Molten is a new block theme from first-time WordPress.org theme author Paul Truong, designed for chefs and restaurateurs to showcase their work. The theme puts the spotlight on food photography offset with bold typography featuring the Playfair Display font for headings and Source Sans Pro for paragraph text. Truong is working on setting up a…
Automattic-sponsored core contributor Adam Zielinski published a demo today of WordPress running in the browser with no PHP server. This is accomplished using WebAssembly (WASM), a format for a stack-based virtual machine that enables deployment on the web for client and server applications, and Emscripten, an open source compiler toolchain to WebAssembly. It’s not stable…
After a seven-month long effort across multiple contributor teams, the Twenty Twenty-Two (TT2) default theme will be tagged as “Accessibility-Ready” when WordPress 6.1 ships in November. It is the first block theme to meet the requirements for gaining this distinction. During its development the theme was also tested and found to meet WCAG AA level…
PublishPress, a company that develops free and commercial publishing and permissions plugins for WordPress, has acquired MetaSlider from Extendify. The plugin is used on more than 700,000 sites to build sliders, slideshows, carousels, and galleries. The company’s mission is to help publishers succeed, so this is a curious acquisition as sliders seem to have fallen…
Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) has announced the availability of version 6.0, an update that applies to both the free and pro versions of the plugin. This release introduces a refreshed admin UI that ACF product manager Iain Poulson said users had been requesting since 2021. “We didn’t want this to be a huge change that…
WordPress 6.1 beta 1 was released today, and testing has begun with the general release expected in just under six weeks on November 1. Versions 13.1 – 14.1 of the Gutenberg plugin will be rolled into core for 6.1. This includes features like improved block placeholders, more design tools for blocks, fluid typography, improvements to…
The count for WordPress block themes has reached 137. It’s a far cry from the 500 block themes WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden-Chomphosy set as a goal for 2022, but the number is steadily climbing as theme authors find their footing and discover how quickly block themes can be created. Brian Gardner is throwing his…
Last month, the plan for WordPress to generate WebP images by default for new JPEG image uploads was put on hold for the upcoming 6.1 release after objections from lead developers. The original proposal had been merged into core at the end of July, despite significant critical feedback and concerns from WordPress’ developer community. Yesterday,…
AI image generation has quickly become more accessible over the past few months and is making its way into different industries that require asset creation. Although it’s still somewhat limited, AI image generators can create breathtaking photorealistic images from complex prompts. AI-assisted artists have even begun selling their works on stock photography sites. DALL-E 2…
SiteGround launched a new managed Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) hosting product today, the first of its kind among WordPress hosts. The company currently powers more than 2,800,000 domains and is targeting small businesses and digital product creators with new plans that make it easy to onboard new EDD store owners. Plans range from $2.99/mo. (1…
Gutenberg 14.1 was released today with some much-needed improvements to the Navigation block, which still seems to be on rocky journey towards better usability. Contributors are moving functionality around the Navigation interface to figure out where it works best. The menu selector has been removed from the Navigation block toolbar in favor of placement in…
WordPress users looking for a block theme for blogging will have no shortage of options while Anders Norén is on a run with back-to-back theme submissions. Beaumont, his second theme release this month, is another one designed for personal sites and blogs but with an emphasis on longform content. It was named for Thaddeus Beaumont,…
In the most recent BuddyPress developers’ chat, contributors discussed progress on the upcoming 11.0.0 release, which is expected on December 14, 2022. Mathieu Viet, one of BuddyPress’ lead developers who spearheaded the effort to get the BP Attachments API into BuddyPress 2.3 in 2015, has been working on templating to display single media items on…
Members of the WordPress 6.1 release squad recently gathered for a product walkthrough on Zoom, where Gutenberg lead architect Matías Ventura gave an informal tour of some of the new features coming in the next release. After the success of the 6.0 walkthrough, this gathering on Zoom has become a new part of the release…
WooCommerce 6.9 was released today and was quickly followed up with 6.9.1 after a bug caused some stores to produce a warning or a fatal error, depending on the site’s PHP version. This release brings the new Cart and Checkout blocks into core as beta features. These blocks have been available in the WooCommerce Blocks plugin since…