While WordPress 3.8 and 3.9 substantially improved the theme experience within WordPress, the plugins page hasn’t had the same treatment. In fact, the page hasn’t changed much since 2.7. However, that may change as Alex Shiels has proposed a detailed outline explaining the improvements and changes he’d like to see. According to Shiels, the goal…
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where a plugin author requests administrator access to your site for troubleshooting purposes? That’s the question posed by WPBeginner along with a couple of tips to help you decide whether you answer yes or no. Over the years, I’ve given access to a couple of plugin authors…
Iain Poulson recently published a post that asks an important but easy question to answer. Will WordPress be a Plugin Business Killer? The post is based on the idea that features from a commercial plugin added to WordPress could kill the business based on that plugin. The short answer to Poulson’s question is no. Here’s…
Dashicons are what’s known as an icon font and were added to the core of WordPress with the release of 3.8. The icons are vector based so they can be as large or small as you want without losing quality. Plugin authors can use CSS, HTML, or a Glyph for use within Photoshop to display…
Last week, we reported the Better WordPress Security plugin would be renamed to iThemes Security. We also shared important details to prepare users for the upgrade. Because of the name change, users needed to re-enable the plugin or risk seeing errors. Despite the beta testing period, the upgrade process hasn’t gone smoothly for some users.…
The folks over at Sucuri have reminded us once again why it’s important to only download plugins from trusted sources. In a disturbing post published on the Sucuri blog, Denis Sinegubko highlights the dangers of using plugins from untrusted sources. In this post, we’ll talk about “patched” malicious premium plugins. We’ll talk about what they…
Early this morning, the WordPress.org plugin repository set a mile stone by hosting the 30,000th plugin. I didn’t think it would happen until a few weeks from now but it shows you how many plugins are approved and added to the repository every day. Jan Reimers on Twitter celebrated with a whoop! I second that…
If you use the Better WP Security plugin, keep an eye out for an important update next week. According to iThemes, the plugin will be renamed to iThemes Security to be more in line with the other products in the iThemes family. Because of the name change, users will need to re-activate the plugin after…
SellWP is a brand new service created by John Turner, who is also the developer of SeedProd. The goal of the service is to eliminate the stress and hassles of selling WordPress products allowing the developer to concentrate on the product itself. Some of the most difficult aspects of running a business such as licensing,…
In this episode, Marcus Couch and I sat down with Chris Wallace, co-founder of UpThemes and discussed in detail the reasons behind the open letter published by the company. We learned how Chris got involved with WordPress theme development and the circumstances leading to the creation of UpThemes. Chris explained how hard it was to…
In this weeks installment of WordPress Weekly, I was joined by plugin guru Marcus Couch and special guest Nick Haskins. Nick is the creator of the Aesop Storytelling Engine. We talked about the news of the week. Then, we launched into a great interview with Nick where he tells us what inspired him to create…
Andrew Ozz who is responsible for maintaining TinyMCE in WordPress has announced that TinyMCE 4.0 has been merged into core. The upgrade contains a number of changes including: New UI and UI API. New theme. Revamped events system/API. Better code quality, readability and build process. Lots of (inline) documentation. Overall improvements everywhere All of the…
Checking for broken links using WordPress plugins can lead to intensive use of server resources and impact site performance. Plugins like Broken Link Checker are restricted on certain webhosts because of the performance issues they can introduce to a site. Thankfully, there are free programs available that off-load the process of checking links from the…
All three contributing writers to WPTavern were able to be part of the first episode of WordPress Weekly for 2014. In this episode, we get you caught up on the headlines and give you our New Years resolutions. We had a great conversation about the launch of AppPresser and the Aesop story engine. Near the…
On Tuesday January 14th, at 3:00PM Eastern ChatWP will be hosting the first ever Twitter chat dedicated to WordPress. Twitter chats are structured conversations centered around a hashtag. This enables anyone who uses Twitter the chance to participate in the conversation. The first chat will be with special guest Jason Coleman, author of “Building Web…