|
|
|
|
|
|
|
This week in WordPress
|
|
Yoast SEO launching on Shopify
|
|
|
At WPTavern, Sarah Gooding explores how Yoast — self-described open-source fanboys and girls — came to the surprising decision before the Newfold Digital acquisition to build an app for a closed-source platform.
|
Gooding notes that Yoast's growth over the past decade has been highly dependent on WordPress, which Thijs says, "… makes us a bit vulnerable." In his December 2021 CMS market share analysis, Yoast founder Joost de Valk's notes, "Shopify continues to show amazing growth, in some months in the last 6 months it even managed to match the growth of WordPress in absolute numbers."
|
"Well well well, definitely should've seen this coming, it's a natural way to expand their market – but is this a harbinger of where the WordPress ecosystem may be headed?" asks industry analyst and strategist Robert Jacobi in Yoast on Shopify.
|
Ellipsis Marketing founder Alex Denning notes in the MasterWP newsletter, "This may well be the moment that WordPress products start seriously treating themselves as SaaS products, and start to look beyond WordPress."
|
|
In related news, this tweet: "Woohoo, YoastCon is back! 🎉This time around, we will be focusing on ecommerce and highlighting the brand new app: Yoast SEO for #Shopify 🛍 We cannot wait to welcome you to our 2022 online #YoastCon event, so make sure to register!" The online event will be held on January 20 at 10.30am EST.
|
|
|
|
|
WordPress 5.9 RC2 out now, on track for official release this month
|
WordPress 5.9 — the first major WordPress release for 2022 after its December release was delayed — remains on track to officially launch on January 25. The second release candidate shipped this week.
|
Marcus Kazmierczak, an Automattic-sponsored core contributor, has shared what must be one of the biggest field guides to accompany a WordPress release. It details new updates to the Block Editor, performance enhancements, the Core API, internationalization, themes and the Customizer, PHP 8.0 and 8.1, tooling, and other developer updates.
|
|
|
|
|
WordPress Community Team proposes stricter rules for in-person events
|
The Community Team wants to make masks mandatory, even in regions that do not have a mask mandate. But as Jeff Chandler at WP Mainline highlights, research shows cloth masks do little to limit exposure and the spread of the Omicron variant. He says there should be additional proposed in-person event guidelines to specify mask type. "Personally, I don't think there is a safe way to host in-person events with how easy Omicron spreads," he adds. Robert Jacobi takes things a step further, suggesting vaccines should be mandated too.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Business Spotlight: Cloudways
|
|
|
|
|
Cloudways is a managed WordPress hosting provider known for its scalability and reliability. Trusted by over 250,000 WordPress users, Cloudways gives you the freedom to choose from any of the top IaaS providers for ultimate performance. With Cloudways, you can forget all the hosting hassles and experience an ascending glide coupled with a smooth experience.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Folks happy to see the back of 2021 in end-of-year posts
|
Fun fact: We published just four 2020 year in review posts in the first issue of The Repository in 2021. This year? Below you'll find 16 of our favorites.
|
It's worth highlighting that working too much, stress, and burnout are common themes that run through many of these reflections. Let's take care of ourselves and each other in 2022 🧡
|
- Awesome Motive founder and CEO Syed Balkhi shares highlights from some of his 30+ companies, including recently acquired Easy Digital Downloads. Collectively, his software products are now used by 19+ million websites, up from 15 million in 2020, and his team has grown to 200+ people in 39 countries.
- Podcaster Joe Casabona says when he looks back at his 2021 journal, the word "stress" comes up more than any other. He shares his professional successes, his health setbacks, starting therapy, and committing to a year of retreat in 2022.
- Carl Alexander writes about how he struggled with depression during lockdown and the challenges of building Ymir, a serverless DevOps platform for WordPress.
- The Post Status team — which grew considerably 2021 — reflects on a year that was both good and challenging, sharing how it impacted them personally, their wishes for the WordPress community, and predictions for the biggest story in WordPress in 2022.
- Alex Denning says his marketing agency Ellipsis is "bigger and better than ever" in his year in review post. He reflects on going down an AI rabbit hole, latching FlipWP, working far too much (including from a hospital bed), and struggling with burnout.
- Iain Poulson sums up 2021 as personally hard and successful professionally. He talks about selling Plugin Rank to Awesome Motive, achieving greater revenue with WP User Manager, and launching acquisition marketplace FlipWP.
- Product designer Mel Choyce shares her journey to buying a house, forming new hobbies (including remote lessons on music theory), and leaving Automattic after eight years to join 18F, a technology and design consultancy for the U.S. Government, inside the government.
