Jetpack 4.1 was released today with performance improvements that make calls to the database more efficient, reducing what Jetpack does on each page load. Slideshows should load faster now that the Carousel module has been tweaked to no longer load full-size images in the previous and next previews. Using Photon in dev mode has also…
Nearly eight months after acquiring Aseop Interactive from Nick Haskins in 2015, Hyun Supual has released Aesop Story Engine 1.7.8. Supual prefaced the announcement by explaining why the blog hasn’t been updated in months. “Although this blog has not been updated too frequently, work has been continuing on Aesop Story Engine,” Supual said. “The recent focus has…
During a recent NerdWallet hackathon, WordPress plugin developer Mickey Kay and his colleague John Lee came up with an idea for creating a visual archive for the site’s content that would allow them to look back at previous versions and associate SEO and performance shifts with content changes. WordPress powers a large portion of NerdWallet…
Reviews of WordPress plugins on the directory come in all shapes and sizes. Some are really helpful while others are short and to the point. For example, this review from a recent WP eCommerce user, “I uninstalled and it left orphan tables I now have to clean up manually. Poorly done.” This type of review…
Jetpack 4.0.4 is available for download and users are encouraged to update as soon as possible. This release contains a number of security fixes, including extra security to post by email, a patched XSS vulnerability in the Likes module, and a fix to ensure that submitted Feedback forms are not publicly available via the REST…
Jason Coleman, creator of the popular Paid Memberships Pro plugin, published a post today, warning users that many payment gateways will soon require TLS 1.2. The encryption protocol secures communication between the server and customers’ browsers so that things like credit card numbers and addresses can be transferred safely. Coleman outlined the requirements that a…
Brad Touesnard, Founder of Delicious Brains, explains why clients should own the licenses purchased by developers if the plugin is an integral part of the project. Sometimes developers who purchase licenses fail to keep them updated or keep in touch with clients. “Worst case scenario: The client never updates the plugin and eventually it breaks…
After more than a year in development, Gravity Forms 2.0 is available for download. This release contains a number of new features and developer enhancements. Conditional logic is now supported by more fields and can be used on multi-input fields such as Name and Address. The underlying code contains improvements that provide the foundation for upcoming…
Child themes have been in use in WordPress for more than seven years and the concept of using them to extend a parent theme is now an established best practice in theme development. The idea is that modifications made in a child theme will not be overwritten when an update is available for the parent…
The Postmatic team has announced that version two of its plugin is available for download. This release contains a number of new features including digests, comment intelligence, service integration support, new email templates, and more. Comment Intelligence Instead of sending emails for every comment, Comment Intelligence analyzes the comment’s content and sends an email if…
Justin Tadlock announced this week that his new ButterBean post meta box framework is now in beta. The framework is object-oriented and built on Backbone.js and Underscore.js. Although the WordPress development community has already produced several post meta frameworks, ButterBean was created for a very specific use case: custom post types with lots of custom…
Researchers at Sucuri are reporting that the WP Mobile Detector plugin has been patched for an arbitrary file upload vulnerability that is being actively exploited in the wild. The plugin, which was temporarily removed from the WordPress Plugin Directory, had more than 10,000 active installs before the exploits began. According to Sucuri, the majority of…
The Jetpack team launched developer.jetpack.com this week, a searchable code reference for actions, filters, and features found in the plugin. Although Jetpack is developed to be highly extensible, up until now there was no centralized place for developers to find documentation. The reference features new hooks added in the most recent version and can also…
Jetpack 4.0.3 is a security release that contains an important fix for a critical vulnerability that has been present in the plugin since version 2.0, released in 2012. According to Jetpack team member Sam Hotchkiss, a stored XSS vulnerability was found in the way that some Jetpack shortcodes are processed, which allows an attacker to…
In early 2015, the WordPress.org Meta team redesigned the WordPress plugin directory and added a number of new features. In an effort to iterate on the page’s layout, the Meta Team has published prototypes of a new design for the plugin directory’s home and search results pages. The prototypes are inspired by Get WordPress, a…