This bi-weekly serves to inform and enlighten our minds on latest happenings in the sprawling countryside we call WordPress-land. In recent news, citizens of WordPress-land unironically celebrated the death of another country’s dictator while simultaneously putting their own into power.
Release News
- The 4.7 Release Candidate is out, meaning the real deal release will happen shortly (Dec 6 to be exact).
- WP 4.7 is improving PDF support by generating image previews representative of the first page of PDFs uploaded to the media library. This image is queryable and should make managing lots of PDFs easier for content editors.
- Another improvement coming to the media library is the ability to search for files by file name, which seems like a no-brainer, but was missing until now.
- WP 4.7 is removing fallback alt text for images in the content editor in a clear denunciation of the “alt-right” movement. Just kidding, they did it to improve accessibility, but seriously, the “alt-right” are assholes.
- Video Headers are coming to WP 4.7, extending the functionality of header images. I still think that handling this sort of thing with a custom field and custom front-end markup is a better solution as you have more direct control over styling and functionality, this will still be an interesting new feature to try out.
Extending WordPress
- WP eCommerce, a plugin I didn’t even know existed (because who uses anything other than WooCommerce?), released an update to patch an SQL injection vulnerability. Justin Sainton, lead developer for the plugin commented, “This vulnerability only affects users who use eWay as their payment gateway, have Gold Cart activated, and are using the as-of-yet-unreleased Theme Engine 2.0”…which is a hilarious sentence filled with all sorts of things I’ve never heard of.
- You know that “Hello, Dolly” plugin that comes pre-packaged with WordPress and you always have to delete? Well some evil genius or sadistic masochist created a new version, Hello, Trumpy…which does exactly what you think…hits you with Trump quotes in the corner of your admin screens.
Grab Bag
This section is changing from WP Drama to Grab Bag and merging with the Misc section. Sometimes it’ll be drama, sometimes it’ll be random news, sometimes it’ll just be a dang meme that tickled my fancy. Life isn’t always about drama. Get over it.
- WordCamp US will move from Philly to Nashville for 2017 & 2018.
- WordPress now powers over 27% of the internet and 60% of the fastest growing companies in the world.
- The world is a wild and scary place, let’s all try to be better.
That’s all for now. Check back in two weeks for another rundown.