Automattician Alex Shiels of the Meta team has announced the resumption of WordPress.org services after the holiday break of two weeks. Users can now register new accounts, submit plugins, themes, and photos, and review plugins once again. Last month, Matt Mullenweg declared WordPress.org’s first-ever holiday break. He said, “In order to give myself and the…
The Training Team has launched a new course on Learn WordPress specifically for designers: Beginner WordPress Designer. This learning pathway is crafted to help designers new to WordPress gain the skills needed to create professional websites. The course covers essential topics such as building a style guide, understanding block themes, and adopting a block-first approach…
On Christmas Eve, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg took to Reddit, causing quite a stir by asking what kind of drama he should create in 2025. He posted, “What drama should I create in 2025? I’m very open to suggestions. Should we stop naming releases after jazz musicians and name them after Drake lyrics? Eliminate all…
Joost de Valk, co-founder of the Yoast SEO plugin has called for Breaking the Status Quo of the WordPress world. This comes in the wake of Matt Mullenweg’s announcement of a holiday break for WordPress.org and the ongoing Automattic-WP Engine legal dispute. de Valk said, “We, the WordPress community, need to decide if we’re ok…
BuddyPress Lead Developer Mathieu Viet has announced his departure from the WordPress community, marking the end of a long-standing association that began with BuddyPress 2.0. In a statement shared on his WordPress profile, he said, “I’ve decided to stop involving into the #WordPress community following the way WordPress leadership decided to prevent some users to…
Automattician Héctor Prieto has revealed the schedule for WordPress releases in 2025. Similar to 2024, three major releases are planned: The Core team has considered year-end festivities and key events like WordCamp Asia and WordCamp Europe when setting these dates. Héctor mentioned, “Although the 6.8 dates aren’t final yet, they are close to final enough…
WordPress 6.7, “Rollins,” was released on November 12, 2024, but WordPress.org experienced increased error rates after the release. Several users reported getting 502 “Bad Gateway” errors and the release messing up their websites. WordPress contributors kept a close eye on the complaints and have decided to release WordPress 6.7.1 on November 21, 2024, to address…
WordPress 6.7, code-named “Rollins,” was released on November 12, introducing a new default theme, Twenty Twenty-Five, zoom out view, and new powerful APIs. The announcement post stated, “Rollins’ bold and exploratory style resonates with WordPress’ own commitment to empowering creators to push boundaries and explore new possibilities in digital expression.” The new default theme, Twenty…
Automattic’s Marketing Lead, Nicholas Garofalo, has announced that WordPress is adding a new element to the Community Code of Conduct: Publishing private messages without consent. This addition expands the examples of unacceptable behaviors in the Community Code of Conduct to six. He pointed out that “Sharing private communications without permission is a clear violation of…
The ongoing WP Engine-Automattic issue shows no signs of being resolved and has, in fact, increased in intensity. The conflict started last month with Matt Mullenweg’s spiciest Word Camp presentation at WordCamp US 2024 where he accused WP Engine of being a “cancer to WordPress”. Yesterday, users who logged onto the WordPress.org home page were…
Starting October 1st, 2024, WordPress.org will roll out new security measures aimed at enhancing the safety of accounts with commit access to plugins and themes. This was announced by the Automattic-sponsored developer Dion Hulse. Mandatory Two-Factor Authentication Beginning next month, WordPress.org will make two-factor authentication (2FA) mandatory for all plugin and theme authors. Authors can…
WordPress constitutes 46% of websites, showing stable usage but with a significant portion using outdated software. Competitors like Wix and Squarespace are gaining ground, while PHP and Mailchimp experience decreases in usage.
Certain WordPress form plugins make achieving accessibility compliance easy. Others…not so much. This article highlights work that Gravity Forms and other plugins are doing to create more inclusive user experiences.
Faster load times, dozens of A11Y and design improvements, a new Font Library, and two exciting APIs: let the testing begin
Jack Lenox, a Software Engineer at Automattic, has launched a new site called SustyWP that focuses on web sustainability using WordPress. By removing the parts of Underscores he didn’t need, using one inline SVG image, no sidebars, limited CSS, and no webfonts, Lenox was able to launch a WordPress site that only has 7 Kilobytes…