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First look at Twenty Twenty-Two 😍
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Automattic Design Director and sponsored contributor Kjell Reigstad has published a first look at the Twenty Twenty-Two default theme coming in WordPress 5.9 and damn, it's gorgeous.
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Gooding says "Unrelenting progress on the block editor and full site editing has made it possible for Twenty Twenty-Two to become the most user-empowering default theme in WordPress' history."
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In Introducing Twenty Twenty-Two, Reigstad says the theme has been designed to be "the most flexible default theme ever created for WordPress." He's leading design for the theme and Jeff Ong, a creative technologist and sponsored contributor at Automattic, is leading development.
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"Twenty Twenty-Two theme looks 🔥" tweets Automattic designer and sponsored contributor Mel Choyce-Dwan. "😍😍" adds Anariel Design co-founder Ana Segota.
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In other theme-related news, Eric Karkovack ponders the future of the WordPress sidebar at speckyboy. "Maybe we can start likening the #WordPress sidebar to the cockroach. Much like the pesky bug, sidebars are survivors – no matter what evolution throws at them," he tweets.
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Mary Job and African WP community launch new website
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More news that should be making headlines this week – Mary Job and the WordPress community in Africa have launched wpafrica.org, a new site that's a focal point for WordPress business owners, developers, designers, bloggers, startups, marketers and publishes on the continent. Word has it Job built the site in just three hours.
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The site notes: "We see a WordCamp Africa in our near future, perhaps in 3- 5 years!" If you're interested in helping, join the WP Africa Slack.
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Job, who's a Support Engineer at Paid Memberships Pro, was recently named a 2021 Yoast Diversity fund recipient. She co-founded Gbefunwa, a managed WordPress hosting company for Africans, and founded Uwani Hub, a safe space for teenagers to do tech in her underserved community of the Ijebu-Imusin area of Ogun State in Nigeria. The hub's goals include training 5,000 teenagers and women how to use WordPress by the year 2030.
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Efficiently deliver results for clients.
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Manage all your projects with the Hub — free.
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The Hub by GoDaddy Pro is an all-in-one site, client and project management solution tailored to the needs of web designers and developers. No matter what stage your business is at, the Hub’s integrated tools help you save time, boost collaboration, and expand your day. Learn more.
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WordCamp US 2021 recap: "What an incredible day!"
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"Getting asked so i'll share my opinon even though I'm biased. But i must say that this year's virtual @WordCampUS was the best virtual #WCUS ever," jokes David Bisset, who along with the rest of the WordCamp US 2021 organizing team, pulled together last Friday's successful one-day event in just eight weeks. Amazing.
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If you weren't able to watch WordCamp US 2021 live, GoDaddy WooCommerce expert Marcus Burnette has shared timestamp links for each presentation. Not sure which talks to prioritize? Twitter has spoken:
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MRW Web Design's Mark Root-Wiley tweets "The #WCUS presentation by @helenhousandi is amazing. It's a great demo & code walkthrough *and* a call to action to get better at building #WordPress blocks and better editing interfaces for our clients."
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WP Engine's Principal Developer Advocate Brian Gardner tweets "Me taking notes at #WCUS during @richard_tabor’s presentation 'Building Modern WordPress Sites: The Interplay of Blocks, Patterns & Theme.json'."
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Automattic Director of Developer Relations Tara King tweets "Loving Sienna Svob's presentation on climate impacts of #WordPress. Page weight has been increasing, which burns more energy -- developers can help by optimizing images, building in dark mode options, and more."
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Software engineer Jeremy Ward tweets "@kjellr's presentation about block styles is hugely reinforcing my desire to claw my way back into full-stack development."
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And well-deserved praise for the #WCUS2021 organizing team: "Congrats to the fine people that put #WCUS together. I know some of them & that it's been a lot of hard work. Make sure & say thanks because they deserve it!" tweets Tim Cantrell, Lead Customer Support Engineer at Wordfence. "What an incredible day! Thank you to every organizer, volunteer, sponsor, and speaker! It has been a tough year and the WordPress love was really felt today #WCUS" adds the team at Torque.
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CaboPress: A business conference in a pool?
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In other event-related news, Robert Jacobi says CaboPress breaks the WordPress event mold. Jacobi, Cloudways' Director of WordPress, recently went to the mastermind event, created by Chris Lema. Lema is highly regarded as a public speaker and recently became General Manager of LearnDash following Liquid Web's acquisition of the learning management system.
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"A business conference in a pool? It won't work, right? But it has, year after year. #CaboPress may be the best business conference in all of Mexico, not just Cabo," tweets Lema. Attendee Michelle Schulp, who runs Marktime Media, also shares some valuable insights about the toxicity of hustle culture.
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Meanwhile, WooSesh kicks off on October 12. The free four-day virtual conference for WooCommerce store builders will feature 23 speakers, 15 sessions, and six workshops. The conference is hosted by developer Brian Richards of WP Sessions.
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HeroPress Network now live
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WP Podcasts launched two weeks ago, making over 7,000 current episodes from dozens of WordPress shows available in one place. Find It WP is currently in beta and will be the next project to launch on or before October 19.
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"I get to add another blog to my feed today. Reeeeally excited about this one!" tweets GoDaddy Pro web developer Alex Standiford. Newsletter Glue co-founder Lesley Sim adds, "heropressnetwork.com!!!"
