WordPress enthusiasts in San José, Costa Rica are getting ready to host the city’s first WordCamp November 5-6. Roberto Remedios is one of 10 organizers working with a Rocio Valdivia, the team’s mentor from WordCamp Central. He said that WordCamp Miami inspired him to want to host an event in Costa Rica. “Back in 2014,…
As of last week, Headway Themes customers are still not receiving support for the products they purchased and co-founders Grant and Clay Griffiths have yet to communicate via email or the company’s blog. Support is frozen and customers and employees have been jilted, while Headway Themes continues to keep the product available for purchase. The…
Back on August 10th, we wrote about the uncertainty of Headway Theme’s future amid a lack of communication, ability to provide support, and possible financial troubles. The article prompted customers to reach out on social media to Grant and Clay Griffiths, co-founders of the company, to find out what’s going on. On August 20th, Red…
WordPress lead developer and 4.7 release lead Helen Hou-Sandí unveiled the design for the Twenty Seventeen default theme today and confirmed that it will be part of the upcoming release. Mel Choyce, a core contributor and design engineer at Automattic, is credited with the design of the new theme, which falls into the business or…
The Google Chrome Security team announced yesterday the browser will begin labeling HTTP connections as insecure starting in January 2017. Chrome currently displays a green lock icon in the address bar for sites that are secure but the security team will be taking it one step further by displaying a warning on unencrypted sites. “Beginning…
Codecademy, the free interactive coding education site, has launched a new ReactJS course. For the past five years, the site’s free, self-guided courses have attracted more than 25 million students. Codecademy recently partnered with the White House as part of the TechHire initiative to promote more diverse entrepreneurship in the tech industry through coding education.…
Jetpack 4.3 was released today with a new admin interface that has been completely rewritten in React.js. The Jetpack team has been working on the redesign for a year and received feedback from more than 8,000 Jetpack users before the official release. After updating to 4.3, Jetpack users will see a new dashboard that offers…
LaunchKey’s password-free authentication platform has been acquired by iovation, a company that provides fraud prevention services and device-based authentication. The companies plan to merge their technologies to provide more authentication options and are launching a product called LaunchKey MFA, a new combined dynamic authentication suite. LaunchKey MFA offers security professionals a toolkit that includes a…
Ninja Forms 3.0 was released today after a year in development. WP Ninjas have completely rewritten the plugin using Backbone, Underscore, and Marionette, an undertaking that required the bulk of development time for this milestone. This architectural overhaul brings major improvements to the user experience. The most visible improvements can be seen in the form…
ManageWP, a WordPress site management service founded in 2010 and officially released in 2012 by Vladimir Prelovac, has been acquired by GoDaddy for an undisclosed amount. ManageWP is based in Serbia and has a team of more than 25 people. The service enables users to manage backups, updates, security, and monitor performance of sites through Orion, the…
Over the weekend, Easy Meta Builder launched a new custom fields marketplace built around CMB2, a popular library that WordPress developers use to easily build metaboxes, custom fields, and forms. CMB2 is active on more than 50,0000 sites. Easy Meta Builder offers a “no code” way to use CMB2 for adding meta fields. WordPress plugin…
This week WordPress.com introduced a new Customizer panel to its users called Content Options. The new panel offers a number of minor tweaks that would ordinarily be handled by a few simple free plugins on a self-hosted site. It brings a whole new range of customizability to the WordPress.com sites that was not previously available.…
Two months ago the WordPress Plugin Directory guidelines became a heated topic of debate after the plugin team began cracking down on incentivized reviews. The most recent publicized incident involved the Sprout Invoices plugin, which was temporarily removed from the directory and all of its 5-star reviews erased after it was discovered that the author…
Automattic is doubling down on its commitment to using JavaScript in its products. In November 2015, the company debuted Calypso, its first React.js-based product powered by the WordPress.com REST API. Shortly after Calypso’s unveiling, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg declared that “JavaScript and API-driven interfaces are the future of not just WordPress but the web.” Today…
Justin Tadlock’s new ButterBean post meta box framework was officially released this week. The framework allows developers to easily build a metabox with a tabbed UI to accommodate multiple fields. After roughly three months of beta testing, ButterBean is ready for use in projects. It can be dropped into a plugin or used as a…