fidzu : WordPress

Adobe announced today that it will discontinue Flash support and updates at the end of 2020. Flash played an important part in the history of the web, inspiring many of the open standards and formats that the web has moved on to embrace.

Given this progress, and in collaboration with several of our technology partners - including Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla - Adobe is planning to end-of-life Flash. Specifically, we will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020 and encourage content creators to migrate any existing Flash content to these new open formats.

Last year most major browsers moved to block Flash, requiring users to enable it manually for sites where they wish to view Flash content. Microsoft, Google, and Mozilla were on deck today with announcements of their own regarding future Flash support. Firefox is the most aggressive with its plan to disable Flash for most users in 2019. Only those running an Extended Support Release will be able to continue using it through the end of 2020 and no version of Firefox will load the plugin after Adobe discontinues security patches.

Chrome is also phasing out support for Flash and plans to remove it completely from the browser toward the end of 2020.

"Three years ago, 80 percent of desktop Chrome users visited a site with Flash each day," Google Chrome Product Manager Anthony Laforge said. "Today usage is only 17 percent and continues to decline.

"This trend reveals that sites are migrating to open web technologies, which are faster and more power-efficient than Flash. They're also more secure, so you can be safer while shopping, banking, or reading sensitive documents."

The Microsoft Edge team also announced its plans to phase out Flash from both Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer with complete removal from all supported versions of Microsoft Windows by the end of 2020.

Although HTML5 adoption is growing among game developers, Adobe's announcement means major changes for segments of the the gaming, education, and video industries that have not yet migrated to newer, open formats. This news will also make obsolete dozens of WordPress plugins that were created to upload and display Flash content.

Adobe's announcement was met with thanks and "good riddance," with many calling for an even speedier timeline. Many are also concerned about all the orphaned content and .swf games on the web that Flash's disappearance will create. Adobe has received many requests on Twitter for the company to consider open sourcing the old Flash Player codebase for the sake of compatibility and archiving content. Adobe has not officially replied to any of these requests.

26 Jul 2017 4:01am GMT

There goes my hero
Watch him as he goes
There goes my hero
He's ordinary

I have no idea what I'm going to write about. How about people? Ordinary people are heroes to me. People who are willing to help one another. People just like you and me.

Well, at least like you - if you're for some reason reading my diary.

Who's teaching who

I still remember when I build my first website with table layouts while studying math in the University of Jyväskylä. Those were the days! But it doesn't feel like yesterday anymore. More like day before.

Nevertheless being a math teacher has been the perfect choice for me. It's been fun, challenging, and rewarding. I've probably learnt lot more from students than they have from me.

Heck, they even got me into WordPress when I was taking my ex-students short film course. Was it 2008? Something like that. We needed a website for our short film and had only 1-2 days. Students gave me link to WordPress.com and I was sold. Getting site up and running was easy and fast.

"Well come here and do it yourself!!" - drama class student shouted.

That's another good lesson I've learnt.

It's so easy to give negative feedback (don't do it like that) without doing anything yourself or giving constructive feedback.

Oh boy I still feel ashamed when I judged a book by it's cover. This time the book cover was a blonde girl asking weird questions with high voice. I was a prison of my prejudice and instantly assumed she must be bad at math. How wrong was I. She was brilliant.

At least the prison gate is now open if I just understand to walk out.

Who am I

Sometimes I wonder what other people think of me? Do they think I'm open minded teacher, or front-developer who cares about accessibility. But does any of that matter? Job title really doesn't tell anything who I am. Or anybody else.

But who am I? I'm not sure how to define me. I'm no dad or husband. I do have several good traits but there are also demons inside me. Lack of empathy is one of them. And that comes down to this:

In the end I'm a selfish asshole.

It's okay to be selfish from time to time but it's not okay to let people down big time when they need me most. Being an ordinary human being is not one of my strengths but I'll promise to work on it.

Friends will be friends

I consider myself lucky. I have lovely parents and two crazy big brothers. And over the years I have made friendships that last forever.

I hope everybody have a friend who is like a bridge between other friends. Someone who is always organizing something fun: bowling, music gigs, dinners, sports. Someone who is always nice to others and would never hurt a fly.

I had a friend like that.

But as a return I couldn't help him enough. Shadows of life had taken over him. He could not see the light anymore. He died by suicide before christmas 2015.

Now he can't fall anymore. He will always be our beloved one and we'll miss him more than words can express. So many songs reflects to memories we have. For example this Finnish song that I heard exactly one year after his death. (Lyrics in english).

Why is it so much easier to talk about other problems but not your own. Why is it so hard to ask help when you really need it.

Life goes on

Do I need to say anything. No I don't.

Summer 2017. Peaceful state of mind after a sauna.

My dear friends rock!

Friends will be friends forever.

WordPress is not important

WordPress is not important. People behind it are, they have feelings. I wish more people would remember that when commenting on blog posts, Slack, or other online tools with shitty attitudes.

