The official WordPress Importer plugin is in shambles and has frustrated users with inconsistent performance for years. The plugin has more than a million active installations and is critical for migrations, unless you are familiar with using more advanced tools. With years of unresolved support threads identifying the plugin’s many bugs, the importer is in…
When Google Analytics by Yoast suddenly turned into MonsterInsights yesterday, many users were taken by surprise. Users voiced their frustration and concerns on the plugin’s support forum. Some users thought their sites were hacked after noticing the menu label changed and seeing a bright green menu icon. Syed Balkhi, founder of WPBeginner.com, along with Chris…
WordPress caching plugins are notorious for being packed full of confusing options, spammy with upsells, and difficult to uninstall. Users who are looking for a caching solution that simply works and has nothing to configure should check out Simple Cache, a new plugin on WordPress.org that offers a one-click install. The plugin promises lightning fast…
Twenty-four hours ago, the future of Edit Flow was unclear due to a lack of communication from the project’s maintainer, Automattic. Today however, the company pushed Edit Flow 0.8.1 to the WordPress plugin directory which is the same version that’s on GitHub. According to the plugin’s changelog, 0.8.1 includes the following: New German localization New…
Edit Flow is an editorial workflow plugin for WordPress created in 2009 that is actively installed on more than 10K sites. Although the author listing on the plugin’s page shows Mohammad Jangda, Daniel Bachhuber, and Scott Bressler as authors, it’s currently maintained by Automattic. Bachhuber announced in 2013 that Automattic claimed ownership of all the…
The team behind AffiliateWP is celebrating its second anniversary today. The plugin and its suite of add-ons has rapidly become one of the most successful products in the WordPress ecosystem under the leadership of Pippin Williamson and his team. Williamson, who is known for his yearly transparency reports, shared that AffiliateWP was the fastest of…
Borek Bernard and Jan Voráček, creators of VersionPress, announced that they’re transitioning the plugin into a free, open source project hosted on GitHub. In addition, they are releasing VersionPress 3.0 Beta, the first version released under the new model. Open Source Is the Way Forward In a post on the product’s site, Bernard explains that…
Vladimir Garagulya, developer of the User Role Editor has patched a critical security vulnerability. User Role Editor is used to edit, manage, and create user roles and capabilities and is active on more than 300K sites. User Role Editor 4.24 and below allows any registered user to gain administrator access. Wordfence, a popular security plugin…
Jetpack 3.9.5 was released yesterday with compatibilities for the upcoming WordPress 4.5 release and a handful of enhancements/bug fixes. Shortly after issuing the routine maintenance update, the Jetpack team began receiving reports of random, unwanted videos being added to the comments of posts. Any number string in the comments was automatically converted into a Vimeo…
The official plugin directory is arguably the best place to host a plugin if you’re looking for the widest distribution, but it’s also one of the most inhospitable for developers. A current meta team initiative is focused on improving search, including prioritizing translated plugins for international users, and streamlining plugin submission, among other improvements. This…
Modern Tribe, a top digital agency with a collection of popular plugins on WordPress.org, announced that it has acquired GigPress. With 20,000+ active installs and more than 260,000 downloads, GigPress is one of the most widely used plugins for musicians and performers who want to manage events with WordPress. Despite the plugin’s solid placement in…
As the WordPress customizer becomes more widely adopted by theme and plugin developers, users often have a host of live preview options to play with when personalizing their sites. Different combinations can produce wildly different designs. What if you could save a preview of customizations before going live with it? This is the idea behind…
Daniel Bachhuber, maintainer of WP-CLI, a popular command line interface utility for managing WordPress sites, has released version 0.23.0. This release includes a number of bug fixes, improvements, and features, but the most important thing to note is that earlier versions of WP-CLI will not work with WordPress 4.5. According to Bachhuber, WordPress 4.5 loads…
W3 Total Cache is a free, caching WordPress plugin created by Frederick Townes that’s active on more than one million sites. While the plugin’s core functionality is free to use, there’s a handful of services users can buy from within the plugin such as enhanced support to server and site configurations. A recent post by…
WPForms Lite is a new plugin developed by Syed Balkhi and Jared Atchison that aims to be the most beginner friendly form creation plugin in the market, “We made simple tasks EASY rather than letting the complex tasks define how hard simple will be,” Balkhi told the Tavern. I took the plugin for a test…