photo credit: WP Tavern WordCamp US kicked off in Nashville over the weekend, following the release of WordPress 5.0. In the first 48 hours, 5.0 had been downloaded more than 2.8 million times. It passed 3 million Saturday night. “There’s been a lot that’s been going on, so I’d like to allow WordPress the chance Read more about State of the Word 2018: WordPress Embraces the Block Editor[…]
Version 1.0 of the official AMP plugin for WordPress was released on the eve of WordCamp US, after two years in development by contributors from Automattic, XWP, and Google. This first stable version has a massive changelog with 30 people credited for their contributions. The plugin is now considered ready for production and is active Read more about AMP Plugin for WordPress Version 1.0 Introduces Gutenberg-Integrated AMP Validation[…]
WordPress 5.0 will ship with a code block in the new editor but it doesn’t include syntax highlighting. The code is currently wrapped in pre tags. During the earlier days of Gutenberg’s development, the HTML block had syntax highlighting but the team was not satisfied with its implementation and decided to pull it until they Read more about SyntaxHighlighter Evolved Plugin Adds Gutenberg Support[…]
Block Lab is a new tool that provides an admin interface and a templating system for creating custom Gutenberg blocks. Rob Stinson, Luke Carbis, and Rheinard Korf, all employees at XWP, kicked off the project in their own time with the goal of removing the relatively steep barrier to block creation. The plugin is now Read more about New Block Lab Plugin Makes it Easy to Create Custom Gutenberg Blocks[…]
WP Engine has acquired Array Themes and Atomic Blocks from Mike McAlister for an undisclosed amount. McAlister has been developing WordPress themes since 2009. He initially sold his themes on ThemeForest. In 2011, he founded Array Themes. I reached out to McAlister to learn why he chose to be acquired, what excites him most about Read more about WP Engine Acquires Array Themes[…]
photo credit: Jeffrey Betts Many WordPress theme shops started out with themes as their only products but over the years have moved into selling plugins that enhance their core products. This came about partially because theming standards evolved to encourage developers to put non-presentational functionality into plugins. For many, the revenue from plugins quickly eclipsed Read more about WordPress Theme and Plugin Shops are Pioneering the First Layout Blocks for Gutenberg[…]
Milan Dinić, a WordPress developer based in Serbia, has released his commonWP plugin that enables WordPress sites to use the free, public jsDelivr CDN. Last year jsDelivr was revamped to allow any file from GitHub and npm to be served by the CDN. WordPress’ mirror on GitHub made it possible for Dinić to create a Read more about New commonWP Plugin Enables WordPress Sites to Use the Free jsDelivr CDN[…]
photo credit: Reiterlied Plundering San Francisco Bay – (license) WPForms has acquired Pirate Forms, a popular WordPress contact form and SMTP plugin originally created by ThemeIsle in 2015. The announcement coincides with International Talk Like a Pirate Day but the pirate branding of the plugin is set to be retired and its users will be Read more about WPForms Acquires Pirate Forms, Plugin to be Retired[…]
If you search for “slider” in the WordPress plugins directory, MetaSlider is the first result that comes up. The plugin, created by the team at UpdraftPlus, is active on more than 900,000 sites, more than any other free slider plugin, and averages a 4.7-star review. It includes four different types of sliders: Flex 2, Nivo Read more about MetaSlider Plugin Adds Gutenberg Block for Inserting Sliders[…]
At the end of 2017, WooCommerce published some of their “Wootenberg experiments”, one of the first previews of what e-commerce might look like in the Gutenberg era. Gutenberg’s handling of meta boxes has greatly evolved since that time and the WooCommerce Gutenberg Products Block feature plugin is now active on more than 20,000 sites. The Read more about Pootlepress Previews Upcoming Storefront Blocks Plugin for WooCommerce[…]