Hi, and welcome to this month’s WordPress “news, articles and guides recap”. It was a fast month for WordPress, and we’ve seen some great posts in March.
Without any further introduction, let’s begin!
WordPress News
WordPress 4.5 Beta 2, Beta 3, Beta 4 and Release Candidate are out! Definitely a fast month for WordPress releases.
Shopify has launched its official WordPress plugin.
And Automattic has purchased a majority stake in Pressable, a WordPress-focused hosting company.
Did you know Jetpack is now 5 years old? They’re also moved from jetpack.me to jetpack.com.
Set your reminders for April 24 for the WordPress Global Translation Day!
Opinion Pieces
Bridget Willard from Word!mpress talks about the “freemium” model in the plugin ecosystem.
And Jesse Pollak talks about securing WordPress in a post titled, err, “Jesse Pollak Talks About Securing WordPress“.
Did you know that there’s a better alternative to the REST API? It’s called GraphQL–check out Mark Gavalda’s article on Kinsta.
The “freemium” model doesn’t apply only to plugins–there’s a whole ecosystem of “lite WordPress themes”. Will Ellington from Wpliving argues the usefulness of the model.
Lastly, Rachel McCollin from WPMU DEV explains the meaning of the WordPress REST API for ordinary users.
WordPress Plugins, Themes & Tools
Avid WordPress developers have a lot of plugins and themes in WordPress.org. If you have some as well, you can keep track of them with this tool.
Ever wanted to integrate Slack into your WordPress website? Here’s how you do it.
Rachel McCollin shared some vital information on a very important theme file, functions.php. Check it out.
Using child themes is a very useful way to do theme customizations–and it’s easy, too. Here’s how to make it even easier.
Everyone’s already gone mobile, hope your website can handle it. If not, check out this listicle for mobile optimization plugins.
Speaking of plugins… Here’s a new WordPress plugin framework, called Herbert.
Need to boost your website’s speed? Here’s 12 plugins to do just that.
WordPress Tutorials
Giuseppe Mazzapica from Roots.io wrote an incredibly useful guide to “a front-end WordPress request”–be sure to check it out.
Another great guide published this month is about custom URL building by Carlo Daniele in WPMU DEV.
Ever heard about WP-CLI, the awesome command-line WordPress tool? Here’s a tutorial for it in KeyCDN’s blog.
Everyone’s talking about AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) these days. Torque guides us through how to make most of it.
Getting errors in your website? Check out WPBeginner for 403 errors, WPExplorer for 404 errors, and Elegant Themes for 500 errors. Nice coincidence, getting all of them in a single month.
It’s common courtesy to thank people after they comment on your blog. Here’s how to automate it, heartlessly.
My last (seriously, last) tutorial in Tuts+ Code is about redirection filters in WordPress. Go check it out.
Some clients hear inaccurate definitions for WordPress, and may protest if you say you’ll make their website with it. You may need to convince them about the benefits of WordPress.
Conclusion
I think this month was great for WordPress. What do you think? Share your thoughts with us in the Comments section below. And, as always, thanks for reading!