In this episode, Marcus Couch and I are joined by James Giroux, Envato’s WordPress evangelist. We discuss a number of topics including what he’s accomplished since taking over the position in January, the item support policy change, and author driven pricing. We also find out what his favorite part of the job is and what he enjoys most about his …
BuddyPress Launches Style Modules Trial Initiative
photo credit: Paintbrush – (license) BuddyPress core developer Hugo Ashmore announced a new trial initiative this week that aims to create a library of CSS and JavaScript snippets to help users customize their communities. The Style Modules project will aggregate community-submitted code that enhances BuddyPress components in a plug-and-play manner. Developers who want to contribute to the project can submit …
Take Granular Control of WordPress’ Update System with Easy Updates Manager
When WordPress 3.7 “Basie” was released in 2013, it brought automatic updates to the masses. By default, WordPress automatically updates to point releases. Using additional constants within wp-config.php, you can configure WordPress to automatically update themes, plugins, and major releases. If you want granular control over the WordPress update system without touching code, check out Easy Updates Manager. Easy Updates …
New Plugin Uses BuddyPress Email API to Send bbPress Forum Emails
BuddyPress 2.5, released in March, introduced customizable emails via a new BP Email API. This new feature allows community managers to easily edit BuddyPress-generated emails in the admin and make design changes in the customizer. It didn’t take long for developers to think of bringing this same customizability to bbPress emails. Brandon Allen has just released BP Emails for BBP, …
Daniel Bachhuber Discusses WP-CLI, the WP REST API, and the Challenges of Contributing to Open Source on Roots Radio Podcast
Daniel Bachhuber, maintainer of the WP-CLI project and a contributing developer to the WP REST API, joined Chris Carr and Austin Pray on a recent episode of the Roots Radio podcast. Bachhuber discussed his recent experience crowdfunding his work on “A More RESTful WP-CLI” as well as the challenges he’s encountered as a contributor to various open source projects over …
The WordPress.org Recommended Hosting Page is Revamped, Features Flywheel for the First Time
DreamHost, Flywheel, and SiteGround have joined Bluehost on WordPress.org’s new recommended hosting page. In mid 2015, Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of the open source WordPress project, announced the page would be revamped. To have a chance at being listed webhosting companies needed to fill out a 40-question survey. 2016 Recommended Hosts Page This is Flywheel’s first time on the page. Flywheel, …
WordPress Accessibility Team Seeks Testers Using Speech Recognition Technology
photo credit: Let’s Read – (license) The World Health Organization estimates that 285 million people worldwide are living with some form of visual impairment and 39 million of those are estimated to be blind. Many people with low vision depend on speech recognition technology to navigate the web and communicate their thoughts. This type of software also assists people who …
GitLab Courts Disgruntled GitHub Customers with Response to Recent Pricing Hike
Yesterday GitHub announced pricing changes that give all paid plans unlimited repositories and change plans to a pricing-per-user model. Individual developers are the most likely customers to benefit from the changes, but many organizations will see an exponential increase in pricing. GitLab, a competitor in the Git repository hosting space, immediately addressed disgruntled GitHub customers with a pricing comparison on …
Critical Vulnerabilities Found in PhpStorm, Immediate Update Advised
JetBrains announced today that it has released a security update for PhpStorm and all of its other IntelliJ-based IDEs due to a set of critical vulnerabilities: The cross-site request forgery (CSRF) flaw in the IDE’s built-in webserver allowed an attacker to access local file system from a malicious web page without user consent. Over-permissive CORS settings allowed attackers to use …
Affinity: A Free WordPress Wedding Theme from Automattic
Affinity is the latest addition to WordPress.com’s small collection of themes created specifically for weddings. This highly customizable, elegant theme was designed by Caroline Moore with weddings and family announcements in mind. Affinity is a one-page theme with support for five different panels. Each panel’s content can be assigned in the customizer under Theme Options by selecting a page from …