You might have noticed a new report published on the official website of the WordPress project. I’m emphasizing the word “official” because the publication location is quite strategic, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.

If you work in content or social media and you often have to take screenshots of other websites then you know how annoying it is when you come across a page with random obstructions. Whether its a giant banner announcing a seasonal sale, a popup window, a sidebar widget, or some awkwardly inserted Google ad – it doesn’t matter. The point is that you don’t want it there. You want a nice, clean image. Fortunately, there is a very quick and very easy way to do it. Here’s how.

Sometimes the difference between security and compromise comes down to a single click – and a healthy dose of suspicion. And it’s because scammers are getting increasingly sophisticated with their phishing attempts. It’s to the point where even following standard security best practices isn’t enough to protect you. Case in point: last week’s near-successful phishing attack on Zach Latta.

The new DeepSeek R1 model from China launched last week. If you’re into AI or even into technology more broadly, it was hard to miss the news. Everyone was talking about it. But it’s not just that. It’s the way everyone was talking about it. I was left with the impression that DeepSeek is going to drive a stake through the heart of OpenAI and Anthropic.

This morning, I came across some interesting news about Google’s updated site reputation abuse policies. Apparently, they’ve revised their main guidelines with some fresh updates.

While the web buzzes with anxiety about AI taking our jobs or achieving consciousness, real artificial intelligence systems have already been making life-altering decisions about healthcare, housing, and basic human rights – often with devastating consequences.In this article I’m going to examine three real-life cases where AI systems destroyed thousands of lives. Then I’ll share my opinion on what we can do about it.

Google has made a significant change: you now need to enable JavaScript to use Google Search. According to them, this move is about security and improving the experience for users like you and me. By requiring JavaScript, Google says it can better protect its platform against spam, bots, and other types of abuse. It also claims this change ensures you get “the most relevant and up-to-date information.”

Last week, Automattic announced that they’d be cutting their weekly contributor hours to WordPress.org from roughly 4,000 to a mere 45. This is a massive shift in how open-source WordPress has functioned for over a decade. Let’s explore four possible implications of this major change.

If you’ve used Google lately, you’ve probably noticed a change: instead of just getting a mix of links and snippets, you’re now seeing AI-generated responses that synthesize information from multiple sources right there in your results. This is what’s known as generative search and it’s changing how we optimize content for search engines. In this post, I’ll explain how traditional SEO differs from GEO and where the concept of GEO originated from. Then I’ll go over some best practices so you can improve your odds of getting featured in generative search results.

Happy almost-2025, everyone! While you’re finishing up your year-end to-do’s (or wishing you had started them earlier), I’ve been diving into some fresh data published by Cloudflare. This time, they’ve looked at how people around the globe have been spending their time online during the holiday season – between Christmas and the New Year. As it turns out, when the feasting starts, the web often takes a back seat.

Fundraising is hard. Accepting payments shouldn’t be. I tested popular WordPress donation plugins to determine how well they can help you meet your online fundraising goals.

If you haven’t tried Sora yet (or are in a region where it’s not currently available) and you’re curious about it, then keep reading. I will begin with an overview of Sora’s usage limits, its UI / UX, and the different ways you can make a video with it. Then I’ll share samples of the videos I made – both good and bad – and I’ll review some of Sora’s additional features that you can use to edit your videos.

Cloudflare just released their “2024 Year in Review” report – a detailed document that dives into the key trends and patterns shaping the web over the past year. I’ll be honest with you, it’s my first time paying attention to this report, but I’m really fascinated by the insights that they’ve been able to deliver. It’s an opportunity for all of us (website owners) to explore the forces behind the internet as we use it every day, and perhaps walk into 2025 a little more prepared.

Last week, Riad Benguella, a key WordPress developer, asked the community about their “quick win” wishlist for the block editor / Gutenberg. He posed it as simple question on the social media platform Bluesky. In this article, I’m going to recap of all the suggestions that were made, starting with the those that have GitHub issues attached to them.