Being nice and constructive goes a long way.

At the same time it's amazing to notice how WordPress combines people together from all over the world. In WordCamps and meetups I have found new friends that really matter. That feels good.

Maybe WordPress is important after all.

The post Random Diary Chapters appeared first on HeroPress.

26 Jul 2017 12:00am GMT

SiteLock, a website security company, has acquired Patchman, a Dutch security startup that offers automated vulnerability patching and malware removal for hosting providers. Prior to the acquisition SiteLock protected 6 million sites, with 2.2 million of them running on WordPress. The addition of Patchman extends SiteLock's customer base to 12 million sites and more than 4 million of those are powered by WordPress.

Patchman detects vulnerabilities in a wide range of popular applications and quarantines and patches threats automatically. The quarantine feature neutralizes malicious files by removing them from public access. Patchman supports detection and patching for WordPress 3.x and later.

Historically, the service has not included patches for plugins but it has applied them on a case-by-case basis for high impact vulnerabilities, including a few found in WP Super Cache, MailPoet, and the open source Genericons font project. The Patchman dashboard allows users to easily track files where vulnerabilities have been detected, view status, and revert patches if necessary.

Patchman's single focus on hosting providers gives SiteLock the opportunity to offer more options to its hosting partners. With the acquisition, the company is now partering with more than 500 hosting providers, including BlueHost, 1&1, Web.com, InMotion, Melbourne IT, GMO (NTT), and many others.

"During our early talks, Patchman was not looking to be acquired and SiteLock wasn't looking to acquire," SiteLock President Neill Feather said. After meeting at the WorldHostingDays show in Rust, Germany in late March this year and at another show in Los Angeles, the companies found they shared similar goals and would be in a better position working together.

"It truly was a matter of 1+1=3," Feather said. "Traditionally, SiteLock is very strong in detecting and removing malware for end users. Patchman offers a service tailored specifically to hosting providers and aimed at fixing the security vulnerabilities that hackers exploit to infect websites with malware. By working together we are able to address a wider market and offer a broader solution to the problems that we solve for our customers. We can now attack the problem from multiple angles."

Patchman's technology will compliment SiteLock's existing security features but the company has not yet decided how it will be incorporated into its security plans for customers. Feather said the team is still jointly building out its future roadmap to give hosts and end customers access to a wider range of products. They are also considering making Patchman's detection technology compatible with more products in the WordPress ecosystem.

Feather could not disclose any specifics on revenue generated by SiteLock's WordPress security products but approximately 30% of its newly expanded customer base is running on WordPress.

"What we can say is that we're heavily invested in the WordPress community and plan on continuing to do so," Feather said.

"I'm excited that the increased number of sites we now protect across multiple platforms means we'll be able to identify malware and malicious trends more efficiently than we've been able to already, and that's good for every end user," SiteLock's WordPress Evangelist Adam Warner said. "Secondly, although we already have solutions for our partners, Patchman allows web hosts to offer increased security options for advanced users of their platforms. Being a WordPress guy, I'm excited about the possibility we now have to extend the capabilities of Patchman to plugins and other WordPress-specific software."

25 Jul 2017 6:46pm GMT

The very first WordCamp Varna will be held September 2-3 at the University of Economics. Varna is a beautiful city in Bulgaria on the Black Sea and a popular spot for summer holidays. It is the first Bulgarian WordCamp to be held outside of Sofia.

Tickets are on sale for EUR 10 (BGN 20) and include all the sessions, lunch, a #WCVAR 2017 T-shirt, and a few drinks at the after party. There are 102 remaining for the conference and 14 remaining tickets for the kids' workshop (ages 7-14).

The location naturally inspired a maritime sticker pack collection for attendees, featuring four new wapuu designs. The collection was designed by the vector graphic illustrators at GraphicMama, a design partner for the WordCamp. Ever wonder how much effort goes into designing all the individualized creations in the world of wapuus? Check out the video below to see how WordCamp Varna's wapuu designs were brought to life.

25 Jul 2017 4:14am GMT

WordPress' iOS and Android apps will soon be getting a new editor. The appearance of the new editor, codenamed "Aztec," is very similar to the old one but is light years ahead of its predecessor in both speed and reliability. Aaron Douglas, iOS engineer at Automattic, announced the open beta for Aztec today with a side-by-side comparison video of the old and new editors. A copy and paste test with 500 paragraphs on iPhone 6s demonstrates Aztec's instantaneous response while the old editor takes two-minutes to render the text.

In addition to better speed and performance, Aztec's use of OS-provided text controls makes it possible to offer full support for accessibility technologies like iOS' VoiceOver and Android's TalkBack. It also adds the ability to draft using dictation.

Aztec introduces a new undo/redo tool at the top of the screen as a quick option for fixing mistakes. It also provides a simpler, more reliable experience using spell check.

