WordPress 5.3 release dates were confirmed this week. The timeline has the official release arriving November 12, 2019, with a decent margin of time to avoid WordCamp US (early November) and the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday week at the end of November. Beta 1 is expected September 23 and a Release Candidate is scheduled to follow on October 15. The scope …
WordPress Poised to Begin Implementing Proposal to Auto-Update Older Sites to 4.7
photo credit: Ryan McGuire WordPress contributors from around the world joined in a lively meeting yesterday to continue the discussion regarding the proposal to auto-update old sites to version 4.7 in a controlled rollout. The idea is that sites would gradually update from one major version to the next (not all at once). The discussion was led by WordPress 3.7 …
A Nofollow Option for Links Is Coming to Gutenberg
Gutenberg users are requesting an easy way to add a nofollow attribute to links in the block editor. Users can currently toggle a setting to designate a link to open in a new tab, but a similarly user-friendly option for adding a nofollow attribute is not yet available. Requests have come in across multiple issues on GitHub, as well as …
WordCamp London 2020 Organizing Team Eyes September Dates Due to Brexit Uncertainty
photo credit: Benjamin Davies The Joomla World Conference in London, planned for November 2019, has been cancelled. Joomla’s Board of Directors announced the cancellation at the end of July, citing the updated October 31, 2019, Brexit deadline as the primary reason: Last week the new UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson has been elected with a mandate to ensure Brexit happens …
Attend the Great WP Virtual Summit for Free: August 19-23
For five days next week, from August 19-23, the inaugural event of The Great WP Virtual Summit will be taking place. Conceived by South African based WordPress developer Anchen le Roux, the summit aims to bring together experts from various fields within the WordPress ecosystem to share their knowledge over the five days I reached out to Le Roux, to …
Automattic Acquires Zero BS CRM, Considers Rebranding it as Jetpack CRM
Automattic has acquired Zero BS CRM, a free plugin with more than 30 commercial extensions that provide deeper integrations with third-party services. Zero BS was co-founded by a two-person team that includes Mike Stott and Woody Hayday. The team marketed the plugin as a “no-nonsense CRM” and have been operating it with a successful subscription-based model for bundles of extensions. …
Gutenberg 6.3 Improves Accessibility with New Navigation and Edit Modes
Major accessibility improvements are the headline feature of this week’s Gutenberg plugin release. Version 6.3 introduces new Navigation and Editor modes to address long-standing problems navigating the block UI with a screen reader. The editor is now loaded in Navigation mode by default. Riad Benguella described it as “an important milestone in terms of accessibility of the editor” and explained …
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Automattic Acquires Tumblr, Plans to Rebuild the Backend Powered by WordPress
Automattic has acquired Tumblr, a long-time friendly rival company, for an undisclosed sum. Just six years after Yahoo acquired Tumblr for $1.1 billion, the company is said to have been acquired for “a nominal amount” from Verizon, who indirectly acquired Tumblr when it bought Yahoo in 2017. Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg declined to comment on the financial deals of the …
WooCommerce 3.7 Introduces New Blocks, Updates Minimum WordPress and PHP Requirements
WooCommerce 3.7 was released today after four months in development. This minor release is backwards compatible with previous versions. Despite containing more than 1,290 commits, 3.7 is smaller than previous releases, as the WooCommerce team is working towards delivering more frequent releases to improve the stability of the platform. WooCommerce 3.7 bundles updates from the WooCommerce Blocks feature plugin version …