The WordPress Governance Project working out who we are. The WordPress Governance Project is trying to explore and influence the governance of WordPress and the open web, and it’s issued some new research. This identifies the stakeholders involved in the… [Keep reading]

When putting together WordPress Security with Confidence, one of the best sources about actual WordPress site comprises was the Sucuri hacked website report. While a lot of WordPress security content (including my own) is informed by a small number of… [Keep reading]

“Expert roundup” on what’s next. I hesitated a little on linking this, as it’s obviously mostly trying to target search engines, and some of the analysis is a little soft: “The future of WordPress is awesome!” But there are also… [Keep reading]

Back in November I set aside this article from my friend Jeremy Ward about how to learn web development. I finally got to reading it and quite liked it. So I thought I'd share it with you. I liked that… [Keep reading]

Metabox Glue is a very niche plugin: its page on the WordPress plugin repository says "30+ active installations," and that sounds about right. When you need it, though, it fits the job exactly. The plugin works with metaboxes: the little… [Keep reading]

“The occasional convenience [of your phone] comes at the cost of developing a compulsive urge to monitor your messages constantly.” Cal Newport’s new book Digital Minimalism has been making the rounds recently, and I very much look forward to reading… [Keep reading]

Over at Thoughtful Code, I recently published an introduction to PHP web scraping based on some hard-won lessons I've had over the last few months doing it for keeps. It's a skill that few people have, and which you might… [Keep reading]

Google just introduced a major update to its search algorithm. This one's called E-A-T, which stands for the things Google really likes now: "Expertise," "Authoritativeness," and "Trustworthiness." The main things I got out of reading the update notes were, first,… [Keep reading]

The children’s author on his writing process and habits. This is a fantastic interview with the famous children’s author Roald Dahl, in which he talks about his life, his work, and his process. The video is from 1982 but it’s… [Keep reading]

This was a great little read about server performance matters from Ashley Rich over at Delicious Brains. While I think most WordPress users (and even most WordPress developers) don't really need to be expert server administrators, at least delving into… [Keep reading]

Fantastic NPR-style podcast from WPMU DEV. I can highly recommend this podcast, which does something totally different to all the WordPress podcasts you’ve heard before. The show follows co-host’s Micah’s journey as a new user of WordPress through a series… [Keep reading]

I'm not a WordPress core contributor. I don't write the code, and I don't make it a priority in my life to be contributing to the Marketting, Accessibility, WP-CLI, Support, Themes, or any other of the volunteer teams that keep… [Keep reading]

You should probably take more responsibility. I found this from Tom Greenwood at Wholegrain Digital really interesting: it explores the application of “extreme ownership” to the agency space. This comes from Jocko Willink’s book of the same name; Jocko is… [Keep reading]

Our friend Josh Pollock recently published a guide which I wish I'd written (and which I may yet, because it's a good idea, and I'm sure going to be growingly-common question). It's about how to go from a shortcode, which… [Keep reading]

One of the most pleasant surprises of our time at WordCamp US 2018 was that we got to meet Dan Maby. Dan is the founder of WP&UP, a registered charity that exists to support and promote mental health in the… [Keep reading]

A huge year in review for Pippin Williamson. There are transparency reports and annual reviews, and then there’s Pippin Williamson’s annual review. Pippin has been writing these since 2012, and in that time Pippin’s plugins have gone from being worked… [Keep reading]

Over on Thoughtful Code I recently covered the topic of "rubber duck debugging." It's a pretty simple procedure but one I love because it works surprisingly well. Here are the basic steps: Explain your (broken) code and its goals, generally.… [Keep reading]

One of the reasons I love WordPress is because there's always something to learn. I've recently had two clients who, for different reasons, really need to sort their post content by custom field values within the posts themselves. CodePress's Admin… [Keep reading]

WordPress.com expands its news offering, with funding from Google. WordPress.com is launching a new Newspack platform, which will “develop an advanced open-source publishing and revenue-generating platform for news organizations”. When Matt Mullenweg was on Kara Swisher’s podcast last year, he… [Keep reading]

On his personal blog, Studio Press lead developer Nathan Rice makes an interesting point about the block-derived performance issues that may come from having lots of Gutenberg blocks and lots of CSS rules to style them in WordPress after 5.0.… [Keep reading]

Derek Sivers will get back to you tomorrow. "When someone asks me a deep question, I say, “Hmm. I don’t know.” The next morning, I have an answer.” I like this from Derek Sivers, and have been thinking – slowly… [Keep reading]

This post about how WordPress works with URL from Ryan McCue has almost everything I love in such things: A certified expert. A thorough examination of both history and details. Disambiguations of things that can trip people up. A little… [Keep reading]

I'm cheered and hopeful that Mr. Krogsgard is correct and Post Status will soon return to form. (It kind of limped out of 2017 and into 2018, but Brian recently emailed members about his new dedication.) This interview with Matt… [Keep reading]

The discounts you should use in your cart abandonment emails. If you’re sending cart abandonment emails, read this! This is great data from Jilt, the cart abandonment app: they looked at a huge dataset from their customers to see what… [Keep reading]

WordPress 5.0 is releasing tomorrow. December 6, 2018. Yay!? I don't think--as I sit in the airport restaurant--I can or should try to write out all of the thoughts about Gutenberg and the chaos that has been the WordPress 5.0… [Keep reading]