The Aztec beta is available to all users in the latest updates of the app (8.0 for iOS, 7.8 for Android). After opening the app you will see a popup for enabling the new editor. It can also be toggled on/off by going to Me > App Settings and selecting "Set the Editor Type."

The mobile team has made it easy to test and give feedback without leaving the app. Tapping the "beta" button at the top of the editor will open a "What's New in the Beta" page with a bug button at the top that you can use to report bugs and send feedback. At the moment, the beta does not support shortcodes or video and WordPress gallery features. Keep in mind that it's not 100% ready for use and heavy users of the mobile apps are likely to discover glitches.

Aztec is open source (GPL 2.0) and packaged as a rich-text editor component in its own GitHub repository (iOS | Android) so that developers can use it in their own applications and contribute code back to the project.

"Quite literally, there is nothing like this out there - every editor we could find uses a web view or has very limited support for any HTML," Douglas said. "Our hope is the Aztec editor is seen as a component that can be used by many iOS and Android apps to provide a rich HTML editing experience. We feel that we could garner a bigger contributor base to the mobile apps simply because this component exists, is free and open, and is super awesome."

The project is a few months behind the schedule published in April, which had open beta targeted for May and the full release for the end of this month. Depending on how well the beta testing period goes, users could see the new Aztec editor included in the mobile apps within the next few months.

24 Jul 2017 10:59pm GMT

Hamilton is a new portfolio theme released by Swedish designer and developer Anders Norén during his summer vacation. It was created for photographers, illustrators, designers, and image-heavy blogs. The theme displays portfolio items in a minimal, masonry-style grid with an optional tagline on the front page.

"Hamilton has a pretty simple design at its core, so when it was more or less finished, I decided to add a couple of fun theme options to make it more customizable," Norén said. "The main one is the Dark Mode. With a click of the mouse in the WordPress Customizer, you can change Hamilton from dark text on a white background to white text on a dark background."

The Customizer also includes a few other helpful options for portfolio sites:

• Set a custom background image or color
• Replace the navigation toggle in the header with the Primary Menu on desktop
• Change two-column default post grid display to three columns on desktop
• Display titles in the post previews
• Add a title to front page when it's set to display latest posts

The theme is beautifully responsive to various devices and screen sizes. Norén's typography choices are clean and readable on mobile.

Hamilton includes styles for the default WordPress image gallery with more interesting options available to create complex galleries stacked with different numbers of columns. It also supports Jetpack's Infinite Scroll module and has styles for blockquotes, pullquotes, and left/right/center aligned media.

One of the most unique features of the theme is the Resume template. It gives users the option to add a simple resume to their portfolios, without having to add a plugin. The template uses basic HTML for formatting with h1 header tags, horizontal rules, and unordered lists. The template could use a bit more documentation, since not all users are familiar with HTML, but it's a useful addition for simple portfolio sites.

Check out a live demo along with the style guide to see the theme in action.

Hamilton is Anders Norén's 15th theme approved for the WordPress Theme Directory. When he submitted it to the Theme Review Team, he anticipated that it would take a month or two for it to get through the review process. His previously submitted theme, Davis, took approximately nine months to make it through the queue. He was surprised to find that Hamilton went through the process in under a month. After less than a week on WordPress.org, the theme has already been downloaded more than 200 times.

24 Jul 2017 7:27pm GMT

Eight years ago, Justin Tadlock moved back home to Alabama and was living in the spare bedroom of his grandparents' house with nothing more than a laptop and a suitcase. Over the course of a few months he started going deeper into learning about writing WordPress plugins and produced Members, a role management plugin for WordPress. The first major overhaul of the plugin came in 2015 with version 1.0's expansion of features and a new UI for editing roles.

Members has built up a user base of more than 100,000 active installs since it first launched in 2009. Tadlock estimates that over the last couple years, 40% of Theme Hybrid customers are primarily there for support and small tweaks to the Members plugin. He decided it was time to begin investing more in the plugin and its community.

Tadlock released Members 2.0 this week. The plugin manages core WordPress capabilities but 2.0 adds the ability for plugins to register custom capabilities. The labels for the capabilities can be internationalized so users can manage the plugin in their own languages in human-readable form.

This release also adds the ability to use the WordPress editor for writing custom post error messages, making it easy to direct visitors to registration or other important information regarding access to the content.

Members 2.0 lets users add multiple roles when creating a new user from the Add User screen. It also introduces the ability to bulk add or remove roles from users, even when multiple roles have been enabled.

This version of the plugin serves some of its data using the WP REST API and a new setting was added to authenticate users who are accessing the REST API endpoints. This protects content from being exposed on sites that have the "private site" setting enabled. Tadlock plans to write a tutorial about what he has learned in integrating the REST API with the plugin.

