WooSesh 2019 Scheduled for October 9 and 10: Registration Now Open

WooSesh is happening next week on October 9 and 10, and registration is now open. This is the second edition of the virtual WooCommerce event hosted by WPSessions. In addition to presentations focused entirely on e-commerce, the event will include a “Hallway Track” that offers opportunities for attendees to connect with each other, along with virtual swag donated by various …

Matt Mullenweg and David Heinemeier Hansson Discuss WordPress Market Share, Monopolies, and Power in Open Source Communities

In what began as a heated conversation on Twitter, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg and Ruby on Rails creator and Basecamp co-founder David Heinemeier Hansson took to the airwaves to debate opposing viewpoints on market share, monopolies, and power in open source communities. Hansson reacted to a statement Mullenweg made in an interview after Salesforce Ventures invested $300 million in Automattic …

First Look at PHP 7.4 for WordPress Developers

PHP 7.4 is slated for release on November 28, 2019. WordPress 5.3 will also include several commits that address deprecated features. It’s unlikely that most WordPress plugin and theme developers will be able to use the new PHP 7.4 features for a while except when working on setups where they have some measure of control over the environment. Given WordPress’ …

The Top eCommerce Trends To Keep An Eye On in 2019

New eCommerce trends emerge at a staggering space. It’s hard to keep up-to-date with them all, so we’ve researched and collected the hottest eCommerce trends of 2019 in this post. eCommerce sales will account for 10% of money spent by shoppers this year. If you run or manage an eCommerce store, it’ll help you a great deal knowing the latest …

Brian Gardner Steps Down From StudioPress

Brian Gardner announced he was stepping down from his role with StudioPress this past Friday. Last year, WP Engine acquired StudioPress. After staying on board for the remainder of his contract, Gardner stepped down from his role with the company. “The past 15 months have gone by quickly, and it sometimes feels like yesterday that we made the announcement,” Gardner …

Automattic Has Discontinued Active Development on Edit Flow Plugin

Edit Flow, the modular editorial plugin that enables collaboration inside the WordPress admin, is no longer being actively developed. After no updates for nine months, Mark Warbinek, a frustrated user, contacted Automattic to ask if they have abandoned the plugin or still plan to update it. A support representative from Automattic confirmed the company will no longer be updating Edit …

Here Comes Hummingbird 2.1 With Compressed Caching & Cookies

From Asset Organization Tours to several new caching features and upgrades, Hummingbird 2.1 is a humdinger. There’s so much to cover, I can’t summarize it all in this teeny tiny paragraph — so let’s just jump right in, shall we? A lot of the features I’m about to detail are only available in Hummingbird Pro, so if you’re not already …

Secure the News Project Finds 93% of Major Publishers Offer HTTPS Encryption by Default

Secure the News is a project that was created by the Freedom of the Press Foundation in 2016 to track HTTPS encryption across major news organizations’ websites. It lists the publications and automatically scores them on a scale of 0-100, based on HTTPS implementation according to best practices, as defined by General Services Administration (GSA) Pulse’s current criteria for modern …