Matias Ventura:

7.0 introduces a fully revitalized dashboard with a chic, modern new color scheme, and clean finishes throughout.

Polished with smooth transitions that seamlessly shift as you move between screens, you’ll feel like you’re effortlessly gliding through the dashboard.

Just one click of the new Command Palette shortcut, a ⌘K or Ctrl+K icon in the upper admin bar, lets you access your favorite tools from anywhere in the dashboard.

I’ve always kept my WordPress install quite small — minimizing the number of plugins I need. So WordPress has always felt fast enough for me. But the dashboard updates included in WordPress 7.0 has everything feeling even snappier.

➝ Source: wordpress.org

Dave Martin:

At WordPress.com, we believe short thoughts deserve a real home. Today we’re introducing a new theme built for quick posts, replies, and reblogs: the kind of writing that lives somewhere between a tweet and a blog post, on a site that’s entirely yours.

If you’ve been thinking about starting your own small, private social network with friends or family, or you want a space to post thoughts freely, or to import your historical posts from Twitter, Mastodon, or Bluesky without handing your words over to someone else’s platform, this one’s for you.

This looks like a dope way to publish to Micro.blog or with WordPress.com’s built-in ActivityPub functionality.

➝ Source: wordpress.com

From the plugin description on WordPress.org:

Internet Archive Wayback Machine Link Fixer is a WordPress plugin designed to combat link rot—the gradual decay of web links as pages are moved, changed, or taken down. It automatically scans your post content—on save and across existing posts—to detect outbound links. For each one, it checks the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine for an archived version and creates a snapshot if one isn’t available.

When a linked page disappears, the plugin helps preserve your user experience by redirecting visitors to a reliable archived version. It also works proactively by archiving your own posts every time they’re updated, creating a consistent backup of your content’s history.

I haven’t had a chance to give this plugin a try yet, but I have a feeling it will become a permanent part of my setup.

I will occasionally look through Initial Charge’s archives and inevitably find dead links. It would be great if those could be automatically replaced with links to archive’s of the associated page rather than being hit with a dead end after clicking an old link.

➝ Source: wordpress.org

From our announcement page:

Running Tumblr on WordPress will make it easier to share our work across platforms. We can build something once and bring it to both WordPress and Tumblr. We can run Tumblr on the rock-solid infrastructure behind WordPress.com. Tumblr will benefit from the collective effort that goes into the open source WordPress project. And WordPress will benefit from the tools and creativity we invest into Tumblr and contribute back to WordPress.

This won’t be easy. Tumblr hosts over half a billion blogs. We’re talking about one of the largest technical migrations in internet history. Some people think it’s impossible. But we say, “challenge accepted.”

Although I’m not on the team that’s working on this project, I’m excited about what it will mean for the future of Tumblr and WordPress.

➝ Source: automattic.com

I’ve wanted to relaunch Initial Charge shirts for quite some time, but it was always a project that ended up on the back burner in favor of more important things. I mentioned it publicly a couple of years ago and started toying around with some options.

I’ve ordered a bunch of samples, made some tweaks to the designs, and am pretty happy with the results. It’s time to finally ship it.

If you’re in need of some snazzy shirts, hats, sweatshirts, or stickers, you might as well buy them from me. It helps support the site and you get something that you’ll have to explain to all your friends when they inevitably ask, “what is that logo?”

You can just tell them it’s a website that all the cool people read.

On a more serious note, the shop is starting out with Initial Charge themed merchandise, but my plan is to expand it with more designs and product types in the future. If you have any ideas, please let me know.

I don’t expect to change the world with this. I’m certainly not going to be going full time with Initial Charge because of t-shirt sales. But even if just a few people buy some products I’ll be happy. Heck, if I’m the only one that ever wears them, that’s actually fine. They’re comfy.

For a little bit of a peak behind the curtain, in case anyone wants to setup a store of their own like this, I built the site on WordPress and am using WooCommerce and WooPayments. Products are printed and shipped by Printful.

I’ve opted for higher quality materials where possible — tri-blend shirts, organic cotton caps, and so on. All of the shirts are printed on Bella + Canvas, which has become my absolute favorite shirt supplier. I would recommend checking the size guide closely, I’ve heard from others that they tend to fit a bit smaller than shirts from other companies.

So please, check out the shop, buy some stuff, and send me any feedback you have.

Jan Boddez:

Some things to consider when enabling ActivityPub on a self-hosted WordPress install.

Rather than, say, RSS feeds, ActivityPub is push-based, at least in part. (Yes, I know about WebSub, but let’s continue.)

As a result, your server will be reaching out to, possibly, a whole lot of other servers whenever you publish new content.

On top of that, whenever one of your posts gets “boosted,” a whole lot of other servers may try and fetch (or GET) that post’s JSON representation.

If, like me, you’re on a smallish VPS or shared hosting package, you will almost certainly see a performance hit (or worse).

I’ve considered implementing ActivityPub here on Initial Charge, but don’t want to worry about the performance implications and am unsure of whether it would be a hinderance to discoverability.

I’m just cross-posting headlines to a Mastodon account for now. But if I decide to go the native ActivityPub route in WordPress, I’m sure these suggestions from Jan will be helpful.

➝ Source: jan.boddez.net

Sarah Perez, reporting for TechCrunch:

WordPress.com sites now have an easier way to integrate with the Fediverse, including Mastodon. Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Tumblr and other web publishing tools, is the new owner of the ActivityPub for WordPress plugin and has also recruited its developer to come work for the company, according to Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg.

I’m pretty happy about this news.

➝ Source: techcrunch.com

Josepha Haden, writing on WordPress.org:

Before the release of WordPress 5.0 in 2018, the Classic Editor plugin was published to help ease the transition to the new block editor. At the time, we promised to support the plugin through 2021 and adjust if needed as the deadline got closer. After discussing this with Matt, it’s clear that continuing to support the plugin through 2022 is the right call for the project as well as the community.

Everything I publish on Initial Charge is written in Ulysses, but everything I publish internally at Automattic is written in Gutenberg. But I think supporting the Classic Editor for an additional year is the right decision.

➝ Source: wordpress.org