Tadlock Aims to Monetize Members with Add-Ons, Renews Efforts to Develop a Community of Add-On Developers

Members 2.0 introduces a new Settings screen that ties in with Tadlock's future plans to monetize the plugin. The new screen includes a view for add-ons. Tadlock has two add-ons available currently and has written an API for third-party developers to register their own add-ons to be visible on this screen.

"The plan is to create some small add-on plugins," Tadlock said. "There's already two: Members - Role Levels, which is paid, and Members - Role Hierarchy, which I was hired to build and was allowed to release to the community for free. I've got a few small plugins like those in mind that'll be in a lower price range."

Tadlock also plans to release a more robust version of the "Content Permissions" feature as another add-on. He has received numerous feature requests from users over the years about what they would like to see in this plugin. The add-on will offer a variety of different ways to show/hide content.

I asked Tadlock if he has considered building payment gateway add-ons so users can charge for memberships. He said the idea is on the table.

"I'm not sure if I'm going to build those or someone else," Tadlock said. "I've mentioned it to some other developers. It would be a good place to start building add-ons." His current setup uses Easy Digital Downloads with a couple of plugins to bridge it with Members and ThemeHybrid.com.

A plugin like Members has the potential to have a large, third-party ecosystem of plugins for payments and additional features, but Tadlock was focused on other projects during the first few years after it launched.

"I haven't actively pursued the add-on angle," Tadlock said. "Instead, I focused more on themes during most of that time. Now, I'm focusing more on plugin development. It's my fault for not nurturing a community of add-on developers, which is something I'm trying to do more of now."

Tadlock said many of the developers he knows are working with Members because they like that it gives them a solid foundation to build on for client work. He hopes to persuade some of them to release some of that code back as commercial add-ons or free plugins in the WordPress plugin directory.

Since launching the plugin eight years ago, Tadlock has aimed to make it behave as if it were a natural part of WordPress. At its core, Members is a role and capability management plugin and not a one-size-fits all membership plugin.

"It's more or less a UI over what you could do with code already," Tadlock said. "Most of all, it tries not to get in your way. Every membership site has its own unique needs. It's tough building something that suits everyone. That's why I'd rather have that foundation of Members just exposing the roles/caps system with third-party add-ons that suit various users' needs.

"Other membership plugins often try to please everyone or pigeon-hole everything into their custom system. I like more to have a bit more flexibility without the bloat."

21 Jul 2017 9:37pm GMT

When WordPress 4.8 was released last month, it introduced TinyMCE functionality to the Text widget. Unfortunately, this caused issues for those who use Custom HTML as the Visual editor often strips out portions of the code.

WordPress 4.8.1 Beta 1 is available for testing and addresses this problem by including a dedicated Custom HTML widget.

"For advanced users or any user who needs to paste in HTML snippets, there is now a dedicated 'Custom HTML' widget that is specifically for adding arbitrary HTML to your sidebar," Weston Ruter, said.

"This widget will retain the application of the widget_text filters, in addition to having a new dedicated widget_custom_html_content filter.

"For use cases that involve adding content to your sidebar, the Text widget will continue to feature the same Visual editing interface that the post editor has (TinyMCE)."

Users who access Text widgets that have Custom HTML in WordPress 4.8.1, will see a note at the top of the widget that suggests using the Custom HTML widget.

If a user pastes or types HTML into a text widget with the Visual editor active, WordPress displays an Admin Pointer suggesting that they use the Text tab instead or use the Custom HTML widget.

Text Widget Admin Pointer

The Custom HTML widget works similar to the Text widget in WordPress 4.7 and below.

Custom HTML Widget

Sites that have existing Text widgets containing custom HTML that may be modified by the Visual editor, are opened in a legacy mode.

Legacy mode retains the old Text widget interface, including the checkbox on whether or not to automatically add paragraphs. This change prevents the Visual editor from altering code.

Ruter says the ideal way to test these improvements is to install it on a staging site that has Text widgets containing HTML and are known to be problematic in WordPress 4.8. After upgrading, check to see if the widgets open in legacy mode.

WordPress 4.8.1 is scheduled to be released on August 1st. Please report any bugs or errors you encounter in as much detail as possible to the WordPress Alpha/Beta section of the support forums.

21 Jul 2017 6:31pm GMT

photo credit: manu schwendener

React users are petitioning Facebook to re-license React.js after the Apache Software Foundation announced its decision to ban Apache PMC members from using any technology licensed with Facebook's BSD+Patents License. So far the GitHub issue has received 627 "thumbs up" emoji and 66 comments from concerned React users who are hoping for a change in licensing.

Many respondents on the thread said that ASF's decision affects their organizations' ability to continue using React in projects.

"Apache CouchDB and others will switch away from React if we have to," CouchDB committer Robert Newson said. "We'd rather not, it's a lot of work for no real gain, but we don't have a choice. Changing license can be simple (RocksDB completed that change in a day)."

"My team, at LinkedIn, is also having legal troubles using React for our internal projects," LinkedIn software Denis Ivanov said. "We would love to see a change on this front."

