As the world scrambles to invent and manufacture therapeutics and vaccines for COVID-19, the World Health Organization has declared the pandemic “a once-in-a-century health crisis, the effects of which will be felt for decades to come.” Outbreaks vary in severity across the globe, making it impossible to host international conferences safely for many months (and possibly years) to come. In …
Redux Framework Relaunches, Focuses Efforts on Gutenberg Templates
Dōvy Paukstys was rushing out another update with bug fixes yesterday morning as we chatted about the future of his popular Redux Framework. It was not the first update of the day. The Virginia-based developer is just over a week into what he has called the soft launch of Redux 4.x. It is a major reconstruction of a plugin that …
Automattic Updates Press Page to Clarify Distinction between WordPress.org and WordPress.com
Last week, Automattic’s marketing team made a positive step towards curbing the perennial branding confusion between WordPress.org and WordPress.com. The company’s press page was updated with a notice to journalists who are writing about Automattic: Automattic owns and operates WordPress.com, which is a hosted version of the open source WordPress software with added features for security, speed and support. Please append …
Big Orange Heart Opens 2020 Remote Work Wellbeing and Mental Health Survey
A Big Orange Heart, formerly known as WP&UP, has opened its 2020 Remote Work Wellbeing and Mental Health Survey. The charity organization focuses on supporting remote working communities with education and resources for mental and physical health. It is also home to a community of more than 4,700 members who support each other in growing their businesses and building new …
WordCamp US 2020 Canceled Due to Pandemic Stress and Online Event Fatigue
WordCamp US 2020, which was originally scheduled for October 27-29, was officially canceled today. In April, organizers transitioned to planning for it to be held as a virtual event, but the tenuous situation with the pandemic in the United States and the stress on the event’s large crew of volunteers has precipitated a full cancellation. The decision was announced on …
Bing Launches URL Submissions Plugin for WordPress
Bing has launched its first official plugin for WordPress aimed at helping site owners get their content indexed immediately. Instead of waiting for a bingbot to crawl the site, the plugin notifies Bing of any new or updated content automatically using its Submit URL API. “Bing believes that the future for search engines is less about crawling to discover content and …
Gutenberg 8.6 Adds Cover Block Video Positioning and Updates Block Patterns
Gutenberg 8.6 landed quietly last week. Much of the focus right now is ironing out the remaining bugs for WordPress 5.5 during its beta cycle. However, that does not mean the Gutenberg project has come to a complete halt in terms of new features. The team is marching forward with extra goodies for those who use the plugin. The latest …
WordPress to Stick with Online-Only Meetups and WordCamps for Remainder of 2020
photo credit: Burst The WordPress Community Team has officially updated its guidelines for WordCamps to be online-only events for the remainder of 2020. The six WordCamps on the schedule through the end of the year were already planning on using an online format but the guidelines also include local meetups. “The team acknowledges that this is not easy for the …
Develop, Test, and Showcase Blocks in Isolation With BlockBook
Riad Benguella released BlockBook, a project that promises to overhaul how developers build blocks and more, on Tuesday. It is a development environment that allows creators to work with blocks in isolation, outside of WordPress. Developers can view individual block properties and test output from a defined block library. BlockBook is available as an npm package. Developers can also contribute …
Revised Block Directory Guidelines Proposal Updates Wording but Changes Little Else
Yesterday, Alex Shiels posted an update to the proposed guidelines for the WordPress block directory. The document adds eight rules for plugin authors to follow if they plan to add their one-off blocks to the directory. The guidelines are additional requirements on top of the existing plugin directory guidelines. While the wording and organization of the block guidelines received a …