WordPress Documentation Team Discusses Modifying External Linking Policy Following Opposition to the Ban on Commercial Links

Last month the WordPress Documentation Team announced a ban on links to commercial websites within the official docs. These include the HelpHub, Code Reference, Plugin and Theme Developer Handbooks, Block Editor Handbook, and the Common APIs Handbook. The reason behind the ban was that heavily policing commercial links placed too much responsibility on the documentation team, when they are already working with limited time and resources. The decision …

WooCommerce 4.4 Updates Blocks and Centralizes Coupon Management

Yesterday, Automattic dropped version 4.4 of its popular WooCommerce plugin. The new release is a minor update with the biggest changes around the plugin’s blocks and coupon management in the admin. Two dozen people made 450 contributions to the release. The WooCommerce team brought several updates to the plugin’s blocks. The biggest user-facing change is that the blocks will now …

Apple to Enforce 1-Year Limit on SSL/TLS Certificate Lifetimes on September 1, 2020, Mozilla and Google to Follow Suit

image credit:  Sylwia Bartyzel Beginning September 1, 2020, Apple’s Safari browser will no longer trust SSL/TLS certificates issued for longer than 398 days, which is the equivalent of one year plus the renewal grace period. Apple cited its “ongoing efforts to improve web security” in the announcement earlier this year. The change affects the full lineup of Apple platforms: This …

WordPress 5.6 Development Kicks Off with All-Women Release Squad

photo credit: Brodie Vissers WordPress 5.5 has already been downloaded more than 4 million times after its release earlier this week, and it’s time to kick off work on 5.6. Josepha Haden will be leading the release alongside coordinator Dee Teal, with additional leads for Triage (Tonya Mork), Core Tech (Helen Hou-Sandì), Editor Tech (Isabel Brison), Design (Ellen Bauer and …

Struggles of Remote Work Half a Year Into the Pandemic

This was supposed to be the year that ushered in a revolution in how we work. Remote jobs would become a common practice, spurred on by the global COVID-19 pandemic. A time when everyone would start paying attention to those radical ideas from remote work evangelists such as Matt Mullenweg. The question is whether this pandemic was the catalyst the …

JSHint is Now Free Software after Updating License to MIT Expat

The world of open source tooling has expanded to welcome JSHint, as the project’s maintainers have finally completed the necessary work to adopt the MIT Expat license. Previously, the JavaScript linter’s code was partially published under the JSON license, with an additional seemingly innocuous clause that stated: “The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.” This clause prevented it …

Astra Theme Suspended and Reinstated, Themes Team Works Toward Delisting Strategy for Guideline Violations

The Themes Team suspended Astra from the official theme directory just a few short weeks after it became the first non-default WordPress theme to surpass one million active installs. The reason: the theme was breaking the directory’s ban on affiliate links. The theme has since been reinstated. However, it has been delisted from the popular themes list. After the Themes …

New WordPress Plugins Disable Unsplash CDN

In light of the recent conversations about the Unsplash plugin’s CDN, several extensions have popped up this week for disabling it. By default, the plugin serves images from the CDN but saves copies to the WordPress media library in case the plugin is disabled or removed. The plugin does not currently have an option to change this. Disable Unsplash CDN …