Flipping the usual popularity contests WordPress-related award systems on their heads, Nathan Wrigley has created something where we can all be a winner. What started as a joke to crown his WP Builds podcast as the best quickly took a positive turn that has seen several charitable donations in the past week or so. The…
Some new data from a recent Core Web Vitals (CWV) technology report produced by the HTTP Archive shows WordPress sites running newer versions have lower CWV pass rates. The original report was published in July by Rick Viscomi, one of the maintainers of the HTTP Archive. The site provides a permanent repository of web performance…
Last week, the popular Rank Math SEO plugin received a major update that includes a new artificial intelligence system. The Content AI feature is a SaaS product that behaves like a personal writing assistant to boost search rankings. “We built Rank Math’s Content AI feature to revolutionize the content production and optimization process with proprietary…
The Wowmall theme was released to the public today. It is the second 100% block theme that integrates with WooCommerce to land in the WordPress directory. Responsive FSE was the first. Two weeks ago, a reader sent in a question for the Ask the Bartender column. He wanted to know where the WooCommerce block themes…
WordPress executive director Josepha Haden Chomphosy announced today that the 2021 State of the Word will be held on December 14, between 5 and 7 pm ET/10 – 12 am (December 15) UTC. For those who are new to the WordPress community, this event is where Matt Mullenweg reviews the milestones and progress of the…
A current proposal could spell the death of at least one form of child theming. The feature would allow themes to ship multiple theme.json files, housing variations on a site’s default styles. Essentially, it is the old-school concept of “skins.” How the feature would work is not yet defined. However, theme authors would presumably be…
Gutenberg 11.9 landed on Wednesday, and it is packed with dozens of enhancements. Contributors are speeding forward, getting in some of the final features before the release of WordPress 5.9, expected on December 14. Version 11.9 is the last plugin release to include new features for the upcoming WordPress update. Bug fixes will continue to…
GoDaddy has acquired managed WordPress hosting company Pagely to expand the company’s expertise in hosting WooCommerce stores. Pagely, co-founded by Joshua and Sally Strebel, has been in business for 18 years, offering hosting for businesses and enterprises at the higher end of the managed hosting market. “We will be working closely with the amazing team…
After what seemed like a shoo-in for WordPress 5.9, a proposed web font API was put on hold. The feature would standardize how theme and plugin developers load fonts and lay the groundwork for future user-facing features. Jono Alderson opened a ticket for the feature in February 2019. In recent months, the proposal picked up…
Lemon Squeezy, a hosted e-commerce platform for selling digital products, subscriptions, and software licenses, launched a WordPress plugin. The plugin allows the platform’s customers to sell their products directly on WordPress sites. Merchants sign up, create products, and manage customers and subscribers using the Lemon Squeezy platform. Then they use the plugin to connect via…
I’m still wondering about the best method to approach a new project. As a background, besides the traditional way, I’ve worked with Divi, love Bricks, and am loving Blocks. But I still feel that there is nothing like building a website from the root, with raw material: HTML, dynamic PHP, and CSS — even more…
In June, netmix® CEO Tony Zeoli began touting the release of the company’s Radio Station PRO plugin. It would offer an upgraded experience over the free version his team had maintained since 2019. At the end of last month, the company officially launched its commercial offering, a plan that had been in the works since…
Are you using post formats? Now there’s a block for that! WordPress’ post formats feature was introduced in version 3.1 as a way for themes to customize presentation of a post. It allows users to choose the way a post looks by selecting a post format from a dropdown list. WordPress has a fixed list…
WordPress’ Polyglots team has published the first edition of a new monthly newsletter aimed at helping contributors stay informed and engaged with the team’s activities. WordPress has been translated by volunteers for more than 15 years since version 1.2, with the earliest contributions from the Hindi, French, Japanese, and Norwegian communities. Since that time the…
It has been a long year since Paal Joachim Romdahl’s proposed an alternative block pattern experience. In November 2020, he opened a ticket on the Gutenberg GitHub repository to explore an overlay-based approach to viewing, searching, and inserting patterns into the content canvas. Late last week, a pull request for the long-awaited feature landed in…