Delivering on an highly-requested feature, Gutenberg contributors have made it possible to rename almost any block in the List View. Version 16.9 was released this week with the new feature, which builds on Gutenberg 16.7‘s introduction of the ability to rename Group blocks. It works in a similar way to naming Photoshop layers. Users can…
The upcoming 6.4 release, expected on November 7, will disable attachment pages for new installations. Up until now, WordPress automatically created attachment pages when users upload a file through the media upload system. It has been treated as a special post type that holds information about the file and each attachment is accessible under its…
WordPress 6.4 RC2 was released this week with more than 25 issues resolved since RC1. These include a few cherry-picked commits from the Gutenberg repository, additional closed Trac tickets since RC 1, and more than a dozen housekeeping commits for Twenty Twenty-Four. The 6.4 Field Guide is now published with technical notes. It’s a lengthy…
Automattic has acquired Texts, an all-in-one messaging platform, for $50 million. Texts is a newer company founded in 2020 that creates a centralized inbox for all major messaging platforms, including iMessage, WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram, Signal, Twitter, LinkedIn, Slack, and Discord. The proliferation of messaging apps and inboxes has made responding to communication more complicated than…
The Open Source Initiative (OSI), a non-profit organization that plays an important role in the open source ecosystem as stewards of the Open Source Definition (OSD), has opened its 2024 State of Open Source survey. This is the third year OSI has published the survey in collaboration with OpenLogic by Perforce, who has sponsored it in previous…
The LiteSpeed Cache plugin, used on more than four million WordPress sites, has patched an XSS vulnerability in version 5.7. The plugin provides all-in-one site acceleration capabilities, server-level caching, and a collection of optimization features. It is compatible with WordPress multisite, and popular plugins like WooCommerce, bbPress, and Yoast SEO, which may contribute to its…
The Ollie block theme, created by Mike McAlister and Patrick Posner, now has a companion plugin available called Ollie Dash. The theme made headlines earlier this month after a contentious WordPress.org review process led its authors to remove the innovative onboarding features. Ollie was approved for WordPress.org but without the time-saving onboarding features its authors…
Elementor, the most popular website builder plugin for WordPress with more than 5 million active installations, has postponed its upcoming DreamWeb event. The Israel-based company was set to host its first in-person conference on November 2, in Berlin, Germany, but has postponed it due to the circumstances following Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel on October…
WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg will be delivering his annual State of the Word (SOTW) address from Madrid before a live audience on December 11, at 15:00 UTC. Last year’s event took place in New York City with attendance by invitation only, and 2023 will mark the first year the SOTW will take place from a…
WordPress.org has launched the redesign of the Showcase, with new block-based components, through a collaboration between the Design, Marketing, and Meta teams that began last year. It’s part of a larger effort to modernize WordPress.org and comes two months after the project relaunched a new design for the WordPress.org homepage and Download page. The updated…
Kinsta launched its static site hosting product today, making a strong entrance into the market with a free tier that is competitive with established solutions from Vercel, Netlify, and GitHub Pages. Companies can host up to 100 static sites for free, including static WordPress sites, which Kinsta deploys from its global edge network of more…
WordPress 6.4 is one step closer to prime time with RC1 available today. The dev notes are rolling out with details on technical improvements in the upcoming release –block hooks for dynamic blocks, improvements to template loading, changes to attachment pages, and many more. RC1 is ready for another round of testing. There are 40…
Adam Zieliński, creator of WordPress Playground, announced today that the WordPress Core PR previewer is now live. Playground is an experimental project that uses WebAssembly (WASM) to run WordPress in the browser. It creates a WordPress instance with admin access without having to install PHP, MySQL, or Apache, making it nearly instantaneous to fire up a…
Gutenberg 16.8 was released this week with improvements to existing blocks and some experiments that lay the foundation for Phase 3 focused on collaboration. The Cover block now automatically sets an overlay color when a user applies the initial background image. If the user doesn’t manually set an overlay color prior to uploading the image, the…
The WordPress Photos Directory crossed a major milestone this week, surpassing 10,000 photos. It’s a growing resource that exists to provide free, publicly-contributed, CC0-licensed photographs. Every photo submitted is moderated by a volunteer. I’m super excited about this milestone,” Photos team moderator Michelle Frechette said. “Most (if not all) of the moderators are also photographers,…