Google announced today that it is bringing free listings to the Shopping tab in the United States before the end of April and will expand globally by the end of the year. Previously, merchants were required to pay for ad placement and product listings, which led to major online retailers dominating the Shopping tab. “Beginning next week, search results on …
WordPress Dashicons Project to Discontinue Development in Favor of New Icon Component
Dashicons, the WordPress admin icon font, is now closed to new icon requests. After the block editor adopted the approach of using SVG icons directly, WordPress design contributors have recently reevaluated the efforts going into the Dashicons project. The team decided to wrap up existing tickets for new icons, push out a final release, and then pool their efforts on …
WPBlockTalk Videos Now Available on WordPress.tv
All of the recordings from the free WPBlockTalk virtual event are now available on WordPress.tv. In case you missed it, WPBlockTalk was a WordPress community event sponsored by Automattic, and produced by Brian Richards, creator of WPSessions. It took place earlier this month on April 2, though some of its momentum may have been lost in the torrent of pandemic …
Leave at Door: New Free WooCommerce Plugin Enables Contact-free Delivery
As many countries around the world are currently in some form of lockdown to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, the hospitality industry has been one of the hardest hit by the new restrictions. Restaurants and breweries in particular have had to radically change how they do business and either lay off or furlough the majority of their employees. Many …
Gutenberg 7.9 Adds Gradients to More Blocks, Extra Typography Controls, and New Patterns
For Gutenberg junkies, the three-week wait between major releases has been rough, especially during this time when many are looking for new things to fill the gaps in our social calendars. Not to fret, the team dropped version 7.9 of the plugin earlier today. This release includes several goodies such as new typography-related controls for blocks, extra patterns for testing, …
Jetpack Re-launches Search Feature as Standalone Service
The Jetpack team announced today that its search service is now available as a separate package from the professional bundle it was previously under. The move should make it more affordable for small sites to use the service. Larger sites might have to shell out more money, depending on how much content is on the site. “Jetpack Search had only …
Proposal to Move WordPress Theme Review Process to GitHub
Denis Žoljom, the automation representative for the WordPress theme review team, proposed moving much of the theme review system over to GitHub. The idea is to move the interactive parts of the review away from the current system. The proposal claims such a move would streamline the process via automated tools and make the manual, reviewer-to-author interactions easier. Currently, the …
Proposal to Add a Consent API to WordPress, Feature Plugin Available
On Wednesday, Garret Hyder announced a feature proposal for a WordPress Consent API. The proposal is one step on the larger privacy roadmap for core. If merged into WordPress, it would establish a standard method for core, plugins, and themes to obtain consent for various privacy-related features. The idea is to create a consistent experience for developers, site administrators, and …
BuddyPress 6.0 Beta Introduces Group and Member Blocks
The team behind BuddyPress dropped the first version 6.0 beta release of the plugin yesterday. One of the most important features is the introduction of the new member and group blocks for the WordPress editor. The plugin now requires at least PHP 5.6 and WordPress 4.8 (5.0 to use the new blocks). “I think it’s exciting times,” said John James …
WordPress 5.4 “Adderley” Includes Improved Editor, New Blocks, and Developer APIs
WordPress 5.4 “Adderley”, named in honor American jazz musician Nat Adderley, was released today and is now available for download. The update includes new social icons and buttons blocks, usability improvements to the block editor, and new APIs for developers to use in plugins and themes. This release saw contributions from 168 new volunteers. There were 552 contributors in total. …