Software developer Clark Evans commented on how React's current licensing might affect medical research institutes, and suggested that Facebook consider an Apache 2.0 license because it includes equitable patent grants.

Since U.S. based universities rely upon patent licensing as part of their legislatively mandated technology transfer initiatives, they are growing far more cautious in their due diligence. For this reason, at some universities, software written with React may be shunned. Existing projects using React software may be asked to remove the React software software dependency. Please strongly consider this proposal, since our RexDB work is used at major universities, we do not wish to rework to use a React alternative.

Several participants in the discussion commented that they would like to use React but the licensing makes it impossible for their companies.

"Other large companies such as mine (Adobe) can't use React, Pop, etc. for the very same reason," Corey Lucier said. "We'd love to participate in the project, contribute to each, etc. but Facebook's heavy-handed PATENTS clause is a showstopper."

"Even mid-size companies like mine (ViaSat) are starting to disallow the use of Facebook's 'open-source' projects for this reason," software developer Aaron Yoshitake said. "We'd like to build React web and native apps, but it seems that any sensible legal department will recommend against agreeing to Facebook's asymmetric patent grant."

Internal Discussions Continue at Facebook, Re-Licensing Issue has been Escalated to Engineering Directors

Dan Abramov, co-author of Redux, Create React App, and React Hot Loader, shared with participants that Facebook is having internal discussions about the re-licensing issue but cautioned them to temper their optimism. He returned to throw some ice on the conversation, which has grown more heated over the past few days, when he said it could only remain an open discussion if everyone involved remains civil. Many participants are concerned about the future of the React-based software that they have already invested thousands of hours of work into.

"I understand that everyone is frustrated about this issue," Abramov said. "Personally I am just as frustrated to spend time, energy, and emotional wellbeing on legal mumbo jumbo that is preventing people from using React. I would much prefer to spend this time on working together to make it better.

"But the reality of this situation is that the maintainers of React (people like me that you're interacting on the issue tracker) are not the ones making these decisions. Each of us is doing what we can to show different perspectives on this issue to the people who can make those decisions, and we appreciate your feedback too. But we can only keep discussion open if everyone stays civil and respectful."

Abramov also pointed out in a follow-up update that a bug tracker isn't the best avenue for a legal discussion, especially since most participants are software developers and not lawyers. Many have mistaken the thread as a way to communicate with Facebook but there are just a handful of software developers who are representing the React community's concerns.

"We have heard you very well, and we have passed on your concerns," Abramov said. "But repeating the same points over and over in different threads does not help move this forward, and creates a lot of noise and stress for the maintainers who are already empathetic to your cause."

Several participants expressed frustration that the React community cannot participate in the discussions more directly. However, as React is both an open source project and a product of Facebook, the company's leadership has the last word on licensing issues.

"I understand that software developers like us are not the best people to discuss legal details," software consultant Erik Doernenburg said. "However, wouldn't the logical consequence be that the Facebook Legal team, who make such decisions, become active in this forum? Shouldn't it be possible that all relevant details pertaining to a piece of open source software are discussed in the open? It is incredibly frustrating to have such an important aspect of open software discussed behind closed doors."

It's not known whether Facebook is considering another change to its Patents grant or a complete re-licensing. Participants in the discussion are also concerned about other Facebook open source projects like GraphQL, Relay, React Native, and Flow, which share the same BSD+Patents License and are widely used by the open source community.

Dan Abramov left an update today to let the community know that no resolution is available this week. However, the update seemed more positive than the first one, which discouraged participants from being optimistic about a change.

"I want to point out that there is a real momentum behind this discussion internally," Abramov said. "There are going to be more meetings next week escalating this up to the engineering directors. As you imagine they are quite busy, so this is taking more time than we thought.

"Again, I can't promise you any specific conclusion, and there is no clarity on where this will land. But please know there are people working on getting your voice heard."

20 Jul 2017 10:37pm GMT

In this episode, John James Jacoby and I are joined by Cody Landefeld, Senior web strategist and founder of Mode Effect. Landefeld describes some of the challenges that shop owners face and provides insight into a couple of WooCommerce projects Mode Effect has recently built.

We discussed the future of WooCommerce and the odds of it turning into a SaaS product. Landefeld shares his thoughts on WooCommerce dropping its 50% renewal discount on subscriptions. Even though the discount is gone, he believes it's still an affordable option for most users. To close out the show, Jacoby and I discuss the news of the week.

Stories Discussed:

AJ Morris Acquires iThemes Exchange
Jetpack Professional Plan Introduces Unlimited Access to 200+ Commercial Themes
bbPress 2.5.13 Readds Sanitization to Anonymous User Data
WP Rollback Adds Multisite Compatibility and Changelog Preview
Gutenberg 0.5.0 Adds New Verse Block for Poetry and a New Display for Recent Blocks

Picks of the Week:

Gutenberg Boilerplate For Third-Party Custom Blocks by Ahmad Awais. The boilerplate is a great way to learn the basics on creating custom blocks for Gutenberg. It comes with four example blocks.

