WordCamp Vancouver is gearing up for its fourth year and will be held on Saturday July 26th, 2014, at the BCIT Downtown Campus, in Vancouver. The event’s organization team announced this week that this year’s camp will be a “developer edition,” catering to the area’s tech community. The day will be focused on topics for…
Last October, Matt Medeiros launched his WordPress Startup Challenge with hopes of validating the WordPress startup scene while building a stronger sense of community among entrepreneurs. At that time he also created a WordPress Entrepreneur group on Google+ to help connect those whose businesses are based on WordPress. Medeiros is the host of the Matt…
Yesterday former WP Engine customer Matthew Woodward posted a lengthy, illustrated review of his experiences with the company’s managed WordPress hosting and support. Though initially impressed with the host’s support when he signed on 18 months ago, Woodward detailed his assessment of its decline over the past eight months, citing poor performance, slow and uninformed…
Jetpack 3.0 was released today with a couple of brand new features and an updated interface for managing modules and settings. The new administrative user interface allows for bulk activation and deactivation of modules in the same way you might manage plugins. The redesigned Jetpack admin greeting page now features its 33 modules and allows…
Long time Android users will remember how much of leap forward Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0 (ICS) was for the platform in 2011. As the vastly improved successor to Android 2.3 Gingerbread, it was one of the largest upgrades to Android OS in history, creating a demarcation line between the much older versions and the newer…
WordCamp Miami celebrated its 5th anniversary this year, drawing 770+ people to the event. The organizers also hosted their first WordPress beginner’s workshop for kids as part of the Sunday activities. Tammie Lister, Kathryn Presner, and I worked together to lead the workshop, along with volunteers Noel Tock, Mika Epstein, and Suzette Franck. The session…
In a crucial courtroom decision involving Google v.s Oracle, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in favor of Oracle. The main part of the appeal is whether Oracle can claim copyright on Java APIs and if Google infringed that copyright. If the ruling stands, it would create a major setback to…
One thing that was continually irksome about Font Awesome icons was the notable absence of a WordPress icon, despite the font having support for Tumblr, Flickr, Github, Instagram, and others. Given that the project is meant to be a comprehensive pictographic language of web-related actions, I was surprised that WordPress, which powers more than 20%…
Chris Wallace and his team at UpThemes have just pushed their new IssuePress plugin into private beta. This innovative new product is will make it possible for developers to provide public support for private Github repositories. The plugin allows you to assign a dedicated support page on your WordPress site where customers can create and…
When the WP Ninjas launched Ninja Forms in 2010, many people dismissed the plugin, saying there was no way it would be able to compete with Gravity Forms, the dominant commercial product in that space. Fast forward two years, and Ninja Forms is now being downloaded over 34,000 times every month from WordPress.org. WP Ninjas…
Kvetch is a Yiddish word defined as a nagging complaint. Introduced to WordPress.org in 2007, the kvetch form provided users an opportunity to anonymously tell developers what it was about WordPress that ticked them off. Each time the page is refreshed, a new entry is displayed. If you read several of the submissions, it becomes…
WooThemes is continuing to investigate a handful of reports of fraudulent activity on customers’ credit card accounts. The company worked with Sucuri who conducted a code audit and discovered three modified files on their server pointing toward an attack. WooThemes has published a blog post explaining the steps they’ve taken to prevent this incident from…
Are you looking to add HHVM to Varying Vagrant Vagrants? HHVVVM is a new HHVM configuration for WordPress developers who currently have dev environments set up using VVV. HHVVVM, though it sounds oddly similar to an STD, is a configuration created by John James Jacoby, which you can fork for your own use. If you…
WordPress 3.9.1 was released late last week, resolving 34 bugs. This maintenance release includes several important fixes for multisite, TinyMCE, the customizer, widgets, and the new audio/video playlists. Site administrators who are still doing manual updates are encouraged to bring their sites up to the latest. WordPress lead developer Andrew Nacin reported that in the…
Accessibility is one of those areas of WordPress contribution that hardly ever ends up in the spotlight. Much of the work that goes on in this area is invisible to the vast majority of users. Accessibility experts are generally in shorter supply than other types of contributors as well. Why aren’t more people involved in…