The WordPress Theme Review team is encouraging all theme authors to take notice of Google’s upcoming change to its ranking algorithm, which will be put in place at the end of April: Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all…
The Google web fonts library has over 650 fonts and without a keen eye for design, it can be difficult to find complimentary fonts. After we highlighted how you can customize Twenty Fifteen with over 650 free fonts, some readers questioned whether customizing fonts should be left up to designers. Typography Project Beautifully Illustrates Complimentary…
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 this episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I discuss what it would take for WordPress to lose its dominant market share position. We both agree that WordPress isn’t going anywhere soon but it’s something to be mindful of. We share our thoughts on the recommended plugins tab coming in WordPress 4.1 and whether…
John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, announced today that Google will be discontinuing its support for authorship in search results. We’ve gotten lots of useful feedback from all kinds of webmasters and users, and we’ve tweaked, updated, and honed recognition and displaying of authorship information. Unfortunately, we’ve also observed that this information isn’t as…
Over the weekend, we reported that WordPress For iOS 4.0 was released. Not only did I upgrade, but I also enabled the single-sign on Jetpack module for WPTavern.com and two-factor authentication for my WordPress.com user account. Within the comments of the post, Jonathan Lyman mentioned WordPress For iOS is incompatible with two-factor authentication: Just a…
Sometimes, after moving a site from a development environment into a live production environment, users and developers can forget to uncheck the “Discourage Search Engines From Indexing Your Site” box located within the Reading Settings. It’s a terrible feeling to realize months after a site has gone live, that search engines failed to index the…
WordPress.org user profiles already display a user’s activity, plugins and themes they’re associated with, and their favorite plugins. What if data from WordCamp.org could be displayed as well? If this sounds interesting, keep an eye on the Make WordPress Community blog. Ian Dunn has begun the process by asking what kind of data to display…
This weeks edition of WordPress Weekly features special guest, David Bisset. We were also joined by Marcus Couch. After catching up on the headlines, we dove into the topic of WordCamps. Specifically, encouraging women to speak while also increasing diversity, new IRS regulations that corporate sponsors must abide by and last but not least, whether…
Google released its first plugin for self-hosted WordPress sites today. Google Publisher is now in beta and available on WordPress.org. The WordPress community is invited to test it out. So far, the plugin includes two main features: Easily add AdSense ads to your site to make money from advertising. Verify your site with Webmaster Tools…
If you have not had the chance to see Automattic’s new office in downtown San Francisco in person, you’re in luck. You can now take a virtual tour of the Automattic office via Google Maps. Joey Kudish who is an Automattic employee shared the news on his blog. According to Joey, a photographer stopped by,…
When the dashboard redesign is officially added to WordPress core, it looks like it will be missing a widget that’s been with the software since 2005 when the Dashboard feature was introduced with WordPress 1.5 “Strayhorn”. In its early days, the incoming links widget used Technorati but due to the service not being able to…
Over the past few years, WordPress has made it a tradition to take part in the Google Summer Of Code. This year however, thanks to Jane Wells, there will be two interns from the Gnome Outreach Program for Women. This program is organized by the GNOME Foundation to encourage more women to get involved with…
When performing a search on the Codex, you’re presented with a slew of search results. However, not all of those results are within the Codex. The search portion of the Codex is powered by a Google custom search box which not only presents results from within the Codex, but from across WordPress.org as well, mainly…
For the first time that I can remember, WordPress has been rejected from the Google Summer Of Code mentor ship program. This was an unexpected move, especially considering how WordPress has been a part of the program for the past few years. As you read through the comments of the post, quite a few people…