If you’re brand new to bbPress, you may not know about some of the ways it can be extended beyond being a simple forum. Additional functionality can be added with plugins, its output can be manipulated through CSS, and development is easy to keep up with. Even though bbPress has a getting started guide available,…
Mark your calendars and schedule some free time on Friday, October 17th for the first “Rate and Review a WordPress Plugin Day“. On October 17th, visit the page of your favorite plugin in the WordPress.org plugin directory, give it a star rating, and write a review. Why The Special Day? If you’re anything like me,…
Marcus Couch and I are joined by the lead developer of iThemes Security, Chris Wiegman. After helping us dissect the news of the week, he tells the story of how he got involved with WordPress. We learn about the circumstances that lead to the creation of iThemes Security and how he almost sold the plugin…
The founder of ManageWP, Vladimir Prelovac, has published an open letter addressed to the WordPress community on the topic of security. In the letter, he cites the third-party ecosystem surrounding WordPress is not only its biggest strength, but also its biggest weakness. He suggests a three-point plan to help mitigate security issues in themes and…
After using WordPress for seven years in a row, it’s hard to consider switching to another publishing platform. I have my gripes about WordPress and there are plenty of things that can improve the publishing process. However, after testing a few other open source alternatives, I was reminded of how many things I take for…
While WordPress 3.8 and 3.9 substantially improved the theme experience within WordPress, the plugins page hasn’t had the same treatment. In fact, the page hasn’t changed much since 2.7. However, that may change as Alex Shiels has proposed a detailed outline explaining the improvements and changes he’d like to see. According to Shiels, the goal…
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where a plugin author requests administrator access to your site for troubleshooting purposes? That’s the question posed by WPBeginner along with a couple of tips to help you decide whether you answer yes or no. Over the years, I’ve given access to a couple of plugin authors…
Iain Poulson recently published a post that asks an important but easy question to answer. Will WordPress be a Plugin Business Killer? The post is based on the idea that features from a commercial plugin added to WordPress could kill the business based on that plugin. The short answer to Poulson’s question is no. Here’s…
Dashicons are what’s known as an icon font and were added to the core of WordPress with the release of 3.8. The icons are vector based so they can be as large or small as you want without losing quality. Plugin authors can use CSS, HTML, or a Glyph for use within Photoshop to display…
Last week, we reported the Better WordPress Security plugin would be renamed to iThemes Security. We also shared important details to prepare users for the upgrade. Because of the name change, users needed to re-enable the plugin or risk seeing errors. Despite the beta testing period, the upgrade process hasn’t gone smoothly for some users.…
The folks over at Sucuri have reminded us once again why it’s important to only download plugins from trusted sources. In a disturbing post published on the Sucuri blog, Denis Sinegubko highlights the dangers of using plugins from untrusted sources. In this post, we’ll talk about “patched” malicious premium plugins. We’ll talk about what they…
Early this morning, the WordPress.org plugin repository set a mile stone by hosting the 30,000th plugin. I didn’t think it would happen until a few weeks from now but it shows you how many plugins are approved and added to the repository every day. Jan Reimers on Twitter celebrated with a whoop! I second that…
If you use the Better WP Security plugin, keep an eye out for an important update next week. According to iThemes, the plugin will be renamed to iThemes Security to be more in line with the other products in the iThemes family. Because of the name change, users will need to re-activate the plugin after…
SellWP is a brand new service created by John Turner, who is also the developer of SeedProd. The goal of the service is to eliminate the stress and hassles of selling WordPress products allowing the developer to concentrate on the product itself. Some of the most difficult aspects of running a business such as licensing,…
In this episode, Marcus Couch and I sat down with Chris Wallace, co-founder of UpThemes and discussed in detail the reasons behind the open letter published by the company. We learned how Chris got involved with WordPress theme development and the circumstances leading to the creation of UpThemes. Chris explained how hard it was to…