This bi-weekly serves to inform and enlighten our minds on latest happenings in the sprawling countryside we call WordPress-land. Much like Sweden, Iran, and Bomont, Oklahoma, dancing is illegal in WordPress-land.
Release News
- WP 4.6 will include a simple API to register and use Resource Hints, a new W3C specification that “defines the dns-prefetch, preconnect, prefetch, and prerender relationships of the HTML Link Element ()”.
- All In One SEO released an update that closed an XSS vulnerability in its Site Maps module. Update if you don’t like ultra l33t hax0rs.
- WordPress 4.6 Beta 3 is out. The real deal won’t be released until Aug 16, so if you are just dying to try out the new functionality, go for it.
- WordPress conveniently comes packaged with many external javascript libraries and a bunch of them are getting updated in WP 4.6, including Masonry, TinyMCE, Backbone.js, and MediaElement.js. Do you use these libraries in your theme or plugin? Check here for details on the updates and how it may affect your implementation.
Extending WordPress
- Jetpack 4.1 has a few new features, including a module that adds single sign capabilities using WordPress.com accounts.
- PHP7 is coming in hot. WordPress Engine has released a PHP7 Compatibility Checker plugin to make sure your plugins and themes are ready.
- VRView is a new plugin that adds the ability to embed Google’s VRView to WordPress installations.
- Attachment Taxonomies is another new plugin that adds…you guessed it…taxonomies to media attachments. This is actually a fairly glaring omission in WP’s functionality, so this plugin is pretty cool.
- I keep talking about new plugins in this issue. No end in sight.
- Another new one, WP Safe Updates, is a pretty sweet piece of functionality, which builds a sandbox environment of your site so you can test out new updates. Killer for sites with no staging environments.
WP Drama
The dirty side of dev.
- There was a recent kerfuffle over incentivized reviews in the plugin directory of WordPress.org.
Misc
I don’t know where to file this crap.
- WordPress Engine released WordPress vs. Joomla white paper. You get 2 tries to guess which CMS comes out on top.
That’s all for now. Check back in two weeks for another rundown.