• A block with custom CSS for editor and front end
• A block with ES6 or ESNext and a Webpack build process
• A block with editable content
• A block to click Tweet the contents of that block

Awais also shared his thoughts on the Gutenberg project.

Add Admin CSS - Using this plugin you'll easily be able to define additional CSS (inline and/or files by URL) to be added to all administration pages. You can define CSS to appear inline in the admin head (within style tags), or reference CSS files to be linked.

WPWeekly Meta:

Next Episode: Wednesday, August 2nd 3:00 P.M. Eastern

Subscribe To WPWeekly Via Itunes: Click here to subscribe

Subscribe To WPWeekly Via RSS: Click here to subscribe

Subscribe To WPWeekly Via Stitcher Radio: Click here to subscribe

Listen To Episode #282:

20 Jul 2017 1:19am GMT

The State of JavaScript 2017 Survey is now open to web professionals of all backgrounds. The intent of the survey is to provide an overview of the rapidly changing landscape of JavaScript frameworks and tools by gauging which technologies are growing in popularity and which ones people are liking and using less.

The survey, created by Sacha Greif and Michael Rambeau, should take approximately 10 minutes to complete. Topics include JavaScript frontend and backend tools and frameworks, state management solutions, testing tools, CSS, build tools, mobile and desktop technologies, package managers, text editors, salaries, and more.

Last year's 89-question survey received more than 9,300 responses. Results showed that React ranked higher than other front-end frameworks in terms of developer satisfaction at 92%, followed closely by Vue.js at 89%.

It will be interesting to see if and how these results change with many open source project and companies growing wary of using React after the Apache Software Foundation's recent decision to ban Apache PMC members from using any technology licensed with Facebook's BSD+Patents License. A licensing issue that jeopardizes more companies' ability to use Facebook's popular open source technologies could precipitate a decline in React's preeminence among frontend frameworks.

Sacha Greif reports that the survey has received more than 3,500 responses in less than 24 hours, a remarkable number compared to 9,300 over the course of three weeks last year. This response affirms the value that last year's results provided to web professionals who are attempting to navigate the ever-expanding JavaScript ecosystem.

19 Jul 2017 8:16pm GMT

The bbPress development team has released bbPress 2.5.13. This release fixes a few bugs, most notably, it readds sanitization to anonymous user data that was accidentally removed in previous versions.

Those who allow anonymous users to create topics and replies on their forums are encouraged to update immediately.

"This feature is not widely used on public forums because spammers aggressively target these kinds of sites, but for communities that rely on this feature, please know you can safely upgrade to 2.5.13 without any issues," John James Jacoby, lead developer of bbPress and BuddyPress, said.

As a reminder, beginning with bbPress 2.5.12, the minimum version of WordPress supported is 4.7. If you're using an older version of WordPress, Jacoby recommends using or staying with bbPress 2.5.11.

bbPress 2.6 is still in the release candidate phase as developers iron out a few issues discovered on WordPress.org.

Users can download the latest version of bbPress from WordPress.org or browse to Dashboard > Updates, and upgrade from within WordPress.

19 Jul 2017 6:22pm GMT

photo credit: Archives of Zagreb Tourist Board - Author: Marko Vrdoljak

WordCamp Zagreb will be held September 1-3 and organizers are anticipating 300 attendees. This is the third WordCamp to be held in Croatia, following WordCamp Rijeka (2015) and WordCamp Split (2016). Although it changes cities every year, the camp is known as Croatia's annual WordCamp.

"Having WordCamp change cities each year is quite normal for us," WordCamp Croatia co-organizer and Zagreb meetup organizer Emanuel Blagonic said. "A lot of people from other cities travel to meetups too. Our largest meetup in Zagreb, which usually has 80+ people present and 100+ live stream viewers, usually has people attending from a 300km circle around Zagreb. People also travel to Split when there are meetups there."

A renewed discussion on regional WordCamps is firing up on the WordPress Community team P2 blog, as the topic was discussed at the Community Summit and with recent developments in WordCamp Netherlands being reinstated and WordCamp Asia a possibility for 2019. Croatia is another example of a country where a national WordCamp might benefit the community.

"When we started with organizing a WordCamp in Croatia, as a community we hoped that WordCamp will help us boost local communities, thus not having everything centralized in Zagreb (where most other meetups happen, i.e. PHP, Design, UX, JavaScript, Python, etc.)," Blagonic said. "As a community we strongly believe that every region is different and it should be viewed like that. So far we are organizing WordCamps 'no matter what,' but having a 'national WordCamp would mean more Croatian sponsors and better coverage from national media."

