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 …

Gutenberg Development Team Confirms Meta Box API Will Not be Formally Deprecated

photo credit: Doors Open Toronto 2008 – Toronto Archives – (license) The discussion surrounding how Gutenberg will handle meta boxes heated up over the weekend after a participant commented on the GitHub issue with concern regarding meta box support being removed from the most recent milestone. “I see this vital issue has been removed from any milestone,” @steveangstrom said. “It …

Trademark Trial and Appeal Board Dismisses Automattic’s Trademark Dispute Against Chris Pearson

In July 2015, Automattic won its Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) case against Chris Pearson regarding Thesis.com after the panel determined that he failed to establish all three elements required under the ICANN Policy. A party must satisfy all three of the burdens imposed under the Policy in order for the Panel to order transfer of a domain name from …