WordCamp US 2020 organizers have cancelled the in-person event in favor of hosting it as an online-only conference. With more than a million confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. today, 63,000+ deaths, and 31 states set to partially reopen this weekend, the pandemic’s trajectory throughout the country has become increasingly uncertain. Many statewide stay-at-home orders are expiring tomorrow, despite no …
WordPress 5.4.1 Addresses 7 Security Issues and Fixes Several Bugs
WordPress 5.4.1, a security and maintenance release, dropped today. The release addresses seven security issues, which were all responsibly disclosed to the WordPress security team. Core developers also included several fixes for code regressions in the previous version 5.4 release and ported bug fixes to the block editor from the Gutenberg plugin. End-users with automatic updates enabled should begin seeing …
Tectonic Shifts in Retail Industry are Creating Unprecedented Opportunities for Independent Stores
Major retailers that are part of the critical infrastructure for distributing household essentials, healthcare items, and shelf-stable food, are raking in the cash during this pandemic. While consumer spending at bars, restaurants, and places of entertainment has dropped precipitously, spending at Amazon and Walmart has increased considerably in the past few weeks. The companies cannot hire workers fast enough to …
WordCamp Europe 2020 Online Registration Now Open: Tickets are Free
WordCamp Europe 2020 is just 37 days away. Organizers announced in April that the event, which was supposed to be hosted in Porto, is moving to be 100% online this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. WCEU will kick off with a virtual Contributor Day on June 4, followed by two half days of talks and workshops broadcasted via livestream. …
Watch the Women of React Conference for Free on Saturday, April 25
While much of the world is in lockdown, public gatherings and conferences have been cancelled, leaving a void in the lives of people who enjoy meeting their fellow open source contributors and colleagues in person throughout the year. Virtual events, which were already on the rise, are enjoying a bit of a renaissance by necessity. On Saturday, April 25, the …
Chatterbox Plugin Uses WordPress Blocks to Show Conversations
Chatterbox is a new plugin with a fun and creative use for the block editor. It displays chat or text threads using blocks that are styled as conversations. Users can type in a record of a chat, including timestamps, with a live preview in the editor. Since written conversations are essentially little blocks of text and media, the block editor …
Frontity Raises €1M with Automattic and K Fund
Frontity, a free, open source framework for building WordPress themes with React, has raised €1M in funding in a round led by K Fund, with Automattic covering 22%. The team behind the framework officially made it open source in May 2019, after battle testing it internally. In one year the framework has more than 12,700 npm downloads and has built …
Google Shopping Is Now Open to Free Product Listings
Google announced today that it is bringing free listings to the Shopping tab in the United States before the end of April and will expand globally by the end of the year. Previously, merchants were required to pay for ad placement and product listings, which led to major online retailers dominating the Shopping tab. “Beginning next week, search results on …
WordPress Dashicons Project to Discontinue Development in Favor of New Icon Component
Dashicons, the WordPress admin icon font, is now closed to new icon requests. After the block editor adopted the approach of using SVG icons directly, WordPress design contributors have recently reevaluated the efforts going into the Dashicons project. The team decided to wrap up existing tickets for new icons, push out a final release, and then pool their efforts on …
WPBlockTalk Videos Now Available on WordPress.tv
All of the recordings from the free WPBlockTalk virtual event are now available on WordPress.tv. In case you missed it, WPBlockTalk was a WordPress community event sponsored by Automattic, and produced by Brian Richards, creator of WPSessions. It took place earlier this month on April 2, though some of its momentum may have been lost in the torrent of pandemic …