Over time, features and user interface elements in WordPress are removed or hidden from view. This generally occurs after a significant amount of discussion. Since WordPress is used by so many people, even a small percentage of users who depend on those features is a significant amount. Thankfully in most cases, features can be restored…
Among the many changes in WordPress 4.4 in an effort to clean the interface, the Get Shortlink button is hidden from view. If you want to restore the button, check out the Shorter Links plugin developed by Rob Allen. In addition to restoring the Get Shortlink button, it gives users the ability to use custom…
Within the last few weeks, a number of readers have contacted us to look into the recent upgrade woes experienced by WordPress SEO users. Since 3.0’s release on November 18th, the development team has released six point releases. Joost de Valk, founder of Yoast.com, and lead developer of WordPress SEO, explains the mistakes made with…
On December 18th, fans across the U.S. will flock to movie theaters to watch Star Wars: The Force Awakens. If you’d like to get your site in the spirit of the movie, check out The Force, a new plugin created by Rohit Motwani who lives in India. The Force replaces lyrics from the Hello Dolly…
Justin Tadlock, founder of Theme Hybrid, is looking for beta testers for a new plugin aimed at theme developers. The plugin is called Theme Designer and allows authors to manage themes in the WordPress backend. It also displays them on the frontend similar to WordPress.com and WordPress.org’s theme pages. Tadlock has moved beyond using WordPress…
Luca Fracassi, founder of Addendio, an alternative search engine for the WordPress plugin and theme directories published an in-depth look at the WordPress plugin directory. The post includes data that shows the number of plugins added to the directory per year, what year the plugins were last updated, and other metrics. My favorite data point…
Now that the WordPress plugin directory is using language packs, translated plugins will start to show up in international directories. For some plugin banners however, this is a problem. For Right to Left languages, the icons and titles are displayed on the opposite side of the banner. To fix this issue, plugin directories have implemented…
Out of the box, WordPress allows you to configure the default avatar that displays for commenters that don’t have one. The choices leave a lot to be desired. Thanks to a new plugin created by Lee Willis, called Wapuuvatar, you can replace default avatars with images of Wapuu. If you’re not familiar with Wapuu, it’s…
Jetpack 3.8 is available for download and includes, Google+ badges, Twitch.TV embed shortcode, improvements to the contact form module, and bug fixes. Users can now display a Google+ Badge widget that shows your Google+ profile, page, or community. You can configure the badge’s width, layout, and choose between a light or dark color scheme. A…
Better Blockquotes is a free WordPress plugin created by Devin Price that makes it easy to add citations to blockquotes. When a user clicks the blockquote button with no text highlighted, a dialogue box pops up with options to add a quote, citation, and a citation link. Citations are inserted into the post with HTML5…
This is a guest post contributed by Matthew Sparrow who is a young, self-taught developer with minimal coding knowledge that loves to use WordPress. He mostly uses WordPress for personal projects although he has completed a couple of projects for others. In addition to maintaining a few plugins, he’s an active translations contributor. Automatic translations…
VersionPress, a version control plugin for WordPress, has raised $400K in seed funding from five investors, led by Credo Ventures based in Prague. In July of 2014, VersionPress conducted a crowdfunding campaign to raise $30K. However, the team raised only 45% of the $30,000 funding goal. The team pressed on and released the first version…
Nikhil Vimal, who runs Techvoltz.com, a WordPress development agency, is the new owner of the Front End Registration and Login Forms Plugin created by Pippin Williamson. Earlier this month, Williamson put the plugin up for sale and noted that it needed some development work. I would like to sell my Frontend Registration and Login Forms…
If you use Akismet to battle comment spam, make sure it’s running version 3.1.5 as it patches a critical security vulnerability. Due to the nature of the bug, the Akismet team pushed out auto updates to sites that can accept them. According to Sucuri, sites using Akismet 3.1.4 and lower and that have the Convert…
If you’ve noticed an influx of brute force attacks on your site, you’re not the only one. Sucuri is reporting that brute force amplification attacks are targeting WordPress sites with XML-RPC enabled. In a nutshell, XML-RPC contains a system.multicall method which allows developers to execute multiple methods and commands inside a single request. What is…