WordPress.com Dashboard Gets a Beautiful, Darker Look

by Raelene Wilson June 18^th, 2013 Leave a comment

WordPress.com has been given a tall, dark and handsome makeover. Well, maybe not the tall bit.

Automattic designer Matt Thomas yesterday announced the dashboard’s redesign, which features better contrast, the “oh-so-lovely” Open Sans as the default typeface… and is pretty much the (top secret!) MP6 plugin many of us were expecting would be part of WordPress 3.6.

The revamp also includes redrawn icons and spacing in the dashboard has been opened up.

Thomas said he had a handful of goals for the redesign, which included:

A simply, uncluttered design; free of excessive decoration and focused on your content.

Miscellaneous, News

Automattic and its Cheque Book: A Look at the WordPress Company’s Acquisitions

by Raelene Wilson June 18^th, 2013 Leave a comment

Automattic has added to its growing stable of acquisitions, buying out WordPress blog editor Poster.

The app’s creator Tom Witkin announced the news in a short statement on his blog, saying he, along with his software, had been snatched up by the WordPress.com parent company. He didn’t disclose how much money changed hands.

Witkin will be joining Automattic’s mobile team as a designer and coder.

Freebies, Plugins

Free Twitter Bootstrap Admin Theme For WordPress

by Sarah Gooding June 17^th, 2013 6 Responses

It’s not very often that I come across a WordPress admin theme that doesn’t make me want to poke my eyes out, but this one caught my attention.

Our very own @aristath has created a plugin that brings Twitter Bootstrap styles into your WordPress dashboard. Bootstrap Admin is a clean, minimalist administration theme that totally changes the look of your dashboard with new icons, colors and Bootstrap as the backbone.

After you install and activate Bootstrap Admin, your WordPress dashboard will be transformed to look something like this:

So far Bootstrap Admin includes:

General styling of the WordPress admin area

Plugins

How to Pull Any WordPress Widget into a Post with a Shortcode

by Joe Foley June 17^th, 2013 3 Responses

WordPress does a lot of cool things. But if you’re like me, you often find yourself saying, “I wish it could do that cool thing over here instead of over there.”

pull-widgets-into-posts-horse-pulling-image — Gettin’ ‘em where you want ‘em.

That seems to happen a lot with widgets. There are all sorts of wicked widgets out there, but with a lot of them, they’re limited to the sidebar area.

Wouldn’t it be convenient if you could pull those nice widgets off the sidebar and stick them right in the middle of a post or page?

BuddyPress, News

What’s New In BuddyPress 1.8

by Sarah Gooding June 14^th, 2013 2 Responses

In case you missed it, the first beta of BuddyPress 1.8 was released this week. BuddyPress 1.7 introduced theme compatiblity and a host of other exciting features. Although 1.8 has had a shorter release cycle, it’s still packed with some very cool new features and improvements.

Here’s a little bit of what you can expect from BuddyPress 1.8:

BP_Group_Extension Rewritten
Many BuddyPress plugins interface with the groups component. The BP_Group_Extension has been rewritten to make it faster for plugins that depend on it. The new changes will make writing group extension plugins much easier than before.

Improvements to Group Administration Panels

Miscellaneous

A WordPress Life: In Animated GIFs

by Raelene Wilson June 14^th, 2013 11 Responses

It’s Friday, and what better way to look back over the week in WordPress and get ready for the weekend ahead than using animated GIFs!

Is it JIF or GIF?

I’m gonna keep saying GIF with a hard “G”. End of story, as the file format’s creator Steve Wilhite likes to say.

P.S. This is a Friday Funny so chillax :)

News, Plugins

WP Super Cache & W3 Total Cache Users: Are Your Sites Vulnerable?

by Joe Foley June 14^th, 2013 10 Responses

Not updating vulnerable plugins is one of the biggest mistakes anyone running WordPress can make. And it seems some of the world’s most visited sites are making that exact mistake. … Are you?

A number of weeks ago, perhaps the two most popular caching plugins, WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache, both updated their code to patch a security vulnerability. HackerTarget.com reports that a quick check of the top 100,000 sites reveals that less than 50% of those sites that run W3 Total Cache have updated their plugins to the latest secure version.

Community, News

WordPress News Sites: Are They Worth Paying For?

by Raelene Wilson June 13^th, 2013 11 Responses

There’s no money in starting a WordPress-centric news website, according to Jeff Chandler, who has one piece of advice for anyone thinking about giving it a go: don’t bother.

The Tavern Keeper over at WPTavern opens up about selling his site to Automattic’s Matt Mullenweg for $14,000, almost selling WPTavern to Joost de Valk and how WPCandy was interested in buying the site’s domain name in an insightful interview on the latest episode of the DradCast.

Miscellaneous, News

WordPress 3.6 is Alive: The New Heartbeat API

by Raelene Wilson June 12^th, 2013 9 Responses

We’ve been anticipating the release of WordPress 3.6 for weeks now, but it’s definitely alive – and you could say it even has a pulse.

The Heartbeat API will be a new feature introduced in the latest release. It’s been designed to deliver login expiration notifications, provide post locking and trigger autosaves - making writers like me very happy.

According to Andrew Ozz who is leading the API’s development:

“The purpose of this API is to simulate bidirectional connection between the browser and the server. Initially it will be used for autosave, post locking and log-in expiration warning while a user is writing or editing.

WPMU DEV

WordPress Chat Plugin Gets A Sleek Redesign and a Dozen New Features

by Sarah Gooding June 12^th, 2013 12 Responses

We’re always busy improving our plugins at WPMU DEV and this week we’re very excited to announce the release of Chat 2.0. This release is a massive update of the plugin. Chat is now faster, sleeker and more customizable than ever before. We’ve added in nearly a dozen new features as well as several improvements that make the chat experience more solid.

Introducing Chat 2.0!

New and Improved Chat 2.0 Features: