Atarim is launching its 2nd annual Web Agency Summit in a couple of weeks. The free event will run from March 23 – 26. The goal of the event is to help agencies and freelancers in the WordPress space grow sustainable businesses. Atarim is the company formerly known as WP Feedback. In February, the business…
Yesterday, Happy Prime owner and engineer Jeremy Felt released Shortnotes, a plugin for writing notes from the WordPress editor. The intention is for users to create short pieces of content, such as that found on Twitter, Instagram, and similar social networks. However, it does not come with a front-end posting interface, at least not in…
The Full Site Editing (FSE) Outreach program has launched its third testing call, continuing the effort to engage users in a structured testing flow focused on specific practical tasks. Previous rounds had testers building a custom homepage and exploring the distinction between editing modes (template vs page/post). The challenge in round #3 is to create…
Automattic-owned WordPress.com launched its new Story-publishing feature today. Currently, only users with the WordPress for Android or iOS apps can add stories. Self-hosted users with Jetpack-connected sites can publish via the mobile apps too. The development team previewed the Story feature in January, launching a public beta on the Android app. Stories are essentially media…
WordPress 5.7 “Esperanza” was released today, named for Esperanza Spalding, an American jazz bassist who became an accomplished singer, songwriter, and composer in her early 20’s. Versions 9.3 – 9.9 of the Gutenberg plugin are rolled into this update, bringing hundreds of enhancements and bug fixes that make working in the block editor more efficient…
A new proposal on WordPress.org explores the ramifications of dropping support for Internet Explorer 11 (IE11). Héctor Prieto summarized the current state of IE usage among WordPress users, citing three metrics that demonstrate declining usage that is now cumulatively below ~1%: 0.71% from StatCounter’s GlobalStats 1.2% from W3 Counter 0.46% from WordPress.com StatCounter’s GlobalStats record IE11 having dipped…
The GPL is so embedded into WordPress that it is not just the license the platform is under but a part of the community’s culture. Friends have been gained and lost over discussions of it. Bridges burned. Battles waged. People cast out to the dark corners of the web that “we don’t talk about.” There…
Gutenberg 10.1 landed yesterday with several new features, many of which focused on improvements to the interface and user experience. Users can now control the justification of items in the Social Icons block. The new release also enhances the UX for creating reusable blocks, groups the Image block toolbar controls, and introduces categorized template parts…
A couple of weeks ago, Munir Kamal released version 2.6 of his Editor Plus WordPress plugin. The latest version does not add a slew of features as its users have seen in the past. However, it introduces one major upgrade. The new version lets users insert templates from Gutenberg Hub’s growing library directly from the…
WordPress’ growing market share is fueling a continual influx of new users but also a higher level of scrutiny around advertising. Companies with large advertising budgets target this segment of consumers, because many who are new to WordPress need help hosting and creating their websites. Last week Bluehost pulled an advertisement that misused WordPress’ trademark.…
Chrome Canary, the browser’s nightly build for developers, has been testing a new Follow button, as spotted on Android by the publishers of Chrome Story. The button appears on the homepage of a site, as well as in the browser menu: Chrome Story speculates that it may be integrated with Google’s Discover feature, allowing sites…
What was once likely viewed as plugin territory is now a reality as part of the Gutenberg project. Yesterday, the team merged a pull request for a Table of Contents (TOC) block into the plugin’s codebase. It was a contribution driven by developer Zebulan Stanphill, starting nearly a year ago. The TOC block may feel…
Bluehost was called out this week for misusing WordPress’ trademark, as the WordPress Foundation prohibits its use in advertising. The company has been featured on WordPress’ recommended hosting page for the past 16 years, as one of a handful of hosts that have been arbitrarily selected based on an incomplete list of criteria. The wording…
Earlier today, the WordPress theme directory welcomed its fourth block-based theme. Built by UXL Themes, Hansen is one of the more stylish projects capable of working with the site editor in the Gutenberg plugin. The theme author also stepped it up a notch and included several block patterns. I have written about how patterns will…
It’s that time in the release cycle when all the dev notes are rolling out ahead of the next major update. These notes include technical summaries of all the goodies coming in the next release. If you haven’t been paying close attention, there are always a few happy surprises in there that pop up as…