Jetpack 5.4 Introduces Beta Version of New Search Module Powered by Elasticsearch for Professional Plan Users

Jetpack 5.4 was released yesterday with many small enhancements to existing modules and an expansion of features for users on the paid plans. A new date picker field is available for the Contact Form, allowing administrators to request additional information such as project timelines, event reservations, or any other date-related data. This release also fixes a bug with Jetpack’s Comments …

Drupal Core Maintainers Propose Adopting React for Administrative UI’s

Both the Drupal and WordPress communities are now knee-deep in weighing JavaScript frameworks to modernize underlying architecture for building user interfaces in 2018 and beyond. Yesterday Drupal founder Dries Buytaert published a summary of his discussions with core committers, framework managers, JavaScript subsystem maintainers, and JavaScript experts at DrupalCon Vienna. Together they concluded that Drupal should consider adopting React. “We …

Regenerate Thumbnails Plugin Passes 5 Million Downloads, Rewrite in the Works

Regenerate Thumbnails, written by prolific plugin developer Alex Mills, has passed 5 million downloads. The plugin was first released nearly a decade ago in August 2008 during the days of WordPress 2.6. Regenerate Thumbnails is used to retroactively generate new thumbnail sizes for past uploads. It has become an indispensable utility over the years, helping millions of users successfully transition …

Gutenberg 1.2 Adds Postmeta Support and Extended Settings Placeholder

WordPress contributors have not yet made a final decision on the JavaScript framework to adopt for core, but Gutenberg development continues on with version 1.2 released this week. The update provides a better experience resolving block conflicts when switching between the “classic editor” and Gutenberg. Previously, if a user had created some paragraph blocks in Gutenberg but switched to the …

DigitalOcean Partners with GitHub to Support Open Source Projects during Hacktoberfest October 1–31

DigitalOcean is organizing its fourth annual Hacktoberfest in partnership with GitHub. The event was created to support open source projects and participants can earn a free t-shirt by contributing four pull requests during the month of October. More than 29,000 people signed up for Hacktoberfest 2016 from 114 countries and 10,227 people completed the challenge. The event tracked a record-breaking …