The “adopt-me” tag in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory is starting to gain traction, with two pages of current listings. While that may not seem like very many among the 33,000+ plugins, the new clear path for adoption is helping to change the course of extensions that would otherwise rot in the repo. The “adopt-me” tag…
OpenTickets launched its community edition on WordPress.org this week. The open source project was created to provide event publishing and online ticket sales for bands, non-profits, venues, festivals, and other events. The platform is powered by WordPress and WooCommerce and provides support for creating multiple venues and events, as well as managing digital and/print ticket…
Ever wish you had more control over the thumbnails that WordPress generates for your media and featured images? My Eyes Are Up Here is a new plugin that helps you get the perfect crop, especially as it pertains to images with human subjects. Ordinarily, images are cropped according to the center, which can leave out…
A couple days ago we wrote about a critical security vulnerability that was found in the popular WordPress Slider Revolution plugin and silently patched by its author. Envato Market has since launched further investigation of the matter, as the product is not only hosted on their marketplace but also packaged with many other products. The…
The security team at Sucuri publicized a critical vulnerability found in the WordPress Slider Revolution plugin recently. The bug has since been patched, but the development team for Slider Revolution kept silent about it and did not notify their users of the importance of updating. The popular commercial slider plugin is hosted on Codecanyon, an…
One important trend surfacing this year is WordPress developers’ growing desire to add git-based version control to their sites. It adds an extra layer of safety in case you need to revert changes. Version control also helps multi-person teams work together more efficiently on the same website. Several plugin options are in the works in…
Last month, Sprout Apps announced that it would soon be launching a suite of business apps targeted at WordPress freelancers and small businesses. While the company is still in pre-launch operations, Sprout Invoices was just released on WordPress.org as part of the launch plan. Dan Cameron, the founder of Sprout Apps, believes there are some…
Version 3.0 of the WordPress Plugin Boilerplate was released today. The open source project was started in 2011 by Tom McFarlin as a GitHub repository for storing code while he learned plugin development. Over the past three years, the boilerplate has matured beyond his expectations with the help of 39 contributors. It now has more…
Jean Galea, who is a member of the Advanced WordPress group on Facebook, recently shared a plugin with an interesting changelog. It’s called Bulk Delete and is developed by Sudar Muthu, a developer based in Bangalore, India. The changelog not only shows which bugs have been fixed or features that were added, it also displays…
By default, WordPress doesn’t notify users when their comments are approved from the moderation queue. If you’d like to change that, consider using the Comment Approved plugin by Niels van Renselaar. The plugin is simple to use and configure. After it’s installed and activated, you’ll find the settings in Settings > Comment Approved. It’s important…
Dashboard notes can come in handy when working with multiple people on a WordPress site. Even when working alone, you can use notes to collect ideas for posts or to remind yourself of important publishing-related tasks and ways to promote your posts. While there are many varying plugins devoted to creating sticky notes in the…
Giving a plugin a top level admin menu between Dashboard and Posts is somewhat frowned upon among WordPress plugin developers. Although the Administration Menus section of the WordPress codex doesn’t outright forbid top level menus above Posts, plugin authors are strongly encouraged to consider placing their plugin’s menu underneath an existing WordPress top-level menu. Nevertheless,…
If you’ve ever wondered why Chris Wiegman sold Better WP Security to iThemes, he answers the question in a post on his personal site. The birth of Better WP Security started off as a mixture of features from several of his favorite security plugins. “I started mashing together features of some of the plugins I liked…
Editorial access is a capability granted only to Administrator and Editor user roles in WordPress. This access is not easily shared to other roles without changing a user’s role or adding extra capabilities. There are several complex plugins out there that will allow you to create custom roles and manage capabilities. But what if you…
Easy Digital Downloads launched its open source download delivery system for WordPress in 2012 and has since grown to amass a global network of contributors and developers. The project’s marketplace, which now boasts more than 100 extensions and dozens of themes, shows no signs of slowing down. With global WordPress usage on the rise and…