When it comes to spam, comments are one of the first things that comes to mind. However, spam user registrations can be just as prolific on sites with open registration. Leland Fiegel, founder of Themetry, has developed a new plugin called Stop Signup Spam that prevents users from registering an account if their email or…
Weglot, a multilingual plugin which has been in the WordPress market for a little over a year, has closed €450K in seed funding from SIDE Capital. Co-founder Rémy Berda reports that there are now more than 10,000 websites using Weglot and the company has passed 30K€ in monthly revenue. Over the past six months Berda…
Jetpack 4.9 gives self-hosted WordPress users access to some of the widgets that are available on WordPress.com. One of the most useful ones for European websites is the new EU Cookie Law Banner widget. The WordPress plugin directory has dozens of plugins related to cookie consent, but Jetpack users can now get this feature bundled…
Managing social media accounts across multiple networks can be a cumbersome task. Social Media Suite by Tina Todorovic and Dejan Markovic, based in Toronto, Canada, aims to make managing those accounts a breeze. At its core, Social Media Suite is a social media marketing management platform. To use it, you’ll first have to install the…
Shopify’s official plugin for WordPress was removed from the plugin directory this week. The plugin allowed users to create “Buy Buttons” for products from their Shopify stores and insert them into WordPress posts and pages using a shortcode. It was built by WebDevStudios and had approximately 9,000 active installations before it was removed. Shopify’s documentation…
One of the most difficult things about writing online is expressing tone and emotion. Emoticons and Emoji help, but what if there was a tool that uses artificial intelligence to determine the emotional response readers are most likely to have after consuming your content? That’s the idea behind Watsonfinds, a free WordPress plugin created by…
If you work with WordPress every day you may have learned to tune out the recommended plugins in the admin by now, but the “Add Plugins” screen is an important part of the new user experience. WordPress developers Joey Kudish and Nick Hamze have released a plugin that brings better recommendations to the admin. Hamze…
After the controversial changes to Twitter’s @reply feature, which no longer counts usernames towards the 140-character limit, Mastodon registrations rose sharply. Mastodon is a free, open source, decentralized network that has many similarities to Twitter. The software, named in honor of its creator’s favorite metal band, was launched in October and registered 24,000 users in…
Last month the WordPress Plugin Directory relaunched with a new design and improvements to the search algorithm. The new design replaced the plugin pages’ previous tabbed interface with a wall of text, truncated by numerous “read more” links. The outpouring of negative community feedback on the new design overshadowed many of the helpful improvements. Removal…
A common frustration I’ve experienced in WordPress after installing a plugin is figuring out where the settings link is located. It can be a top-level menu item or tucked away in a sub-menu. Sometimes, the plugin doesn’t warrant a settings link. A new plugin called Show Plugin Menu Items on Activation created by Kellen Mace and Gary Kovar seeks…
Less than three weeks ago Yoast SEO version 4.5 was released with an ugly, non-dismissible notice for sites on PHP 5.2. The notice encourages the user to upgrade to PHP 7, explaining that it is faster and more secure. It includes links for getting started and example emails that users can send to their hosting…
Jetpack 4.8 was released this week with a settings redesign that is a continuation of the React.js-powered admin interface introduced last September. The new settings screen has been completely rearranged under a more simplified menu. “We went through every setting on WordPress.com and Jetpack to make sure it was necessary to keep around, and to…
Two weeks ago, I highlighted a WordPress plugin that displays upcoming WordCamps in the Dashboard. I’ve recently discovered that the WordPress Community team is working on an official plugin that does something similar called Nearby WordPress Events. The plugin attempts to detect a user’s location and displays upcoming events within the WordPress News dashboard widget.…
The new WordPress Plugin Directory went live today. Contributors have been working for the past year on rebuilding the directory with a new design and better capabilities for searching through the 45K+ available plugins. The new landing page displays a search bar prominently at the top, followed by sections for featured plugins, popular plugins, and…
The WordPress plugin directory provides information such as version requirements, compatibility, last updated, and active installs for plugins. What it doesn’t tell you is how old a plugin is. A new site called Age WP Plugin created by Ahmad Awais and Maedah Batool makes finding this information easy. Simply type in a plugin’s slug into…