GoDaddy has acquired CoBlocks, ThemeBeans, Block Gallery and Block Unit Tests, one of the leading Gutenberg product lines in the WordPress ecosystem. Founder Rich Tabor is joining GoDaddy as Senior Product Manager of WordPress Experience and will lead a team dedicated to understanding users’ needs and expanding the company’s Gutenberg-related (more…)
Earlier this month, Jetpack 7.1 added suggestions to the plugin search screen, a controversial change that has sparked debate this week. When users search for a plugin that matches a term for an existing Jetpack feature, the plugin now inserts an artificial, dismissible search result into the first plugin card (more…)
In one of the most unpopular changes in the history of the WooCommerce open source project, version 3.6 will introduce “Marketplace Suggestions.” The update adds suggestions to the products admin screen, which vary based on whether it’s an empty state or within the list of products. “They are contextual mentions (more…)
Yesterday the discussion surrounding Jetpack’s implementation of feature suggestions in the plugin search screen became heated after developers pointed out that Automattic is also using these suggestions to promote paid upgrades. You can test this by searching for “backups” where you find that Jetpack’s commercial offering takes the place of (more…)
Over the weekend, Pipdig, a small commercial theme company, has been at the center of a scandal after multiple reports exposed a litany of unethical code additions to its Pipdig Power Pack (P3) plugin. On Friday, March 29, Wordfence threat analyst Mikey Veenstra published a report with code examples of (more…)
Jetpack 7.1 was released earlier this month with new blocks for WordAds, Business Hours, Contact Info, Slideshows, and Videos. This release also quietly added suggestions to the plugin search screen, a change that has not been well-received by the developer community. If a user searches for a plugin that has (more…)
10up has released a GitHub Action that enables developers to deploy to the WordPress.org Plugin repository by tagging a new version on GitHub. Helen Hou-Sandí, 10up’s Director of Open Source Initiatives, explained how it works: You’ll be able to manage your entire development lifecycle in GitHub—no more futzing with local (more…)
Daniel James is putting his Dark Mode plugin up for adoption. “I’m stepping back from plugin development (and WordPress contributions) and would like to see someone passionate about it pick it up,” James said. Dark Mode has 2,000 active installations and is the most popular among a handful of dark (more…)
WordPress core contributor Alex Shiels has published a proposal for a WordPress.org block directory that would host JavaScript-based, single block plugins. The directory would make blocks searchable and installable from within the Gutenberg editor. Building a directory for discovering blocks and seamlessly installing them is one of the nine projects (more…)
Freemius, a monetization, analytics, and marketing library for WordPress plugin and theme developers, patched an authenticated option update vulnerability in its wordpress-sdk four days ago. The library is included with many popular plugins, such as NextGEN Gallery (1,000,000+ installs), 404 – 301 (100,000+ installs), WP Security Audit Log (80,000+ installs), (more…)
WordPress 5.1 has been downloaded more than 3.6 million times since its release last week and work on 5.2 is now underway. The upcoming release will be led by Matt Mullenweg with Josepha Haden acting as Release Coordinator. Gary Pendergast posted a proposed scope and schedule that would have 5.2 (more…)
Wapuu Dashboard Pet is a new plugin from Kayleigh Thorpe and the team at WordPress hosting company 34SP.com. It is essentially a WordPress Tamagotchi, or digital pet, that resides in your dashboard and monitors the health of the site. The plugin checks to make sure WordPress has been updated (plugins, (more…)