Automattic has published its Lettre theme to WordPress.org. The company launched its newsletter product at the end of December 2022 using Lettre as the default theme. The self-hosted version of this block theme is for those who want to publish a newsletter using Jetpack. The theme puts the focus on the subscription form, which is…
WordPress 5.9 “Josephine” was released in January 2022, but that seems like ages ago when you compare the advances made in site building over the past year. Anne McCarthy, an Automattic-sponsored contributor who heads up the Full Site Editing Outreach Program, has published a short video that tours the important changes in WordPress over the past…
Automattic is bringing Tumblr’s Blaze ad tool to WordPress sites with its launch today on WordPress.com and Jetpack. Blaze made its debut in April 2022, to the delight of Tumblr users who will gladly shell out cash to get people to look at their cat or promote a game they made. It’s an affordable way…
In December 2022, the ClassicPress community voted on whether to re-fork WordPress or continue on with the project as-is. As WordPress continues to evolve, ClassicPress fell behind in pursuit of PHP 8+ compatibility. The fork is based on WordPress 4.9 and users are increasingly limited in what plugins will work with the five-year-old codebase. In…
WordPress’ Performance Team met this week with the express purpose of responding to Matt Mullenweg’s recent request to stop adding functionality to the Performance Lab plugin which could otherwise work as a standalone plugin. At the end of December 2022, the Performance Team published instructions for how to test the new SQLite implementation, which was…
Gutenberg Times will be hosting a live Q&A webinar titled “Layout, Layout, Layout” on January 11, 2023, at 05:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada) via Zoom. This event is open to WordPress users of all experience levels who are interested to learn more about how to use WordPress’ layout features when building sites with…
WordCamp Europe 2023 is being hosted in Athens this year with two conference days scheduled for June 9 and 10. The first day’s theme is “WordPress Now” (Everything that can be currently achieved with WordPress) and the second day is “WordPress Tomorrow.” Organizers have opened the call for speakers and are especially interested in scheduling…
BuddyPress 11.0.0 is now available thanks to the efforts of 34 contributors. The release is named “La Scala” in honor of a pizza restaurant located in Issy-Les-Moulineaux, a Paris suburb. Version 11.0.0 introduces a few important changes. BuddyPress has improved the way it loads its JavaScript and CSS assets with the addition of a new…
Awesome Motive’s product suite of nearly 20 commercial plugins has expanded to include a backup plugin. The company announced its acquisition of Duplicator today, a 12-year-old freemium product with more than 1.5 million users. In addition to the backup utility, the plugin enables users to migrate, copy, move, or clone a site from one location…
Gutenberg 14.9 was released this week with a powerful new feature for site editing that allows users to push individual block changes to Global Styles. When WordPress makes it this easy for users to design their own sites, there’s always the lingering concern – will the tools inadvertently be used to make sites that are…
WordPress developer Munir Kamal has released a new plugin called CF7 Blocks that does exactly what it says in the name. It brings blocks to one of WordPress’ most beloved plugins, which has kept the same familiar interface and has not yet adopted the block editor. The Contact Form 7 plugin was created by WordPress…
Security researchers at Doctor Web, a security company focused on threat detection and prevention, have discovered a malicious Linux program that targets WordPress sites running outdated and vulnerable plugins and themes. The malware targets 32-bit versions of Linux, but it is also capable of running on 64-bit versions. It exploits 30 theme and plugin vulnerabilities…
Nick Diego, developer advocate at WP Engine, has released version 1.4.0 of his Icon Block plugin. Diego launched it in October 2021, after struggling to find an efficient way to add SVG icons to the block editor. He is aiming for this small but useful plugin to become “the definitive SVG icon and graphic block.”…
One of Matt Mullenweg’s announcements at the 2022 State of the Word was the addition of new taxonomies for the theme and plugin directories that will help users more quickly ascertain the purpose of the extensions they are considering. With nearly 60,000 free plugins available and more than 10,000 free themes, it’s not always immediately…
Gutenberg 14.8 was released today with a major update to the Site Editor’s interface that makes it feel more unified as a design tool. In August, Gutenberg designer James Koster shared some mockups for updating the Site Editor to include a “navigable frame” where users can select from a menu of features and styles on…