<div class="rss-widget"><ul><li><a class='rsswidget' href='http://wptavern.com/postmatic-launches-100-email-based-commenting-for-wordpress' title=' Postmatic publicly launched its email-based commenting service today and is now officially out of beta. The free plugin aims to increase comment engagement by allowing readers to subscribe to new posts/comments via email and leave comments by simply hitting reply. Postmatic also launched a commercial service alongside version 1.0. For $9/month customers can add additional features, including guaranteed mail delivery for thousands of subscribers, fully responsive HTML email for posts and comments, support for oEmbed and shortcodes, and the ability to moderate comments from your inbox. The Challenges of Sending Bulk Email Sine Postmatic is critically dependent on email delivery, founder Jason Lemieux and his team didn’t want to hassle with attempting to send it themselves. “Sending bulk email is really difficult to do correctly so we’ve partnered with folks that have already solved it,” he said. “All posts, comments, and otherwise are sent through a combination of both Mailgun (by Rackspace) and Mandrill (by Mailchimp). “This takes all of the uncertainty out of the equation and makes sending WordPress content to lists of tens of thousands of subscribers as easy as pie. Users don’t need to sign up for accounts with these services, change their dns or anything – we handle it all for them.” Lemieux reports that Postmatic had 1,200 sites in its beta program, ~500 of which they considered highly active. The individual installations were the easy part of the beta. Supporting the subscribers, which are more numerous, was the greatest challenge the team encountered. “During beta we delivered posts and comments to roughly 46,000 unique subscribers and processed nearly 15,000 incoming comments,” he said. “These numbers are pretty small so we’ve built a system that scales and are ready to open the doors to everyone.” Notifications sent from Postmatic are two-way transactions designed to invite further discussion in comments, so the team has to be able to adequately support the myriad of email clients that people are using. “Email is complicated and as old as it is, it still seems like the wild west in a lot of ways,” Lemieux said. “We have to make sure that the post being delivered to an old-timer using Pine on his home-built Linux box communicates ideas just as well as the same post when seen in Gmail or on an Apple watch. Then we have to accept comment replies from all of these sources as well, which it turns out you can do. With a watch. Leave a comment. Go figure.” The Future of Postmatic Postmatic is a micro-startup that is mostly self-funded. Approximately 10 months before starting, the team knew that they wanted to be ready to quit their jobs when the time came. “We were fortunate to be able to squirrel away much of the funding we needed while also building it in tandem with our usual client work,” Lemieux said. “When we entered beta last fall and saw the reaction people were having to commenting by email we chose to stop taking on new client work, bring in a small amount of private funding, and go at it full time.” Postmatic’s tiny four-person team is what made this possible. Two members are full-time and the other two are currently part-time. As part of their quest to seamlessly join email and commenting, the team deemed it important to launch with importers for Jetpack, Mailpoet, and Mailchimp. This makes the transition easier for site administrators who are already hooked into more traditional comment subscription services. Postmatic also has a few more high priority items on the roadmap. “The first is to support sites with high publishing frequency by enabling digests,” Lemieux said. “We have some fantastic ideas about how to do this in the new world of email commenting that will be of huge benefit to publishers and readers both. “As we move into the world of professional publishing we’ll also need a diversity of templates. Rolling in a template library or template builder is the plan there. Both of those things are next on our list.” The team behind Postmatic is investing heavily in 100% email commenting because they believe that innovation in WordPress comments is long overdue. “Every comment system needs email to some degree,” Lemieux said. “Livefyre, Disqus, Jetpack – all send an email notification (if subscribed) that a new comment has been posted. But you still have to jump over to a blog to reply and post a comment. It’s not always possible to do so, nor is it easy on mobile – which has become so important. “Postmatic takes that out of the equation – notification leads to reply, leads to blog comment, in one seamless action. Why wouldn’t you want email commenting to work like that?” Email commenting and post notifications are available in the free plugin, but these features are just the beginning of how Postmatic is aiming to revolutionize WordPress commenting. “The debate about the usefulness of comments in WordPress rages on while email marketing and automation has become a very hot area,”  Lemieux said. “But really the WordPress comments system is an email automation platform just waiting to happen.” If you’re curious about what it’s like to participate in comments without ever leaving your inbox, Postmatic has a live demo available where you can try it out.'