. It lists and previews all the font families and font faces embedded in the theme and allows users to embed Google fonts, embed local font assets, and remove…
WooCommerce 7.1 was released yesterday, delivering on time with the highly anticipated custom order tables feature, which was renamed to “High-Performance Order Storage” (HPOS). This is a major undertaking that implements custom tables for orders, products, and coupons, and promises significant performance gains for stores. Contributors have been working on HPOS throughout 2022 but have been…