As work continues on Gutenberg, members of the community are discussing its impacts on WordPress’ future. Morten Rand-Hendriksen considers Gutenberg to be a watershed moment, “This is a revolution,” he said. “This is a watershed moment for WordPress. This is entirely new and fundamentally different from how WordPress works and how we work with it today. I cannot overstate it …
Facebook Isn’t Budging on React’s BSD + Patents License
Last month React users petitioned Facebook to relicense the project (and its other open source projects) after the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) added Facebook’s BSD+Patents license to its Category X list of disallowed licenses for Apache PMC members. Participants and subscribers to the GitHub thread waited weeks for a decision on re-licensing while Facebook’s engineering directors discussed the matter internally. …
WordPress.org to Add New Page Educating Users on Benefits of Upgrading PHP
WordPress’ Core PHP team has created a new GitHub organization for initiatives focused on improving the use of PHP in the project. The first one they are tackling is a new page on WordPress.org dedicated to educating users about the benefits of upgrading PHP. Contributors are collecting third-party articles and tutorials on PHP upgrades to find inspiration for the project, …
WordPress Support Team to Host Free Workshop August 23 on Supporting Themes
Over the past few months the WordPress Support Team has been brainstorming ways to improve support across various aspects of the community. One new idea they are pursuing is hosting workshops where WordPress.org theme and plugin authors can present how they approach supporting their free, open source products that have been released to the community. Some users approach WordPress.org plugins …
WordPress Mobile Apps Updated with a New Login Experience
The WordPress mobile apps are sporting a new login experience that Automattic’s mobile designers and developers released in the latest versions. The login flow has been completely redesigned to provide a more unified experience for connecting both self-hosted and WordPress.com-hosted sites. These flows were completely separate in the past and users were often confused about which one to select. The …
maekit Acquires WP Remote, Plans to Add Cloud-Based Backup Services
maekit, a cloud-based platform that handles the business aspect of web design, has acquired WP Remote from Human Made. Two years after Human Made began searching for a buyer, maekit purchased WP Remote to integrate it with the company’s existing platform that caters to designers managing multiple clients. “WP Remote had remained a much-loved product with its users and despite …
Early Results from NRKbeta’s Comment Quiz Plugin Show Readers Enjoy the Quiz but Rarely Leave a Comment
Earlier this year, NRKbeta, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation’s media and technology site, open sourced its comment quiz plugin for WordPress. The site’s publishers have been experimenting with requiring their readers to complete a short, three-question quiz before giving access to the comment form on certain articles. The goal of the plugin was to prevent rants and off-topic responses by ensuring …
WordPress 4.9 to Focus on Code Editing and Customization Improvements, Targeted for November 14
photo credit: Sophie Ollis WordPress core contributors have set a tentative schedule for the upcoming 4.9 release, which will be co-led by Mel Choyce and Weston Ruter. The development cycle kicked off in early August with Beta 1 scheduled for early October and the official release targeted for November 14. Choyce published a list of goals today that outlines what …
WooCommerce Forks select2, Releases selectWoo as a Drop-In Replacement with Improved Accessibility
The WooCommerce development team has forked select2 to create a more accessible, drop-in replacement library called selectWoo. select2 is a widely used jQuery-based library for making custom drop down menus. Many users are wondering if the project has been abandoned, because the repository hasn’t seen any activity since February and 115 pull requests have piled up. In the interest of …
WordPress Foundation to Sponsor Open Source Educational Events
photo credit: 16th st – (license) The WordPress Foundation is sponsoring a new series of workshops and training events that will introduce people to WordPress and related open source software. The program targets communities in Latin and South America, Africa, Oceania, and Asia. “Specifically, we want to shine more light on the potential of open source software in countries where …