Shortly after Jetpack 4.0 was released yesterday many users reported a fatal error and/or white screen when updating. Developers started warning each other in the Advanced WordPress Facebook group to avoid updating to 4.0, after having received emails from clients with sites that went down. A followup 4.0.2 release was pushed out today for users…
With 24 states having enacted laws to legalize medical marijuana, the industry is booming and dispensaries need websites. WP Dispensary, released five months ago, is the first WordPress plugin to target this underserved market. After creating Leafly Reviews, a plugin that displays dispensary reviews from Leafly using a widget or shortcode, Robert DeVore decided he…
Last month the White House called for developers to comment on its proposed draft for a Government-wide Open Source Software policy. The new policy would require code paid for by the government to be made available for reuse across other federal agencies and a portion (20%) of the custom code would be released as open…
In a rare and deeply personal interview with TED Curator Chris Anderson, Linus Torvalds spoke about how open source made his projects what they are today. Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel and the Git version control system, revealed that he prefers to work alone, in his bathrobe, in total silence. Although he heads up…
As soon as WordPress 4.5 was out the door, WordPress 4.6 release lead Dominik Schilling opened up the floor for discussion on wish list items ahead of the kickoff chat on Wednesday. The development community chimed in with feedback on their users’ biggest pain points, important UX issues to be solved, and existing features they…
Sucuri, a website security company that specializes in securing WordPress (and other CMS) sites, announced that SSL certificates are now available at no cost to all customers who make use of the company’s firewall. As a sponsor of the Let’s Encrypt initiative, Sucuri joins Automattic as one of the first companies to fully automate free…
The official WordPress Importer plugin is in shambles and has frustrated users with inconsistent performance for years. The plugin has more than a million active installations and is critical for migrations, unless you are familiar with using more advanced tools. With years of unresolved support threads identifying the plugin’s many bugs, the importer is in…
Font Awesome creator Dave Gandy announced the release of version 4.6.0 this week. The open source vector icon collection is used on approximately 60 million websites, including high profile sites like whitehouse.gov, thebeatles.com, and washingtonpost.com. Additionally, more than 300 plugins on WordPress.org and dozens of themes use Font Awesome in some way. The 4.6.0 release…
Users who are updating Google Analytics for WordPress by Yoast are discovering a new menu item with a green monster icon in their WordPress backend. That’s because Syed Balkhi, founder of WPBeginner.com, has acquired it for an undisclosed amount and has renamed it to MonsterInsights. Joost de Valk, founder of Yoast.com, says the company is…
Let’s Encrypt announced that the project is exiting beta this week. The initiative, which aims to encrypt 100% of the web by making trusted certificates available to everyone at no cost, launched its beta seven months ago. Since our beta began in September 2015 we’ve issued more than 1.7 million certificates for more than 3.8…
WordPress.com is finally adding sharing buttons for some of the world’s most widely used messaging apps. Users can now add WhatsApp, Telegram, and Skype to the lineup by editing the sharing buttons for their sites. Private groups and messaging are rapidly overtaking social networking. This was the driving factor behind Facebook’s purchase of WhatsApp in…
The “A Day of REST” conference, an event devoted to the WordPress REST API, is expanding to the US. The first edition, held in London in January, was a success, with the majority of participants indicating they would attend again. Last month, Human Made announced that the organization team is planning an expanded “Week of…
WordPress 4.5 was released today, named in honor of Coleman Hawkins, an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Hawkins was one of the first musicians to establish the tenor saxophone as a jazz horn. Compared to other major releases, this one is short on show-stopping features but keeps WordPress on the path of steady, incremental improvements. Most…
Yesterday, prolific WordPress plugin developer Takayuki Miyauchi launched a JSON API for the Wapuu archive via GitHub Pages. The new API allows developers to easily build applications that fetch the wapuus with their images and details: [html light=”true”] [ { "name": "original-wapuupng", "wapuu": { "name": "Wapuu", "url": "https://ja.wordpress.org/", "repository": "https://github.com/jawordpressorg/wapuu", "src": "https://jawordpressorg.github.io/wapuu/wapuu-archive/original-wapuu.png", "mime_type": "image/png" },…
WordPress.com announced today that it has turned on encryption for custom domains. The network’s subdomains have been HTTPS-enabled since 2014 as part of the Reset the Net campaign against mass surveillance. Today Automattic expanded HTTPS coverage to more than one million custom domains hosted on the network. Last April the company joined Mozilla, Cisco, EFF…