GoDaddy Pro is launching its first virtual Expand event on April 27. The free-to-attend conference will focus on web professionals and will last until April 28. In February, GoDaddy re-launched GoDaddy Pro as a formal sub-brand of the company. The “Pro” branding was not a new outing. However, it was a fresh take on an old idea. As part of …
Creating Tiled, Masonry, and Other Image Layouts With Meow Gallery
I am uncertain of how I first came across the Meow Gallery WordPress plugin. It was a pinned tab in my browser for a while, but it has recently become one of those projects that I keep coming back to. I delight in the imagery of the Meow Apps brand, created by Japan-based software developer Jordy Meow. It has the …
WordPress to Drop Support for IE11 in Upcoming 5.8 or 5.9 Release
In early March, WordPress contributors began discussing the possibility of dropping support for IE11 in the near future after usage fell below ~1%. This week, the discussion’s facilitator, Héctor Prieto, confirmed the majority of participants are in agreement to move forward and set a timeline for discontinuing support. Contributors are now considering either the 5.8. or 5.9 release. “The argument …
10up Creates Classic Post Migration Route With Its Convert to Blocks WordPress Plugin
Yesterday, 10up officially announced Convert to Blocks, a WordPress plugin for transforming classic posts into blocks. The goal is to provide users with a safe migration route for old content while removing the burdens of other options in the space. I briefly mentioned this plugin in an article covering bulk conversion in the Ask the Bartender series. However, I could …
Insert Font Awesome Icons Into the Block Editor via the JVM Gutenberg Rich Text Icons Plugin
Joris van Montfort, a freelance WordPress developer, released the JVM Gutenberg Rich Text Icons plugin over the weekend. The goal was simple: allow users to insert icons nearly anywhere in the block editor at the click of a button. The plugin uses version 4.7 of the Font Awesome library out of the box. However, developers can modify this to include …
Chrome 90 to Use HTTPS by Default in the Address Bar
Chrome’s upcoming version 90 will use https:// by default in the address bar, bringing a significant improvement to security and loading speed. HTTPS adoption has shot up significantly over the past six years after Google announced in 2014 that HTTPS would be used as a ranking signal in search results. In February 2021, W3Techs found that 82.2% of websites use a valid SSL certificate. …
Refactoring Gutenberg’s Gallery Block To Support Nested Images
Like many others, I often have pinned tabs of all sorts of things in my browser. Some of them linger there for months. Others for years, I shamefully admit. Of the handful of Gutenberg-related browser tabs I have had pinned since late 2020, one of them finally had the sort of movement I have been waiting on. The Gallery block …
New Private Slack Channel Created for Full-Time Sponsored WordPress Contributors
As part of an experiment designed to improve coordination of contributor teams, WordPress has launched a new Slack channel for full-time sponsored contributors. Josepha Haden Chomphosy, the project’s executive director, announced the new closed Slack channel on Friday evening in a post that drew critical feedback from contributors who pushed for more clarification. “2020 was filled with hardships for many …
Upcoming Changes and Steps for an Overhauled WordPress Theme Review System
On Wednesday, WordPress executive director Josepha Haden Chomphosy posted the next steps forward for themes and reviews for the official theme directory. In the post, she describes the tools and types of access the Themes Team needs. She also laid out some other goals for the system. The timeline is to have much of this in place by early 2022. …
Elementor Patches XSS Vulnerabilities Affecting 7 Million WordPress Sites
Elementor users who haven’t updated recently will want to get on the latest version 3.1.4 as soon as possible. Researchers at Wordfence disclosed a set of stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in the plugin to its authors in February, which was partially patched at that time and additional fixes were released the second week of March. Wordfence summarized the vulnerabilities in …