It seems to be the week for dropping news of WordPress feature plugins. Felix Arntz, WordPress core committer and developer programs engineer at Google, announced a plan to push a lazy loading feature to the platform. If testing goes well, this feature could land in WordPress 5.4 in March. The concept of lazy loading allows…
Thierry Muller, a Developer Relations Program Manager at Google, and several contributors posted an update on the XML sitemaps feature that may land in WordPress this year. After seven months of development, the team has made the XML Sitemaps feature plugin available on GitHub. It is currently open for testing and feedback. The plugin should…
David Vongries, creator of the Page Builder Framework theme, launched the Swift Control plugin last week. The plugin is billed as a replacement for the core WordPress toolbar (admin bar). It allows site owners to customize the front-end control panel’s appearance and what links are displayed. Swift Control adds a new button on the front…
The Gutenberg team announced version 7.3 of the plugin yesterday. This was the second release of the year, which included 159 contributions from 56 people. The major changes to the plugin include settings for changing the navigation block’s text and background colors, a new Block Collections API for developers, and placeholder blocks for post elements.…
GiveWP plugin users raised $106 million in donations in 2019. This is the first time donation amounts have crossed the $100 million threshold in a year. Matt Cromwell, GiveWP’s COO, made the announcement on Facebook last week. This is a jump from the $88 million and $41 million raised in 2018 and 2017, respectively. “I’m…
Stratus5, a company that specializes in cloud container management and business service automation, launched Dollie today. Dollie is a cloud-based eCommerce solution for WordPress developers looking to provide white-label hosting services to their customers. The platform allows developers and agencies to sell custom, pre-configured WordPress solutions to their clients. Dollie is built on top of…
Adam Wathan, creator of the Tailwind CSS, published the early release notes for the upcoming version 1.2.0 update to the framework. The new version will include the much-anticipated support for CSS grids and several other useful features for app and website designers. There are no planned breaking changes with the update. Tailwind CSS is a…
The Gutenberg team released version 7.2 of the plugin yesterday after a four-week release hiatus for the holidays. This update includes at least 180 pull requests to the project’s repository by 56 contributors. The largest user-facing features include a new “buttons” block that allows users to add multiple buttons in a row and the ability…
BobWP.com announced yesterday that the site and its podcast would be rebranded to “Do the Woo at BobWP .” After a decade of more generalized WordPress topics and news, it will now focus specifically on the WooCommerce plugin and its community. The podcast will also be aired weekly, notching up their previous twice-monthly episodes. For…
Phil Kurth and Jason Schuller launched a new WordPress product named Landing Kit today. The plugin allows end-users to map a domain name to any post, page, or custom post type entry. It includes other features such as SSL support and URL redirecting. More features like custom templates and Gutenberg blocks are on the way.…
Scott Kingsley Clark, lead developer of the Pods Framework, announced the project was seeking new donors on Thursday. Automattic, the primary sponsor, dropped out after funding the project since 2012. This has put the team in a position to seek help for maintaining and supporting the project. Automattic was previously covering around 90% of the…
The WordPress Theme Review Team announced its color picker control today. The project is a single package that allows theme authors to include an advanced color control in the customizer. The control allows users to select a hex color with an optional alpha channel to handle transparency. The color control is the fourth feature package…
The team behind the Rank Math SEO plugin released an update that includes full support for the block editor on December 18. The update includes around two dozen features, improvements, and fixes. The biggest feature update was the inclusion of a new plugin sidebar for the block editor. Some of the new features include a…
Mel Choyce-Dwan shared the first version of the WordPress admin block directory prototype the design team has been working on. The goal is to bring the block directory to the admin in WordPress 5.5, which is currently set for August 2020 on the roadmap. The post also outlines reusable components that can be used in…
On December 18, less than a week since WordPress 5.3.1 security update shipped to the masses, the core team dropped a version 5.3.2 maintenance release. No security issues were named in this update. Instead, 5.3.2 addresses a couple of high-priority bugs along with a few other issues. Users with automatic updates enabled should already be…