Articles about WordPress

Out of the blue, Typepad has announced that it is closing down. The stalwart blogging service says it was a "difficult decision to discontinue” operations, but does not give any details about the reasons behind it.

Users of Typepad have a little over a month until the service is gone forever, and anyone who would like to preserve their writing is urged to export their content.

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Google has announced that AVIF, a rapidly growing image format, is now officially supported in Google Search, including Google Images and other areas where images are utilized. This means that AVIF files can now be indexed by Google without requiring any special configuration from webmasters.

AVIF, an open image file format derived from the AV1 video compression standard, has gained traction due to its efficient compression and high-quality output. Its compatibility spans across all major web browsers and is supported by various platforms, including WordPress, Joomla, and CloudFlare.

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Canonical, parent company of the content management platform WordPress, announced the release of a new Jetpack tool. Called Jetpack AI Assistant, it is integrating a "creative writing partner" to WordPress.

The experimental feature is available on WordPress.com and all WordPress sites that use Jetpack. Jetpack is a subscription-based service that adds various plugins and tools to WordPress. These tools include spam protection, security protection, performance tools, and now also the AI Assistant.

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Microsoft Word vs. Google Docs: which one do you prefer? Many people grew accustomed to using Microsoft Word in school and now find it difficult to shift to Google Docs at the workplace. Notably, many businesses prefer Google Docs because it's web-based, so teams can collaborate in a document even though they don't work in the same office or department.

So, which is the best option? Below is a review of the features and benefits to help you decide on the right choice for you.

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Google's Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) technology has raised the hackles of many, and the latest to express concern at the new user tracking and ad targeting technique is WordPress.

The blogging platform joins the likes of DuckDuckGo in standing up to Google, suggesting it could block Google's new technology on the sites it powers. With WordPress catering for around two-fifths of the web, the proposal could have a huge impact on what Google has planned. Fighting FLoC, WordPress says it "can help combat racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination and discrimination against those with mental illness with four lines of code".

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Researchers from Check Point have found serious vulnerabilities in the widely-used WordPress plugins that are used for large-scale online learning by top academic institutions and major businesses.

By exploiting the flaws in LearnPress, LearnDash and LifterLMS, students, as well as unauthenticated users, can abuse security flaws in order to steal personal information, siphon money and attain teacher privileges on the platform.

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A mere two years after acquiring it, Verizon is selling Tumblr. Full details of the deal have not yet been revealed, but the micro-blogging service is being bought by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.

Tumblr came into the spotlight last year when it introduced a ban on all adult content, and anyone hoping for this to change is going to be disappointed. Automattic says the ban will remain in place.

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Anyone running a website powered by WordPress is being told to upgrade to version 4.8.3 immediately after the discovery of a serious security issue.

The problem -- an SQL injection vulnerability -- affects millions of websites running WordPress 4.8.2 and older. In addition to installing the latest update, site owners are advised to update plugins that could be exploited.

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According to security researcher Daniel Cid, at least 15,769 WordPress websites have been compromised this year by cyber-attackers who were able to evade Google's Safe Browsing checks.

WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world, used by consumers and businesses to create and publish blogs. To conduct the research needed for the second 2016 Sucuri report on compromised web properties, 21,821 sites were studied with the majority of them using WordPress to manage and publish their content. The report also found that 3099 Joomla! sites were hacked during that time as well.

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Internet domain registrar, and web hosting company GoDaddy, has announced that it has acquired ManageWP. ManageWP is a WordPress dashboard, allowing webmasters to manage multiple WordPress sites from a single dashboard.

"GoDaddy is serious about investing in WordPress and ManageWP is by far the leading tool for managing WordPress sites", says Jeff King, SVP of Hosting at GoDaddy. "Together, we’ll bring ManageWP to the scale of GoDaddy, helping web designers and developers save thousands of work hours and touch millions of websites globally, no matter where they are hosted".

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WordPress is the finest content management system. Its popularity is proof of that. Websites on WordPress perform great and the platform is easy to use. However, the same cannot be said about managing its database.

If you are a beginner in using this CMS then you might get a migraine or two whenever you try to understand the tons of content available online concerning WordPress databases.

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Facebook's biggest news recently has been the global roll out of Reactions. But bubbling away in the background over recent weeks have been changes to the Instant Article program. Initially made available only to larger publishers, Facebook Instant Articles help to improve user-engagement by providing articles that load internally up to ten times faster than linking to external sites.

Facebook then announced that Instant Articles would be made available to publishers of all sizes, and today a WordPress plugin has been launched that means any blogger can take advantage of the feature. The partnership between Facebook and Automattic opens up Instant Articles to millions of users.

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The precise number of websites out there running on WordPress may not be known, but one thing is for sure -- there are a lot of them. Two reasons for the popularity of WordPress are the ease of set up and the availability of a huge range of plugins. One popular plugin, Custom Content Type Manager (CCTM), has just been pulled from the WordPress Plugin Directory after a backdoor was discovered.

The plugin has been installed on thousands of websites, and a recent update -- automatically installed for many users -- included a worrying payload. In the hands of a new developer, Custom Content Type Manager made changes to core WordPress files, ultimately making it possible to steal admin passwords and transmit them in plaintext to a remote server.

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Microsoft’s blog editor Windows Live Writer has been revived with an independent open-source fork, Open Live Writer.

OLW’s first release allows you to create blog posts, add photos, videos, maps or more, and publish them to your website.

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While the browser is likely to remain the most-popular and convenient way of managing a WordPress site from a PC, Automattic, the company behind the hugely-successful content management system, also wants to give users a more focused tool for the job. So, in late-November, it announced dedicated apps for Windows, OS X and Linux.

The idea behind the PC apps is to make it easier for users to focus on their content, by getting rid of the distractions that come with working inside a tabbed browser environment. The OS X app launched first, arriving at the time of the announcement, and now it is Windows users turn to get a dedicated WordPress.com app.

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