Stepping Into a Market With Major Players, Mario Peshev Acquires WP-CRM System

Mario Peshev, the CEO of WordPress agency DevriX, officially announced he had acquired the WP-CRM System plugin this week. Formally, his company Premium WP Support is taking the reins for the project. Scott DeLuzio, the creator and previous owner of the plugin, published the news on his blog last month. DeLuzio originally built the plugin in 2015 after dissatisfaction with …

MotoPress Acquires Gutenix WordPress Theme

MotoPress, a theme and plugin shop in operation since 2013, has acquired the Gutenix WordPress theme and its commercial ZeGuten blocks plugin for Gutenberg. The free theme currently has more than 700 active installs after nine months on WordPress.org. MotoPress already has a number of successful niche WordPress themes and plugins but Gutenix fills the gap for a multipurpose theme. …

Privacy-First Gravatar Replacement, Pixel Avatars Module Released for the Toolbelt WordPress Plugin

Ben Gillbanks decided to put an old idea into motion. After the discussion over Gravatar privacy concerns and local avatars in WordPress reignited a couple of weeks ago, he went to work building Pixel Avatars, a generated avatar solution that requires no connection to a third-party service. Gravatar solves a huge problem. It creates a global avatar so that users …

Automattic Tangles with Apple Over Lack of In-App Purchases in the WordPress for iOS App

Over the weekend, Matt Mullenweg announced on Twitter that Apple’s App Store had blocked Automattic from shipping updates to WordPress’ official iOS app. Automattic doesn’t sell anything for WordPress.com or Jetpack inside the mobile apps, but the app included external purchasing methods that bypassed Apple’s requirement of selling via in-app purchases. On the surface it seemed Apple was forcing a …

New Plugin Displays WordPress Environment Type for Admins

One of the minor but useful additions to WordPress 5.5 is the new wp_get_environment_type() function. It makes it possible for plugin and theme authors to do some interesting things based on whether a site is identified as staging, development, production, or some other custom environment type. In discussion on the original trac ticket, Marius Jensen suggested a few ways this function …

WordPress Documentation Team Discusses Modifying External Linking Policy Following Opposition to the Ban on Commercial Links

Last month the WordPress Documentation Team announced a ban on links to commercial websites within the official docs. These include the HelpHub, Code Reference, Plugin and Theme Developer Handbooks, Block Editor Handbook, and the Common APIs Handbook. The reason behind the ban was that heavily policing commercial links placed too much responsibility on the documentation team, when they are already working with limited time and resources. The decision …

WooCommerce 4.4 Updates Blocks and Centralizes Coupon Management

Yesterday, Automattic dropped version 4.4 of its popular WooCommerce plugin. The new release is a minor update with the biggest changes around the plugin’s blocks and coupon management in the admin. Two dozen people made 450 contributions to the release. The WooCommerce team brought several updates to the plugin’s blocks. The biggest user-facing change is that the blocks will now …

Apple to Enforce 1-Year Limit on SSL/TLS Certificate Lifetimes on September 1, 2020, Mozilla and Google to Follow Suit

image credit:  Sylwia Bartyzel Beginning September 1, 2020, Apple’s Safari browser will no longer trust SSL/TLS certificates issued for longer than 398 days, which is the equivalent of one year plus the renewal grace period. Apple cited its “ongoing efforts to improve web security” in the announcement earlier this year. The change affects the full lineup of Apple platforms: This …