One of the first things I recommend users do after installing WordPress is to either close user registration or install a plugin that protects the site against spam registrations. A friend of mine recently started a new WordPress site that has BuddyPress installed. After two weeks, I chipped in to help him out and discovered…
A WordPress.org homepage redesign is now in the works with a strong focus on marketing to new users. As the face of the open source project, the site is long overdue for some design attention. Mark Uraine, a designer at Automattic, posted on the Make/Meta blog about how quickly the project is coming together: “During…
For the past two weeks, I’ve been helping a friend build his site. The site uses WordPress and BuddyPress and is the first opportunity I’ve had to use BuddyPress for a project. The site is dedicated to a Hockey League league that’s specific to a video game. The league has a number of players and…
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I are joined by Tony Perez, co-founder and CEO of Sucuri. It’s easy to tell from this episode that Perez is extremely passionate about web security. We discussed a wide range of topics related to security including, trends involving WordPress, the FUD factor, messaging surrounding HTTPS,…
Tickets for WordCamp Bangkok 2017 went on sale over the weekend and there are 235 remaining. The event will be held on February 18, 2017, at CP Tower on Silom Road. This is the third WordCamp to take place in the Bangkok area but organizers are including an English Track for the first time at…
Last week Automattic published its annual “Year in Review” stats, including WooCommerce stats for the first time since the company acquired Woo in 2015. As of December, there are 1,594,894 active stores using WooCommerce and roughly 1/3 of those (530,000) are new in 2016. One of the most exciting areas of growth is WooCommerce’s global…
Seriously Simple Podcasting, created by Hugh Lashbrooke in 2012, has been acquired by Podcast Motor. The plugin is actively installed on nearly 20K sites and out of 104 reviews, has an average rating of 4.9 stars. Lashbrooke no longer has the time to dedicate to the project, “I am in fact selling the plugin (along…
WP-CLI contributors have been working towards a more sustainable future for the project throughout 2016. Daniel Bachhuber, the project’s official maintainer, has launched an experiment to fund ongoing maintenance and new development, asking potential patrons, “How much is WP-CLI worth to you?” Options for contributions range from $100/yr – $7500/yr. This particular funding experiment is…
WordPress.com announced today that users can now upload and publish VR content on their sites, including 360° photos and 360° videos. Regular photos and panoramas are also now viewable in VR. The VR gear tested so far includes Cardboard, Gear, Daydream, Rift, and Vive. Uploading VR content works just like adding normal pictures and videos.…
During the last WordSesh event held in August 2016, Matt Mullenweg joined the community for a session where he spoke about the growth of WordPress and his thoughts on confronting the project’s external threats. Mullenweg floated the idea of a WordPress Growth Council – a collection of individuals and organizations interested in contributing to WordPress’…
UpdraftPlus, a European company that maintains a backup plugin by the same name with nearly 1M active installs, has acquired the WP-Optimize plugin. WP-Optimize was created eight years ago by Ruhani Rabin and is actively installed on more than 500K sites. Its primary function is to clean and optimize databases. WP-Optimize will become part of…
WordCamp Harare, the first ever WordCamp in Zimbabwe, was held over the weekend at the Harare City Library. Harare was selected out of 182 applicants as one of the three locations for the WordCamp Incubator Program. The experimental program launched in February 2016 with the goal of bringing WordCamps to new locations around the world…
When Matt Mullenweg, co-creator of the WordPress open source project, announced that design would lead the way for WordPress development in 2017, utilizing user research and mockups, the first thing that came to my mind was WordPress 2.7. That release was the culmination of effective leadership and effort from Jen Mylo and Liz Danzico. In…
Over the weekend, Bluehost experienced a severe, widespread network issue that caused customer sites to go down. The incident began Friday evening and continued into the night. As WP Tavern is hosted on Bluehost, we were watching the situation with keen interest, finally clocking the downtime at 12 hours before our site was back up.…
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I are joined by Weston Ruter and Nick Halsey, lead developers of the Customize component in WordPress. I invited Ruter and Halsey on the show to give us some insight into its origin and why it was created. We also discuss its evolution since WordPress 3.6…