Earlier this year, we asked Automattic what’s going on with Edit Flow, an editorial workflow plugin for WordPress that the company acquired from Daniel Bachhuber, a former Automattician. Mark Armstrong, who represents Automattic, said the plugin is an active project used on many VIP client sites. However, the fixes implemented on the project’s GitHub account…
Since the rise of Twitter, every WordCamp has a designated hashtag for aggregating tweets about the event. Tweets using the hashtag are often a good measure of attendees’ excitement and connection to the speakers and activities. French developers Willy Bahuaud and Thierry Pigot have just released a new plugin to display a live Twitter wall…
Jetpack 4.3 was released today with a new admin interface that has been completely rewritten in React.js. The Jetpack team has been working on the redesign for a year and received feedback from more than 8,000 Jetpack users before the official release. After updating to 4.3, Jetpack users will see a new dashboard that offers…
LaunchKey’s password-free authentication platform has been acquired by iovation, a company that provides fraud prevention services and device-based authentication. The companies plan to merge their technologies to provide more authentication options and are launching a product called LaunchKey MFA, a new combined dynamic authentication suite. LaunchKey MFA offers security professionals a toolkit that includes a…
Ninja Forms 3.0 was released today after a year in development. WP Ninjas have completely rewritten the plugin using Backbone, Underscore, and Marionette, an undertaking that required the bulk of development time for this milestone. This architectural overhaul brings major improvements to the user experience. The most visible improvements can be seen in the form…
Over the weekend, Easy Meta Builder launched a new custom fields marketplace built around CMB2, a popular library that WordPress developers use to easily build metaboxes, custom fields, and forms. CMB2 is active on more than 50,0000 sites. Easy Meta Builder offers a “no code” way to use CMB2 for adding meta fields. WordPress plugin…
Two months ago the WordPress Plugin Directory guidelines became a heated topic of debate after the plugin team began cracking down on incentivized reviews. The most recent publicized incident involved the Sprout Invoices plugin, which was temporarily removed from the directory and all of its 5-star reviews erased after it was discovered that the author…
When a WordPress plugin has an update available, it comes with a “View Details” link where users can read the changelog before updating. Clicking the details link launches the changelog section of the readme.txt file in a modal window. Themes, on the other hand, do not have a link to view details, because WordPress.org doesn’t…
When uploading images to WordPress’ media library, there are a couple of different fields available to provide additional information. You can edit an image’s title, add a caption, provide alternative text, and add a description. The Alt Text field displays text when an image does not display. According to Morten Rand-Hendriksen, these fields are underutilized and largely ignored. There are two…
Mergebot is a new SaaS solution by Delicious Brains Inc., that simplifies the database merging process making it somewhat similar to VersionPress. Although he hasn’t used the service as it’s still in early beta, Bernard compares the two and provides insight into how Mergebot possibly accomplishes database merging at a technical level. “On the outside,…
Borek Bernard, co-founder of VersionPress, published an update on the company’s blog that details the progress of version 4.0. According to Bernard, the team is making headway on providing third-party plugin support which is a major feature of 4.0. Composer workflows will be in the release and the team has hired a user experience expert…
Jetpack 4.2 is a combination release with performance improvements and fixes for a couple of security vulnerabilities. These updates secure Contact Form submission exports from potential formula injections and fix a general XSS vulnerability in the misuse of the add_query_arg() function. The majority of enhancements in this release are centered on speeding up communication between…
WP Site Care announced that it will soon be entering the WordPress products business with a commercial recipe plugin. Co-founder Ryan Sullivan said the company is partnering with Feast Design Company to launch Cookbook, a full-featured recipe plugin that is mobile and SEO friendly. “A good chunk of our current customers are food bloggers and…
Last week WordPress plugin developer Rachel Carden released wA11y, a new plugin that offers comprehensive feedback on web accessibility issues. wA11y was created to provide a toolbox of resources for site owners and currently includes support for two well known web accessibility evaluation tools: Tota11y and WAVE. “You know that saying ‘Information wants to be…
Earlier this year we tested the Customize Snapshots feature plugin, which allows users to draft and preview customizer states. For the past several months Weston Ruter and his team at XWP have been working on adding the ability to schedule Customizer changes. This would allow users to stage content as a set of customizer changes,…