Released in late 2013, WordPress 3.8 was packed with new features including, a new theme browser experience, widgets area chooser, and a redesign of the backend. It’s also the first release to include a feature using a new formal development process called features-as-plugins first. The backend redesign started off as a plugin called MP6 with development…
The CPO and partner of Human Made, Noel Tock, published his WordPress predictions for 2015. His predictions include, custom dashboards, front-end editing, internationalization, and more. This could be the year of admin themes, but I think it largely depends on whether the WP API is merged into core. Tock predicts we’ll see a substantial increase…
A long-awaited update to the official WordPress Themes Directory is in progress. Contributors on the Meta team for WordPress.org are picking up speed on the effort to move the theme repository away from bbPress and into a new plugin, comprised of a custom post type for the repository package and a theme uploader. Konstantin Obenland…
WordPress 1.0 introduced search engine friendly permalinks using mod_rewrite. Setting your site to use pretty permalinks is usually one of the first things that administrators do after installation. WordPress 4.2 will add a new function that will automatically enable pretty permalinks, if the server supports it, at the time of installation. This means that in…
Dan Griffiths, who is known on Twitter as Ghost1227 and one of the creators of WP Tally, recently found himself in an emergency situation. Due to personal reasons, details of the situation have been withheld but it required Griffiths to come up with $2,500 within a 24 hour time span. Griffiths is a military Veteran…
Dashicons is an icon font that first shipped with WordPress 3.8. Since then, the core development team has routinely added new icons as necessary. WordPress 4.1 includes more than 20 new icons, specifically for the built-in media player and inline image editing tools. There’s also a few miscellaneous icons including, a palm tree, tickets, a…
WordPress 4.1 was released just yesterday, but core contributors are already planning and working towards 4.2. The Menu Customizer feature plugin is back in development and contributors are hoping to have it ready for inclusion in 4.2. Nick Halsey, who originally started the Menu Customizer work as part of his Google Summer of Code project,…
After nearly four months of development, WordPress 4.1 “Dinah” in honor of jazz singer Dinah Washington, is available for download. Led by John Blackbourn, 4.1 contains several improvements such as a new default theme, an improved distraction free writing experience, and plugin recommendations. Twenty Fifteen Twenty Fifteen is a two-column theme with a focus on…
The WordPress Heartbeat API, introduced in WordPress 3.6, simulates a pulse and is responsible for revision tracking, session management, and more. The pulse is around 98 Bytes in size, but it can cause performance issues in certain situations. If you’ve been notified by your webhost that your account is using too many resources and cite…
WordPress made great strides in 2014 towards improving internationalization for the global community. WordPress 4.0 streamlined language management in the admin and brought language selection to the installation process. In the State of the Word address this year, Matt Mullenweg highlighted the importance of internationalization to the project when he said, “If WordPress is going…
On the Add New plugin page in WordPress 4.0, there are two different tabs to help users discover new plugins: Featured and Popular. What if WordPress could recommend plugins based on the ones you have installed? Thanks to a recent update to the API, users will be able to access a list of recommended plugins…
As the US gets ready to celebrate Thanksgiving, it’s the time of year where I stop to think about what I’m thankful for regarding WordPress. In no particular order, here are six things I’m thankful for when it comes to WordPress. The Community The WordPress community is a large reason for the project’s continued success.…
WordPress theme developers will be pleased to know that the upcoming 4.1 release will remove the custom background and header screens in the admin. These screens will be replaced with deep-links to the customizer. To be clear, header and background menus will still appear in the admin, but they will be deep-linked to the customizer.…
WordPress core contributors released a security update today. All users who have not yet received the automatic update are encouraged to update as soon as possible. WordPress 4.0.1 is a critical security release that provides a fix for a critical cross-site scripting vulnerability, originally reported by Jouko Pynnonen on September 26th. Sites running WordPress versions…
John Blackbourn announced this afternoon that he will be merging the Focus Project into WordPress core ahead of the upcoming 4.1 release. Last week Jeff Chandler explored how the Focus Project plans to enhance distraction-free writing in WordPress. If you haven’t been following the project, it’s essentially a complete re-think of the way WordPress has…