WordPress.com added support for ActivityPub today, a decentralized social networking protocol that is now available for across free and paid plans. This allows users to join the fediverse from their WordPress.com sites, and interact with content across federated platforms like Mastodon (and many others) with replies automatically published back to the blog as comments. The…
WordPress 6.4 will be shipping a new default theme, Twenty Twenty-Four (TT4), expected in early November. This theme is more feature-rich than previous default themes, and contributors have been working on identifying potential performance improvements that can be made ahead of the release. As a starting point, Google-sponsored Performance team contributor Felix Arntz conducted several…
WooSesh 2023, the virtual conference for WooCommerce store builders, kicked off today with the State of the Woo address. This year’s theme is “Next Generation Commerce,” featuring advances across the e-commerce industry, as well as WooCommerce core and the wider ecosystem of tools and payment integrations. WooCommerce CEO Paul Maiorana began the presentation with a few…
Last week WordPress meta contributors implemented a “Live Preview” button for plugins in the official directory, with the intention of allowing users to safely test any plugin in one click. The button went live across all of WordPress.org’s 59,000+ plugins but took plugin developers by surprise as it was pushed through without any communication or…
The free Ollie block theme, created by Mike McAlister and Patrick Posner, is now available for download on WordPress.org. A contentious review process led the team to remove the onboarding features, despite having gotten the green light from WordPress’ leadership who advocated for moving forward with the experiment. The version of Ollie available on WordPress.org…
NASA has removed the beta label from the new nasa.gov website, which was launched on WordPress, replacing Drupal as the CMS. After a lengthy process, which required 18 months of active web development, data migration, and content building, NASA has emerged with modernized flagship and science websites, showcasing the innovation and discoveries that have defined…
The WordPress 6.4 release squad has decided to punt the planned Font Library feature to 6.5 after core maintainers found major gaps in the Font APIs that cannot be resolved in time for the upcoming release. “I am currently reviewing the font APIs PR,” WordPress REST API co-maintainer Jonny Harris said. “I must say, I am…
Mike McAlister, creator of the free Ollie theme, will be dropping the innovative onboarding features from the theme in favor of putting them into a separate plugin after facing pushback during the review for inclusion in WordPress.org’s Themes Directory. During what McAlister described as an “unnecessarily contentious” review process that turned unproductive and combative at certain points,…
WordPress’ Community team has proposed a draft for the 2024 Global Community Sponsorship Program, with fees increased to cover the costs of the rapidly expanding number of in-person events. The program supports the volunteer-organized local events so that they can provide free or low-cost access for attendees. It helps companies streamline their sponsorship contributions across…
Gutenberg 16.7 was released this week, packed with several features that are headlining the upcoming WordPress 6.4 release. This will be the last plugin release that will be rolled into the next version of WordPress. Font management with the new font library is now available for testing in the plugin. These features standardize a way…
Mike McAlister, creator of the free Ollie theme, has been working towards getting his theme approved for hosting on WordPress.org. Ollie went into public beta in April 2023 and gained momentum over the next few months when McAlister previewed the theme’s new onboarding wizard. WordPress users have been slow to adopt the block editor and block themes…
WordPress has launched its 2023 annual survey, which is open to the entire community, including users, site builders, plugin and theme authors, and contributors. The 2022 survey collected responses from roughly 3,400 people, including approximately 800 contributors, a decline in submissions from previous years. The 2022 survey introduced the Likert scale, a rating scale that…
WordPress 6.4 Beta 1 was released today on schedule, led by an underrepresented gender release squad. It includes the last five releases of the Gutenberg plugin (16.2, 16.3, 16.4, 16.5, 16.6) along with the upcoming 16.7 release and 190 tickets for core. If you are following Gutenberg development, many of these features have already been released in the plugin.…
WordPress.org began testing two-factor authentication (2FA) as an opt-in feature in May 2023. The interface and functionality are still in beta but it’s operational. This week contributors have expanded support for 2FA with a new interface for adding security keys, which are more secure than the one-time passwords. A logged in user can set up…
WordPress developer Corey Maass has sold his Social Link Pages plugin to Matthaus Klute, an independent WordPress consultant and developer with Alpha Particle. It’s another story of small plugins changing hands, where developers get the opportunity to test ideas and business models. Even the most modest creations have value in a thriving marketplace where business…