In this episode, John James Jacoby and I discuss a controversial feature in Jetpack 7.1 that adds feature suggestions to plugin search results. We also talk about extension suggestions that are coming to WooCommerce. We talk about the security implications from the recent investigations into the Pipdig plugin and what users can do about it.…
Delicious Brains have published the process they use for creating and releasing WordPress plugins. The post covers development, brainstorming, reviewing, testing, and wire frames. The team also describes the products and services they use and the roles they play within their projects. How is their process different or similar to yours?
This is a guest post written by Katie Keith, co-founder of Barn2 Media. In this post, Keith shares the lessons she and her husband learned transitioning from client work to selling WordPress products in one year. If you’ve ever dreamed of quitting client work and earning passive income by selling WordPress themes and plugins, you’re…
This post was contributed by Rebecca Gill. Rebecca is the founder of Web Savvy Marketing, a web development, design, maintenance, and SEO consulting company based in Michigan and host of the SEO Bits podcast. Rebecca recently sold her Genesis Theme store to 9seeds, a store she managed and maintained for five years. In this post,…
One of the most important things that distinguishes self-hosted WordPress from WordPress.com is the ability to install custom themes and plugins. A recent change to WordPress.com’s Business Plan removes this limitation, allowing customers to install most third-party plugins and themes. In a WordPress.com support thread created in February, a user asked how to install plugins…
The WordPress plugin directory provides information such as version requirements, compatibility, last updated, and active installs for plugins. What it doesn’t tell you is how old a plugin is. A new site called Age WP Plugin created by Ahmad Awais and Maedah Batool makes finding this information easy. Simply type in a plugin’s slug into…
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I are joined by Mika Epstein. Epstein reviews plugins before they’re added to the WordPress plugin directory and volunteers on the WordPress support forums. We learn what the plugin review process is like and common security issues she discovers. I was shocked to learn that Epstein…
At the end of 2014, Jetpack 3.3 introduced a centralized dashboard that enables users to manage Jetpack powered sites. At the time, you could only do the following: Plugin management: Turn plugins on or off with one click — per site or in bulk. Initiate plugin updates: Update plugins for a single site or all…
WP Contributions is a new plugin by Dustin Filippini, Damon Cook, and WebDevStudios that displays WordPress contributions via widgets. Widgets included are: Contributions to the Codex WordPress Core Contributions Featured Plugin Featured Theme Once activated, browse to Appearance > Widgets to access the new widgets. You’ll need to know your username for WordPress trac and…
The WordPress plugin directory has nearly 35k plugins and discovering new ones that have been tested and downloaded a few thousand times is difficult. Users can browse the directory for newest, recently updated, most popular, and highest rated plugins. With the exception of the recently updated category, there’s no way to discover plugins in the…
If you’re brand new to bbPress, you may not know about some of the ways it can be extended beyond being a simple forum. Additional functionality can be added with plugins, its output can be manipulated through CSS, and development is easy to keep up with. Even though bbPress has a getting started guide available,…
Mark your calendars and schedule some free time on Friday, October 17th for the first “Rate and Review a WordPress Plugin Day“. On October 17th, visit the page of your favorite plugin in the WordPress.org plugin directory, give it a star rating, and write a review. Why The Special Day? If you’re anything like me,…
Marcus Couch and I are joined by the lead developer of iThemes Security, Chris Wiegman. After helping us dissect the news of the week, he tells the story of how he got involved with WordPress. We learn about the circumstances that lead to the creation of iThemes Security and how he almost sold the plugin…
The founder of ManageWP, Vladimir Prelovac, has published an open letter addressed to the WordPress community on the topic of security. In the letter, he cites the third-party ecosystem surrounding WordPress is not only its biggest strength, but also its biggest weakness. He suggests a three-point plan to help mitigate security issues in themes and…
After using WordPress for seven years in a row, it’s hard to consider switching to another publishing platform. I have my gripes about WordPress and there are plenty of things that can improve the publishing process. However, after testing a few other open source alternatives, I was reminded of how many things I take for…