WPHelpful is a plugin created by Zack Gilbert and Paul Jarvis that allows users to rate the helpfulness of a post. It can be a useful addition to sites that offer tutorials, lessons, documentation, or any content where user feedback is warranted. Version 1.0 is available for free in the official WordPress plugin directory, but…
With the WordPress theme directory dominated by business-oriented themes, it’s sometimes tough to find themes that cater to more specific user groups. If you dig deep enough, you’ll find something outside the norm. Bayleaf is a blog theme specifically designed for sharing food and recipes. The theme is designed and developed by Vedathemes. They currently…
The News Project founded by Merril Brown has launched its first customer site, CALmatters. CALmatters is a nonprofit journalism venture that covers politics, environmental regulation, education, and more. The site sports a new design, a fresh logo, and was built using WordPress. The News Project describes itself as a “solution that integrates best-of-breed content, audience…
It’s Friday and we could probably all use a little more positivity in our lives, especially on social media. Morten Rand-Hendriksen recently asked his followers on Twitter how WordPress has changed their lives. Here are a couple of the responses that stood out to me. As a beginner web designer, who was struggling to find…
Last week, I published an article that describes the process I went through in Gutenberg to try to add an aligned image to a paragraph block. I concluded that performing the task in the Classic Editor was easier than in Gutenberg. In response to the article, William Earnhardt compared the process and showed how it…
The WordPress 5.0 release schedule has been published and not everyone is excited about the expected November 19th release. November 19th is three days before Thanksgiving, a major holiday in the U.S. Historically, WordPress has shipped major versions in early to mid December rather than November. Holidays were considered because of the sharp drop-off in…
Gutenberg and WordPress core contributor Gary Pendergast has weighed in with this thoughts on ClassicPress, a fork of WordPress created by Scott Bowler. Pendergast praises the fork and extended an open invitation to Bowler to collaborate in the future. As a member of the WordPress core team, I certainly hold no ill-feelings towards them, and…
Depending on how far and deep you look, there is not a lot of positive sentiment surrounding Gutenberg. For Scott Bowler, the notion of merging Gutenberg into WordPress 5.0 represents a shift so detrimental to the project, he has forked WordPress into a new project called ClassicPress. “The team at WordPress have decided to force…
It’s been about four months since the last time I shared my experience with Gutenberg. In that time, there have been sixteen releases. The more I use Gutenberg, the more nuances I encounter. Disruptive Writing Flow When writing a post, I press the enter key at the end of a paragraph. This creates a new…
WordPress.com came under fire this week for hosting a site with conspiracy theories claiming the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax. The New York Times published an article titled “This Company Keeps Lies About Sandy Hook on the Web,” setting off a hailstorm of angry posts on social media that demanded Automattic take…
Pippin Williamson, founder of Easy Digital Downloads, published an apology on the company’s blog today admitting that it made a mistake in its pricing model for extension passes. In mid-June, the company introduced a new set of pricing options or passes. The passes come with a single license that provide access to a group of…
Last month, WP Engine acquired StudioPress. Brian Gardner, founder of StudioPress, recently shared his thoughts on why he didn’t want to sell the business, but did. Making a decision that not only affects your livelihood, the livelihood of your partners and employees, and the livelihood of an entire community isn’t for the faint of heart. It…
Jennifer McFarland, the web services coordinator for the North Carolina State Office of Information Technology (OIT), recently did an interview with Technician, the official student newspaper of NC State University. Since Gutenberg’s announcement in December of 2017, McFarland has published a series of articles on the NC State Office of Information Technology website educating staff…
Last week, I had the pleasure of joining Michael Fienen and Aaron Hill, hosts of the Drunken UX podcast, to discuss Gutenberg. We covered a lot of topics, including, why Gutenberg was created, our experiences, its timeline, pros, cons, resources, our biggest concerns, and what developers and freelancers need to know. The show is one…
Ive used Gutenberg for several months and during that time, there have been moments where I love it and situations where I've had to disable the plugin because of frustrating bugs. One of the most frustrating aspects of using Gutenberg is the lack of support from the plugins I depend on. Publish Post Preview I…