In September, Patchstack released its six-month report on the vulnerabilities found with WordPress and its extensions. At the time, it listed over 1,000 issues — the company has shared the updated numbers with WP Tavern. It soon followed that up with a free vulnerability-reporting plugin. Under the banner of WebARX, the company launched the first…
Automattic has acquired WPScan, a ten-year-old service that provides a database for WordPress core, plugin, and theme vulnerabilities. The company has sponsored WPScan for a number of years and has already been white labeling its use in Jetpack Scan. Pricing for WPScan is based on API requests per day, with a free version limited to…
WordCamp Birmingham is the first in-person WordCamp on the schedule for 2022. The event will be held at the Sidewalk Film Center and Cinema in downtown Birmingham on February 4-5. It is one of the first cracks in WordPress’ iced over event landscape after the pandemic brought in-person gatherings to a halt. “WordCamp Birmingham was…
No sooner than I said the floodgates of block theme development would be open, a couple of more FSE-capable themes landed in the WordPress.org directory. I checked the review system, and three more were queued up. It took mere days for me to find another favorite: Ona by DeoThemes. When the author mentioned it, I…
The official Gutenberg demo page on WordPress.org may soon be getting an update that better reflects the editor’s capabilities and showcases the design creativity available through patterns. Automattic-sponsored designers Beatriz Fialho and Kelly Hoffman have submitted a prototype for consideration with explorations of both light and dark modes and three different variations for typography. “Now…
It is November, and that only means one thing. It is National Novel Writing Month — NaNoWriMo for short. Autumn is my favorite time of year. Football is in full swing. Warm mugs of coffee replace the cold brew. Eggnog cartons line supermarket fridges. There are weekend hayrides, face paintings, corn mazes, ring-toss games, and…
Jetpack is finally formalizing its approach to agency licensing with a new portal launched this week. The program is aimed at streamlining product setup and account billing records for agencies and professionals who use Jetpack on client projects. The dashboard shows partners their total licenses and costs at a glance. It also allows agencies to…
The search for a host city for WordCamp US 2022 is now underway with what WordPress community organizer Angela Jin calls “big changes” to the selection process. Unlike previous years where WordPress communities applied after researching venues and demonstrating activity and interest, community leadership plans to conduct its own city search. “We all felt that…
In late September, Chloe Chamberland, a researcher at Wordfence, discovered multiple security vulnerabilities in the OptinMonster plugin, which could allow unauthenticated attackers to export sensitive information and inject malicious JavaScript into vulnerable sites. The OptinMonster team promptly patched the plugin and updated the plugin again after more feedback from the Wordfence team. Version 2.6.5 was…
Gutenberg 11.8 was released at about 12 pm (CDT) today. However, it hit a bump in the road toward its destination, the WordPress plugin directory. A mix-up with getting the release tagged was the culprit, so it sat in limbo for around eight hours. Technically, it was available via its GitHub and SVN repositories. However,…
In December 2020, we reported on a new antitrust lawsuit against Google that claimed AMP was created for the purpose of pushing publishers away from “header bidding.” This is an advertising mechanism that allows sites to route their ad inventory through several ad exchanges and sell the space to the highest bidder. At that time it…
Gutenberg contributors have shifted their efforts to focus on the Navigation Block ahead of WordPress 5.9, leaving the Navigation Editor for a future release. Recent check-ins on the progress have further narrowed the scope from what Matias Ventura previously projected to include “both the navigation block and navigation screen projects.” “The Nav Editor will not…
WPChill is now the owner of Gutenberg Forms, a project created by Munir Kamal. While still rough around the edges a year ago, the plugin was updated regularly and was something to at least keep an eye on as it matured. Extendify acquired it alongside Kamal’s Editor Plus and Gutenberg Hub at the end of…
Generated social images seem to be all the rage now. Automattic scooped up Daniel Post’s Social Image Generator last month for eventual inclusion in Jetpack. There is a proposal to dynamically generate them for plugins and themes hosted on WordPress.org. And, there is a new player in town: Branded Social Images. Admittedly, I have had…
Jetpack is splitting out its commercial Backup feature into a standalone plugin that can be used without installing the core Jetpack plugin. The commercial product includes automated daily or real-time backups with one-click restores, even for sites that are offline. Backups include all WordPress database, theme, and plugin files, which are stored on WordPress.com’s infrastructure…