WordPress News

18F — the US government service –…

Brian Krogsgard

February 6, 2017

18F -- the US government service -- recently noted that cloud.gov is now FedRAMP Authorized for use by federal agencies, which means “teams can start using cloud.gov in production with less upfront work”. The post goes into more details, but it’s…

Alex Denning at WP Zoom tells…

Brian Krogsgard

February 6, 2017

Alex Denning at WP Zoom tells the story of the rise and fall of their page builder tool, including what they learned. The product existed for more than two years. After noticing the plugin, “created too much confusion,” and that…

Mika Epstein notifies developers of a…

Brian Krogsgard

February 6, 2017

Security

Mika Epstein notifies developers of a recent plugin guideline change in the WordPress plugin repo. Guideline 12 (“Public facing pages on WordPress.org may not spam”) is now more clear in broadcasting the message “Do not use your readme to spam.”…

Shawn Hooper shows how to use…

Brian Krogsgard

February 6, 2017

Shawn Hooper shows how to use the WordPress REST API to remotely trigger clearing of a key in the Object cache. It’s nice because as Shawn mentions, “now the public website is kept up-to-date in real-time, while still making use…

Kinsta has released an 18 part…

Brian Krogsgard

February 6, 2017

Kinsta has released an 18 part series on improving WooCommerce conversion rates, if that's your sort of thing. It's a thorough guide for a store owner or consultant.

BlogVault vulnerability exposed tens of thousands of sites to hacking

Brian Krogsgard

February 6, 2017

Security

BlogVault has 20,000 active installs of their free plugin on WordPress.org, and on their home page they boast 85,000+ sites in their network. Over the weekend, they disclosed a vulnerability in their plugin that exposed customers, and an unknown percentage…

WordPress.com digital only ad campaign sign of things to come

Brian Krogsgard

February 6, 2017

Business

Automattic created a digital only advertisement geared toward the Super Bowl. When it was discovered, some folks thought it may air nationally, either during or around the game. I confirmed with Mark Armstrong of Automattic that it's actually a digital…

Editing and customization core focus areas — Draft Podcast

Katie Richards

February 2, 2017

DraftPlanet

In this episode, Joe and Brian talk about both the editor and customizer feature projects -- two core focus areas for WordPress in 2017.

StudioPress relaunched, going all in on a hosted product

Brian Krogsgard

February 1, 2017

Hosting

StudioPress has a brand new look, and is now marketing itself primarily as StudioPress Sites. At a foundational level, StudioPress Sites feels like a mashup of other products under the parent company umbrella, backed by the powerful StudioPress brand. In…

WooCommerce switches accounts to utilize WordPress.com credentials

Brian Krogsgard

February 1, 2017

Security

WooCommerce has officially switched over to require WordPress.com account credentials. The announcement was made by Todd Wilkens, the new lead of WooCommerce within Automattic. Todd was formerly the head of mobile and chat products at Atlassian (HipChat, etc). This change…

The editor and customizer aren’t the…

Brian Krogsgard

January 26, 2017

The editor and customizer aren't the only parts of core getting attention. Felix Arntz has posted about improving the, "well-known, but not well-loved Settings API." Improvements include a long-desired default callback option for common field types. Felix also posted about…

WordPress 4.7.2 shipped today with security…

Brian Krogsgard

January 26, 2017

Security

WordPress 4.7.2 shipped today with security updates. All three updates require existing administrative access, so don't seem to have a super high risk profile compared to publicly exposed areas. You should've already gotten automatic update notices for your websites --…

We have more big hosting news,…

Brian Krogsgard

January 26, 2017

Hosting

We have more big hosting news, again from Liquid Web. They've acquired WiredTree, the much beloved VPS service. According to Liquid Web's announcement, WiredTree customers will be migrated to their infrastructure. The post also says Liquid Web has 600 team…

Tom J Nowell shows how to…

Brian Krogsgard

January 26, 2017

Tom J Nowell shows how to write a WordPress REST API endpoint in a few minutes, assuming one knows nothing about REST APIs. It's a very quick and easy to follow tutorial.

Carlo Daniele has a developer’s guide…

Brian Krogsgard

January 26, 2017

Carlo Daniele has a developer's guide to WordPress's Twenty Seventeen Theme on the Kinsta blog. Carlo shows customizing the front page header, adding more sections to the front page, adding custom SVG icons to the Social Icons menu, and animating…

Many developers have heard the term…

Brian Krogsgard

January 26, 2017

Many developers have heard the term unit testing, but some might have nightmares about how complex it might be. That's why I enjoyed Thorsten Frommen's straightforward introduction to unit testing for WordPress. There are five questions that every unit test…