Donna Cavalier announced the vision of WordPress.com’s marketplace earlier today via the site’s news blog. This future will include bringing more premium themes, plugins, and services to users. Automattic, the company behind the site, will be partnering with third-party developers to bring these commercial offerings to its customers. Plugin developers, theme designers, and WordPress service providers can get on the …
WordPress Community Designers Create the Museum of Block Art
Anne McCarthy announced the launch of the Museum of Block Art earlier today via the Gutenberg Times blog. The site’s goal is to showcase creative uses of blocks and inspire the WordPress community to push the limits of what is possible with the block editor. The site showcases 22 pieces of block art from 11 people in the WordPress space. …
Play the Piano and Other Instruments via the WordPress Block Editor
Tetsuaki Hamano released the Piano Block plugin for WordPress on Monday. It allows users to insert a piano-based interface into the editor for playing music. Mostly, it is just a lot of fun. Hamano launched RichText Extension, his first submission to the WordPress plugin directory, in the spring of 2020. At the time, block-related plugins were still scarce, but he …
Gutenberg 12.7 Adds Multi-Block Selection in List View and Brings Margin Support to Group Blocks
Another two weeks have flown by, and another Gutenberg plugin update is in the books. This release is not as feature-heavy as the last, but it feels solid overall. Other than one breaking issue, version 12.7 includes several nice-to-have enhancements. The latest update includes some early work for a new style engine. This is a longer-term project that should improve …
WordPress Ditches “Pee” and “Tinkle” Jokes in Favor of More Inclusive Language and Clearer Code
It feels like the end of an era. Last week, core contributors merged a patch that removed PHP variables named $pee and $tinkle from the WordPress codebase. Yes, the software that powers 43% of the web has pee-pee jokes in its code. I know how it sounds. I felt silly writing that sentence. My job as a writer for WP …
The WordPress Web Fonts API Has Arrived
The journey toward a web fonts API in WordPress has been a rollercoaster of emotions for developers. After being punted from the WordPress 5.9 release, it was moved to the Gutenberg project, where it could be built alongside related features that relied on it. The API has been merged into the Gutenberg plugin and should land in version 12.8. Theme …
WordPress Multisite Is Still a Valuable and Often Necessary Tool
Rob Howard rocked the boat last week in calling for the deprecation of WordPress multisite in the latest MasterWP newsletter. He argued that “the brave and noble add-on is no longer necessary or valuable to developers.” The responses via Twitter were swift and in disagreement. Before WordPress 3.0, multisite was an entirely separate system called WPMU (WordPress MultiUser). It was …
FSE Outreach Round #12: Building a Site Header With Blocks
On Wednesday, Anne McCarthy announced Round #12 of the FSE Outreach Program. As always, everyone is free to join by testing features and providing direct feedback on problem areas with the design tools in WordPress. Anyone interested should respond by March 16. For this round, volunteers are tasked with testing some oldies but goodies. Early in the program’s history, anyone …
Recreating Onia: Building Brushstroke Backgrounds With WordPress Blocks
As I was looking over the latest releases from the WordPress theme directory this week, I came across one that caught my eye. Onia was clean and minimal while reserving its flourishes to bring attention to just a few elements across the page. Could this be one of those diamonds in the rough I am always looking for in the …
WordFest Live to Host Free 24-Hour Festival of WordPress March 4, 2022
The third edition of WordFest Live is coming up on March 4, 2022. The online event will feature more than 60 sessions over the course of 24 hours, as well as workshops, socials, and celebrations. Sessions will be focused on WordPress, remote working, and mental wellbeing. Topics include leadership, freelancing, website performance, podcasting, WooCommerce, dealing with mental disorders in tech, …








