Gutenberg 3.8 is available for download. This release features a full screen mode that hides both the admin bar and the menu. Unlike previous versions of Distraction-Free-Writing mode where things would fade in and out of view, these two items stay hidden until full-screen mode is disabled. User Interface elements have been added to manage…
If you search for “slider” in the WordPress plugins directory, MetaSlider is the first result that comes up. The plugin, created by the team at UpdraftPlus, is active on more than 900,000 sites, more than any other free slider plugin, and averages a 4.7-star review. It includes four different types of sliders: Flex 2, Nivo…
For the past year, Daniel James has been developing the Dark Mode plugin for WordPress. The plugin is actively installed on more than 1K sites. Dark Mode replaces the white and grey colors in the backend with darker colors that are easier on the eyes. James has published a proposal to merge the plugin into…
At the end of 2017, WooCommerce published some of their “Wootenberg experiments”, one of the first previews of what e-commerce might look like in the Gutenberg era. Gutenberg’s handling of meta boxes has greatly evolved since that time and the WooCommerce Gutenberg Products Block feature plugin is now active on more than 20,000 sites. The…
In October, Google’s open source AMP project (Accelerated Mobile Pages) will be heading into its third year. The initiative aims to improve performance on the mobile web and currently boasts usage on 25 million domains across publishing, advertising, e-commerce, and business websites. WordPress had a rocky beginning with its official AMP plugin, which was originally…
Gutenberg 3.7 is available for download and contains a number of changes. The Fixed Toolbar has been renamed Unified Toolbar. This is an optional mode that fixes all of the toolbar icons to the top of the editor, similar to the Classic editor. The team discovered that experienced users who don’t mind the disconnect between…
10up’s Distributor plugin has exited beta and is now publicly available. The free plugin syndicates content across WordPress multisite networks and the web. It went into beta last year and 10up reports that more than 100 organizations and developers participated in the beta program. “We’ve already integrated many improvements contributed by beta testers, including 10up…
WordPress core committer John Blackbourn has released a new plugin called Network Media Library that provides a shared media library across all sites on a WordPress multisite network. Blackbourn is an engineer at Human Made and the plugin is one he created for a client by forking Frank Bültge and Dominik Schilling’s Multisite Global Media…
Yoast SEO 8.0, featuring the plugin’s first pass at integrating with the Gutenberg interface. This major update also revamps the classic editor’s meta box for those who do not have the Gutenberg plugin installed. In the past, the Yoast SEO meta box was displayed below the post editor. In the Gutenberg UI, the meta box…
Gutenberg 3.5.0 is available for download and polishes existing features. This release adds an edit button to embed blocks that allows users to edit the source URL. The contrast has been increased for input fields and check boxes have visually more distinct states as the following video shows. One notable change is the addition of…
Joost de Valk tweeted a sneak peek of the Gutenberg integration the Yoast SEO team is currently testing. The plugin has more than 5 million active installations and is one that packs a lot into its wide meta box. Users have been curious about what compatibility with the new editor will look like for Yoast…
The Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) team published an announcement today, assuring users that Gutenberg compatibility is in the works and will be available in version 5.0 of the free version in September 2018. The plugin, created by Elliot Condon, makes it easy for developers to add custom fields to WordPress edit screens, including posts, users,…
As Gutenberg nears a merge with WordPress, Theme Authors are running out of time to ensure that their themes are compatible. The Gutenberg handbook has an excellent article on how to opt-in and add support for enhanced features. Most themes will present the default blocks without any issues as the blocks themselves provide their own…
If you want to see what Gutenberg blocks are available on a site along with their attributes, check out the Block Attributes Glossary plugin by NC State’s Office of Information Technology and Design. The plugin adds a Glossary Attributes Block to Gutenberg that when added to a post or page, displays an index of blocks…
Font Awesome 5.2 was released yesterday with two new categories and 372 new icons, bringing the total number of free icons to 1,295. The open source vector icon font is used on more than 22 million sites across the internet. It’s also a popular icon font with WordPress theme and plugin developers. Version 5.2 introduces…