WordCamp Europe 2017 organizers are counting down 50 days until the largest planned WordPress event to date. Speaker announcements continue to roll out and the recommended hotels are getting booked up at the height of tourist season. As of yesterday, more than 300 of the 500 tickets for Contributor Day have been claimed. This year organizers are experimenting with sponsor …
WordPress 4.8 Will End Support for Internet Explorer Versions 8, 9, and 10
Over the weekend, Matt Mullenweg announced that the upcoming WordPress 4.8 release will drop support for IE versions 8, 9, and 10. Core contributors have been discussing browser support for the past two months in relationship to setting technical requirements for the new editor. Microsoft discontinued support for IE 8, 9, and 10 in January 2016, which means these versions …
Embed Mastodon Statuses in WordPress
After the controversial changes to Twitter’s @reply feature, which no longer counts usernames towards the 140-character limit, Mastodon registrations rose sharply. Mastodon is a free, open source, decentralized network that has many similarities to Twitter. The software, named in honor of its creator’s favorite metal band, was launched in October and registered 24,000 users in the first six months. A …
Headway Themes Appears to be Dying a Slow Death
It’s been seven months since Grant and Clay Griffiths, founders of Headway Themes, apologized to customers for failing to communicate on a regular basis and provide adequate customer support. In the apology, the founders admit that the company was experiencing financial difficulties and noted that competition in the WordPress drag-and-drop page-builder space was tough. The duo vowed to communicate more, …
WordPress Plugin Directory Restores Tabbed Interface
photo credit: Jeffrey Betts Last month the WordPress Plugin Directory relaunched with a new design and improvements to the search algorithm. The new design replaced the plugin pages’ previous tabbed interface with a wall of text, truncated by numerous “read more” links. The outpouring of negative community feedback on the new design overshadowed many of the helpful improvements. Removal of …
BuddyPress 2016 Survey Results Show 54% of Respondents are on PHP 7.0+
The results of the BuddyPress 2016 survey have been published. This year the survey received feedback from 302 respondents in 61 different countries, a 43% increase in responses from 2015. The top five countries represented in the survey include the United States (27.15%), India (7.62%), United Kingdom (6.95%), Germany (6.29%), and Canada (3.64%). English remains the most popular language for …
Open Collective is a New, Transparent Way to Fund Open Source Projects
Open Collective is a new service that aims to make it easy for individuals, groups, and organizations to raise money in a transparent way. Although many projects have communities ready to offer financial support, the paperwork, taxes, and accounting involved in collecting money under the proper legal entity can be a nearly insurmountable hurdle. “So far, the Internet has been …
Automattic to Host a Free, Remote Conference on Design and Exclusion on April 21
Automattic is hosting a free, remote conference called Design and Exclusion on April 21. The event will bring together design and technology experts who will discuss solutions for the ways that digital products and services exclude people. Lead organizer Ashleigh Axios, Design Exponent at Automattic, said inspiration for the event came from the exclusion that is everywhere in the industry. …
Yoast Office Hosts “Bring Your Parents to Work Day”
If you’ve ever heard your parents say something like,”My son works for the internet,” or “My daughter owns some kind of computer company,” then you know the struggle. Many parents have a difficult time understanding the professions of their grown children, especially when they are in the tech industry. This can also be compounded by the novelty of remote work, …
Customizer Team Proposes Image Widget for WordPress 4.8
WordPress contributors to the customizer have published a merge proposal for a new JavaScript and REST API-powered core image widget. The new widget interfaces with the WordPress media library to provide a simpler, more intuitive experience for adding images. No new widgets have been added to core since the Custom Menu widget was included in 3.0 nearly seven years ago. …