In an effort to free up resources on WordPress.org, the WordPress Plugin Review Team is closing unused plugins. An unused plugin is one that has been approved for the directory but no code was uploaded by the developer in six months or more. An unused plugin reserves a URL slug (more…)
Jetpack 6.1 is available and is considered a general maintenance release. This version adds two improvements to the WordAds module. Users can now use the [wordads] shortcode to place an inline ad on any post or page. Support for the ads.txt file has also been added. A new filter is (more…)
XWP, Automattic, and Google’s AMP team, has released 0.7 Release Candidate 1 of the AMP for WordPress plugin. Hinted at during AMP Conf 2018 earlier this year, 0.7 is a major release that contains significant new features. This release adds Native AMP support for all of the default widgets, embeds, (more…)
Gutenberg 2.7 is available for testing and not only does it refine the visuals around block controls, it adds the highly requested ability to edit permalinks. Editing Permalinks in Gutenberg 2.7 A new pagination block is available that adds a page break, allowing users to break posts into multiple pages. (more…)
The plugin review team has amended guideline number nine which states, developers and their plugins must not do anything illegal, dishonest, or morally offensive, to include the following statement: Implying that a plugin can create, provide, automate, or guarantee legal compliance Mika Epstein, a member of the WordPress.org plugin review (more…)
Gutenberg 2.6 is available for download and with it, comes a new way of sorting blocks. In addition to using up and down arrows, this version introduces the ability to sort blocks by dragging and dropping. If you hover the cursor over the up and down arrows on the left (more…)
Not long after I published my experience with Gutenberg, developers reached out to me to work on some of the issues I mentioned. Riad Benguella figured out why meta boxes were not collapsing or expanding. It turns out that some meta boxes depend on the post script which has a (more…)
There have been many discussions over the years on whether or not Hello Dolly should be unbundled with WordPress. Seven years ago, it was argued that the lyrics are copyrighted and could potentially violate the GPL license. The latest issue with Hello Dolly is that some lyrics that appear in (more…)
In 2016, WordFence published their findings of a vulnerability that could have compromised the servers that are used to send out WordPress updates. It turned out to be a complex, obscure vulnerability that ignited a conversation surrounding the security of api.wordpress.org and what could happen if the servers were compromised. (more…)
Jetpack 5.8 is available for download and includes a handful of new features for Professional, Premium, and Personal plan users. In October of last year, Jetpack 5.4 began beta testing a new search module based on Elasticsearch. Jetpack 5.8 concludes the beta and the new search service is available to (more…)
WooCommerce 3.3.1 is available and fixes template conflicts discovered in a handful of WordPress themes that forced the team to revert WooCommerce 3.3. The team reviewed handful of the most common themes running WooCommerce and tested them for compatibility with 3.3.1. WooCommerce developers recommend that theme authors use hooks instead (more…)
Earlier this week, WooCommerce 3.3 was released and among the features was increased theme compatibility. However, soon after release, users of third-party themes reported issues with categories displaying improperly. Despite it being a minor release that should be fully backwards compatible with previous releases up to 3.0, WooCommerce has removed (more…)