- Jason Coleman shares what the Paid Memberships Pro team achieved in 2021, including 15% year-on-year revenue growth. The co-founder writes, "Kim [Coleman] and I are very grateful to have built such a successful open source product for WordPress."
- Jack Kitterhing shares how he unexpectedly moved back to London from Portugal, is learning a ton from LearnDash's new general manager Chris Lema (Kitterhing is the company's Product Manager), and how working too much impacted his health.
- Developer Aurooba Ahmed writes about her second year as a solo entrepreneur, figuring out her work routine, surviving a nightmare project that involved 14-15 hour workdays, and shares her goals for 2022.
- Developer and consultant Carrie Dils reflects on her 10 years working with WordPress. After "throwing a lot of spaghetti at the wall," she says in 2021 she focused on three areas of work: content creation, clients services and consulting, and education (primarily her LinkedIn Learning courses).
- Brad Touesnard says despite the pandemic, Delicious Brains had a great year. The company tripled the size of its team, acquired Advanced Custom Fields, shipped and published "a ton of awesome stuff," and had a nice bump in revenue.
- WebDevStudios Marketing Strategist Laura Coronado says in 2021 the company contributed 1,650 hours to Five for the Future, launched 24 projects, supported 87 clients, and gave out 38,000+ tacos.
- Yoast Creative Marketing Manager Marieke van de Rakt says 2021 was an exciting year for the SEO company—it was acquired by Newfold Digital and Thijs de Valk took over as CEO, among other developments.
- The WordPress Foundation shares that despite ongoing pandemic-related challenges, it made excellent progress in its mission to educate the public about open source software, thanks to its global team of volunteers and contributors.
- WPTavern's Justin Tadlock shares the news site's top 10 most viewed stories and most commented stories.
|
|
|
|
A year in WordPress Core: by the numbers
|
"Took me some time to put this together, but here is my little surprise for the end of the year…" tweets Jb Audras, a core contributor and Whodunit's CTO, who pulled together core contributor data for A Year in WordPress Core — 2021 on the Make WordPress Core blog.
|
There are some interesting data insights, but it's when comparing the graphs that an interesting story emerges: Automattic continues to top the list of contributions by company (785 commits), followed by Yoast (379 commits) and Advies en zo (191 commits). But while Automattic sponsored 85 employees to contribute to WordPress and Yoast sponsored 18, Advies en zo sponsored just one – self-employed consultant Juliette Reinders Folmer (who, interestingly, doesn't use or offer WordPress services.)
|
Reinders Folmer tweets, "There's something seriously out of whack when a tiny one-person company like Advies en zo (=me) is listed as nr 4 based on number of contributions to WordPress in 2021 in a list of ALL companies contributing…" She adds, "Maybe time for more companies to step up and start contributing?"
|
|
At WPShout, David Hayes notes, "I don't think this is cause for massive alarm. Applause for Juliette's tirelessness perhaps. But certainly important to remember that these open source systems can be made big and great by fewer people than you think, for both better and worse."
|
|
|
|
|
WP Engine open sources Frost block-based theme
|
Brian Gardner closed out 2021 with the news that WP Engine acquired his block-based theme project Frost. Gardner launched Frost in August, shortly before joining the web host to lead its developer relations team. In WP Engine Adds Frost to Open Source WordPress Project, he says his team at WP Engine will continue to develop the theme.
|
Gardner, a premium themes pioneer, blazed a trail when he launched the Revolution theme back in 2007. He went on to sell StudioPress and the Genesis framework to WP Engine in 2018 before stepping away from WordPress for a year. He told the Press This Podcast in November that launching Frost and re-joining WP Engine was his "second coming" in the WordPress space.
|
Lee Shadle, a WordPress developer at WP Draft, tweets, "YASSSS! Go Rich!! 🎉 I was just lurking Login Designer the other day thinking how beautiful it is…"
|
Speaking of Extendify, the company is spinning out the popular Editor Plus and EditorsKit plugins from its platform for a more dedicated focus separately on plugins and Extendify services. Co-founder Chris Lukbert says developer Munir Kamal and a dedicated team will manage the ongoing development and support of the plugins. The news comes after Extendify joined forces with Kamal and and his team behind Editor Plus and Gutenberg Hub in December 2020, and adopted EditorsKit in June 2021.
|
|
|
|
|
|
#WPCommunityFeels: Thijs de Valk
|
|
|
|
A podcast worth listening to: I don't listen to a lot of podcasts, to be honest! I've obviously listened to all Yoast SEO podcasts, but I find having to listen takes up a lot more of my time than reading posts.
