In November, web hosting provider Bluehost launched a WordPress plugin and theme marketplace. The company integrated with MOJO Marketplace to provide access to WordPress products via its customer dashboard. Currently, the marketplace is open to third-party theme developers. Plugin authors will have to wait, but they will eventually be able to sell their plugins through…
WordPress 5.3.1 was released today with 46 bug fixes and enhancements. Changes include several accessibility improvements and four security vulnerability fixes. The update includes multiple changes to the default Twenty Twenty theme. Version 5.3.1 is a security and maintenance release. All users are encouraged to update as soon as possible. For those with auto-updates enabled,…
The past two weeks have been blazing fast for Gutenberg plugin development. A total of 161 pull requests (patches) were merged into version 7.1 of the plugin. Over 20 bugs were squashed while the team added several enhancements, which include better multi-block selection, a new welcome modal, and drag-and-drop featured images. The team refactored several…
Jeffrey Carandang, the creator behind the EditorsKit WordPress plugin, launched a new community site for sharing block designs and templates today. The ShareABlock website allows visitors to download block files directly from the site and import them into the block editor. Users can also sign up to share custom block designs and full-blown block templates.…
Josepha Haden, Executive Director of WordPress, published an update of WordPress’ goals in 2019. The focus for WordPress over the past year has been on nine primary projects. Of the nine projects, WordPress only managed to ship two in 2019. This means that the focus in 2020 will be much the same as the community…
The team behind Zero BS CRM launched version 3.0 of their WordPress plugin today. This is the first major release since the plugin was acquired by Automattic in August. The updated plugin uses custom database tables, opens the plugin for more extensions, and has a more consistent UI than previous versions. CRM is an acronym…
In a pull request on the Gutenberg repository yesterday, Riad Benguella created an initial document that outlines how block-based WordPress themes might work. While the document is merely a starting point for the conversation, it is a set of ideas that will likely forever reshape the WordPress landscape. It is paradigm-shifting. For the first time,…
On November 28, millions of people awoke to a Black Friday ad on nearly every page of their WordPress admin, courtesy of the Yoast SEO plugin. That day also coincided with the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, so it left freelancers and agencies scrambling to address a banner on their clients’ sites on a day they likely…
On November 27, Gutenberg 7.0 landed with several features, enhancements, and bug fixes. Most notably, the navigation block is now a stable feature. Theme authors can also start using block template parts and testing the post title and content blocks. The update addressed several bugs with the block editor. It also introduced new developer features…
‘Tis the largest shopping season of the year. While you are gearing up for a big weekend of finding that perfect gift for your family and friends, you might take a moment to consider giving your website a little something for the holiday. The following is our roundup of WordPress hosting, services, and plugins that…
10up announced the public availability of two GitHub Actions geared toward WordPress plugin developers yesterday. The first Action allows developers to deploy plugin updates directly to the WordPress.org plugin directory by tagging a release on GitHub. The second Action handles readme file and asset updates. On November 14, GitHub announced the public launch of their…
On November 13, the Gutenberg team launched version 6.9 with several features, most of which were aimed at developers. Users can now add custom image title attributes. Plugin developers can start diving into the new Block Patterns API. Plus, theme authors can begin tinkering with the experimental gradient presets and block templates features. Gutenberg 6.9…
After a multi-year hiatus, Elliott Richmond has relaunched his WordPress advent calendar and is looking for volunteers. The WP Snippets ’til Christmas site will host 24 days of WordPress code snippets starting on December 1 and lasting until December 24. With each passing day, a new code snippet will be revealed. Advent calendars are special…
On Tuesday, John James Jacoby announced that bbPress 2.6 was available to the public after a six-year wait in a post titled bbPress 2.6 — Better Great Than Never. The announcement landed with a whimper as it was overshadowed by the release of WordPress 5.3 on the same day. bbPress is an official WordPress project…
WordPress 5.3 “Kirk,” named in honor American jazz musician Rahsaan Roland Kirk, is now available for download. The update includes a new default theme named Twenty Twenty, user interface improvements aimed at accessibility, and new block editor features. This release saw contributions from 645 volunteers, which is the largest contributor group ever for a WordPress…