One of the minor but useful additions to WordPress 5.5 is the new wp_get_environment_type() function. It makes it possible for plugin and theme authors to do some interesting things based on whether a site is identified as staging, development, production, or some other custom environment type. In discussion on the original trac ticket, Marius Jensen suggested…
Joe Casabona, a freelance web developer and educator, launched WordPress: A Year in Review last week. The project was born out of his passion for helping others and a longing for attending WordCamp US, which has been canceled because of the stress of the pandemic and online event fatigue. He wanted to do something to…
Last month the WordPress Documentation Team announced a ban on links to commercial websites within the official docs. These include the HelpHub, Code Reference, Plugin and Theme Developer Handbooks, Block Editor Handbook, and the Common APIs Handbook. The reason behind the ban was that heavily policing commercial links placed too much responsibility on the documentation team, when they are already working with limited…
We should be leading the users, not following them.We should be guiding the users, not coddling them.We should carve out the road to the future, not continue to fix a broken road to the past.We should say what we do and do what we say. Juliette Reinders Folmer wrapped up her final thoughts on a…
Yesterday, Automattic dropped version 4.4 of its popular WooCommerce plugin. The new release is a minor update with the biggest changes around the plugin’s blocks and coupon management in the admin. Two dozen people made 450 contributions to the release. The WooCommerce team brought several updates to the plugin’s blocks. The biggest user-facing change is…
In just one week since WordPress 5.5 was released, the Enable jQuery Migrate Helper plugin has passed 10,000 active installs, as users look for a fix for broken sites. The plugin was developed by the WordPress Core team to mitigate jQuery-related problems users may face after updating to 5.5. WordPress has removed jQuery Migrate 1.4.1,…
A couple of years ago, Morten Rand-Hendriksen launched WP Rig for WordPress. The goal was to bring a modern starter theme and build process to the theme development community. Now, he and the current team are hoping to find someone new to keep the project moving. Whoever is chosen will gain outright ownership of the…
Beginning September 1, 2020, Apple’s Safari browser will no longer trust SSL/TLS certificates issued for longer than 398 days, which is the equivalent of one year plus the renewal grace period. Apple cited its “ongoing efforts to improve web security” in the announcement earlier this year. The change affects the full lineup of Apple platforms:…
For months, I have eagerly awaited the official release of WordPress 5.5, an update that promised to put the long-awaited block patterns system into the hands of theme designers. I may sound like a broken record at this point, but patterns have the potential to revolutionize WordPress theme development, even more so than the upcoming…
WordPress 5.5 has already been downloaded more than 4 million times after its release earlier this week, and it’s time to kick off work on 5.6. Josepha Haden will be leading the release alongside coordinator Dee Teal, with additional leads for Triage (Tonya Mork), Core Tech (Helen Hou-Sandì), Editor Tech (Isabel Brison), Design (Ellen Bauer…
It is an age-old question. OK, well, it’s really a 10-year-old feature request, but that is age-old in software development years. Should WordPress have a local avatar system? Let’s be honest. Most of us have kind of gritted our teeth and quietly — and sometimes not so quietly — lived with the Automattic-owned properties that…
This was supposed to be the year that ushered in a revolution in how we work. Remote jobs would become a common practice, spurred on by the global COVID-19 pandemic. A time when everyone would start paying attention to those radical ideas from remote work evangelists such as Matt Mullenweg. The question is whether this…
Now that WordPress 5.5 has shipped, block patterns are available in core for all users. If you have previously been relying on reusable blocks but prefer the flexibility of block patterns, you may want to convert these. WordPress core developer Jean-Baptiste Audras has made this possible in the latest update of his Reusable Blocks Extended…
The world of open source tooling has expanded to welcome JSHint, as the project’s maintainers have finally completed the necessary work to adopt the MIT Expat license. Previously, the JavaScript linter’s code was partially published under the JSON license, with an additional seemingly innocuous clause that stated: “The Software shall be used for Good, not…
Over the weekend, David Gwyer announced a custom server-side render component for block plugins. The co-founder of WPGO Plugins primarily built his component to speed up the rendering process for dynamic blocks within his own plugins. However, he has now released this component for other block developers in the WordPress community. Most blocks are static.…