In-depth article by Siobahn McKeown that breaks down how commercial plugin developers are monetizing their efforts through the WordPress.org plugin respository. The article covers the guidelines that plugin authors should follow, examples of successful plugins as well as plugins that didn’t meet the guidelines, and various ideas plugin authors can try. One of the things…
If you’re using the self installed version of WordPress and looking to participate in the internet blackout day today, check out the SOPA Blackout Plugin. This plugin contains flexibility so that you don’t have to turn your entire website into a black hole. Instead, you get to set blackout dates as well as a myriad…
Earlier this morning, I discovered that while moderating comments, a small little X icon appeared that I’ve never seen before. After inquiring on Twitter why WordPress never gave me a new feature pointer to explain to me what this feature was, I was told that it came with the newest version of Akismet. On January…
WordPress consultant, Konstantin Kovshenin has published an excellent guide describing what theme/plugin lock-in is and how to avoid it. This is a topic I’ve been thinking about for a long time but have never been able to put into words for a post. The biggest culprit in my opinion when it comes to lock-ins are…
Dev4Press has an interesting post that contains performance benchmark numbers that show just how much of an impact certain plugins have on loading times within WordPress. Amongst the 35 tested plugins are bbPress, W3 Total Cache, WooCommerce and a few of the plugins developed by Millan. I as well as many others were shocked to…
@WraithKenny – #WordPress plugin repo should have a favorites button. – via Twitter Now THAT’S a good idea! Stretch it further by giving us the option decision to make our favorite lists private or public on WordPress.org. There are all sorts of things you can do from there on in.
If you’re the owner of an iPad, you’ll likely love the sound of Touch Punch which is a newly released plugin by David Gwyer that enables users to use touch screen gestures to control the WordPress administration area. For example, with Touch Punch, you can now drag and drop widgets using your fingertips. Here is…
Making the rounds on Twitter today is a WordPress plugin called Dashboard Site Preview that allows you to preview your website from the WordPress dashboard. The plugin was created by 10 year old, Jesse Friedman who goes by jesseenterprises on WordPress.org. According to Brad Williams, this guy attended WordCamp Philly in 2011 and used what…
With the Santa hat on, Matt Mullenweg has decided to try out an experiment specifically for plugin authors and their respective plugin pages. He’s decided to give plugin authors a little more control with regards to how their plugin pages look by offering them a chance to upload a 772 x 250 pixel image that…
One of my favorite WordPress plugins of all time WP Ajax Edit Comments, will soon be free again for all to use. According to a recent email sent out by iThemes, as of January 1st, 2012 they will no longer be supporting Ajax Edit Comments as a premium plugin. Instead, the full version will be…
David Decker has published his list of seven cardinal sins that he’s run into when diving into the localization/internationalization of plugins and themes. For beginners who want to start making it easy for others to localize their code, you should read this article on the Codex entitled, Translating WordPress. While David didn’t chastise developers for…
Scott Reilley who also goes by Coffee2Code is continuing his trend of releasing small but useful plugins for niche audiences. This time, he has released a plugin called No Browser Nag that removes the Outdated Browser nag found within newer versions of WordPress. While it’s a bit foolish to condone the use of outdated browsers,…
Congrats to Donncha O Caoimh for releasing version 1.0 of his popular caching plugin, WP Super Cache. The release is an incremental improvement over previous versions but contains a number of bugfixes and new features such as a “Delete Cache” link within the admin bar. Back in 2009 when the plugin was first released, it…
One of the terms you’ll hear a lot within the WordPress community is Metaboxes. These boxes are what users interact with the most when using WordPress. For instance, when writing a post, you interact with the Publish, Categories, Tags and if need be, Post Format metaboxes. If you are a developer or consultant, the chances…
The default search engine in WordPress has sucked for a number of years. So much so that people end up replacing it with a custom Google search box. However, there is a plugin that has been gaining steam in recent months called Relevanssi that is trying to solve most of the problems the default search…