WordPress News

There is a discussion unfolding at…

Dan Knauss

September 11, 2019

There is a discussion unfolding at Make WordPress about the future design of the WordPress "About" page. Initial discussion points posted by Tammie Lister ask some good focusing, "what if" questions: What if the CSS system was rebuilt from the…

WordPress 5.2.3 is out. It’s a…

Dan Knauss

September 11, 2019

Security

WordPress 5.2.3 is out. It's a security and maintenance release that includes 29 fixes and enhancements, including an update of jQuery for older versions of WordPress. ✨

Chat with a WordPress skeptic

Brian Krogsgard

August 15, 2019

DraftPlanet

Kira Leigh works with WordPress, but in most instances she'd rather avoid it. I talk to her about why she's a WordPress skeptic.

Is Tumblr a social network?

Brian Krogsgard

August 15, 2019

BusinessPlanet

Sharing without a strategy. Blogging without a plan. Connecting without an angle. Maybe that's how Tumblr shines?

Automattic — the maker of WordPress.com — has purchased Tumblr

Brian Krogsgard

August 12, 2019

BusinessHosting

Automattic has purchased Tumblr from Verizon, in a firesale move reported to be for less than $3 million. There is still value in the site, however, for Automattic.

Gary Pendergast announced a “baby step”…

Brian Krogsgard

August 9, 2019

Hosting

Gary Pendergast announced a "baby step" toward a better contributor experience in WordPress Core. Custom Docker images are now available for running WordPress on PHP versions 5.2 to 7.3. These images aren’t intended for hosting Docker-based WordPress sites but instead…

The New York Times explains how…

Brian Krogsgard

August 9, 2019

Business

The New York Times explains how they built a proprietary "collaborative editing CMS" for their newsrooms. It's an impressive piece of software, but it's a shame how much cool engineering goes into closed systems. Would the Times sharing this effort…

WooCommerce vs Shopify: A battle for ecommerce platform dominance

Jonathan Wold

August 1, 2019

BusinessDraft

Shopify has a lot going for it. WooCommerce, though, is the better platform for ecommerce on the Open Web.

ServerPilot announced in June that they…

Dan Knauss

July 26, 2019

Hosting

ServerPilot announced in June that they are launching a new hosting automation service called HostLaunch. It's meant to be a "platform for operating a modern web hosting company." It's a "customer-facing portal for your users to create their own accounts,…

Joshua Wold explains from a design…

Dan Knauss

July 26, 2019

Design

Joshua Wold explains from a design perspective how WooCommerce widgets are being converted into Gutenberg blocks. A lot more work goes into this than you might think!

Mary Ann Azevedo from Crunchbase makes…

Dan Knauss

July 23, 2019

Hosting

Mary Ann Azevedo from Crunchbase makes the case that the WordPress hosting space may simultaneously be one of the most lucrative — yet underfunded — industries. 💸

Tidy Repo made a speed comparison…

Dan Knauss

July 23, 2019

Hosting

Tidy Repo made a speed comparison of 100 WordPress themes. The tests were limited to free themes in the WordPress repo, so popular commercial themes were not featured. Because of the variables involved — including your hosting and installed plugins…

Here’s an eye-opening study from Princeton…

Dan Knauss

July 23, 2019

Design

Here's an eye-opening study from Princeton University that analyzed over 53,000 product pages from 11,000 shopping websites. What they found was 1,818 instances of dark patterns, which are user interface design choices that benefit an online service by coercing, steering,…

Ionut Neagu reviews the redesign of…

Dan Knauss

July 23, 2019

Design

Ionut Neagu reviews the redesign of Themeisle, including the pros and cons of the decisions that went into it. The design itself cost $10,000-$15,000. Commenting on that Ionut writes: While the design itself is something almost impossible to track the…

Preserving the Wilderness

Dan Knauss

July 12, 2019

BusinessPlanet

The web is a sacred wilderness, and it deserves preservation. What role can open source communities play? And how does it contrast with the monopolistic tendencies of the "tech giants?"

Everyone’s Going Local 🏠 Josh Koenig…

Dan Knauss

July 5, 2019

Hosting

Everyone's Going Local 🏠 Josh Koenig announced the first release of Pantheon Localdev, a local dev app for the Mac (Windows and Linux "coming soon") that is built on top of Docker and Lando with a GUI for working on sites…