StudioPress, which was acquired by WP Engine in 2018, is rebranding its popular Atomic Blocks plugin to Genesis Blocks. WP Engine also acquired Atomic Blocks in 2018, growing the plugin’s user base from 3,000 active installs to more than 60,000 over the past two years. The purpose of rebranding is to more tightly align the […]
One of the minor but useful additions to WordPress 5.5 is the new wp_get_environment_type() function. It makes it possible for plugin and theme authors to do some interesting things based on whether a site is identified as staging, development, production, or some other custom environment type. In discussion on the original trac ticket, Marius Jensen suggested
We should be leading the users, not following them.We should be guiding the users, not coddling them.We should carve out the road to the future, not continue to fix a broken road to the past.We should say what we do and do what we say. Juliette Reinders Folmer wrapped up her final thoughts on a
Last month the WordPress Documentation Team announced a ban on links to commercial websites within the official docs. These include the HelpHub, Code Reference, Plugin and Theme Developer Handbooks, Block Editor Handbook, and the Common APIs Handbook. The reason behind the ban was that heavily policing commercial links placed too much responsibility on the documentation team, when they are already working with limited
Joe Casabona, a freelance web developer and educator, launched WordPress: A Year in Review last week. The project was born out of his passion for helping others and a longing for attending WordCamp US, which has been canceled because of the stress of the pandemic and online event fatigue. He wanted to do something to
Yesterday, Automattic dropped version 4.4 of its popular WooCommerce plugin. The new release is a minor update with the biggest changes around the plugin’s blocks and coupon management in the admin. Two dozen people made 450 contributions to the release. The WooCommerce team brought several updates to the plugin’s blocks. The biggest user-facing change is
photo credit: Brodie Vissers WordPress 5.5 has already been downloaded more than 4 million times after its release earlier this week, and it’s time to kick off work on 5.6. Josepha Haden will be leading the release alongside coordinator Dee Teal, with additional leads for Triage (Tonya Mork), Core Tech (Helen Hou-Sandì), Editor Tech (Isabel
This was supposed to be the year that ushered in a revolution in how we work. Remote jobs would become a common practice, spurred on by the global COVID-19 pandemic. A time when everyone would start paying attention to those radical ideas from remote work evangelists such as Matt Mullenweg. The question is whether this
It is an age-old question. OK, well, it’s really a 10-year-old feature request, but that is age-old in software development years. Should WordPress have a local avatar system? Let’s be honest. Most of us have kind of gritted our teeth and quietly — and sometimes not so quietly — lived with the Automattic-owned properties that
The world of open source tooling has expanded to welcome JSHint, as the project’s maintainers have finally completed the necessary work to adopt the MIT Expat license. Previously, the JavaScript linter’s code was partially published under the JSON license, with an additional seemingly innocuous clause that stated: “The Software shall be used for Good, not
In light of the recent conversations about the Unsplash plugin’s CDN, several extensions have popped up this week for disabling it. By default, the plugin serves images from the CDN but saves copies to the WordPress media library in case the plugin is disabled or removed. The plugin does not currently have an option to
On Wednesday, the Gutenberg team pushed what was primarily minor enhancements and bug fixes to the WordPress platform’s primary project. Everyone is mostly gearing up for the WordPress 5.5 release, so we are not seeing any major features dropping at the moment. However, steady work continues on improving the Gutenberg plugin. Gutenberg 8.7 contains over
A short while ago, Justin Tadlock posted an article titled Are Plugin Authors to Blame for the Poor Admin Notices Experience?. If you haven’t already, I recommend reading his article. It describes in detail one question I’ve been pondering since I originally posted the WP Notify feature project proposal almost a year ago now: Will
Automattic’s relaunch of P2 is now in Beta. This is the long-awaited update to the company’s internal collaboration software that is also used on WordPress.org and other self-hosted sites via a theme. For years, Automattic, which now counts more than 1,200 employees in 77 countries, has had P2 at the core of its written communication
Iain Poulson announced that Plugin Rank is open to the public yesterday. It is a new service that allows plugin authors to track their rankings by keyword on the official WordPress plugin directory. The service is geared toward plugin authors with freemium offerings. The tools were already in place for Poulson to build the service.
Last week, Automattic’s marketing team made a positive step towards curbing the perennial branding confusion between WordPress.org and WordPress.com. The company’s press page was updated with a notice to journalists who are writing about Automattic: Automattic owns and operates WordPress.com, which is a hosted version of the open source WordPress software with added features for security,
With the WordPress 5.5 development cycle coming to a close, it is time to begin mapping out what features should land in WordPress 5.6 later this year. Earlier today, Chloe Bringmann asked the community to chime in with its wish list on the Make Core blog. As usual, I have a few thoughts. I tend
A Big Orange Heart, formerly known as WP&UP, has opened its 2020 Remote Work Wellbeing and Mental Health Survey. The charity organization focuses on supporting remote working communities with education and resources for mental and physical health. It is also home to a community of more than 4,700 members who support each other in growing
WordCamp US 2020, which was originally scheduled for October 27-29, was officially canceled today. In April, organizers transitioned to planning for it to be held as a virtual event, but the tenuous situation with the pandemic in the United States and the stress on the event’s large crew of volunteers has precipitated a full cancellation.
I am always on the lookout for interesting syntax-highlighting plugins, particularly for those occasions when I write tutorials or other articles that lean heavily on code. Far too many plugins use shortcodes, custom blocks, or other odd solutions. However, there is one option that I intentionally overlooked when it was released over a year ago:
