As a teen, I would visit my Uncle David’s house every other week or so. He was the only family member with a computer. It was an old, bulky monstrosity that ran whatever the latest version of Windows that existed at the time. It was one of my first introductions to dial-up, but my primary interest was not the internet. …
Add a Little Pumpkin Spice to Your WordPress Admin This Autumn
Autumn is my favorite time of the year. On some weekends, I like to drive through my old hometown with the windows rolled down. I crawl through the school zone at 25 mph and breathe in the football field’s freshly cut grass. All those memories of blood, guts, and glory under the Friday night lights flood back. Nervous homecoming dances. …
Automattic Acquires Social Image Generator Plugin, Plans to Integrate with Jetpack
Automattic has acquired the Social Image Generator plugin, a commercial product that automatically creates social share images for WordPress content from a set of fully customizable templates. The plugin launched in February 2021, with a starting price of $39/year but is now closed to new sales. Daniel Post, the plugin’s creator, is joining Automattic to continue developing it as a …
Termly Responds to Feedback, Updates Its Cookie Consent Banner Limits
In July, Termly announced its acquisition of the GDPR/CCPA Cookie Consent Banner plugin. The new direction was an overhaul of the WordPress extension, turning what was once a free offering into, essentially, a commercial SaaS product. Users could run the service for up to 100 visitors. After that, the cheapest tier would cost $180 per year. Despite multiple notices that …
Gutenberg 11.4 Overhauls Galleries, Adds Axial Padding for Buttons, and Lays Groundwork for Global Spacing
Another two weeks have flown by, and another Gutenberg plugin update is in the books. I always look forward to the latest release, awaiting what goodies our contributor community has produced. Sometimes I jump the gun and install a development version of the plugin to understand an upcoming feature, such as the new “block gap” style setting. Other times, I …
ACF 5.10 Introduces Block API v2 Support, Block Preloading, and Security Improvements
Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) has released version 5.10, the first major release since the plugin was acquired by Delicious Brains. It introduces several new features that were previously experimental, closing out tickets that were started by previous owner Elliot Condon. The release enables HTML escaping by default, which helps prevent Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks. It runs content rendered by ACF …
WordPress Classic Editor Support Extended for at Least Another Year
Last week, I reached out to several members of the core WordPress committers to see if we could get an official word on whether Classic Editor support would continue beyond the mere months it seemingly had left to live. I received a semi-official answer but was asked to hold off on publishing for a more detailed and nuanced response. Earlier …
Gutenberg 11.3 Introduces Dimensions Panel, Adds Button Padding Support, and Speeds Up the Inserter
Earlier today, Gutenberg 11.3 landed in the WordPress plugin directory. The latest update introduces a new dimensions panel for toggling spacing-related block options. The Button block now supports the padding control, and the Post Featured Image block has new width and height settings. One of the release’s highlights was a speed improvement for both opening and searching within the inserter. …
WordPress.org Experiments with Rejecting Plugin Submissions with the “WP” Prefix to Mitigate Potential Trademark Abuse
Many in the WordPress developer community were surprised to learn that WordPress.org is rejecting plugins with the “WP” prefix in the name after Joe Youngblood tweeted the rejection note he received. Although that restriction was put into place approximately seven months ago, there was no official communication on the change. WordPress is now claiming that the @WordPress Foundation has demanded …
From eCommerce Integration to Location-Based Controls, Block Visibility Pro Expands Upon Its Free Version
It has been several months since I last dived into Nick Diego’s Block Visibility plugin, and it is now one year since the initial release. Recently moved on from his past job into the WordPress product space, he has been building one of the best context-based plugins for showing or hiding content. In January, Diego touted some of the ideas …