On Wednesday, September 2, Gutenberg 8.9 launched with a set of new features, enhancements, and several bug fixes. The development team took the block-based widgets system out of its experimental stage, making it the default experience for all plugin users. Block-based widgets have taken months upon months of work. The team has surpassed some of…
Sunlit 3.0 was released this week and is now available in the App Store. The free photoblogging app is a companion app to the Micro.blog indie microblogging platform. Sunlit has some similarities to Instagram minus the deadweight of ads and algorithms. Users can follow each other, comment on posts, and timeline photos are displayed in…
On May 4, the StudioPress development team made a small but significant user-facing change to its Atomic Blocks plugin (now rebranded to Genesis Blocks). It removed the “AB” branding from its block titles. This minor update changed block titles such as AB Accordion and AB Button to Accordion and Button, respectively. On the surface, this…
WordPress 5.5.1 was released yesterday with 34 bug fixes, 4 enhancements, and 5 bug fixes for the block editor. Version 5.5 removed 19 legacy JavaScript localization objects, in favor of using the new functions and utilities found in the i18n package introduced in WordPress 5.0. One of the most notable changes in this maintenance release is the inclusion of a backfill for…
Jeremey Herve, a Jetpack developer at Automattic, announced the release of Jetpack 8.9 earlier today. The update brings several major features to the plugin’s users. Jetpack now sports a new social preview option in the block editor, a newsletter signup form type, and a block for handling donations. Version 8.9 also adds support for the…
The second edition of WordSesh EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) is happening in less than 48 hours on September 2. The virtual event’s schedule is tailored to attendees living in the Eastern hemisphere. In its first year running, WordSesh EMEA attracted a solid turnout of close to 1,000 attendees and was the proving ground…
One year ago today, Elmastudio launched a beta version of its Aino WordPress theme and Aino Blocks plugin. While the team pushed the theme live in the theme directory earlier this year, it wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago that they officially released their blocks plugin. Elmastudio’s beta launch was one of the first…
WordCamp Austin 2020 is putting out a call for musicians, alongside its call for speakers. The event’s organizers are rising to the challenge of creating a unique experience for attendees, while working within the constraints of a virtual format. Because the city prides itself on being “the live music capital of the world,” due to…
Mario Peshev, the CEO of WordPress agency DevriX, officially announced he had acquired the WP-CRM System plugin this week. Formally, his company Premium WP Support is taking the reins for the project. Scott DeLuzio, the creator and previous owner of the plugin, published the news on his blog last month. DeLuzio originally built the plugin…
MotoPress, a theme and plugin shop in operation since 2013, has acquired the Gutenix WordPress theme and its commercial ZeGuten blocks plugin for Gutenberg. The free theme currently has more than 700 active installs after nine months on WordPress.org. MotoPress already has a number of successful niche WordPress themes and plugins but Gutenix fills the…
Elementor version 3.0 was launched on Tuesday. This release is the first major update to the plugin in over two years and is one of the largest upgrades in its history. The new version focuses on a design system, a new theme builder, and performance improvements. The driving motivation behind this release was to create…
StudioPress, which was acquired by WP Engine in 2018, is rebranding its popular Atomic Blocks plugin to Genesis Blocks. WP Engine also acquired Atomic Blocks in 2018, growing the plugin’s user base from 3,000 active installs to more than 60,000 over the past two years. The purpose of rebranding is to more tightly align the…
Juliette Reinders Folmer released a proposal for WordPress to drop old PHP version support on a fixed schedule. She wrote the proposal after Matt Mullenweg, WordPress co-founder and project lead, reached out to discuss solutions. This was after he closed a Trac ticket last week that sought to drop support for PHP 5.6 and bump…
Ben Gillbanks decided to put an old idea into motion. After the discussion over Gravatar privacy concerns and local avatars in WordPress reignited a couple of weeks ago, he went to work building Pixel Avatars, a generated avatar solution that requires no connection to a third-party service. Gravatar solves a huge problem. It creates a…
Over the weekend, Matt Mullenweg announced on Twitter that Apple’s App Store had blocked Automattic from shipping updates to WordPress’ official iOS app. Automattic doesn’t sell anything for WordPress.com or Jetpack inside the mobile apps, but the app included external purchasing methods that bypassed Apple’s requirement of selling via in-app purchases. On the surface it…