This bi-weekly serves to inform and enlighten our minds on latest happenings in the sprawling countryside we call WordPress-land. We’re back after a little break for the holidays which we spent attacking our many enemies and those who have fought us and lost so badly they just don’t know what to do. Love!
Release News
- WP 4.7.1 will release this week on Wednesday the 11th, and includes a slew of security and maintenance fixes.
- WP founder Matt Mullenweg announced that WP-CLI, the command line interface for WordPress, will be coming under the WordPress.org umbrella, ensuring the future of the product and guaranteeing long term support.
Extending WordPress
- WooCommerce published an article about accessibility in web stores and it’s a great overview, and not just on the “how” but also on why you should care, beyond the obvious reason that more people accessing your site increases the chances that you’ll make some money, you greedy bastards.
- WordPress.com added support for VR content, including 360 degree photos and videos. The feature will also roll out to the JetPack plugin for self-hosted WordPress sites soon. Finally an easy way to publish my immersive subway nail clipping videos.
- Email Tracker is a new plugin that can track whether emails sent from WordPress have been been read or not. It also adds a “Compose Email” screen for writing and sending emails directly from the WordPress admin, especially useful for sending company branded hate mail.
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.
- WP founder Matt Mullenweg is forming a WP Growth Council, a group of organizations and individuals interested in contributing to the growth of WordPress and combating threats to the platform and the open web in general.
- Automattic published their 2016 Year Review which contains a lot of interesting stats, including that WP now powers 27% of the web and WooCommerce powers 42% of all web stores. No word on how much of the internet is powered by hate filled political tweets though (probably a lot of it).
- Torque published a rundown of some things to keep in mind regarding PHP7, including a link to WPEngine’s handy PHP Compatibility Checker plugin for people who are looking into upgrading.