WordPress News

“The Coral Project is a joint…

March 15, 2016

"The Coral Project is a joint effort between The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Mozilla Foundation, and The Knight Foundation..." designed to make comments and online communities better. Yes, please. I look forward to seeing where this goes.…

Tracy Levesque summarizes her PressNomics talk…

March 15, 2016

Tracy Levesque summarizes her PressNomics talk in a blog post, discussing why diversity is a benefit, and instruction organizations how they can encourage more diverse environments.

Mahangu Weerasinghe writes about “breaking the…

March 15, 2016

Mahangu Weerasinghe writes about "breaking the silence" on HeroPress, with one of the most moving stories I've read in a long time. Somehow, as I progressed through high school, the expectant pauses of those listening to me were more difficult…

Shopify introduces WordPress integration

Brian Krogsgard

March 15, 2016

Shopify has announced three WordPress themes and an official Shopify eCommerce plugin to help WordPress sites start selling using Shopify. Shopify partnered with Themezilla, Themify, and Ultralinx for the launch. The themes and plugin are free and Shopify is promising…

WordPress’s place amongst an increasingly corporatized web

Brian Krogsgard

March 15, 2016

Big companies are jockeying for position with regard to how content is published and how it is shown on the web, and WordPress is right in the middle of it all. Requiring new formats of web pages for tools like…

WPForms enters the market, targeting beginners

Brian Krogsgard

March 15, 2016

WPForms is the latest project under the Awesome Motive umbrella. Syed Balkhi is partnered up with Jared Atchison, and Thomas Griffin is serving in an advisory role. Syed posted the backstory on his blog about where WPForms came from. It's…

Yet another survey for the WordPress recommended hosting page

Brian Krogsgard

March 11, 2016

Hosting

In discussing the Pressable story, a few folks have asked me about the WordPress recommended hosting page, and if Automattic's ownership of Pressable will affect that page. The answer is that I don't think so, but I don't know for sure. However,…

The Wallace Theme is a WordPress…

Brian Krogsgard

March 11, 2016

The Wallace Theme is a WordPress REST API driven theme using Angular 2. It's not released yet, but the base will be free and will have paid add-ons. It's a super smooth user experience right now that I would really…

Reactions have gotten a bit of…

Brian Krogsgard

March 11, 2016

Reactions have gotten a bit of an overreaction on Make Core. Gary Pendergast wrote about a plugin he's playing with to add Reactions to WordPress sites. While I don't think this is core material (especially right now), that wasn't really…

Konstantin Obenland has written up exactly…

Brian Krogsgard

March 11, 2016

Konstantin Obenland has written up exactly how to make use of the new Custom Logo feature in WordPress. I'm really pleased to see this in the customizer so themes can quit doing this a million different ways. It requires add_theme_support()…

Also coming in 4.5, the new…

Brian Krogsgard

March 11, 2016

Also coming in 4.5, the new link modal is great. WP Tavern has the best showcase of this with a gif demo. It's going to be nice to have auto-complete more inline.

Modern Tribe has an beautiful new…

Brian Krogsgard

March 11, 2016

Modern Tribe has an beautiful new website, built with React and the WordPress REST API. David Hickox wrote about their rebranding effort as well. This is the nicest agency redesign I've seen in a long time, and using pretty new…

Review Signal has changed the algorithm…

Brian Krogsgard

March 11, 2016

Hosting

Review Signal has changed the algorithm used to rank web hosts. A number of hosts were affected, and I thought you may like to see how. I believe Kevin does a terrific job with this site and it's the only…

Jetpack is building an onboarding plugin to alter the new WordPress user experience

Brian Krogsgard

March 11, 2016

Hosting

Jetpack is working on a plugin called Jetpack Onboarding that alters the default WordPress "Welcome" screen in the dashboard with a step by step onboarding process. Right now there are four steps for setting up a basic site: The repo…

Jetpack is testing direct email marketing for Automattic products

Brian Krogsgard

March 11, 2016

Automattic is testing email marketing to WordPress.com users who have accounts linked to Jetpack, in order to market Automattic products like VaultPress and Akismet. It's the first time I've seen them make use of the WordPress.com <-> Jetpack connection; previously the…

Automattic has purchased a majority stake in Pressable

Brian Krogsgard

March 10, 2016

BusinessHosting

Automattic has taken over a majority stake in Pressable, the managed WordPress hosting company, with a purchase of Pressable CEO Vid Luther's shares of the company. They were already a significant investor.