I built four block plugins last week. It was not something I had set out to do. I did not wake up one day and declare, “I think I will build a suite of custom block types over the next few days.” It just happened. The first plugin I built was to address an old…
In-person WordPress events are ramping up again, with in-person meetups happening all over the world and WordCamps back on the schedule. A sampling of the upcoming major events include the following: WordCamp Vienna, Austria (April 23, 2022) WordCamp Irun (May 21–22, 2022) WordCamp Europe (June 2–4, 2022) WordCamp Warsaw, Poland (June 11–12, 2022) WordCamp Montclair,…
Anyone who has been watching or participating in the development of the web fonts API can attest that it has been an emotional rollercoaster. At one point, it seemed to be a shoo-in for WordPress 5.9. Then, it was punted to the next release. Sure that it was landing once again, we find ourselves looking…
Yesterday both DuckDuckGo and the Brave browser announced they will be bypassing Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) in favor of serving publishers’ content on the original URL. Brave is calling the new feature “De-AMP.” In cases where it’s not possible to rewrite the URLS, the browser will watch as pages are fetched and redirect users, while…
Less than a week after launching Block Enhancements, Phi Phan has released another project: Icon Separator. It is a block plugin for creating custom dividers with an SVG icon. “I’ve tried to support icons in the core/separator,” Phan said when we last spoke about adding icons to core blocks. “But it requires changing the markup.…
WooCommerce is moving closer to closing the gap on its full-site editing support with the latest features announced on the Q1/Q2 roadmap. While the e-commerce platform already has support for nearly two-dozen core blocks, it’s not yet possible to use full-site editing for customizing every aspect of a store. The concept of “Store Editing” is…
Plugin review team representative Mika Epstein announced changes for officially-recognized featured and beta plugins last Friday. Under the new rule, plugin owners will no longer be able to directly change ownership to someone else or add/remove commit access. The purpose is to prevent bad actors from pushing malicious code or premium upsells. Plugin owners can…
I was slightly frustrated last week when sharing a tutorial on a hero-style post header. I had planned to create a layout with a left-aligned Group with a maximum width, as shown in the following screenshot: This would allow the focal point of the background image to shine through on the right. However, neither of…
A truly zen, distraction-free writing experience is my white whale of WordPress features. The one that landed in WordPress 3.2 was pretty close to perfect, but the block editor changed everything. In the early days of the Gutenberg project, contributors worked on different ways to improve the writing experience after reviewers said they found it…
Gutenberg 13.0 landed earlier today in the WordPress plugin directory. It is one of the heftier releases lately, containing the final features that should ship with WordPress 6.0. The more prominent features include multi-block partial text selection, Cover blocks with featured images, a Stack variation for Groups, and pattern-based page creation. And there is much…
WordCamp Europe published its schedule today, to the delight of prospective attendees around the world. The three-day event will take place June 2-4, and will feature 29 talks, 18 workshops, and two panels spanning 11 different categories. The two conference days have general themes, with Day 1 dedicated to “WordPress Now” and Day 2 to…
Elementor has patched a critical Remote Code Execution vulnerability that was discovered by threat analyst Ramuel Gall from Wordfence on March 29, 2022. Wordfence disclosed the vulnerability to Elementor via its official security contact email address but did not receive a timely reply. On April 11, 2022, Wordfence disclosed the vulnerability to the WordPress Plugins…
I once said that full-page patterns were the missing link for block theme development. Theme authors have been able to include such layouts since the patterns feature was rolled out in WordPress 5.5 last year. However, core WordPress has never provided an experience built around them. This may be changing when WordPress 6.0 ships next…
WordPress’ Performance team has put its WebP by Default proposal on hold after the community voiced critical feedback and significant technical concerns. The new feature would generate WebP images on upload by default for new JPEG uploads and would use WebP images by default for website content. WordPress’ Performance team proposed this update for the…
WordPress developer Phi Phan has been making small splashes lately, but in a sea of 1,000s of plugins, it is increasingly tough to make a wave. Over the weekend, he released the Block Enhancements plugin, the first pass on a project that he plans to iterate on with new ideas. However, this is not his…