GPL author Richard Stallman announced this week that he has rejoined the board of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), which he established in 1985, and is not planning to resign a second time: “I have an announcement to make. I’m now on the Free Software Foundation Board of Directors once again. We were working on […]
In 2018, WebARX launched the first version of its security platform and grew to 3,000 users. Earlier this month, the company decided to rebrand to Patchstack. Outside of customers getting the name wrong, the company had grown beyond its original SaaS product, providing other services like PlugBounty, an open-source bug-hunting platform. Earlier this year, they
On Wednesday, WordPress executive director Josepha Haden Chomphosy posted the next steps forward for themes and reviews for the official theme directory. In the post, she describes the tools and types of access the Themes Team needs. She also laid out some other goals for the system. The timeline is to have much of this
Yesterday, version 10.2 of the Gutenberg WordPress plugin landed. Users can now add a Spacer block between Navigation items, categorize custom template parts, and pick between patterns when inserting the Query block. The user experience continues to improve in some areas. The Media & Text block, one of the few holdouts, can now be transformed
Elementor users who haven’t updated recently will want to get on the latest version 3.1.4 as soon as possible. Researchers at Wordfence disclosed a set of stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in the plugin to its authors in February, which was partially patched at that time and additional fixes were released the second week of March.
The world of Gutenberg blocks is expanding. WordPress’ official block directory launched in June 2020 with just 60 single-block plugins. Today, it has grown to more than 480 blocks. As users incorporate more blocks into their websites, the block inserter can become a very long list to scroll when browsing. Block management capabilities were added
Atarim is launching its 2nd annual Web Agency Summit in a couple of weeks. The free event will run from March 23 – 26. The goal of the event is to help agencies and freelancers in the WordPress space grow sustainable businesses. Atarim is the company formerly known as WP Feedback. In February, the business
Yesterday, Happy Prime owner and engineer Jeremy Felt released Shortnotes, a plugin for writing notes from the WordPress editor. The intention is for users to create short pieces of content, such as that found on Twitter, Instagram, and similar social networks. However, it does not come with a front-end posting interface, at least not in
Living on the bleeding edge of Gutenberg’s development is not particularly easy for everyone. There is a ton of work and know-how involved with getting everything set up. You have to clone a Git repository, grab pull requests, and run a build process. Non-developers may find themselves facing an overwhelming learning curve. It can be
Gutenberg 10.1 landed yesterday with several new features, many of which focused on improvements to the interface and user experience. Users can now control the justification of items in the Social Icons block. The new release also enhances the UX for creating reusable blocks, groups the Image block toolbar controls, and introduces categorized template parts
One of my favorite activities each week is to peruse the latest themes to land in the WordPress theme directory. Often, there are intriguing design concepts. However, much of the time, I am disappointed to learn that homepage designs of many rely on theme options instead of the block editor. While the editor has several
Chrome Canary, the browser’s nightly build for developers, has been testing a new Follow button, as spotted on Android by the publishers of Chrome Story. The button appears on the homepage of a site, as well as in the browser menu: Chrome Story speculates that it may be integrated with Google’s Discover feature, allowing sites
I’m a developer that has started developing with Gutenberg recently. There are a bunch of amazing benefits and features, but there are also a ton of drawbacks, inconsistencies, as well as absolutely awful and outdated documentation. One of the worst aspects of Gutenberg from a developer perspective has been block validation. Consider the following scenario.
What was once likely viewed as plugin territory is now a reality as part of the Gutenberg project. Yesterday, the team merged a pull request for a Table of Contents (TOC) block into the plugin’s codebase. It was a contribution driven by developer Zebulan Stanphill, starting nearly a year ago. The TOC block may feel
Plausible Analytics is not new on the scene. The two-person, EU-based team behind the company has been trying to carve its slice of the analytics pie against players like Google Analytics and WordPress.com Stats for nearly two years. The self-funded and bootstrapped company is starting to gain a small foothold. It has been an uphill
After noticing suspicious review activity for the AccessiBe plugin, accessibility consultant Joe Dolson reported the fake reviews to WordPress.org’s plugin team. The reviews were removed in under 48 hours, thanks to Dolson’s detailed research. At the time of reporting, Dolson found 31 five-star reviews, 2 four-star reviews, and 2 one-star reviews. After putting these into
WordPress contributors are considering scaling back the planned number of releases in 2021. In a post titled “Making WordPress Releases Easier,” WordPress’ Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy summarized three years of research on reducing the effort required to have a successful WordPress release: From my research, the work to automate what we can (and potentially
Perhaps the fates have stepped in to prove a point. After I wrote a 2,000-word piece on the lack of quality themes in the theme directory, they decided to send a message. Not once, but twice this week, a new WordPress theme has managed to catch my eye. My rational mind knows that it was
Earlier this week, Elementor announced a significant pricing hike coming in March 2021 for new customers: On March 9th, 2021, Elementor will be adding new Studio and Agency Pro subscription plans and adapting the Expert plan, to best accommodate users’ growing needs. These changes will only apply to new purchases. If you’re on an existing active
Version 9.9 of the Gutenberg plugin landed earlier today. While it includes several minor UI improvements, the biggest user-facing change is the inclusion of icon and background color options for the Social Links block. Theme authors can now add support for rounded image borders. They are also faced with a breaking change to their theme
