WordPress 6.4 will be shipping with a new default theme, expected in early November. The theme’s project leaders unveiled the designs and concept for Twenty Twenty-Four in an announcement on WordPress.org today. For those who have complained that past default themes have been too niche or too narrowly focused in design, this theme will take…
Organic Themes, one of the oldest WordPress theme shops, was founded in 2009 in the town of Lahaina on the island of Maui, which was ground zero for the recent devastating wildfires. Until recently, Lahaina was home to Organic Themes co-founder David Morgan, who hosted the Maui WordPress meetups for years, and co-organized WordCamp Maui in 2015. Morgan…
Work on WordPress 6.4 is kicking off with a post from Editor Triage Co-Lead Anne McCarthy that highlights everything the team has planned for the release. This will be the third major release of 2023, and is unique in that it’s being led by an underrepresented gender release squad. Although WordPress is moving into Phase 3…
WordPressCS 3.0.0 was released this week with what its maintainer, Juliette Reinders Folmer, says are significant changes to improve the accuracy, performance, stability, and maintainability of all sniffs, and its handling of modern PHP. The project is a collection of PHP_CodeSniffer rules (sniffs) that are used to validate code developed for WordPress, helping developers meet the requirements…
WordPress Playground, an experimental project that uses WebAssembly (WASM) to run WordPress in the browser, makes it possible for users to quickly test plugins and themes without having to set up a local development environment. Ordinarily, testing a plugin or theme with Playground requires visiting playground.wordpress.net, which will instantly create a real WordPress instance with admin access without having…
Equalize Digital, a WordPress accessibility products and services company, has added a new frontend highlighting feature to its free accessibility checker plugin, which is used to perform audits on self-hosted sites. The feature was funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), through Equalize Digital’s consulting work on the new NASA websites. NASA recently…
This year’s WordCamp US includes a Community Summit, an invitation-only contributor-focused event that will take place prior to the main conference on August 22-23, 2023, in National Harbor, Washington, DC. It will be the first summit in six years, since the last one was held in Paris, France in 2017. Historically, the summit has offered…
The WP Community Collective (WPCC), a non-profit organization created to support individual WordPress contributors and community-led initiatives, has funded its first fellowship. Alex Stine, a fully blind individual contributor who has been working with the WordPress Accessibility team since 2016, is the first recipient of the funds designated for the fellowship. WPCC reports that the…
group.one, a European cloud hosting and digital marketing services provider, has acquired the BackWPup, Adminimize, and Search & Replace plugins from Inpsyde. Together the products have more than 1.1 million active installs and will join group.one’s growing portfolio of WordPress products, which include WP Rocket, Imagify, and Rank Math SEO. Inpsyde sold the plugins to focus more on its consulting…
WordPress.org’s support forums are a vital resource and communication tool for users supporting their own sites and developers extending the software. Visiting the forums often means users have gotten stuck somehow and need to have a successful support experience in order to continue on their WordPress journeys. They are looking for help deciphering the meaning…
What are blocks? WordPress has added a new resource to its website at wordpress.org/blocks that attempts to explain blocks visually with simple language. The landing page is aimed at those who are new to the block paradigm or those who may not yet fully understand blocks’ ease of use and powerful features. Automattic-sponsored core contributor…
Crocoblock, a Ukraine-based company with plugins on WordPress.org as well as commercial products, is hosting a WordPress Web Agency AI Summit event on September 28-30, 2023. The company has a community of more than 24K+ freelancers and web agencies on Facebook and is moving to organize its first large virtual event that will be free for all…
WordPress’ Themes team launched its Community Themes initiative earlier this year with the goal of bringing together contributors to build block themes year round, the same way that default themes are built and officially supported. Their first theme release was Stacks, a single-purpose theme for creating slide decks that can be used for a presentation.…
The monumental task of overhauling WordPress’ aging admin design is coming into focus, as contributors kicked off explorations of some initial mockups this week. Gutenberg’s Phase 3 is focused on Collaboration and this admin revamp is part of that road map. As a starting point, Automattic-sponsored product designer Saxon Fletcher published some images and videos…
WordPress 6.3 “Lionel” was released earlier this week with an overview video that offers a beautiful, dizzying demo of the many new features packed into this update. It’s a two-minute guided tour of WordPress’ greatly expanded customization features, streamlined Site Editor interface, pattern creation and management, and the new Command Palette in action. For the…