Earlier this week, Sajjad Hossain Sagor released the first version of his Drag & Drop Menu Items plugin in the WordPress plugin repository. The plugin is a one-off, single-use plugin that does exactly what its name describes — it allows end-users to drag menu items from the meta boxes on the nav menu screen to…
Over the weekend, Munir Kamal released version 2.0 of his ACF Blocks plugin, a project that creates a suite of blocks for the editor. The plugin offers 18 custom blocks in its free version and 15 more in the pro upgrade. It is built on top of Advanced Custom Fields Pro (ACF Pro). The latest…
Jetpack 8.5 was released today with a new podcast player block for sharing audio content. Configuring the block is as simple as entering the podcast RSS feed URL. This will automatically bring in the cover art and recent episodes. Block options allow for further customization of the display, including the number of episodes, colors, and…
How do you know what blocks are in use on a WordPress site? I recently saw a tweet asking this question in regards to knowing whether it is safe to turn off a plugin. This seems like it could become a common question, especially for those who have hundreds or thousands of blog posts as…
The team behind the Gutenberg plugin shipped version 8.0 yesterday. The update adds some nice user-facing changes, including a merged block and pattern inserter, new inline formatting options, and visual changes to the code editor. Over two dozen bug fixes were included in the release, along with several enhancements. Designers on the project updated the…
Chatterbox is a new plugin with a fun and creative use for the block editor. It displays chat or text threads using blocks that are styled as conversations. Users can type in a record of a chat, including timestamps, with a live preview in the editor. Since written conversations are essentially little blocks of text…
For Gutenberg junkies, the three-week wait between major releases has been rough, especially during this time when many are looking for new things to fill the gaps in our social calendars. Not to fret, the team dropped version 7.9 of the plugin earlier today. This release includes several goodies such as new typography-related controls for…
It is no secret that I love testing out the sort of fun WordPress blocks that hark back to my early days of the web. I have written on the subject once or twice. Imagine my surprise when I came across a side-scrolling dinosaur game that users could simply plop into the block editor and…
The Jetpack team announced today that its search service is now available as a separate package from the professional bundle it was previously under. The move should make it more affordable for small sites to use the service. Larger sites might have to shell out more money, depending on how much content is on the…
Have I mentioned how excited I am about the potential of block patterns? For regular Tavern readers, I may sound like a broken record at this point, but I am going to continue evangelizing this upcoming feature for WordPress. With no social plans or other important things requiring my attention this past weekend, it made…
Version 7.8 of the Gutenberg plugin landed yesterday. The team continues to improve the editor with the refreshed interface work that began in version 7.7. The most useful feature with this update of the plugin is the inclusion of the Patterns API for plugin and theme developers. This release is not the massive feature release…
Meta Box released its MB Views add-on plugin last week. The new extension allows developers to build custom templates from the comfort of their WordPress admin. The goal is to provide an easy-to-use interface for outputting custom fields without editing theme files, but its flexibility pushes the boundaries of full-site editing. Quick take: MB Views…
You could say that I am a bit of a fanboy of the late 1990s and early 2000s web. I loved the funkiness of GeoCities.
Yesterday, Automattic launched version 4.0 of its WooCommerce plugin. Except for the new admin interface, which has been in testing for over a year, the development of this update began in January 2020. The update also includes an updated onboarding experience for new users. Version 4.0 is a major release of the plugin. Users should…
Organic Themes released the Bulk Block Converter WordPress plugin last month and updated it in the past week. The plugin allows users to convert classic content, written in the old editor, to the new block format. Unless end-users have the Classic Editor plugin installed, their old content is placed into the classic block in the…