On this episode, Marcus Couch and I are joined by Morten Rand-Hendriksen to discuss his WordPress Telemetry proposal. We discuss the potential benefits of having an opt-in usage data collection system that could help core developers and others make informed decisions. Rand-Hendriksen also shares what he’s learned from teaching WordPress at Lynda.com, on how difficult…
WP Super Cache is a nearly 10-year-old plugin that is maintained by Donncha Ó Caoimh and is actively installed on more than a million sites. Releases have been far and few between, but Ó Caoimh has released WP Super Cache 1.4.9 that patches cross-site-scripting vulnerabilities on the settings page. “Those pages are only accessible by admin…
The WordPress mobile app for Android is shutting down its beta testing community that was hosted on Google+ for the past three years. The mobile team switched to a completely open beta last year, enabling them to recruit 1,500 new testers. The Google+ community, which currently has 1,152 members, has been the main channel for…
One of the main drawbacks of Google AMP has been brand confusion when viewing and sharing articles. Google launched the AMP project to speed up the mobile web, but in exchange publishers have had to give up control of how their AMP’d content appears. One of the most irksome aspects of interacting with AMP pages…
At the end of January, WordPress 4.7.2 was released to fix four security issues, three of which were disclosed at the time of the release. These included a SQL injection vulnerability in WP_Query, a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in the posts list table, and the Press This feature allowing users without permission to assign taxonomy…
BlogVault, a real-time backup and migration service with a WordPress plugin that’s active on more than 20K sites, announced over the weekend that it suffered a security breach that exposed data. Akshat Choudhary, founder of BlogVault, explains that some customer sites were accessed without authorization and were infected with malware. BlogVault is contacting customers whose…
This is a guest post written by Reid Peifer, Partner and Art Director at Modern Tribe. In this post, Peifer shares his experience, opinions, and things to consider as the content creation experience in WordPress is revamped. Let’s imagine a world where the tools that we have don’t limit us, but instead enable us to…
In October 2016 Mozilla Telemetry showed more than 50% of page loads were encrypted with HTTPS. This week Let’s Encrypt is reporting that more than 50% HTTPS page loads is now the norm, a major milestone for HTTPS adoption across the web. Per @Firefox Telemetry, more than 50% HTTPS page loads is now the norm!…
WP-CLI 1.1.0 is now available, two months after 1.0.0 was released. The project shifted after 1.0.0 to focus on its package ecosystem, encouraging new features to be built as standalone packages instead of rolling them all into WP-CLI core. Daniel Bachhuber, the project’s maintainer, moved WP-CLI in this new direction to better distribute the maintenance…
In this episode, Marcus Couch and I are joined by Cameron Barrett, founder of SchoolPresser, LLC. Barrett explains how he negotiated and helped migrate Newark New Jersey’s public school system from a proprietary CMS to WordPress. He shares the pitfalls he experienced and the amount of money the district is saving since making the switch.…
At the end of October 2016, Morten Rand-Hendriksen created a proposal on WordPress trac for adding telemetry to core, an opt-in feature that would collect anonymized data on how people are using the software. He proposed that the new feature be displayed on first install or update, disabled by default in the admin with a…
If you logged into WooCommerce.com over the weekend, you may have noticed a distinct change. In order to sign into the site, users are now required to have a WordPress.com account. The change occurred without warning and surprised those who manage multiple WooCommerce stores for clients. Brad Griffin, who maintains a number of client sites…
With one week remaining on its Kickstarter campaign, the Micro.blog indie microblogging project has surged past its original $10K funding goal with $66,710 pledged by 2,381 backers. This puts project creator Manton Reece closer to his stretch goal of $80K, which would enable him to develop a Safe Replies feature to preemptively combat abuse on…
WordCamp Europe 2017 opened its call for sponsors at the end of 2016. The organizing team is embracing the challenge of delivering value to sponsors with workshops for those purchasing the two highest sponsorship levels: This year, for the first time, we are introducing a third track during both conference days. The third track will…
In October 2016, Matt Mullenweg called out Wix for using GPL-licensed code from the WordPress mobile app and distributing it in its proprietary app. After identifying a path for Wix to comply with the license, Mullenweg confirmed he would be willing to go to court to protect the GPL. Wix CEO Avishai Abrahami’s response to…