>WPTavern: Postmatic Launches 100% Email-Based Commenting for WordPress</a></li><li><a class='rsswidget' href='http://wptavern.com/wp-rest-api-version-2-0-beta-1-released' title=' Contributors on the WP REST API project have released version 2.0 beta 1, named after Simpsons character Ralph Wiggum. This release is not backwards compatible with version 1, but project lead Ryan McCue  assured developers that it is a direct continuation and that the fundamentals of the API haven’t changed. Documentation for version 2 is now in progress, starting with basic schema docs, and the site has a section that outlines the changes in 2.0 Beta 1 internals and externals. It also includes an example for migrating endpoints from version 1 code to version 2. Compatibility with future beta releases is not guaranteed and this release comes with a note of caution for testers: While we believe the API is now stable enough for public testing, we may continue to break the API in the future as we improve it further. Only use the API in development, and do not use version 2 in production environments. Version 2.0 beta 1 had 23 contributors and many generous companies donated employee time to the project. This is a major milestone for the WP REST API on its journey to being proposed for inclusion in WordPress core. Check out the project’s core merge plan to follow the progress and view steps as they are completed.'>WPTavern: WP REST API Version 2.0 Beta 1 Released</a></li><li><a class='rsswidget' href='http://wptavern.com/wordpress-plugins-created-by-jp-bot-may-not-be-maintained-after-june-2015' title='In late 2014, we went behind the scenes with Anas Sulaiman who goes by the WordPress.org username of JP Bot. Sulaiman is responsible for creating six WordPress plugins that are alternatives to popular Jetpack modules. We received a tip from a reader that the plugins will soon be retired. When browsing to any of the six plugins on WordPress.org, the following message is displayed: Retiring on June 2015. JP plugins will not be maintained after the end of June 2015. Thanks for everyone who used these plugins. Special thanks for those who gave good ratings. I asked Sulaiman why he’s retiring his plugins at the end of June. “As I said in the interview in 2014, I make sure my projects stay alive when I can no longer work on them. Now, I can hardly find the time to keep JP plugins up to date; hence, I posted that notice in the hope that someone from the community would step up and take the wheel,” he responded. Sulaiman confirmed that someone has taken over his plugins but has not worked on them for over a month. He remains hopeful that the person is still motivated. “Anyways, if no one would seriously pick up JP plugins, I’m considering updating them every six months, or perhaps quarterly or so. After all, there are 4000+ users who are counting on them,” he said. I suggested that he add the adopt-me tag to his plugins to increase the chances an interested party will take them over. If you use any of the plugins developed by JP Bot, I highly encourage you to keep tabs on what happens after June 2015 as you might need to find an alternative.'>WPTavern: WordPress Plugins Created by JP Bot May Not be Maintained After June 2015</a></li><li><a class='rsswidget' href='http://wptavern.com/managewp-launches-wordpress-events-hub' title='There are a variety of WordPress events that take place around the world where users learn WordPress in person. Some are WordCamps, meetups, and others are WordPress specific but don’t use the WordCamp branding. Until now, there has not been an easy way to see all WordPress events on one page. ManageWP.org has launched a WordPress Events Hub which displays WordCamps, meetups, and non-WordCamps on the same page using a map overlay. Events Across the US Vladimir Prelovac, Founder and CEO of ManageWP.com, explains why he created the site: I was travelling the US last year and wanted to see what WordPress events I could attend along the route and there was no elegant solution to this problem. WordCamp Central lists only WordCamps without a map showing their location. There are also numerous meetups as well as non-WordCamp conferences like LoopConf, CaboPress, ThemeConf that are not listed anywhere. So I decided to build it. Only registered users to ManageWP.org are able to create new events. On the event creation screen, there are fields to add an event’s address, name, type, date, URL, Twitter account, and Twitter hashtag. You can also add speakers as well. I found creating a WordPress meetup a little