WPHugs: A Community Devoted to Educating, Discussing, and Raising Awareness of Mental Health

In the past two years, there has been an increased effort in the WordPress community to raise awareness of mental health. Cory Miller, Rich Robinkoff, Michele Butcher, and others have presented on the subject at numerous WordCamps. A common theme that surrounds mental health is the fear of discussing it openly. WPHugs.org, a passion project by Leo Gopal, aims to provide a safe space …

Seattle to Host WooConf 2017 in October, Conference to Focus on Developers

WooConf, the official WooCommerce developer’s conference, is returning for its third edition October 19-20, 2017. In line with previous years’ events that were hosted in major U.S. tech hubs (San Francisco and Austin), WooConf 2017 will be held in Seattle. The organizing team, which is made up of almost a dozen people from around the world of WooCommerce, is planning …

WP Elevation is Focusing All Content on Mental Health for Month of May

photo credit: Jorge Garcia May is Mental Health Awareness Month in the US, dedicated to educating people about mental health and illnesses since 1949. WP Elevation is joining the observance this year with a special emphasis on freelancers and the tech industry. The company, which provides education for WordPress consultants, will be focusing all of its content on mental health …

Shopify Discontinues Its Official Plugin for WordPress

Shopify’s official plugin for WordPress was removed from the plugin directory this week. The plugin allowed users to create “Buy Buttons” for products from their Shopify stores and insert them into WordPress posts and pages using a shortcode. It was built by WebDevStudios and had approximately 9,000 active installations before it was removed. Shopify’s documentation says the plugin has been …

Embed Mastodon Statuses in WordPress

After the controversial changes to Twitter’s @reply feature, which no longer counts usernames towards the 140-character limit, Mastodon registrations rose sharply. Mastodon is a free, open source, decentralized network that has many similarities to Twitter. The software, named in honor of its creator’s favorite metal band, was launched in October and registered 24,000 users in the first six months. A …

Headway Themes Appears to be Dying a Slow Death

It’s been seven months since Grant and Clay Griffiths, founders of Headway Themes, apologized to customers for failing to communicate on a regular basis and provide adequate customer support. In the apology, the founders admit that the company was experiencing financial difficulties and noted that competition in the WordPress drag-and-drop page-builder space was tough. The duo vowed to communicate more, …