Mika Epstein, who helps review plugins before they’re added to the directory and is a dedicated support forum volunteer, has a great post on the difficulties associated with plugins that require license keys for updates. She addresses topics like keeping users informed, ownership, and bundling plugins with themes. She also suggests the following solution to…
Robert Chapin, who contributes to WordPress core, published the first draft of a roadmap that explains how the Shortcode API could be overhauled. “The decision to create this roadmap arose from specific needs that are not met by the old code,” Chapin said. The proposal has an aggressive timeline with development starting in WordPress 4.4…
For over six years, the Google Earth API has enabled countless developers to build 3D mapping applications in the browser. Those days are over as Google announced on its developer blog that the API is deprecated and will officially retire December 12th, 2015. The Google Earth API is built on the NPAPI plugin framework which…
In a crucial courtroom decision involving Google v.s Oracle, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in favor of Oracle. The main part of the appeal is whether Oracle can claim copyright on Java APIs and if Google infringed that copyright. If the ruling stands, it would create a major setback to…
Rocketgenius, the team behind GravityForms has announced the release of GravitfyForms 1.8 Beta 1. This is a big release as 1.8 contains a number of features such as: Support for the Heartbeat API Integration with the Trash component of WordPress Multi-file uploading Form scheduling Form Sorting WordPress Multisite (Gravity Forms now supports being installed within…
About three years ago, WordPress introduced pie charts and a stats API to the plugin repository. These stats gave plugin authors a chance to see which versions of their plugin were activated while also giving a glimpse into how many actual users the plugin had. The API provided a method to getting access to the…
There are very few instances when I’m browsing WPTavern.com without being logged in as an administrator. Turns out, I should do that more often as I discovered that my Comment Quicktags Reloaded plugin was broken. I’ve used Comment Quicktags Reloaded since launching WPTavern.com because I believe that comment forms are a lot like forum threads.…
The short answer is yes, it’s still free for personal use. However, over the past few weeks, it seems as though many people believe that the free use of Akismet has disappeared and it’s now only a paid service. So in order to understand where this line of thought is coming from, I decided to…
The extensibility of WordPress is legendary. But buried deep beneath the surface is plugin API that is rarely used and lie mostly undiscovered. Get a primer on how these APIs might be used in plugins and take WordPress to even higher heights by Aaron Brazell, author of the book The WordPress Bible and owner of…
Nuclear powered Raphael Mudge has announced on the After The Deadline blog a couple of interesting developments the first being the removal of API Keys. Using the service no longer requires users to register with the site. However, if you need to use AtD in a commercial environment, you are encouraged to use the open…