News

  • WordPress 5.6 Release Team Pulls the Plug on Block-Based Widgets

    WordPress 5.6 Release Team Pulls the Plug on Block-Based Widgets

    I was wrong. I assured our readers that “the block-based widget system will be ready for prime time when WordPress 5.6 lands” in my previous post on the new feature’s readiness. I also said that was on the condition of not trying to make it work with the customizer — that experience was still broken.…

  • WooCommerce Tests New Instagram Shopping Checkout Feature, Now in Closed Beta

    WooCommerce Tests New Instagram Shopping Checkout Feature, Now in Closed Beta

    Instagram’s checkout feature, which allows users to purchase products without leaving the app, has become an even more important part of Facebook’s long-term investment in e-commerce now that the pandemic has so heavily skewed consumer behavior towards online shopping. When Instagram introduced checkout in 2019, it reported that 130 million users were tapping to reveal…

  • Past Twenty* WordPress Themes To Get New Block Patterns

    Past Twenty* WordPress Themes To Get New Block Patterns

    Mel Choyce-Dwan, the Default Theme Design Lead for WordPress 5.6, kick-started 10 tickets around two months ago that would bring new features to the old default WordPress themes. The proposal is to add unique block patterns, a feature added to WordPress 5.5, to all of the previous 10 Twenty* themes. It is a lofty goal…

  • Using the Web Stories for WordPress Plugin? You Better Play By Google’s Rules

    Using the Web Stories for WordPress Plugin? You Better Play By Google’s Rules

    What comes as a surprise to few, Google has updated its content guidelines for its Web Stories format. For users of its recently-released Web Stories for WordPress plugin, they will want to follow the extended rules for their Stories to appear in the “richer experiences” across Google’s services. This includes the grid view on Search,…

  • Stripe Acquires Paystack for $200M+

    Stripe Acquires Paystack for $200M+

    The big news in the world of e-commerce today is Stripe’s acquisition of Paystack, a Nigeria-based payments system that is widely used throughout African markets. The company, which became informally known as “the Stripe of Africa” picked up $8 million in Series A funding in 2018, led by Stripe, Y Combinator, and Tencent. Paystack has…

  • WooCommerce 4.6 Makes New Home Screen the Default for New and Existing Stores

    WooCommerce 4.6 Makes New Home Screen the Default for New and Existing Stores

    WooCommerce 4.6 was released today. The minor release dropped during WooSesh, a global, virtual conference dedicated to WooCommerce and e-commerce topics. It features the new home screen as the default for all stores. Previously, the screen was only the default on new stores. Existing store owners had to turn the feature on in the settings.…

  • Google Podcasts Manager Adds More Data from Search: Impressions, Top-Discovered Episodes, and Search Terms

    Google Podcasts Manager Adds More Data from Search: Impressions, Top-Discovered Episodes, and Search Terms

    Google announced an expansion of listener engagement metrics today for those using its Podcast Manager. Previously, audience insights included data about the types of devices listeners are using, where listeners tune in and drop off during a given episode, total number of listens, and listening duration, but the service lacked analytics regarding how visitors were…

  • WordCamp Austin 2020 Finds Success with VR Experience for Sessions and Networking

    WordCamp Austin 2020 Finds Success with VR Experience for Sessions and Networking

    WordCamp Austin 2020 attendees are raving about their experiences attending the virtual event last Friday. It was no secret that the camp’s organizers planned to use Hubs Virtual Rooms by Mozilla to create a unique environment, but few could imagine how much more interactive and personalized the experience would be than a purely Zoom-based WordCamp. After selecting…

  • Privacy-Conscious WordPress Plugin Caches and Serves Gravatar Images Locally

    Privacy-Conscious WordPress Plugin Caches and Serves Gravatar Images Locally

    Ari Stathopoulos released his new Local Gravatars plugin last week. The goal of the plugin is to allow site owners to take advantage of the benefits of a global avatar system while mitigating privacy concerns by hosting the images locally. In essence, it is a caching system that stores the images on the site owner’s…

  • WordPress 5.6 to Introduce Application Passwords for REST API Authentication

    In 2015, WordPress 4.4 introduced a REST API, but one thing that has severely limited its broader use is the lack of authentication capabilities for third-party applications. After considering the benefits and drawbacks of many different types of authentication systems, George Stephanis published a proposal for integrating Application Passwords, into core. Stephanis highlighted a few…

  • WP Agency Summit Begins Its Second Annual Virtual Event October 12

    WP Agency Summit Begins Its Second Annual Virtual Event October 12

    Jan Koch, the founder and host of WP Agency Summit, is kicking off his second annual event on October 12. The five-day event will feature 37 speakers from a wide range of backgrounds across the WordPress industry. It is a free virtual event that anyone can attend. “The focus for the 2020 WP Agency Summit…

  • Navigation Screen Sidelined for WordPress 5.6, Full-Site Editing Edges Closer to Public Beta

    Navigation Screen Sidelined for WordPress 5.6, Full-Site Editing Edges Closer to Public Beta

    The new block-based navigation screen is once again delayed after it was originally slated for WordPress 5.5 and then put on deck for 5.6. Contributors have confirmed that it will not be landing in WordPress core until 2021 at the earliest. “The Navigation screen is still in experimental state in the Gutenberg plugin, so it hasn’t had…

  • EditorPlus 1.9 Adds Animation Builder for the Block Editor

    EditorPlus 1.9 Adds Animation Builder for the Block Editor

    Munir Kamal shows no signs of slowing down. He continues to push forward with new features for his EditorPlus plugin, which allows end-users to customize the look of the blocks in their posts and pages. He calls it the “no-code style editor for WordPress.” The latest addition to his plugin? Animation styles for every core…

  • Cloudflare Launches Automatic Platform Optimization for WordPress

    Cloudflare Launches Automatic Platform Optimization for WordPress

    Just a day after launching its new privacy-first web analytics product last week, Cloudflare announced Automatic Platform Optimization (APO) for WordPress. The new service boasts staggering performance improvements for sites that might otherwise be slowed down by shared hosting, slow database lookups, or sluggish plugins: Our testing… showed a 72% reduction in Time to First…