Nick Diego released the Icon Block plugin last week. Unlike similar blocks that are available, it does not rely on a third-party library. Instead, it caters to the developer and DIY crowd, allowing them to add any SVG directly to the editor. Diego is the author of the Block Visibility plugin, which is just a…
As always, I like to highlight some things on the lighter side of the WordPress world. We have had enough business acquisitions in the past week — the whole year, really — that we need to take a break and enjoy the more experimental developments that the community has to offer. Such as the case…
WordPress developer Keanan Koppenhaver announced today that he has acquired WP Pusher and Branch from Peter Suhm. WP Pusher, a product we have covered for the past six years, allows users to deploy plugins and themes from popular code hosting services like GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket. In 2018, Suhm expanded his offerings to include Branch,…
Gutenberg 11.5 landed earlier today. It is a hefty release that includes extensive changes to the Navigation block, a new way for grouping widgets, and more block gap feature integration. I have had mixed reactions to the features that made it into the latest release. At some points, I thought to myself, finally, this made…
As a teen, I would visit my Uncle David’s house every other week or so. He was the only family member with a computer. It was an old, bulky monstrosity that ran whatever the latest version of Windows that existed at the time. It was one of my first introductions to dial-up, but my primary…
Pipe Wrench, an online publication that dissects different topics through longform stories, reactions, interpretations, and asides, has released a free WordPress plugin called Native Land Search. The publication commissioned the plugin from Alex Gustafson, a subscriber and contributor to the magazine. Native Land Search offers a search block or “Native Lands Aside” block pattern that…
Autumn is my favorite time of the year. On some weekends, I like to drive through my old hometown with the windows rolled down. I crawl through the school zone at 25 mph and breathe in the football field’s freshly cut grass. All those memories of blood, guts, and glory under the Friday night lights…
Automattic has acquired the Social Image Generator plugin, a commercial product that automatically creates social share images for WordPress content from a set of fully customizable templates. The plugin launched in February 2021, with a starting price of $39/year but is now closed to new sales. Daniel Post, the plugin’s creator, is joining Automattic to…
In July, Termly announced its acquisition of the GDPR/CCPA Cookie Consent Banner plugin. The new direction was an overhaul of the WordPress extension, turning what was once a free offering into, essentially, a commercial SaaS product. Users could run the service for up to 100 visitors. After that, the cheapest tier would cost $180 per…
Another two weeks have flown by, and another Gutenberg plugin update is in the books. I always look forward to the latest release, awaiting what goodies our contributor community has produced. Sometimes I jump the gun and install a development version of the plugin to understand an upcoming feature, such as the new “block gap”…
Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) has released version 5.10, the first major release since the plugin was acquired by Delicious Brains. It introduces several new features that were previously experimental, closing out tickets that were started by previous owner Elliot Condon. The release enables HTML escaping by default, which helps prevent Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks. It…
Earlier this week, websevendev released its fourth WordPress plugin to the official directory named Block Attributes. The extension allows end-users to add any HTML attribute to nearly any block. One of the problems with the WordPress editor is that it can be a bit fussy about customizing HTML. Blocks are built on a set of…
Last week, I reached out to several members of the core WordPress committers to see if we could get an official word on whether Classic Editor support would continue beyond the mere months it seemingly had left to live. I received a semi-official answer but was asked to hold off on publishing for a more…
Earlier today, Gutenberg 11.3 landed in the WordPress plugin directory. The latest update introduces a new dimensions panel for toggling spacing-related block options. The Button block now supports the padding control, and the Post Featured Image block has new width and height settings. One of the release’s highlights was a speed improvement for both opening…
Many in the WordPress developer community were surprised to learn that WordPress.org is rejecting plugins with the “WP” prefix in the name after Joe Youngblood tweeted the rejection note he received. Although that restriction was put into place approximately seven months ago, there was no official communication on the change. As the result of the…