ClassicPress, the fork that has been keeping WordPress 4.9 on life support for those who don’t want to use the block editor, will soon be moving into version 2.0 after the community voted to re-fork a newer version of WordPress (6.x) to keep moving forward. Version 1.6.0 was released a few weeks ago as the…
Gutenberg 16.3 was released today as a maintenance release but includes several new tools that make pattern management smoother and easier for users. Most notably, custom user patterns now have a dropdown menu for renaming, duplicating and deleting them. Patterns and template parts that come with themes will only have the “duplicate” option available since…
WordPress 6.3 RC2 has been released and is ready for community testing. Since RC1 landed a week ago, 15 changes have come in from the Editor and Trac, including bug fixes for footnotes, internationalization fixes, a missing command for opening the distraction free in the Site Editor, and a few other issues. This release also brings in work…
WordPress Playground, an experimental project that uses WebAssembly (WASM) to run WordPress in the browser, was number 1 on Hacker News recently and was also featured on TechCrunch. Word is getting around about how easy it is to fire up a sandbox environment in just a few seconds for testing plugins and themes and even different…
Mojeek, a UK-based privacy-oriented search engine, has added Openverse to its image search. For more than 15 years, Mojeek has provided independent, unbiased search without tracking or building profiles on users. It is one of just a handful of genuine search engines that uses its own technology and algorithms, unlike the metasearch engines that syndicate…
Unless you are some kind of wizard with the block editor, starting a WordPress website from a blank slate can be overwhelming and ultimately defeating. Mike McAlister, maker of the free Ollie theme, is developing an onboarding experience that aims to drastically reduce the amount of time users spend setting up a new site. “I…
WordPress’ Recommended Hosting page is a hotly contested piece of online real estate, and has recently come into focus again following the removal of SiteGround from the listings. When the change was highlighted during a recent Meta team meeting, Audrey Capital-sponsored contributor Samuel “Otto” Wood said, “Matt asked me to remove SiteGround because that page…
WordCamp US 2023 is happening next month in National Harbor, Maryland. The Contributor Day will kick off the event on Thursday, August 24, preceding the conference days. It is open to any attendee, including those who have never contributed before and seasoned contributors alike. There are many technical and non-technical ways to contribute to WordPress.…
Gutenberg 16.2 was released with a number of important changes to pattern management. Most notably, Reusable blocks have been renamed to Patterns, and the Library section of the Site Editor has been renamed to Patterns. This release also introduces a sync status on the pattern details screen to give more information to site owners when…
As the dev notes for the upcoming WordPress 6.3 release are rolling out, there are so many exciting features that have not yet been highlighted. The new development mode, initiated by declaring the WP_DEVELOPMENT_MODE constant, is one that will be particularly useful for theme developers initially. “The development mode configured on a site defines the kind…
Bluehost launched its new WonderSuite product this week, which introduces a setup and site creation experience guided by AI. In September 2022, the hosting company debuted its managed WooCommerce packages after acquiring YITH, a WordPress plugin company with more than 100 WooCommerce extensions. The new WonderSuite product is included in all Bluehost WordPress hosting plans…
WordPress’ admin is on deck for a long-awaited makeover after Gutenberg lead architect Matías Ventura published plans for a revamped admin design as part of the Phase 3: Collaboration road map. “As WordPress turns twenty years old, the overall aim of this work is to improve upon this experience at a foundational design level, giving…
All-In-One Security (AIOS), a plugin active on more than a million WordPress sites, was found to be logging plaintext passwords from login attempts in the database and has patched the security issue in version 5.2.0. In a post titled “Cleartext passwords written to aiowps_audit_log” published to the plugin’s support forum two weeks and five days…
WordPress’ Community Team kicked off its experimental mentorship program this week, announcing that the inaugural cohort has been assigned to a group of mentors who will guide them forward on project contribution across various teams. “Our mentors offer 1:1 support to each contributor in our cohort,” Automattic-sponsored Community Team contributor Hari Shanker R said. “These…
The State of Digital Publishing, a startup market research publisher focused on digital media, is hosting an online event called WordPress Publishers Performance Summit (WPPS) on July 27, starting at 2PM EST. The organization’s mission is to help publishers develop sustainable business models through education, guides, online courses, and other resources. They have partnered with…