confusing since I had to set a start and end date. Event Creation Screen I think the event type should be the second field underneath the event’s name. I’d also like to see a set of fields or options added that are specific to the type of event being held. For example, if it’s a meetup, there’s no reason to have an end date. Instead, the end date should be replaced with an option to set a time. There should also be a way to configure repeating events, similar to how Meetup.com does it. This way, I don’t have to remember to edit the event’s details every month. Events are not moderated, allowing submissions to appear immediately on the map. As the number of WordPress events across the world increases, it’s nice to have a resource that unites them on one map. In future iterations, it would be cool if users could create an itinerary. The itinerary would be saved to the user’s account and would be sharable through a URL. This way, users could get together and plan a road trip together. Prelovac is keeping a close eye on the comments of this post, so after you check out the events hub, please leave your feedback in the comments.'>WPTavern: ManageWP Launches WordPress Events Hub</a></li><li><a class='rsswidget' href='http://wptavern.com/redux-and-kirki-frameworks-join-forces-to-provide-better-support-for-the-wordpress-customizer' title=' In light of the WordPress Theme Review team’s recent decision to enforce the use of the native customizer for themes in the official directory, the folks behind the Redux and Kirki frameworks are joining forces to better support developers for the new requirement. Redux, which is built on the WordPress Settings API, is one of the most widely used options frameworks for themes and plugins, with WordPress.org reporting 90,000+ active installs. It supports a multitude of field types, custom error handling, and custom field and validation types, but is not currently compatible with the Customizer API. That’s where Kirki is stepping in to offer a framework for advanced controls using the customizer. Kirki, created by Aristeides Stathopoulos, makes it easy to style the customizer to be a more natural extension of your theme and add panels and sections with more than 20 different field types. Both open source frameworks and their developers will be working together to offer “the most powerful WordPress frameworks under one roof.” They are currently working on making the data output the same as well as creating a converter API for Redux developers. The eventual goal is that Redux will cover both custom settings panels as well as the customizer, while Kirki will be focused purely on the customizer. Redux lead developer Dovy Paukstys was one of the most vocal opponents of the decision to make the customizer a requirement for WordPress.org theme options. His position is that it limits developers and cannot provide a complete replacement for the Settings API. “The announcement of April 22, 2015 regarding the requirements for WP.org theme submission bothered me,” Paukstys said. “I had a decision to make; work to make Redux work fully in the customizer, or reduce our community. “I then remembered the Kirki project and decided to ping Ari. We discussed the possibility of bringing Kirki into the Redux organization and progressing from there.” Kirki is joining Redux as part of the team, but it will be maintained as a separate framework. “Kirki will always be light, with a smaller footprint,” Paukstys said. “There are no plans to turn Kirki into the Swiss army knife that Redux is. However, Kirki will be modified slightly.” The Redux and Kirki teams plan to share concepts and development time in order to ensure that they can mirror the data output between the two frameworks. “I am also in the process of creating the Kirki API, which will allow Redux devs to take their current config and use it with Kirki, rather than Redux,” Paukstys said. This will enable developers who have built themes using Redux to easily port their theme options over to Kirki for compatibility with the customizer. Eventually, Redux will support both custom options panels using the Settings API and the customizer. In the meantime, Paukstys took the initiative to partner with Kirki to make sure Redux users won’t be hung out to dry with the new WordPress.org requirements. “Kirki is a great solution for Customizer only themes,” Paukstys said. “There’s room enough on our team for both frameworks. Both serve a unique audience.” As the WordPress Theme Review team seems firmly set on upholding its controversial decision regarding the customizer, Redux and other frameworks have no other choice but to fall in line. “This community is too divided,” Paukstys said. “We prefer working together, rather than working apart. We believe greater things will come in the future moving forward together, as a team.”'>WPTavern: Redux and Kirki Frameworks Join Forces to Provide Better Support for the WordPress Customizer</a></li></ul></div>