News

  • Watch WordCamp Asia 2023 via Livestream February 17-19

    Watch WordCamp Asia 2023 via Livestream February 17-19

    WordPress enthusiasts from around the world are beginning their journeys to attend the inaugural WordCamp Asia, which is happening in Bangkok, Thailand, February 17-19. Organizers are expecting 1,500 attendees at this new flagship event. For those who cannot attend in-person, there will be a livestream broadcasting the sessions from the conference days after Contributor Day,…

  • WooCommerce to Launch WC Blocks Extensibility Monthly Chat

    WooCommerce to Launch WC Blocks Extensibility Monthly Chat

    WooCommerce is calling on its developer community to join a new monthly chat focused on WooCommerce block extensibility. The chat is being run as a three-month pilot program with different topics each month. “During these sessions, we want developers to actively shape the future of WC Blocks by hearing what developers’ integrations need from us…

  • Gutenberg 15.1 Adds Openverse Integration

    Gutenberg 15.1 Adds Openverse Integration

    Gutenberg 15.1 was released this week with Openverse integration in the Media tab. The Openverse library of openly licensed and public domain works has also moved to its own website with an updated design. It contains more than 600 million free-to-use images and audio files that are now available inside WordPress’ editor: Clicking on an Openverse…

  • WordPress.com Is Testing AI-Generated Images and Content

    WordPress.com Is Testing AI-Generated Images and Content

    WordPress.com is currently testing two new blocks for generating images and paragraph content using AI. The blocks, which are currently labeled as experimental, were first spotted by Jen T of WPcomMaven who published a few examples on her blog this week. WordPress.com developed the blocks through a partnership with OpenAI, creators of ChatGPT and DALL·E.…

  • WP Community Collective Names Alex Stine as First Accessibility Fellow

    WP Community Collective Names Alex Stine as First Accessibility Fellow

    The WP Community Collective (WPCC), a newly formed nonprofit organization dedicated to funding individual WordPress contributors and community-led initiatives, has announced its first Accessibility Fellow. Alex Stine, a fully blind individual contributor who has been working with the WordPress Accessibility team since 2016, is the first recipient of the fellowship. WPCC is managing its finances…

  • WordPress Opens Applications for 2023 Community Summit

    WordPress Opens Applications for 2023 Community Summit

    The WordPress open source project will be hosting a Community Summit as part of WordCamp US this year. It will take place prior to the main conference on August 22-23, 2023, in National Harbor, Washington, DC. The invitation-only event will be the first summit in six years, since the last one was held in Paris,…

  • WordPress 6.2 Beta 1 Released and Ready for Testing

    WordPress 6.2 Beta 1 Released and Ready for Testing

    WordPress 6.2 Beta 1 was released on time today, and can be tested by using the WordPress Beta Tester plugin or downloaded directly. In just seven weeks, the upcoming major release will roll in the last nine Gutenberg plugin releases, which account for 292 editor enhancements and 354 bug fixes. The beta 1 announcement confirms that WordPress…

  • WordPress Plugin Developers Alerted Ahead of Twitter API Changes

    WordPress Plugin Developers Alerted Ahead of Twitter API Changes

    Beginning February 9, 2023, Twitter will turn off free access to its APIs. The company announced yesterday that it will be offering “a paid basic tier” with more details coming next week. In response to a user who conjectured that this move is more about raising the friction to making bots, Elon Musk responded, saying…

  • New Proposal Calls for Automated Performance Monitoring for WordPress Core

    New Proposal Calls for Automated Performance Monitoring for WordPress Core

    WordPress Core Committer Adam Silverstein has published a proposal for adding automated performance tooling that would offer continuous monitoring for performance issues so they can be resolved before major regressions are committed to core. “Similar to our unit test suite, automated performance testing would help protect core from introducing large performance regressions by catching problems immediately and…

  • WordPress Training Team Seeks Feedback with Individual Learner Survey

    WordPress Training Team Seeks Feedback with Individual Learner Survey

    In 2020, WordPress began prioritizing education as critical to the project’s future, launching Learn.WordPress to support beginners to advanced learners with free educational content. Over the past two years, WordPress’ Training team has been instrumental in building and expanding this resource with synchronous and asynchronous learning opportunities, as well as downloadable lesson plans for instructors…

  • WordPress.com Introduces Browse Mode, Style Book, and Push to Global Styles Features

    WordPress.com Introduces Browse Mode, Style Book, and Push to Global Styles Features

    WordPress.com users are getting early access to some of the major new features that are shipping with the upcoming WordPress 6.2 release. The platform rolled out Browse Mode today, describing it as “an easier way to navigate the Site Editor.” This is one of the most impactful changes coming to customization, as it unifies the…

  • A Look Under the Hood at Engine Awesome, a Laravel-based SaaS App Using Gutenberg

    A Look Under the Hood at Engine Awesome, a Laravel-based SaaS App Using Gutenberg

    During the 2022 State of the Word, Matt Mullenweg highlighted a few examples of how Gutenberg adoption is growing beyond WordPress and how he believed it could become “bigger than WordPress itself.” Engine Awesome, a Laravel-based SaaS application, is one example he cited that is using the block editor to allow customers to build their own…

  • WordPress Contributors Work Towards Removing Site Editor Beta Label for 6.2 Release

    WordPress Contributors Work Towards Removing Site Editor Beta Label for 6.2 Release

    Will WordPress be ready to remove the Beta label from the Site Editor in the upcoming 6.2 release? The project’s Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy addressed this question in her latest WP Briefing podcast episode titled “What Does Concluding a Gutenberg Phase Really Mean?“ “All of the projects, with the exception of two, I believe,…