WordPress core development is kicking off in 2017 with the new focus-based development process that Matt Mullenweg announced during the 2016 State of the Word. The new approach to releases shifts WordPress from the familiar time-based release cycle to one that is more project-based. The idea is that design and user testing will lead the…
W3Techs published its Web Technologies of 2016 report today, compiling technologies that saw the largest increase in usage last year. The survey pulls data from the top 10 million sites (according to Alexa rankings) and compares the number of sites for each technology by measuring the difference from January 1, 2016 to January 1, 2017.…
WordPress.org made its new homepage redesign live today. The meta team worked quickly to put the new design in place in time for the holidays. “While this is only the first iteration, the plan is to continue design and development to create something truly amazing,” Mark Uraine said in the announcement. “This is the first…
A WordPress.org homepage redesign is now in the works with a strong focus on marketing to new users. As the face of the open source project, the site is long overdue for some design attention. Mark Uraine, a designer at Automattic, posted on the Make/Meta blog about how quickly the project is coming together: “During…
During the last WordSesh event held in August 2016, Matt Mullenweg joined the community for a session where he spoke about the growth of WordPress and his thoughts on confronting the project’s external threats. Mullenweg floated the idea of a WordPress Growth Council – a collection of individuals and organizations interested in contributing to WordPress’…
WordPress 4.7 was released yesterday with translations for 52 languages, thanks to the volunteer efforts of its vibrant community of translators. For the first time, WordPress is 100% translated into Urdu, the national language of Pakistan. Urdu is spoken by 100 million people in several different areas of the world, including India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and…
WordPress 4.7 “Vaughan” was released today, named in honor of American jazz vocalist Sarah “Sassy” Vaughan. This release makes significant improvements to the new theme setup experience, inspiring the tagline: “Your site, your way.” Twenty Seventeen is making its debut in 4.7 as the first default theme designed for business websites. It beautifully showcases new…
Philadelphia welcomed 1,923 attendees to WordCamp US this weekend with an additional 2,028 enthusiasts watching via live stream. Matt Mullenweg delivered his 11th annual State of the Word address to a rapt audience ready to celebrate WordPress’ progress over the past year and hear the project leader’s vision for 2017. He began by thanking sponsors…
In October, Let’s Encrypt was managing more than 10 million active SSL certificates. That number doubled to 20 million in November as large providers continue to partner with the organization to manage their customers’ certificates. In 2014, Google announced that HTTPS is a ranking factor. Earlier this year, the Google Chrome security team announced that Chrome 56 will mark HTTP…
Among the many enhancements in WordPress 4.7 are improvements to the media component. Previous to 4.7, users who uploaded files to the media library and changed the title could not search for them by file name. Four years since the ticket was created, users will be able to search for media by filename. PDFs are…
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the US. It’s a time of reflection and an opportunity to express gratitude for the good things in life. In episode 143 of the KitchensinkWP podcast, host Adam Silver asked his two sons why they’re grateful for WordPress. “I am thankful for WordPress because it gives you a job for the…
WordPress now powers 27.1% of all websites on the internet, up from 25% last year. While it may seem that WordPress is neatly adding 2% of the internet every year, its percentage increase fluctuates from year to year and the climb is getting more arduous with more weight to haul. In January 2015, Mullenweg said…
Earlier this year, Automattic added visual icons to the WordPress.com customizer after user testing showed users tried clicking on the parts of the page they wanted to edit, rather than searching through the menus in the customizer. In an effort to see if the same could be done for the self-hosted version of WordPress, Payton Swick…
When images are uploaded in WordPress 4.6.1 that have an empty alt text value, WordPress tries to generate one based on the caption text or the image title. If the image title is non descriptive as is common with photos uploaded from digital cameras, the alt text can be meaningless. In WordPress 4.7, the caption text and the image…
Astute testers may have noticed a new feature in WordPress 4.7 beta 1 that enabled users to search, preview, and install themes from within the customizer. This feature was part of five feature projects related to the customizer that were approved for merge last month. Its goal is to unify the theme browsing and customizing…