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Brainstorm Force acquires ProjectHuddle
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This week in who-acquired-whom, ProjectHuddle has joined the Brainstorm Force family. ProjectHuddle is a plugin that lets you add sticky note-style feedback to designs and web projects. India-based Brainstorm Force is the company behind the Astra theme, Ultimate Addons for various page builders, and Convert Pro.
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In his announcement post, Brainstorm Force co-founder Sujay Pawar assures existing ProjectHuddle users that licences and access to the plugin won't change.
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Sarah Gooding shares her views on WordPress journalism
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After Justin Ferriman recently raised concerns about WordPress media ownership, Matt Medeiros from The WP Minute went straight to the source, as they say — WPTavern Editor Sarah Gooding — for a Q&A about WordPress journalism.
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"There is no heavy involvement from Audrey Capital (the company that owns WPTavern) or [Audrey Capital owner] Matt [Mullenweg]. We have very basic editorial guidelines, such as not overtly promoting WordPress products that are not GPL-licensed, and there's this thing about the Oxford comma, but that's about it. 🙂" says Gooding.
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"This whole thing is kind of unseemly. You publish a sponsored post bashing #WordPress - fair enough. But you don't make the sponsorship known until the END of the article. It's a great way to piss off your readers and lose trust," tweets speckyboy writer Eric Karkovack.
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#WPCommunityFeels
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This week, what's inspiring Birgit Pauli-Haack, a WordPress Developer Advocate at Automattic, curator at Gutenberg Times, and co-host of the Gutenberg Changelog podcast.
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A podcast worth listening to: Going outside the WordPress space with this question. Syntax FM with Wes Bos and Scott Tulinski – just the wealth of information about JavaScript, ReactJS and modern web development and the delivery is refreshing. And This week in Google with Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, Stacey Higginbotham, and Ant Pruit is an insightful conversation on tech news.
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A concept worth understanding: WordPress block patterns are a designed collection of core blocks a user can instantly use in their WordPress site and just add their content and pictures. They are easy to create. Every theme should have plenty of them. On the WordPress.org website, you can copy a few into your site. Soon, they will be available through the block editor inserter. To learn more: Gutenberg Times Block Pattern Resource List.
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A Twitter account worth following: @Good First Bugs is the most interesting bot for people who want to start contributing to WordPress. Ryan Welcher created the code to query Trac and GitHub tickets for the account's tags and tweets them.
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An article worth reading: Matias Ventura's blog post The theme.json horizon for everyone who wants to understand where WordPress theme development is going.
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A habit worth forming: A 2-3 mile walk during your lunch break, if possible in a forest or park.
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WooCommerce Wednesdays: How to set up Google Analytics for WooCommerce
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Google Analytics is a powerful tool for gaining a comprehensive understanding of your website performance. Properly configuring Google Analytics to track the right data can be tricky for ecommerce stores. In this guide, we examine how to properly set up Google Analytics for a WooCommerce site to provide insightful metrics you can use to improve your business.
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Integrating Google Analytics with a WooCommerce extension
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You can avoid the process of manually adding tracking codes to your site by using a WordPress plugin to handle it for you. There is a myriad of plugins you can choose from. The most powerful is the WooCommerce Google Analytics Pro extension, included in the GoDaddy Managed Ecommerce Hosting plan.
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The extension seamlessly adds advanced event tracking to your WooCommerce website. It then pushes the events to Google Analytics, to track ecommerce metrics such as conversion rate and sales per product.
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- Ecommerce Store Essentials
- Payments and Transactional Emails in WooCommerce
- Ready Your Sites for Holiday Security
- Take Advantage of Email Marketing Season
- Ready Your Sites for Holiday Traffic with Google Analytics
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In other WordPress news...
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- WP Engine has launched Atlas Content Modeler. "📣 Have you heard? Atlas Content Modeler, @wpengine's free, open source tool for headless WordPress hit the WordPress Plugin Directory this week! 💥" tweets Kellen Mace from WP Engine's Developer Relations team. Chris Wiegman, a Senior Software Developer at WP Engine, adds, "For the first time in a few years I'm part of a product I believe in and it feels great to launch it!"
- On the Make WordPress Themes blog, Google Developer Relations Engineer and sponsored contributor, Felix Arntz, shares the performance impact of using jQuery in WordPress themes and the results aren't good. TL;DR: jQuery is the most common JavaScript-based performance problem amongst the top 100 themes in the WordPress.org theme repository. Arntz recommends migrating away from using jQuery in your themes if you're a developer who relies on it.
- Steve Burge, who runs PublishPress, and Ralph Morris, a Senior Developer at agency 10 Degrees have launched Logtivity, a plugin and service that allows site owners to track everything that happens on their WordPress installs. Burge tells WPTavern's Justin Tadlock the service allows site owners to track and log activity at scale — it was originally created for a membership website with 100,000 users and 10,000 subscribers.
- The Hub by GoDaddy Pro was created to streamline your workflow and save time on tasks that typically eat up a workday. But we aren't done yet. See the latest Hub updates and changelog here, and then explore the Hub by GoDaddy Pro – it's free! Sponsored link
- Wordfence is urging Access Demo Importer users to update to the latest version after disclosing a high severity vulnerability that makes it possible for authenticated users to upload arbitrary files. Threat analyst Chloe Chamberland says after several unsuccessful attempts to contact the developer, the WordPress Plugins Team shut down the plugin on August 27, later making a patched version available for download. A fully patched version was released on September 21. The plugin is installed on over 20,000 sites. In other security news, Pagely has published its WordPress Security Updates for September and iThemes has shared part one of its WordPress Vulnerability Report for October.
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