WordPress core doesn’t make it easy to edit text strings, but a little plugin called Say What? has been quietly gaining a solid user base by providing this functionality. It allows users to edit text strings without editing WordPress core or plugin code. Lee Willis released Say What in 2013, but the plugin had a…
This opinion piece was contributed by guest author Peter Suhm. Peter is a web developer from the Land of the Danes. He is the creator of WP Pusher and a huge travel addict, bringing his work along with him as he goes. Laravel Forge is a server and application provisioning tool that was originally…
Let’s Encrypt has just closed out its first full year as a certificate authority with more than 20 million active certificates. The free and open certificate authority focuses on lowering the complexity of setting up TLS encryption by making the process more automated. It came out of beta in April 2016 and the number of…
When a friend of mine asked for suggestions on what he should use to create a new site, I suggested WordPress. It is well supported, has an amazing community, and a ton of free themes and plugins to choose from. After getting WordPress installed on a new webhosting account, I left him be to see…
This post was contributed by guest author Taylor Lovett. Lovett is based in the Washington DC area, is the Director of Web Engineering at 10up, creator of ElasticPress, and general open source enthusiast. In February 2016, the WordPress Foundation announced the WordCamp incubator program, focused on spreading WordPress and open source values to remote…
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…
Developer Manton Reece is on a mission to take back short form content for the open web by providing better tools for independent microblogging. Most short form content today is posted through centralized social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, where posts are mixed with promoted content and users have no control of their…
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.…
The WP-CLI open source project will be coming under the WordPress.org umbrella in 2017. After recent talks with Daniel Bachhuber, WP-CLI’s official maintainer, Matt Mullenweg announced WordPress’ support for the project, calling it “one of the highest impact developments for WP in many years.” The wp-cli.org website will soon be migrated to WordPress.org and a…
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I recap the news and headlines of the first half of 2016. Part two will be recorded on January 4th, 2017, where we’ll look back at the headlines during the second half of 2016, give our predictions for 2017, and share what we’re looking forward to…
The BuddyPress development team has released BuddyPress 2.7.4 to address a security vulnerability that affects all versions back to 2.0. According to John James Jacoby, lead developer of BuddyPress, “This version patches a vulnerability to the BuddyPress core attachments API that could allow arbitrary file deletion on certain installation configurations.” The vulnerability was responsibly disclosed by…
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…
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I discuss the news of the week including, WooCommerce’s 42% market share, the redesign concept of WordPress.org, and two plugin acquisitions. I also share details of a side project I’m working on that involves BuddyPress. Last but not least, we briefly discuss Jeff King’s impact on…
If you want to make a living in the world of open source software, Nadia Eghbal has created a guide that explores various models for funding your work. Eghbal, who has written extensively on sustainability and open source, recently authored a white paper published by the Ford Foundation called “Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor…
Bradley Kirby released version 1.0 of his Wallace WordPress theme today. The theme is built using the WP REST API and Angular 2. Kirby has been working on Wallace for the past two years and has rewritten it several times in order to keep pace with changes in the REST API and Angular. If you…