For the past several months Hyun Supul, new owner of Aesop Interactive LLC, has been diligently improving Aesop Story Engine and today he’s released version 1.9. This release includes a new gallery type by Paul Eiche called Hero. Users can configure the Hero gallery type to fill the window or container vertically or horizontally. You…
In the last two years, I’ve had many private conversations with people in the WordPress community about WordPress core’s leadership. A phrase I’ve often heard during these conversations is, [I just don’t want to get crucified by insert name of core developer here.] It doesn’t matter who is saying or thinking it, it only matters…
WordPress 4.6 is scheduled for release on August 16th. This release streamlines the installation, activation, and update process for plugins, uses native system fonts for the WordPress backend, and improves the post editor. It also includes a number of enhancements under the hood. Outside of the improvements to the plugin and theme management process, there’s not…
Gravatar, acquired in 2007, is a service owned and operated by Automattic that allows you to assign profile images to email addresses. These images are used automatically when registering an account on sites or services that support Gravatar. Support for Gravatar was added in WordPress 2.5 “Brecker”. The other day, I registered an account on a new gaming site that uses…
Before the first inaugural WPCampus took place last weekend, the organizing team conducted a survey to learn how WordPress is used in higher education. A total of 486 people responded to the survey. Modern Tribe has not only made the survey results available to the public, they have also published an in-depth review of the data. There are a…
John James Jacoby, lead developer of bbPress and BuddyPress, published a 35 part tweetstorm sharing his thoughts on leadership in the WordPress project, the community, and the WordPress economy. A tweetstorm is a series of tweets linked together in chronological order around a particular topic. There are a number of useful nuggets of wisdom in…
Last week, Dan Cameron, creator of Sprout Invoices, received an email from the WordPress.org plugin review team stating that his plugin was in violation of the repository guidelines. Sprout Invoices was promptly removed from the directory and all of its 5-star reviews were also removed. Cameron had been discounting the professional license of his plugin…
PluginsCon is a conference dedicated to WordPress themes and plugins scheduled for September 8-9 in Salt Lake City, Utah, organized by Janet Thaeler and Joel Otterstrom. The event is geared towards developers, users, and marketers and was announced in April but has been pushed back to September 8-9 of 2017. I reached out to the…
WordPress the open-source software project is licensed under the GPLv2. This license grants users and developers the following freedoms. The freedom to run the program, for any purpose. The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can…
For the first time in history, more Americans are working for online publications than for traditional print newspapers. In his report on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, NiemanLab’s Joseph Lichterman succinctly summarizes the slow death of the American newspaper: It’s safe to assume that newspaper jobs will continue to evaporate. Most small…
We’ve recently installed some new plugins on the Tavern and one of them generates an admin notice that can not be dismissed without disabling it. Not only is this frustrating, but it makes it less likely that I’ll give the developer money to purchase the pro version. Here’s what the admin notice looks like. I’ve…
This post was contributed by guest author Peter Suhm. Peter is a web developer from the Land of the Danes. He is the creator of WP Pusher and a huge travel addict, bringing his work along with him as he goes. If you run a typical WordPress agency, I will be bold enough to…
Whether you manage WordPress plugins, themes, or a service, a key component to keeping users happy is communication. Users and especially paying customers want to know what’s going on. Going an extended period of time without communicating leads to doubt, a feeling of abandonment, and speculation. Communicating is not hard and these days, developers have…
In 2014, we wrote about the trend of more people receiving commit access to WordPress core. Fast forward to the beginning of 2016 and a total of 35 people can commit code to the core of WordPress. Helen Hou-Sandí, WordPress Lead Developer, published the stat on Twitter and notes that 22 out of the 35…
When I founded WP Tavern in 2009, comments were an important part of the site’s initial success. After six years, the site has published its 30,000th comment. At a time where large websites such as Copyblogger and the Toronto Star are closing down comments in favor of social media, the Tavern continues to be a…