In December 2020, we reported on a new antitrust lawsuit against Google that claimed AMP was created for the purpose of pushing publishers away from “header bidding.” This is an advertising mechanism that allows sites to route their ad inventory through several ad exchanges and sell the space to the highest bidder. At that time it…
As I was perusing the latest block themes on WordPress.org, I came across a new favorite: Bai. The typography was on point for those who tend to write long-form content. Plus, it has a built-in dark mode design that did not make me want to rip my eyes from their sockets. I had planned to…
Gutenberg contributors have shifted their efforts to focus on the Navigation Block ahead of WordPress 5.9, leaving the Navigation Editor for a future release. Recent check-ins on the progress have further narrowed the scope from what Matias Ventura previously projected to include “both the navigation block and navigation screen projects.” “The Nav Editor will not…
From the moment I opened my first theme shop back in 2008 to the present day as someone who merely tinkers, my plan has always been to build a single theme in the mold of CSS Zen Garden. This was a project that Dave Shea launched in the early 2000s to show how designers could…
WPChill is now the owner of Gutenberg Forms, a project created by Munir Kamal. While still rough around the edges a year ago, the plugin was updated regularly and was something to at least keep an eye on as it matured. Extendify acquired it alongside Kamal’s Editor Plus and Gutenberg Hub at the end of…
Generated social images seem to be all the rage now. Automattic scooped up Daniel Post’s Social Image Generator last month for eventual inclusion in Jetpack. There is a proposal to dynamically generate them for plugins and themes hosted on WordPress.org. And, there is a new player in town: Branded Social Images. Admittedly, I have had…
Jetpack is splitting out its commercial Backup feature into a standalone plugin that can be used without installing the core Jetpack plugin. The commercial product includes automated daily or real-time backups with one-click restores, even for sites that are offline. Backups include all WordPress database, theme, and plugin files, which are stored on WordPress.com’s infrastructure…
Two weeks ago, Cate and Topher DeRosia launched the HeroPress Network, a centralized website that would host various projects for helping people with WordPress. Today, the duo announced the opening of Find It WP, a new site that is part of the collective. It will serve as a database or archive of all things WordPress.…
The Software Freedom Conservancy announced that it is suing Vizio, an American TV manufacturer, for what it alleges are “repeated failures to fulfill even the basic requirements of the General Public License (GPL).” The 501(c)(3) charity organization is a non-profit that provides infrastructure support for free and open source software projects, defending users’ rights under…
A few weeks ago, WP Ninjas announced it was stepping into the media optimization plugin market. The team released its Remove Unused Media plugin as a commercial project for tidying storage space. I received a full copy of it and put it through the ropes. With so many commercial plugins, I am accustomed to the…
A friend and I were discussing the need for more one-off block plugins earlier today. He had mentioned that WordPress has this powerful block search feature that rarely turns up anything useful. Most are part of collections that do not appear in the results. This was part of a more wide-ranging conversation that I am…
WordPress’ Reusable blocks may soon be getting re-named, as the feature’s distinct capabilities are less recognizable from its name following the introduction of patterns. When the Gutenberg project first took off, nobody had any idea how important patterns would become in the page building experience, or that they would be getting their own directory on…
Something on my radar right now is third-party plugins that have settings in the Customizer. What I gather of friends who are the devs working on Customizer and front-end stuff within a few plugin companies, global styles and block styles are not yet on their radar. So what happens if someone installs Twenty Twenty-Two or…
The go/no-go deadline for deciding on features for WordPress 5.9 was set for October 12 but the conversation was pushed back two days. Today, the core leadership for this release announced that everything in the previously-proposed scope for 5.9 will be moving forward. Users can expect block themes, template and template part editing flows, the…
The Jetpack Scan team has published a summary of two issues recently discovered in the WP Fastest Cache plugin – an Authenticated SQL Injection vulnerability and a Stored XSS Via CSRF vulnerability. “If exploited, the SQL Injection bug could grant attackers access to privileged information from the affected site’s database (e.g., usernames and hashed passwords),” Automattic…