If you’re looking for a blog design that emphasizes the words of your content without a requirement for big, flashy featured images, Reyl Lite is a super minimalist option. It is one of the most bare bones blogging themes to hit WordPress.org in recent weeks. Throughout 2015, the single-column, centered layout has been a mainstay…
Over time, features and user interface elements in WordPress are removed or hidden from view. This generally occurs after a significant amount of discussion. Since WordPress is used by so many people, even a small percentage of users who depend on those features is a significant amount. Thankfully in most cases, features can be restored…
Over the weekend, the WordPress community in Lahore, Pakistan held its third monthly meetup. The first meetup had just a few dozen attendees, the second approximately 300, and this weekend they had more than 500 WordPress professionals and enthusiasts. Attendee Noumaan Yaqoob traveled from Karachi to the event and shared his experience in a post…
Earlier this year, Hookr.io entered beta with a new UI and support for 800+ plugins and themes. The site provides a WordPress hook/API reference for developers, but creator Christopher Sanford has a vision to do much more with it in 2016. Today Sanford announced the release of the new official Hookr plugin, which is available…
I had the opportunity to catch up with John James Jacoby at WordCamp US 2015. Jacoby is the project lead for bbPress and BuddyPress. In the video interview below he offers a quick overview of what to expect in BuddyPress 2.5. Jacoby also gives us a look inside his Stuttter project, which contains several social…
When the WordPress theme review team announced it would require theme authors to use the customizer to build theme options, many voiced their displeasure in the comments. Bruce Wampler, lead developer of the Weaver Xtreme WordPress theme, commented that his theme received a death sentence due to the requirement. Eight months later, Wampler has changed…
During Matt Mullenweg’s State of The Word presentation at WordCamp US, he said everyone in the community should make an effort to learn JavaScript deeply. I visited Barnes and Noble today and discovered that some books are heeding Mullenweg’s call and are doing their part to encourage people to learn JavaScript in addition to WordPress.…
Today Automattic announced that the WordPress.com desktop app is now open source and available on GitHub under the GPLv2 (or later). A Linux version joins the OS X and Windows apps that were released at the end of November and early December, making desktop publishing accessible to users on all major operating systems. The apps…
After three months in the WordPress.org theme review queue, Morten Rand-Hendriksen‘s new mobile-first theme is now live in the official theme directory. Popper is one of the few themes worthy of the “accessibility ready” tag, which requires the author to meet all of the WordPress Accessibility Guidelines. This includes features such as semantic markup and…
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I are joined by Jeff Matson who writes and maintains documentation for Rocketgenius. Matson tells us how he became involved with WordPress and the community. We learn how he’s transitioned from working in an office everyday to an office being optional. Last but not least, we…
If you’re looking for a real-world example of the WordPress REST API with code that you can dig into, the new ustwo.com website is open source on GitHub. ustwo is a digital product agency most well known for their work on the award-winning Monument Valley app. They partnered with Human Made, a WordPress development agency,…
Back in October, we explained how to mark themes as favorites in the WordPress theme directory. Although users could install their favorite plugins in WordPress 4.3, they couldn’t install their favorite themes. I created a Trac ticket asking the WordPress development team to consider adding the ability to install themes marked as favorites. Thanks to…
The first conference dedicated to the WordPress REST API is on its way to selling out. A Day of REST will be held January 28, 2016, at Conway Hall in London. The venue has a capacity of 250 people and Petya Raykovska, one of the organizers from Human Made, reports that more than half the…
A few days ago, I asked the WordPress community to help Terri Caissie fund her medical equipment and treatment as she battles Hashimoto’s Encephalopathy (Autoimmune) with Progressive Cerebella Ataxia or HE/SREAT. The community responded in a big way by completely funding the $2,500 campaign. Fifty-six people contributed to the campaign, including large donations from Samuel Wood…
Last week the WordPress community took to Twitter and the Treehouse forums to express disappointment at the company’s decision to fire educator Zac Gordon. According to Gordon, the company will be giving his salary to a .NET developer and will no longer create new WordPress courses, nor do they plan to update the existing courses.…