Dig Into the Open Web

As the American Thanksgiving holiday is coming up, I am so grateful for all of our Tavern readers and the people who make WordPress – 800 in the most recent 6.1 release with 35 percent of them being new contributors. This community has made remarkable progress this year, while navigating changes and uncertain times. Committed contributors continue to show up …

New Tool Checks If Google Fonts Are Hosted Locally

Earlier this year, WordPress’ Themes Team began urging theme authors to switch to locally hosted fonts after a German court case decision, which fined a website owner for violating the GDPR by using Google-hosted webfonts. Since that ruling, German website owners have continued to receive threats of fines for not having their fonts hosted locally. The makers of the Fonts Plugin, …

Divi 5.0 Aims to Bring Greater Compatibility with Gutenberg

Divi, the popular commercial WordPress theme and page builder created by Elegant Themes, has announced major changes coming in version 5.0 that constitute a complete rewrite of Divi’s core technologies. The update, which is expected to be released in beta next year, will focus on performance, stability, scalability, and extendability, but it will not introduce any new features. “We are …

Jetpack Search Adds Free Tier and 3-Month Free Trial

Jetpack Search, a plugin that enhances WordPress’ search capabilities, has added a free tier and a three-month free trial to what was previously only available as a paid upgrade. The plugin uses WordPress.com’s infrastructure to provide instant, more relevant search results without reloading the page, with real-time indexing, integration with WooCommerce, spelling correction, and more. Jetpack Search was launched as …

Loudness: A New Block Theme from Automattic

Automattic has released a new block theme called Loudness that is available on both WordPress.com and WordPress.org. It’s an artistic and opinionated theme based on the company’s Block Canvas starter theme. Although Loudness’ brief description suggests the theme was created for “music and learning,” the design and custom patterns lend themselves to a variety of different use cases. It could easily …