Gravatar is fielding questions today after “Have I Been Pwned,” a data breech checker service, tweeted “New scraped data: Gravatar had 167M profiles scraped in Oct last year via an enumeration vector. 114M of the MD5 email address hashes were subsequently cracked and distributed alongside names and usernames.“ It claims 72% of these email addresses were already logged with the …
FSE Outreach Round #11: Going on a Site Editing Safari
Anne McCarthy announced Round #11 of the FSE Outreach Program on November 11. The latest test, dubbed Site Editing Safari, calls on volunteers to run through a step-by-step list to find strengths and weaknesses around the upcoming WordPress 5.9 site editor. Volunteers are still welcome to provide feedback until Tuesday, December 7. This is actually my second attempt at Round …
PHP Foundation Gains Momentum with $280K Estimated Annual Budget on Open Collective
At the end of November, prominent members of the PHP community formed a new PHP Foundation as a non-profit organization, “to ensure the long life and prosperity of the PHP language.” The founding members include Automattic, Laravel, Acquia, Zend, Craft CMS, Private Packagist, Tideways, PrestaShop, Symfony, and JetBrains—a group of companies with products that rely heavily on PHP. In just …
WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 Released with Detailed Testing Guide
WordPress 5.9 beta 1 is now available for testing. With just eight weeks remaining until the official release lands, the team is focusing on testing, an important part of the development process that will keep 5.9 on track. Due to the great many interconnected parts of full-site editing (FSE) that will make their debut in 5.9, contributors are organizing a …
Ask the Bartender: Should I Use a Page Builder or Wait for Block Themes?
As a non-developer, I honestly don’t know what direction to take my WordPress site anymore. I used to rely on themes and even bought some premium ones, but over time, I’d outgrow them. As an artist myself, I prefer having control over every aspect of my website, from its layout, colors, to its fonts. Thus, I turned to page builders. …
Gutenberg 12.0 Focuses on Cleanup and Minor Enhancements
Last week, contributors to the Gutenberg plugin wrapped up the version 12.0 release just ahead of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. Most work is being pushed toward the upcoming WordPress 5.9 release, which has been postponed to January 25. As a result, Gutenberg 12.0 has fewer bells and whistles and more bug fixes and maintenance. However, the latest update has a …
WordPress, Blogging, and the Things We Are Thankful For
On Saturday, one side of my family held our pre-Thanksgiving reunion. It had been two years since we were able to do it. I offered to host this year when our previous venue’s loss threatened to sideline the event for yet another year. Needless to say, I was exhausted by the time my last cousin and his wife got in …
GoDaddy Data Breach Exposes 1.2 Million Active and Inactive Managed WordPress Hosting Accounts
In a disclosure to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that was published today, GoDaddy announced a data security breach impacting its WordPress managed hosting customers. The company discovered unauthorized third-party access to its hosting environment on November 17, 2021, through an exploited vulnerability. GoDaddy’s initial investigations show the attacker gained access using a compromised password beginning on September …
Automattic Theme Team Releases a Plugin To Build Blockbase Child Themes
On Wednesday, Ben Dwyer announced a new block-based plugin on the Theme Shaper blog. The Automattic Theme Team had built a child theme creator for its Blockbase WordPress parent theme. Blockbase has quickly started filling the role of Underscores, a starter that many developers used to create custom themes in the classic era. For block templating and global styles, something …
BuddyPress 10.0.0 Beta 1 Delayed, Stable Release Rescheduled for December 24
The upcoming BuddyPress 10.0.0 beta 1 release was scheduled for November 20, but contributors have decided to postpone the beta by two weeks, due to lack of time for adequately testing recent improvements to the planned features. The stable release has been rescheduled for December 24. This version will require WordPress >= 5.4. The delayed beta gives BuddyPress plugin developers more …