Contributors on the upcoming WordPress 4.3 release are moving full speed ahead with plans to improve the experience of using the customizer. They’re also exploring ways to re-architect it to make way for feature plugins that would bring in additional functionality. WordPress core contributors have continually demonstrated a commitment to improving the customizer to make…
This week contributors on the TGM Plugin Activation (TGMPA) library published a roadmap for the future of the project. TGMPA is widely used by WordPress developers to require and recommend plugins for themes (and other plugins). The library is recommended by Themeforest, CodeCanyon, and the WordPress.org Theme Review Team as an alternative to bundling everything…
Every WordPress administrator has different needs when navigating the admin. For example, one may require frequent access to the Posts menu and rarely touch the Appearance menu. Another admininistrator may have a certain custom post type that is accessed more frequently than any other menu item. In some cases plugin developers take their liberties placing…
WordPress 4.2 is a week old and has been downloaded more than six million times. One of the first things I noticed after updating is the change to the Insert/edit link modal box. Instead of having to apply a title to the URL, the title is replaced with Link Text. The text that is highlighted…
Postmatic publicly launched its email-based commenting service today and is now officially out of beta. The free plugin aims to increase comment engagement by allowing readers to subscribe to new posts/comments via email and leave comments by simply hitting reply. Postmatic also launched a commercial service alongside version 1.0. For $9/month customers can add additional…
In late 2014, we went behind the scenes with Anas Sulaiman who goes by the WordPress.org username of JP Bot. Sulaiman is responsible for creating six WordPress plugins that are alternatives to popular Jetpack modules. We received a tip from a reader that the plugins will soon be retired. When browsing to any of the six…
One of the highlights of the recent WordPress 4.2 release is the completely revamped Press This interface. The feature’s intended purpose is to make it easy to share text, images, and videos from around the web in a quick post, but many users are newly captivated by Press This’ new minimalist design for post creation.…
Jetpack 3.5 was released today, coinciding with WordPress 4.2. This release expands the capabilities of Jetpack’s centralized site management to include menus. If you have Jetpack Manage activated, you can now log into WordPress.com to manage menus for any of your sites that have opted in. The benefit of going to WordPress.com to manage menus…
The official Facebook plugin for WordPress launched in 2012 with the help of engineers from Automattic and currently lists 14 contributing authors. The plugin is active on more than 200,000 websites, but Facebook has not updated the plugin description page to let users know that it has been abandoned. The Facebook plugin has received no…
For the past week, security firm Sucuri has worked with the WordPress core security team to address a cross site scripting vulnerability discovered in more than a dozen popular WordPress plugins. The vulnerability stems from the improper use of the add_query_arg() and remove_query_arg() functions. Inaccurate information within the WordPress Codex lead many developers to assume…
In mid 2014, Borek Bernard and Jan Voráček from the Czech Republic, launched a crowdfunding campaign to fund the development of VersionPress. VersionPress is a version control plugin for WordPress. It keeps the whole site in a Git repository enabling things like site-wide reverts, safe updates, and easy staging. Despite not reaching their funding goal,…
A product’s documentation is usually a strong indicator of its quality, but creating docs is often the least exciting aspect of launching something new. Products that lack documentation can create a greater support burden, forcing you to write docs as a defensive measure after the fact. The free Documentation Post Type plugin may be just…
Pippin Williamson, founder of Easy Digital Downloads, looks back on three years of building an e-Commerce product for WordPress. Williamson describes the last three years as containing some of the highest and lowest points of his life. Williamson acknowledged that without his dedicated team, the product wouldn’t be anywhere close to what it is today.…
Last week WooCommerce announced that the plugin had passed 7 million downloads and the WordPress.org plugin directory reports that it is currently in use on over a million websites. WooCommerce is not only head of the pack when it comes to WordPress e-commerce solutions, the plugin is also the global leader among e-commerce platforms. According…
Plugins such as WooCommerce and Ninja Forms have a lot of extensions available to add functionality and each extension is usually a separate plugin. Depending on the functionality you need, extensions can add several additional plugins to the plugin management page in the backend of WordPress. Plugin Groups is a free new plugin by CalderaWP…