Jetpack 4.1 Adds Telegram and WhatsApp Sharing Buttons, Introduces Untappd Menu Shortcode

Jetpack 4.1 was released today with performance improvements that make calls to the database more efficient, reducing what Jetpack does on each page load. Slideshows should load faster now that the Carousel module has been tweaked to no longer load full-size images in the previous and next previews. Using Photon in dev mode has also been improved by cutting out …

Bulgarian Government Now Requires Custom Software to be Open Source

photo credit: Bulgarian Flag – (license) The Bulgarian government has just passed an amendment to its Electronic Governance Act that mandates all custom software created for the government must be open source. The amendment was voted on in the Bulgarian parliament and put into effect July 1, 2016. According to Bozhidar Bozhanov, a 27-year-old software engineer and advisor to the …

Responsive Design Should Be Required for WordPress.org Themes, Says Matt Mullenweg

photo credit: Jeffrey Betts During Matt Mullenweg’s Q&A session at WordCamp Europe, an unidentified Google employee asked about making WordPress sites more mobile-friendly: I work at Google with search and we think the web and mobile are important, but one thing that we noticed is that 28% of the new sites that choose WordPress and come online (that we’ve discovered) …

WordPress 4.6 Beta 1 is Available For Testing

The WordPress development team has released WordPress 4.6 beta 1. This release includes a new process for installing, updating, and deleting plugins and themes, native fonts in the WordPress backend, and improvements to the post editor. It also contains a number of changes that developers should be aware of. WordPress 4.6 Beta 1 is still in development and should not be used in …

Automattic Pushes the Advanced WordPress Facebook Group Giveaway to More Than $70K in Prizes

Last week, we mentioned that the Advanced WordPress Facebook Group is giving away more than $40K worth of WordPress related prizes away to celebrate crossing the 20,000th member milestone. This past weekend, the prize value jumped to more than $70K after Automattic contributed 100 one-year long Jetpack Pro licenses to the prize pool. Jetpack Professional costs $299 per year and …