WordCamp Zagreb will be a three-day event, beginning with workshops on the first day as the event has done in previous years. Organizers are planning for 12 workshops in four tracks that will be open to public registration. The main conference will be held Saturday with two tracks. Contributor Day will close out the event on Sunday, followed by a walking tour of the city.

Friday's workshops will be held mostly in Croatian, except a few, such as WordPress Basics and Public Speaking, which will be conducted in English. All of the conference talks this year will be in English.

"Croatia is a tourist country and most of the people here speak good English, which is often used at large tech events," Blagonic said. "With that in mind, every WordCamp so far was (mostly) in English, which means it's quite welcoming for people outside Croatia, too (Slovenia, Austria, Italy, Germany) - and our community likes to meet new people. Unlike WordCamps, we see Meetups as strong local events so we usually have talks in Croatian there."

Blagonic said every year so far the WordCamp has had approximately 20% of its attendees traveling from outside Croatia, as the country is relatively small with a population of 4 million. Most attendees travel to the WordCamp from other parts of Croatia.

Croatia currently has five local meetups, but only the two in Zagreb and Split have enough members to meet regularly. Blagonic said he sees the meetups as a way to help local communities grow and views the WordCamp as "a celebration of the country community." However, he believes centralizing the larger events too much would be detrimental to growing the fledgling WordPress communities in the smaller cities.

"I'd say that in Croatia (and in the region) we have a young democracy and we still haven't found the best way to connect with people," Blagonic said. "For example, there are four big cities in Croatia where most of the things happen, and the tech scene is quite strong in them. If you go outside of these four hubs, a lot fewer things happen, which is a problem for people living outside. We believe that having a centralized country is bad for growing local communities (outside these areas) so with changing cities each year and with traveling to other Meetups/WordCamps we hope that we will change how people feel about it. "

19 Jul 2017 6:11pm GMT

WP Super Cache is a fast full-page caching plugin for WordPress. Download it from your dashboard or get it here.

Version 1.5.0 has been in development for some time. It has a ton of bug fixes and new features.

REST API

The headline new feature is REST API access to the settings. This will allow developers to create their own interface to the settings of the plugin. Unfortunately it isn't yet documented but you can see the code in the rest directory. Start with load.php where you'll find the code that registers all the endpoints. Users who access the API must be logged in as admin users. If you want to test the API, see the end of this post.

Settings Page

We have also simplified the settings page to make it easier to choose which caching method is used.

Instead of maybe confusing the user with technical words like PHP, mod_rewrite and WP-Cache we have split them up into "Simple" and "Expert" delivery methods, and done away with mentioning WP-Cache completely. Simple delivery uses PHP, expert uses mod_rewrite and well, WP-Cache got the boot because it's always active anyway.

WP-Cache caching is always active, but it can be disabled in different ways.

• Disable caching for known users.
• Don't cache pages with GET parameters
• Disable caching of feeds

Headers

We expanded the number of headers cached by the plugin. The list of headers was borrowed from Comet Cache. However, anonymous users will still only see the bare minimum like content-length or content-type. If you need to use security headers like "X-Frame-Options" or "Content-Security-Policy" you should enable caching of HTTP headers. This unfortunately disables super caching so only WP-Caching is used but it's still very fast (and faster in this release than before which I will get to below). You can also use the "wpsc_known_headers" filter to modify the list of recognised headers.

WP-Cache Reorganisation

WP-Cache cache files are split into two files - one holds the page content, the other (meta file) holds information about the page such as cookies, headers and url. In the past these files were stored in two directories which could become a problem if there were many thousands of those files. Even with only a few hundred files, maintenance could be an issue as deleting related files (like page archives, or copies of the front page) needed every meta file to be inspected.
Now the files are stored in the supercache directory structure that mirrors your permalink structure. Deleting related files is is simpler and serving files will be faster as the operating system won't need to open a directory of thousands of files.
If you currently rely on WP-Cache files, the plugin will still look for them where they are, but new WP-Cache files will be created in cache/supercache/example.com/ (where example.com is your hostname).

Sitemaps

We added support for caching sitemaps, but your sitemap plugin will need to cooperate to get it to work. The sitemap plugin needs to identify the sitemap request as a feed. Jetpack 5.1 now supports this since #7397. You can disable the caching by excluding feeds from caching.

Debugging Improved

The debug log is now protected by a username/password. For convenience, the username and password are the same but they are a long md5 string:

Deleting the log file clears it and resets it ready for more logging. Before, toggling debugging would create a new debug log and the old one would be kept around, but not linked, until deleted by garbage collection, and of course they were text files anyone could access.

This release includes lots of other small bug fixes and changes. Take a look at the number of closed PRs for an exhaustive list of those changes!

Testing the REST API

There are a number of ways to send POST requests to a web server but one I like is using curl in a shell script. You'll need two bits of information from the website:

1. The "wordpress_logged_in" cookie from your browser.
2. The wp_rest nonce which you can get by adding `echo wp_create_nonce( 'wp_rest' );` somewhere on your site where you're logged in. It's good for 24 hours.

