ChatGPT passed 1 million users today and Twitter is brimming with a steady stream of creative questions and applications for the AI-powered chatbot. The language model, created by OpenAI, is powered by GPT-3.5, a series of models trained on text and code from before Q4 2021. The model features a dialogue format that gives ChatGPT…
WordPress Core Committer Jb Audras, CTO of the France-based Whodunit agency, has released two new accessibility plugins in cooperation with Guillaume Turpin, another developer on the Whodunit team. These are small “micro” plugins developed to fill gaps in the block editor’s accessible content creation experience. The first plugin is called Lang Attribute for the Block…
10up has released version 4.4.0 of ElasticPress, its enhanced search plugin that speeds up searching while reducing the load on WordPress sites. The plugin is based on Elasticsearch and is used by customers of the ElasticPress.io service (a SaaS solution), as well as those who are hosting their own Elasticsearch instance. This update adds a…
Divi, the popular commercial WordPress theme and page builder created by Elegant Themes, has announced major changes coming in version 5.0 that constitute a complete rewrite of Divi’s core technologies. The update, which is expected to be released in beta next year, will focus on performance, stability, scalability, and extendability, but it will not introduce…
Jetpack Search, a plugin that enhances WordPress’ search capabilities, has added a free tier and a three-month free trial to what was previously only available as a paid upgrade. The plugin uses WordPress.com’s infrastructure to provide instant, more relevant search results without reloading the page, with real-time indexing, integration with WooCommerce, spelling correction, and more.…
Last month, WordPress.org removed the active install growth chart from plugins, upsetting plugin authors and leaving them with very little meaningful data. The Meta team is working on making more accurate and useful data available to plugin developers, but this will take some work. In the meantime, the team behind AyeCode, makers of the GeoDirectory…
If you are going all in on building sites with the new full-site editing (FSE) experience, then you may have noticed a lack of menu items that will deliver you directly to the tools you need to use. It may be because the Site Editor is still in beta, or because WordPress leadership may still…
Earlier this month WordPress.org meta contributors removed the active install growth chart from plugins, sending plugin developers who relied on this data into a state of dismay and outrage. The commit cited “insufficient data obfuscation” but there was no clear communication about when and where this decision had been made. Developers demanded more transparency around…
Jetpack has announced changes to its Jetpack Social plugin that may impact publishers who frequently share across social media networks. Previously, users could share an unlimited number of posts automatically via their connected social media accounts. Jetpack is shuffling its monetization strategy for this extension and has capped social sharing at 30 shares per month…
For more than a decade, WordPress developers have been discussing how core can support plugins that require one or more other plugins in order to work. Having a standardized way of managing plugin dependencies would be a useful and time-saving feature for developers, who currently have to roll their own solutions for this. “The situation…
Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) put out a big release today, following several maintenance releases and the last major release in July. Version 3.1 introduces 10 new core blocks available to users who are running WordPress 5.8 or newer: These blocks enable store owners to do more than their shortcode predecessors. Although the shortcodes still work,…
Frustrations are mounting, as WordPress.org plugin developers plead with WordPress leadership to restore access to the active install growth data for plugins after it was removed last weekend without any public discussion. A ticket calling for bringing back the charts is home to a heated discussion on the matter but so far the developer community…
Over the weekend, WordPress.org meta contributors removed the active install growth charts for plugins, a key metric that many developers and a handful of services rely on for tracking. “Insufficient data obfuscation” is the cryptic reason cited for the charts’ removal, but the decision-making process was not transparent. In a ticket titled “Bring back the…
BackupBuddy, a commercial plugin from iThemes that performs scheduled backups with remote storage options, has patched a vulnerability that allowed for arbitrary file download by unauthenticated users. iThemes published an advisory for its users, indicating that the vulnerability affects versions 8.5.8.0 through 8.7.4.1 and is being actively exploited. Wordfence reviewed its data and found that…
WP Super Cache, one of the oldest and most widely used static caching plugins for WordPress, is changing hands. After 15 years, the plugin’s author, Donncha Ó Caoimh, is handing over maintenance and development to Jetpack’s performance team. If you have been building WordPress sites since the early days, you are almost guaranteed to have…