WordPress contributors are currently discussing adopting friendlier terms for some of the trac ticket resolutions to create a more welcoming environment for participants and newcomers. Since trac resolutions are not set in stone, organizations can customize these terms for different workflows. During a recent core developers chat, Sergey Biryukov proposed that WordPress trac rename “invalid,”…
One year ago developers at Google and Yoast began collaborating with other contributors on a proposal to add XML sitemaps to WordPress core. The XML Sitemaps feature plugin went into testing in late January and the feature is now on deck for inclusion in WordPress 5.5. This week contributors merged a basic version of sitemaps that plugin developers…
Late last week WordPress made major progress towards the goal of getting users to adopt newer versions of PHP. The ServeHappy API has been updated to set the minimum acceptable PHP version to 7.2, while the WordPress downloads page recommends 7.3 or newer. Sergey Biryukov committed this change on the meta trac after Marius Jensen…
One of the most exciting parts of Matt Mullenweg’s session at WordCamp Europe 2020 Online was the live demo of the new image editing tools that will land in the next release of the Gutenberg plugin. The video is already available on WordPress.tv (and embedded below). At the 8:30 mark, Mullenweg and Matías Ventura, lead…
WordPress’ Executive Director, Josepha Haden, announced the names of the leaders who will be coordinating releases for the remainder of 2020. Version 5.5, expected to be released in August, will be led by Matt Mullenweg, with Jake Spurlock as the coordinator and David Baumwald on Triage. Haden also named tech and design leads for the…
Seventeen. It is almost a lost year between sweet 16 and the adulthood that comes along with 18. For many, 17 is a rebellious age when they feel like they have already reached grown-up status but still have some hard lessons to learn, some growing to do. The past year of WordPress’s life has felt…
WordPress 5.4.1, a security and maintenance release, dropped today. The release addresses seven security issues, which were all responsibly disclosed to the WordPress security team. Core developers also included several fixes for code regressions in the previous version 5.4 release and ported bug fixes to the block editor from the Gutenberg plugin. End-users with automatic…
Laying out a webpage design and getting every element aligned perfectly can be a tough job. Even many developers rely on CSS grid frameworks. Granted, with the introduction of the flexbox and grid systems in the CSS language, such frameworks are becoming unnecessary. Whether it is getting the vertical and horizontal rhythm down or simply…
Dashicons, the WordPress admin icon font, is now closed to new icon requests. After the block editor adopted the approach of using SVG icons directly, WordPress design contributors have recently reevaluated the efforts going into the Dashicons project. The team decided to wrap up existing tickets for new icons, push out a final release, and…
Josepha Haden, executive director of WordPress, provided a progress update on the 2020 goals in early March. As always, the timeline to hit certain goals can change based on roadblocks the development team hits and other factors. On the whole, the tentative roadmap looks feasible. Currently, WordPress 5.5 is set to ship on August 11,…
Riad Benguella announced on the core development blog last week the editor in WordPress 5.4 will ship in fullscreen mode by default. While some form of fullscreen or distraction-free writing has existed for years in the core platform, this marks the first time WordPress will make it the default experience. Not all installations will see…
Release coordinator Francesca Marano announced the release of WordPress 5.4 Beta 1 on February 11. Most of the work has centered on the block editor. However, at the moment, contributors have closed another 258 tickets for the 5.4 milestone. A second beta release is scheduled for February 18, according to the 5.4 release schedule, along…
Another year is in the bag. With a project as large and far-reaching as WordPress, there was no shortage of news and controversy. We covered a lot of stories in 2019 and are gearing up for another exciting year. I always like to take a moment at the end of the year to look over…
On December 18, less than a week since WordPress 5.3.1 security update shipped to the masses, the core team dropped a version 5.3.2 maintenance release. No security issues were named in this update. Instead, 5.3.2 addresses a couple of high-priority bugs along with a few other issues. Users with automatic updates enabled should already be…
WordPress 5.3.1 was released today with 46 bug fixes and enhancements. Changes include several accessibility improvements and four security vulnerability fixes. The update includes multiple changes to the default Twenty Twenty theme. Version 5.3.1 is a security and maintenance release. All users are encouraged to update as soon as possible. For those with auto-updates enabled,…