Now that WordPress 5.4 has successfully launched, it is time to begin thinking about version 5.5, which has a tentative release date of August 8, 2020. On Wednesday, Josepha Haden, Executive Director of WordPress, put out a call for tickets. Naturally, the block editor is the top focus as we continually inch toward new features such as a refreshed interface, …
Fighting the Stay-At-Home Boredom: Time to Create Rather Than Consume
A common theme among my friend groups is the utter boredom of being under stay-at-home orders during the COVID-19 pandemic. Part of me wants to tell folks that there has never been a greater time in human history to find something to do at home. There is a plethora of content available at the touch of a finger or even …
WordCamp Europe 2020 Is Moving Online This Summer
On Monday, the WordCamp Europe team announced it would hold its annual event online from June 4-6. The move comes after initially postponing this year’s physical event because of the COVID-19 pandemic currently sweeping the globe. Like many other events, the organizing team is in the process of switching gears and moving everything to work over the internet. WordCamp Europe …
Jetpack Re-launches Search Feature as Standalone Service
The Jetpack team announced today that its search service is now available as a separate package from the professional bundle it was previously under. The move should make it more affordable for small sites to use the service. Larger sites might have to shell out more money, depending on how much content is on the site. “Jetpack Search had only …
Proposal to Move WordPress Theme Review Process to GitHub
Denis Žoljom, the automation representative for the WordPress theme review team, proposed moving much of the theme review system over to GitHub. The idea is to move the interactive parts of the review away from the current system. The proposal claims such a move would streamline the process via automated tools and make the manual, reviewer-to-author interactions easier. Currently, the …
Proposal to Add a Consent API to WordPress, Feature Plugin Available
On Wednesday, Garret Hyder announced a feature proposal for a WordPress Consent API. The proposal is one step on the larger privacy roadmap for core. If merged into WordPress, it would establish a standard method for core, plugins, and themes to obtain consent for various privacy-related features. The idea is to create a consistent experience for developers, site administrators, and …
Create Custom Patterns with the Block Pattern Builder Plugin
Have I mentioned how excited I am about the potential of block patterns? For regular Tavern readers, I may sound like a broken record at this point, but I am going to continue evangelizing this upcoming feature for WordPress. With no social plans or other important things requiring my attention this past weekend, it made for a good moment to …
BuddyPress 6.0 Beta Introduces Group and Member Blocks
The team behind BuddyPress dropped the first version 6.0 beta release of the plugin yesterday. One of the most important features is the introduction of the new member and group blocks for the WordPress editor. The plugin now requires at least PHP 5.6 and WordPress 4.8 (5.0 to use the new blocks). “I think it’s exciting times,” said John James …
WordPress 5.4 “Adderley” Includes Improved Editor, New Blocks, and Developer APIs
WordPress 5.4 “Adderley”, named in honor American jazz musician Nat Adderley, was released today and is now available for download. The update includes new social icons and buttons blocks, usability improvements to the block editor, and new APIs for developers to use in plugins and themes. This release saw contributions from 168 new volunteers. There were 552 contributors in total. …
Proposal to Update the WordPress Coding Standards for Modern PHP
WordPress is a dinosaur. If you are a PHP programmer and have had the opportunity to work outside of WordPress in the past 10 years, there are likely one or two or a few dozen things that frustrate you when diving back into the project’s 16-year-old codebase. At a time when WordPress is gifting JavaScript programmers with the latest and …