My test script looks something like this:
export NONCE='1234567890'
export COOKIE='wordpress_logged_in_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx=1234567890'
curl -v -X "GET" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H "X-WP-Nonce: $NONCE" -H "Cache-Control: no-cache" -H "Cookie: wordpress_test_cookie=WP+Cookie+check; $COOKIE" \
-d '{}' "https://example.com/wp-json/wp-super-cache/v1/settings/"

Related Posts

• WP Super Cache 0.8.4, the garbage collector
• WP Super Cache 0.8.7
• WP Super Cache 0.9.9

Source

19 Jul 2017 12:25pm GMT

It's so easy to become secluded and sit at home, in your own bubble, but it wasn't until a group of people literally pulled me in with their welcoming atmosphere and demeanor, that I realised that I could function amongst other people as well (even if it was somewhat limited).

In The Beginning

To understand my bubble, you need to also know a little about me, or rather, about my childhood. I had a less than ideal childhood. I have a great family, lived in a great house, even in the "best country in the world" as they say. And despite this, I say I wasn't happy with my childhood. My school years were the reason, they were rough. At times I think back and feel like events that unfolded were parts of ridiculous scenes from an over the top movie.

All in all, the days seemed generic enough, except my school days were a thing of dread. I would suffer physical and verbal abuse throughout my schooldays, even going to and from school, I had no real friends (victim by association is understandably not something a child would want to intentionally walk into. I understand this as an adult, but as a child it's not that easy).

Because of my treatment over the years, I developed trust issues, I got a fear for everyone around me, and it was growing stronger and stronger over the years.

I suppressed it, I lied about it, and I got terrifyingly good at the lying part.

This is why I was drawn to the internet: I didn't have to interact with people, I didn't need to go outside where the others were, I could just do my thing and move on. I could live in my own bubble.

Finding WordPress

But then the darndest thing happened. I'd been stuck on a project, I needed help, and I turned to a support room for an open source project, for WordPress. If you've ever tried to get help in a chat before, you'll know what kind of an experience it can be, the snarky reactions to your code, the nitpicking of using the wrong terminology, it's not fun. This place though, they didn't care that I was not only using the wrong terms, but my entire code was a horrible mess.

Where I would usually get the help I needed and move on, popping back in my bubble of solitude, I instead wanted to be like these people, I wanted to use what I learnt to let others get helped.

Over the years, I all but devote myself to that place. Nobody knew me, I liked staying under the radar, but eventually I got pushed into a team meeting. I was intrigued, so I would watch, I'd say hi, and progressively make my opinions heard. Yet, I would stick to my bubble, once the meeting was over I was back on my own.

And Then I Went To WordCamp

Until I got to attend my first big WordCamp, the last one held in San Francisco, I was ecstatic! I'd never been to a big conference before, as I didn't like crowds, but I knew some of the people who would be there. They were people who had been friendly and inviting in the most genuine way imaginable. It's not easy being worried whenever you're out amongst people, but this group of people, this community, I didn't have that fear around them.

I somehow made WordCamps my safe space.

They are where I can, if only for a short while, leave that bubble, leave the need to be alone, and be a part of something great! I use them as fuel to get through the hard times, I can look forward to meeting people, people who value my opinions and my experience. People who genuinely want to listen and most of all, care about you! The WordPress community is, slowly but surely, helping me get rid of my ingrown fear of the unknown, of others.

The community is helping me become myself again.

The post Becoming Myself Again appeared first on HeroPress.

19 Jul 2017 12:00pm GMT

Contributing to WordPress or other open source projects can be intimidating for first-time contributors. Sometimes, all you need is a helping hand to overcome fear, intimidation, or other barriers.

In 2013, with the help of Konstantin Obenland, a WordPress core developer, I overcame my fear and contributed my first patch to WordPress.

This is one of the principles behind a new weekly meeting that is geared towards new contributors.

"The new contributors meeting is the perfect place to come if you are new to contributing to WordPress core and have questions," Adam Silverstein, WordPress core contributor, said.

Every Wednesday at 3PM Eastern Daylight Time, users can visit the #core WordPress Slack channel and ask questions related to patches, tickets, and review the good-first-bugs report on Trac.

The first meeting was held on July 5th where participants asked questions about working with Git in WordPress core, applying patches, and unit testing. In the second meeting, participants discussed whether or not new contributors are allowed to make changes to tickets.

Other topics mentioned include, which repositories to use, clarification on contributing to core versus updating the WordPress Developer's site, and which tickets to select for review.

The next meeting is on Wednesday, July 19th at 3PM Eastern. If you have any questions on how to contribute to WordPress, be sure to join the WordPress #core Slack channel at that time and ask away.

Meeting notes with links to discussions, tickets mentioned, and other resources are published on the Make WordPress Core blog under the #new-contributors tag

19 Jul 2017 5:09am GMT