Matt Mullenweg’s crusade against WP Engine seems to have hit a roadblock as the case moved from the court of public opinion to the court of…well, the actual court. On Tuesday December 10, WP Engine won a preliminary injunction against Mullenweg and Automattic that seems to be aimed at preserving the status quo from before Mullenweg’s alleged attack, thus giving the case time to work through the court system while limiting the damage to WP Engine.

Have you noticed in the past few months that Reddit seems to pop up in almost every single one of your Google search results? Whether you’re looking for product reviews, travel tips, or life advice, those distinctive Reddit threads are almost always there on either page one or two – though it’s usually the former. This isn’t just Google’s algorithm being extra friendly to Reddit – there’s actually a story behind it.

Despite the lack of official announcement (as of the time of this writing), X’s signature AI tool – Grok – is quite different from what it was less than a week ago. Let’s take a closer look at the new free version of Grok and also the premium Aurora feature.

Something you might not know about – at least I didn’t – is that Google, the search behemoth we’ve all come to know (and sometimes love), is quietly losing its search market share in several European countries.

Mathieu Viet, the driving force behind BuddyPress, has made a heartfelt announcement: he’s stepping away from the WordPress ecosystem…entirely.

If you’ve been following the WordPress world lately, you might have heard about the small little lawsuit between WP Engine and Automattic. Jokes aside, it’s the kind of case that could have far-reaching effects for developers, other hosting companies, and anyone whose business depends on WordPress for that matter.

Last Monday, Mary Hubbard wrote her first P2 message announcing her one-hour Q&A call on Friday. The Zoom event was announced on the Make WordPress Slack channel, and 82 people showed up, including Matt Mullenweg.

Something truly unexpected happened in the WordPress community just before the weekend – a “product release,” sort of. You’ve probably already guessed what I’m talking about from the headline, so let’s skip the suspense.

On November 12, WordPress 6.7 was released for WordPress users everywhere to enjoy. Keeping with the jazz theme, WordPress 6.7 goes by the name “Rollins,” named after Sonny Rollins. In total, 750 different contributors worked on WordPress 6.7. In this post, I want to take you through some of the highlights of the release, including features that regular users will care about and features that developers might care about.

Over the past month, we ran a survey here on WPShout to explore how users perceive the voice and tone of the WordPress brand. We received 222 responses from engaged members of the WordPress community. First off, I’d like to thank everyone who took the time to participate and share their thoughts!

While overall opinions on the Gutenberg editor vary, even the naysayers can’t deny that there are so many elements you can add now with just the core WordPress blocks that you couldn’t before. One of those elements is a background cover image. Not only is there a dedicated “cover block” solely made for this purpose, but it only takes a minute to add it to your posts. In this guide I’ll show you how to do it and also how to customize it.

One of the most popular control panels that many hosting companies rely on is cPanel. If you have cPanel hosting and you’re starting to hit your storage limits then you need to learn how to remove large files from your database. This quick 3-minute guide will explain it to you.

So you launched a new WordPress site, wrote your first post, and published it. Then shortly afterwards you realized that it was automatically tagged as “uncategorized.” We’ve all been there before – myself included. There’s a way to change this though and in this quick tutorial I am going to show you how to do it.

The Gutenberg block editor has close to 100 default blocks available for use. However, there are still situations where you might want to add a feature to your post that’s simply not available via the default blocks. That’s where custom HTML comes to the rescue! In this quick guide, I’m going to show you how you can use the HTML block along with Claude (a freemium AI tool) to customize your own posts.

A couple of weeks ago, I talked about the new and growing fight between Automattic/Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine. Back then, the two were mainly trading words, and dueling cease and desist letters. However, the scope seems to be continuing to expand, including WP Engine filing an actual lawsuit against Matt Mullenweg and Automattic.

As much as I love using WordPress, there are certain quirks about it that annoy me. One of those in particular is that the only default way to change your user profile photo is by linking it to a Gravatar profile. It’s not only annoying because it forces you to create an account with a service that you probably wouldn’t use otherwise, but then it also populates that same photo on any WordPress site you log into (if you use the same email address).