This week the Shiny Updates Team officially proposed the merge of the plugin into the upcoming WordPress 4.6 release. The project modernizes the process of installing, updating, and deleting themes and plugins in order to hide what is colloquially referred to as “The Bleak Screen of Sadness.” This is the screen that shows the technical…
Among the improvements coming in WordPress 4.6 are accessibility enhancements to the Category and Tag management pages. The flow of each page has been changed so that the visual order of elements match the tab order. This allows those who navigate with keyboards to access the Add New Tag or Add New Category area first.…
DreamHost, Flywheel, and SiteGround have joined Bluehost on WordPress.org’s new recommended hosting page. In mid 2015, Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of the open source WordPress project, announced the page would be revamped. To have a chance at being listed webhosting companies needed to fill out a 40-question survey. This is Flywheel’s first time on the page.…
The World Health Organization estimates that 285 million people worldwide are living with some form of visual impairment and 39 million of those are estimated to be blind. Many people with low vision depend on speech recognition technology to navigate the web and communicate their thoughts. This type of software also assists people who have…
In late 2014, WordPress 4.1 added a Recommended Plugins tab that takes into account the plugins you have installed and suggests plugins based on which ones are commonly used together. After nearly a year and a half since it was added, I asked the Tavern’s Twitter followers if they have ever installed plugins recommended by…
The WordPress core team has released WordPress 4.5.2 which patches two security vulnerabilities in WordPress versions 4.5.1 and below. The first is a SOME vulnerability (Same-Origin Method Execution) in Plupload, the third-party library WordPress uses for uploading files. The second is a reflected cross-site-scripting vulnerability in MediaElement.js, the third-party library used for media players. Auto…
WordPress 4.5.1 is available and addresses a dozen items reported against WordPress 4.5. According to Adam Silverstein, “a singular class issue that broke sites based on the Twenty Eleven theme, an incompatibility between certain Chrome versions and the visual editor, and an Imagick bug that could break media uploads,” are among the bugs fixed. A…
Since I started covering WordPress in 2009, one of the things I’ve noticed is that certain topics have a cyclical nature to them. One of these is the contention in the WordPress community on what data is sent, stored, and shared on WordPress.org. In a post published on Torquemag.io, Josh Pollock, Founder of CalderaWP, argues…
WordPress 4.5 “Coleman” was released last week without too many issues. However, the WordPress development team recently identified two bugs that are prompting an immediate point release scheduled for next week. The first is that TinyMCE toolbars and tabs are unresponsive in Chrome Version 50.0.2661.75 beta-m (64-bit). The second is that page templates with widgets…
Based on the number of comments we received on WordPress admin notices being abused, it’s clear that a number of you feel the same way I do. Thanks to the healthy discussion that took place, I learned several new things about admin notices I’d like to share with you. Themes Do it Too While the…
As soon as WordPress 4.5 was out the door, WordPress 4.6 release lead Dominik Schilling opened up the floor for discussion on wish list items ahead of the kickoff chat on Wednesday. The development community chimed in with feedback on their users’ biggest pain points, important UX issues to be solved, and existing features they…
The official WordPress Importer plugin is in shambles and has frustrated users with inconsistent performance for years. The plugin has more than a million active installations and is critical for migrations, unless you are familiar with using more advanced tools. With years of unresolved support threads identifying the plugin’s many bugs, the importer is in…
WordPress 4.5 was released today, named in honor of Coleman Hawkins, an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Hawkins was one of the first musicians to establish the tenor saxophone as a jazz horn. Compared to other major releases, this one is short on show-stopping features but keeps WordPress on the path of steady, incremental improvements. Most…
The WP REST API team released version 2.0 beta 13 of the feature plugin today. This release includes a couple of breaking changes, JavaScript client updates, and many other fixes and improvements. Developers who use the plugin in their projects can expect it to follow a more stable release cycle in the future, as beta…
Last year, I identified key factors that suggested the features-as-plugins first model was falling apart. A lack of communication, direction, buy-in from core developers, and synchronized development between plugins on Github and WordPress.org were some of the contributing factors highlighted. Features-as-Projects WordPress lead developer Helen Hou-Sandí has outlined a new strategy for the model transitioning…