This bi-weekly serves to inform and enlighten our minds on latest happenings in the sprawling countryside we call WordPress-land. WordPress is to content as the French press is to coffee. Sort of. But not really.
Release News
- The WP 4.7 team is working on some improvements to WP HTTPS support to help solve some age old bugs, such as mixed content returning from images embedded in the WYSIWYG content, for example.
- WP REST API 2.0 Beta 14 is out and includes a bunch of new features, like support for password protected posts.
- A proposal has been submitted for a new Feature Project focused around a new Notifications API. As this is just a proposal, it’s still a long way off from seeing the light of day in a release, but the functionality being discussed would be a fantastic addition to WP core, which is limited to old school email notifications currently.
Extending WordPress
- Automattic has released a new version of Edit Flow, a fantastic editorial workflow plugin, which addresses a number of bugs.
- A new major release of CloudFlare’s WordPress plugin has recently dropped. The new version of the plugin features CloudFlare cache purging right from the WP admin, a much desired and long awaited feature, as well as the ability to manage a bunch of other CloudFlare settings from the WP admin.
- A high risk XSS vulnerability has been reported in the W3 Total Cache plugin, which has been patched in the latest (v. 0.9.5) release. If you use that plugin, update it, or roll the dice and see if you get hacked. It’s your life, I won’t tell you how to live it.
- Constant Contact, a company whose name sounds like an introvert’s worst nightmare, released a new plugin to ease the integration of their contact forms into WP sites.
WP Drama
The dirty side of dev.
- Page builder type themes and plugins are all the rage right now, and respected plugin author and mentor to many WP developers Pippin Williamson reacted to the hype on Twitter in a fashion that I can really get behind: “I’m sorry is this hurts anyone feelings, but seriously, all of the majorly popular page builders for #WordPress are terrible.” He followed this up with a critical analysis of all the major players, but really, I’m so satisfied after reading that tweet, I don’t need to read the article.
Misc
I don’t know where to file this crap.
- WordPress is so damn popular that the upcoming php[world] conference has added a double-sized track dedicated to all things WordPress.
That’s all for now. Check back in two weeks for another rundown.