In December, Mapbox shocked its open source contributor community with the news that Mapbox GL JS version 2.0 would be released under a proprietary license. The JavaScript library powers interactive, customizable vector maps on many high profile websites like CNN, The New York Times, Ancestry, Strava, Shopify, Facebook, and more. Older versions remain open source but Mapbox will only be …
New Local Blueprint Enables One-Click Setup for Testing Full Site Editing
If you haven’t yet tested the Gutenberg team’s progress on the full site editing (FSE) project, WordPress developer Carrie Dils has created a blueprint for Local that makes it easy to jump right in. Full site editing is phase 2 on the Gutenberg roadmap and is one of the main focuses for WordPress core development in 2021. (Check out What …
WordPress Proposal To Align Release Cycle With Industry Standard
Yesterday, Francesca Marano opened a proposal for changing the phases of the core WordPress release cycle. It was a recap of a discussion the began in October 2020. The goal is to align the platform’s phases with the larger development industry standard. Aside from naming, WordPress has mostly followed the software industry in how it tackles its release cycle. Following …
Gutenberg’s Faster Performance Is Eroding Page Builders’ Dominance
WordPress’ block editor, colloquially still widely known as Gutenberg, is making inroads into the segment of users who have heavily relied on page builders for years. For the most part, page builder plugins have either declined in growth or stagnated in 2020, with the exception of Elementor. In contrast, block collections with page builder features are gaining more users. Performance …
WordPress Community Team Proposes Using a Decision Checklist to Restart Local Events
photo credit: Glenn Carstens-Peters WordPress’ Community Team has been discussing the return to in-person events since early December 2020, and has landed on an idea that would allow local meetup organizers to determine readiness using a COVID-19 risk-assessment checklist. This would enable organizers to restart meetups when it is safe for their communities, instead of applying a blanket global policy. …
Blocked-Based Version of Twenty Twenty-One Nearing Readiness for the Theme Directory
Twenty Twenty-One Blocks, now renamed to TT1 Blocks, is inching its way toward the WordPress theme directory. Kjell Reigstad mentioned the prospect in this week’s block-based themes meeting. Contributors to the theme, which is part of the Theme Experiments project, have pushed some much-needed code updates to the repository. TT1 Blocks is the block-based version of the Twenty Twenty-One theme. …
JetBrains Denies Being Under Investigation for SolarWinds Attack
JetBrains, makers of Phpstorm, one of the most popular IDEs for PHP developers, has published a statement denying any involvement in the SolarWinds attack, which compromised multiple US federal agencies and private companies. The company stated that it has not been the subject of an official investigation: JetBrains has not taken part or been involved in this attack in any …
All in One SEO Plugin Turns on Automatic Updates without Notifying Users, Removes Functionality in Latest Release
Buried in the changelog of a series of minor releases that dropped before the Christmas holiday, All in One SEO plugin users were given the surprise gift of automatic updates. After a seemingly endless run of releases (12 updates during a span of six weeks at the end of 2020), the plugin’s developers decided to change its auto update policy …
Block System Will Create More Commercial Opportunities for WordPress Theme Authors
Ten years ago, a potential WordPress theme buyer might stumble upon a site like ThemeForest. The themes on the site would primarily tout the hundreds of shortcodes they included. These shortcodes would allow the user to build anything they wanted with simple BBCode-like brackets around some tag or another. The practice was not limited to ThemeForest. Nearly every theme development …
WordPress.com Rattles Freelancer Community with New Website Building Service Launch
WordPress.com launched a new website building service today with prices starting at $4,900. Automattic has been beta testing the service since the last quarter of 2020. The product announcement invites customers to let WordPress.com’s professional team “translate your vision into a compelling and modern website” but does not specify pricing for more customized websites: Whether you need a fast and performant …