Yesterday, StudioPress announced several changes to its themes and marketplace coming on or around June 8. For those outside its community, the company will be making its Genesis Framework available for free. The company is overhauling its marketplace, no longer selling individual themes. StudioPress’s selection of themes will soon be available only through a Genesis…
Core contributor Jeff Ong announced an upcoming virtual hangout around the concept of universal themes. The meeting could cover much ground for theme authors learning how new and upcoming tools will fit into their workflows, businesses, and more. For an invitation, attendees should leave a comment on the announcement post or message Ong directly. The…
GiveWP, one of the most popular donation and fundraising plugins with more than 100,000 active installs, has been acquired by Liquid Web. The team behind the plugin will be joining Liquid Web as part of the asset sale, which includes the whole company, products, and leadership. GiveWP made its debut in 2015 with a 0%…
Yesterday, WordPress released a core plugin named Classic Widgets. Core contributors Tonya Mork and Andrew Ozz created the plugin under the WordPress Contributors account. It allows end-users to disable the upcoming block-based widgets system. Support is expected through 2022 or as long as necessary according to the plugin description. Decided last month by a small…
Last year, I asked Tavern readers if WordPress should notify end-users when a plugin’s owner changes. The post was not entirely based on theory. There have been some cases of real-world confusion. The consensus from the comments on that post seemed to be that, yes, such notifications would be welcome. When I wrote that post,…
Jetpack 9.7 was released today with updates under the hood that ensure the plugin’s blocks are compatible with the full-site editing features coming in WordPress 5.8. It also changes how sites access features that require the WordPress.com infrastructure. A pull request merged in version 9.7 changes the connection flow to make Jetpack active as soon…
The People’s Voice voting for the 25th annual Webby Awards closes in three days on May 6, 2021. Since 1996, the Webbys have recognized excellence on the internet among what is now seven major media types: websites, video, advertising, media and PR, social, apps, mobile, voice, games, and podcasts. After nearly 13,500 entries were submitted…
Digital consultancies Alpha Particle and Flowspoke have acquired the Kanban for WordPress plugin, a tool that puts Kanban boards into the admin to measure progress on a goal. The plugin is used for agile project management, sales tracking, editorial scheduling, and other planning purposes. WordPress developer Corey Maass created Kanban for WordPress in 2015 but…
I reach over to grab my phone to check the time. I am debating whether I should stay awake and watch one more episode of The Walking Dead — it would be my fourth, maybe fifth, binge of the series. 11:12 pm. I noticed that Slack was blowing up my phone. I had it on…
Last month WordPress contributors published the initial designs for the upcoming pattern directory, which will host community-submitted patterns that can be installed with one click from the block inserter in the editor. A live prototype of the work in progress is available at wordpress.org/patterns. The previously planned masonry style, which accommodates variable thumbnail heights, has…
The Gravity Forms team formally announced version 2.5 of its form plugin yesterday. The product, owned by Rocketgenius, promises an overhauled experience that is more in line with the core block editor. The team also wanted to put accessibility at the forefront of this release. The design is fresh, ditching pieces of the older WordPress…
The Creative Commons search engine will soon be part of WordPress.org, as Automattic will begin sponsoring several members of the CC Search team to maintain it. The engine currently offers over 500 million images, audio, and videos, under Creative Commons licenses or the public domain, aggregating more than 45 different sources. Matt Mullenweg announced the…
Now that COVID-19 vaccinations are becoming more widespread, many hope that in-person WordCamps can once again be a reality. There is no official path forward just yet, and decisions will likely be locally based in the coming months. Angela Jin, a community organizer for Automattic, announced an open discussion around the topic. Currently, all WordCamps…
Last week WordPress contributors began a heated discussion regarding blocking FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts). Google’s experimental alternative to third-party cookies has become a highly contentious topic that made its way into last week’s Core developers meeting. Representatives from the Chrome team also attended the meeting to clear up any confusion and answer questions about…
The WordPress Community Team is discussing banning companies from sponsoring WordCamps if they advertise competitively against WordPress. A WordCamp organizing team recently brought the concern to community deputies regarding a potential sponsor that is advertising its product in such a way that it puts WordPress in “an unflattering light.” This particular instance is prompting community…