In the past two years, there has been an increased effort in the WordPress community to raise awareness of mental health. Cory Miller, Rich Robinkoff, Michele Butcher, and others have presented on the subject at numerous WordCamps. A common theme that surrounds mental health is the fear of discussing it openly. WPHugs.org, a passion project by Leo Gopal,…
Security researcher Dawid Golunski of Legal Hackers has published the details of an unauthorized password reset vulnerability in WordPress core. Golunski demonstrated how, under certain circumstances, an attacker could intercept the password reset email and gain access to a user’s account. His proof of concept takes advantage of WordPress using the SERVER_NAME variable to get…
The WordPress Community Team is debating the merits of a new type of WordCamp, a hybrid event with the traditional WordCamp content in a retreat-style format. Sven Wagener and the Köln meetup group in Germany, which has more than 700 members, have proposed a new style of camp that would potentially be called “WordCamp in…
In this episode, I’m joined by John James Jacoby. We recap WordCamp Chicago 2017 and learn about what he’s been up to as of late. Jacoby was recently elected as a trustee by the Village of East Troy, WI. We discussed what lessons he’s learned through open source software development that he’ll apply to his…
Jetpack 4.9 gives self-hosted WordPress users access to some of the widgets that are available on WordPress.com. One of the most useful ones for European websites is the new EU Cookie Law Banner widget. The WordPress plugin directory has dozens of plugins related to cookie consent, but Jetpack users can now get this feature bundled…
Managing social media accounts across multiple networks can be a cumbersome task. Social Media Suite by Tina Todorovic and Dejan Markovic, based in Toronto, Canada, aims to make managing those accounts a breeze. At its core, Social Media Suite is a social media marketing management platform. To use it, you’ll first have to install the…
WooConf, the official WooCommerce developer’s conference, is returning for its third edition October 19-20, 2017. In line with previous years’ events that were hosted in major U.S. tech hubs (San Francisco and Austin), WooConf 2017 will be held in Seattle. The organizing team, which is made up of almost a dozen people from around the…
May is Mental Health Awareness Month in the US, dedicated to educating people about mental health and illnesses since 1949. WP Elevation is joining the observance this year with a special emphasis on freelancers and the tech industry. The company, which provides education for WordPress consultants, will be focusing all of its content on mental…
WP Docker is a new project from 10up that makes it easy to set up a local WordPress development environment with Docker. Last year 10up worked with Joyent, a cloud infrastructure company, to create a production-ready implementation of WordPress in Docker. After their experience with this project, 10up created WP Docker as a simple, open…
Shopify’s official plugin for WordPress was removed from the plugin directory this week. The plugin allowed users to create “Buy Buttons” for products from their Shopify stores and insert them into WordPress posts and pages using a shortcode. It was built by WebDevStudios and had approximately 9,000 active installations before it was removed. Shopify’s documentation…
In 2016, WordPress meetups had the fastest growth the community has seen in five or six years with more than 62,566 people attending in 58 different countries. Meetups are the seeds of future WordCamps. These local gatherings help users further their WordPress skills and underpin the community’s growth across the globe. Funding a local meetup…
Promotion for WordCamp US 2017 in Nashville, December 1-3, is now in full swing, as organizers have ramped up social media efforts to stimulate ticket sales. Instead of releasing batches of tickets in stages, all WordCamp US tickets are on sale at once. “Our goal is to sell between 2,000 and 2,500, but we could…
One of the most difficult things about writing online is expressing tone and emotion. Emoticons and Emoji help, but what if there was a tool that uses artificial intelligence to determine the emotional response readers are most likely to have after consuming your content? That’s the idea behind Watsonfinds, a free WordPress plugin created by…
Open source software usage is growing across all industries, but this year’s Open Source Security and Risk Analysis (OSSRA) report from Black Duck shows the pervasiveness of security vulnerabilities and license compliance risks. Black Duck conducted audits on more than 1,000 commercial applications in 2016 and analyzed the anonymized data. The audits were primarily related…
WordCamp Europe 2017 organizers are counting down 50 days until the largest planned WordPress event to date. Speaker announcements continue to roll out and the recommended hotels are getting booked up at the height of tourist season. As of yesterday, more than 300 of the 500 tickets for Contributor Day have been claimed. This year…