Gutenberg 14.5 was released today with a modest set of enhancements and dozens of bug fixes and code quality improvements. The highlight of this release is the new “Document Overview” panel, which combines what was previously found under separate icons in the Editor toolbar under “List View” and “Details.” This popup was where information like words,…
For the past few weeks, members of the Advanced WordPress Facebook (AWP) group have been discussing methods of combatting Stripe Card Testing fraud. WordPress developer Jon Brown opened the topic after seeing fraudulent charges on five different websites, including four using WooCommerce and one using the Leaky Paywall platform. “All five were on Cloudflare with…
OpenLogic, a company that provides technical support for enterprise open source infrastructure, and the Open Source Initiative (OSI), the nonprofit stewards of the Open Source Definition (OSD), have collaborated to put together the 2023 State of Open Source Survey. The annual survey collects data from professionals to identify trends in the adoption and challenges of using…
While WordPress’ site editing capabilities have been in development, the term full-site editing (FSE) has been widely used but sometimes poorly understood outside of contributor groups. Three months ago, WordPress’ Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy proposed renaming FSE to something more user friendly. After a lengthy discussion, Haden Chomphosy has announced the decision to use…
WordPress’ default site tagline, “Just another WordPress site,” is now a thing of the past, though not yet fully retired to the realm of nostalgia. The recent 6.1 release resolved a ticket that lead developer Mark Jaquith opened 15 years ago to encourage people to change their taglines. The tagline has now been changed to…
Anders Norén, a Swedish designer and prolific WordPress theme developer, has released Oaknut, a new profile block theme reminiscent of services like Linktree and Carrd. The theme is for users who want a simple profile landing page with relevant social and work links, but it could also be easily expanded to capture email addresses for…
Last month, WordPress.org removed the active install growth chart from plugins, upsetting plugin authors and leaving them with very little meaningful data. The Meta team is working on making more accurate and useful data available to plugin developers, but this will take some work. In the meantime, the team behind AyeCode, makers of the GeoDirectory…
WP All Import announced it will soon change its business model to annual licenses. The product, which includes free and commercial versions, allows users to import/export XML, CSV, or Excel data and integrates with more than a dozen popular plugins. Since its founding in 2011, WP All Import has been sold with unlimited, lifetime licenses.…
WordPress 6.1 “Misha” was released today, named for Soviet-Norwegian jazz pianist Mikhail “Misha” Alperin, who was born in Ukraine in 1956. A founding member of the first Moldavian jazz quartet, and later the Moscow Art Trio, Alperin became known for his distinct and bewitching blend of jazz and folk music. This release is the culmination of…
If you are going all in on building sites with the new full-site editing (FSE) experience, then you may have noticed a lack of menu items that will deliver you directly to the tools you need to use. It may be because the Site Editor is still in beta, or because WordPress leadership may still…
Elon Musk has bought Twitter in a $44B deal that closed this week, tweeting “Let the good times roll,” on Friday after taking the helm. Musk fired top executives at the company and tweeted an appeal to Twitter’s advertisers to share his motivation in acquiring what is arguably the world’s most important social network: “The…
Gutenberg 14.4 was released today with long-awaited support for distraction-free editing, to the delight of content editors around the world. It hides all non-essential UI and clears the canvas for a focus on text-based content creation. The mode can be toggled on in the options menu in the top toolbar. Distraction-free mode hides the top…
The last two chapters of the 2022 Web Almanac were released this week – Structured Data and Performance, completing the 729-page ebook of the report. The WordPress-specific chapter was published earlier this month with metrics that indicate adoption is growing. The Performance chapter was written by Etsy performance engineer Melissa Ada and Google web transparency engineer Rick…
WordPress Accessibility Day is just one week away on November 2-3, and registration is still open. Co-lead organizer Amber Hinds published an impressive speaker lineup with 40 speakers from 14 countries. She also noted that 40% of the event’s sessions have at least one speaker who identifies as living with a disability. WordPress professionals who…
Olive Themes, a relatively new independent theme shop, has released its third block theme on the WordPress.org directory. Arc FSE is a high contrast, multipurpose theme, designed to enable a broad range of flexibility through support for full-site editing features. The theme features the open source and exceptionally readable Poppins web font in various weights…