Gutenberg 12.6 landed in the WordPress plugin directory yesterday. The update includes several transform-related enhancements and new Read More and Post Author Biography blocks. Users can now also show visible labels via the Social Icons block. Nothing seems to be broken with this release, which is always welcome. Gutenberg has not fundamentally wrecked something I…
WordPress.org’s News section is sporting a new design with a bold color scheme and updated typography. The design was created by Automattic-sponsored contributor, Beatriz Fialho, who unveiled earlier versions of the update in June 2021. Fialho selected Inter, an open source font, for paragraphs and functional text, and EB Garamond for headings. As design trends change on the…
It has been over nine years since the late Alex Mills opened a ticket on WordPress Trac titled Plugin Dependencies (Yet Another Plugin Dependencies Ticket). It is not the oldest of similar feature requests, but it is still open. Most predecessors were closed with the “wontfix” label, which is usually the final nail in the…
The ball is moving on a nine-year-old effort to migrate BuddyPress’ custom URI parser to use WordPress’ Rewrite API. BuddyPress currently requires sites to use pretty permalinks in order to be compatible with its URL parser. The plugin analyzes the URL for whatever component you are viewing and performs internal checks to decide what to…
Gutenberg design contributors are exploring how the template creation UI can be updated to expand the types of templates that user can create using the Site Editor. In WordPress 5.9 users can edit any template that a theme includes, but template creation is limited to a few basics: Front page Single Page Archive Search 404…
Stanislav Khromov announced Clarity, a plugin for hiding obtrusive banners, via Twitter and the Advanced WordPress (AWP) Facebook group today. It was first pushed to WordPress.org around a year ago, but the developer seems to be just now publicizing it. The Clarity website describes its mission as: “Ads, upsells, and analytics banners have been running…
The WordPress Photo Directory is taking off, growing to more than 1,400 approved free photos in under two months. After a successful call for testers and volunteer photo moderators, the directory has an enthusiastic team of contributors ready to move the project forward. Angela Jin’s pitch for photo moderators resonated with a lot of people…
Kadence Blocks, a popular block collection plugin, added a new Lottie Animations block today in version 2.2.4. Most of the blocks in the plugin offer commonly used page building features like rows, buttons, galleries, and testimonials. The Lottie Animations block introduces something a little more fun and whimsical. Developed by the design team at Airbnb,…
I “officially” dubbed Newsletter Glue my favorite plugin in the 2021 yearly recap post. WordPress’s block system makes such projects more feasible than before, or at least more easily built and extended. Since I first took note of it, I have kept a watchful eye on its progress. Late last month, the plugin’s development team…
WordPress Community Support (WPCS), the subsidiary of the WordPress Foundation that handles financial and legal support for official WordPress events, has published an overview of the program’s current finances and a summary of 2020. Harmony Romo, a financial wrangler at Automattic, reported that WPCS ended the year with approximately $1.2M of cash on hand. $293,000…
WordPress hosting company Convesio has raised $5 million from private investors. This funding round includes some of the company’s original investors who participated in Convesio’s 2019 Wefunder crowdfunding campaign, which brought in more than $1 million from 800+ investors. “I started Convesio because legacy hosting providers have not evolved their technology, struggled to provide high…
Kevin Batdorf, the Project Lead Developer at Extendify, released the Wavy Divider plugin earlier this week. It is described as “a colorful, fun, lightweight divider block to energize your website with character and pizazz.” As someone who believes every Friday should be officially titled “Fun Friday,” how could I not install and activate it? I…
Rick Viscomi, one of the maintainers of the HTTP Archive, tweeted some interesting data from a report he is working on that tracks churn for different JavaScript frameworks and CMS’s over a specified period of time. He detected the changes using the open source Wappalyzer project. The first graph he shared shows shows data from…
WordPress is hosting a live online event tomorrow called “Beginner’s Guide to Full Site Editing.” Within three minutes of WordPress’ Twitter account tweeting about it, all 70 spaces were booked and the waiting list kicked in. As part of the project’s big picture goals for 2022, WordPress will be ramping up community efforts to help…
The FSE Outreach Program is back with another round of testing. Anne McCarthy asks for volunteers to test and provide feedback on media-related features in WordPress. Anyone is welcome to contribute, and feedback is open until February 23. This round of the program includes two tasks. The first has users explore today’s media-related experience. The…