|
A concept worth understanding: I’m very much into data and analytics, and a concept I think is really worth understanding is that numbers/data mean nothing without the right context. Not sure if this is actually a concept, but this is what the question made me think of!
|
A Twitter account worth following: Just one? Wow. The one that immediately comes to mind is Aleyda Solis. She produces awesome content, and also shares great content.
|
An article worth reading: I would have to say Joost's CMS market share analysis articles. They give some very good insights on how WordPress and the rest of the CMS's are doing and where they seem to be going.
|
|
A habit worth forming: Oh, you're asking a behavioral scientist! I don't think there's one specific habit worth forming, as the need is different for every person. But for me personally I've found it's very useful, and enlightening, to ask for clarification, even when I think I understand something. This often leads to interesting conversations!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Getting started with block-based themes
|
|
|
|
|
|
When building a site with WordPress, one of the first things you’ll do is decide upon a theme to use. That might include block-based themes, depending on the site needs. Whether you build from scratch or use a premade theme, consider what functionality you and your clients need from the theme.
|
Types of WordPress themes
Using a block theme and customizing site content and custom functionality will not rely as heavily upon knowing how to build the entire theme with PHP. This can be a big win for low-code developers, as well as those eager to build with JavaScript and React.
|
There are four main types of themes in WordPress:
|
- Classic theme: a theme built the way we’ve been used to with PHP templates, functions.php, and more. Example: WordPress Default theme or a theme framework like Underscores.
- Block theme: a theme made for FSE using HTML templates and theme.json, allowing one to manage all parts of their site with blocks. Example: Twenty Twenty-Two.
- Hybrid theme: a classic theme that adopts a feature(s) of FSE, like theme.json or the template editor. Example: Astra.
- Universal theme: a theme that works with both the Customizer and the Site Editor. Example: Blockbase.
|
|
|
|
|
|
In even more WordPress news...
|
|
- WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy has started a discussion on 2022 major release timing. While some contributors want as few releases as possible, Aaron Jorbin, a WordPress core committer and Director of Editorial Technology at Penske Media Corporation, thinks should be aiming for twelve.
- The WordPress Accessibility Team wants to know what accessibility improvements folks would like to see shipped with WordPress 6.0. A discussion to identify major team goals will be held on January 23 at 4am GMT+11 in the #accessibility channel on Making WordPress Slack.
- On January 6, the WordPress Security Team pushed WordPress 5.8.3 to all WordPress installs that support automatic core updates. Wordfence Threat Analyst Ram Galls says the release patched four high-severity vulnerabilities and were backported to every version of WordPress since 3.7.
- In a first-time ruling by Italian courts on open source licensing, a plugin company has lost a civil case after failing to comply with GPL requirements. The case involved Ovation's Dynamic.ooo plugin, which extends Elementor. Two former employees redistributed the plugin — which is allowed under the GPL — but failed to acknowledge the original work. The court ordered the defendants to pay a fine every day until their software was brought into compliance.
- Ellipsis Marketing is open-sourcing its financial model spreadsheet for WordPress businesses. Founder Alex Denning says most businesses have a really difficult time getting accurate financial data and the spreadsheet has helped him get an accurate handle on his revenue numbers. Denning has also published a piece on the Freemius blog: Acquisitions & Exits: How Much Is Your WordPress Business Worth?
- Courtney Robertson is experimenting with ways to teach folks WordPress. The WordPress Training Team contributor, who's also a Web Design and Developer Advocate at GoDaddy, has started a short, daily series on TikTok that focuses on everything from installing WordPress to learning development skills.
- Jill Binder has shared the WordPress Diverse Speaker Training Groups' 2021 report and the stats are impressive. The group expanded to three programs, held 26 events for 146 people in 16 countries, and increased Diverse Speaker workshop attendees' public speaking confidence by 20%.
- On The Matt Report podcast this week, Rae Morey from The Repository talks to Matt Medeiros about how she built the newsletter. She also shares her background in journalism, how hard it is turning WordPress news into a real business, and what it takes to make it work.
- Can Matt Mullenweg save the internet? Protocol's Editorial director David Pierce asks the question in his 4,000-word profile on the WordPress co-founder and his belief that open-source software is the future of everything. (But can he save the internet? On his blog, Mullenweg says alone he can't, but a movement can.)
- More Matt: He also appeared on CNBC TechCheck on December 28 to talk about the future of the internet. In the five-minute interview, he focused on Web3 and the difference between open and closed platforms.
- HeroPress Network has launched a new press release service called Press It WordPress. The services allows companies, individuals and services related to WordPress to post press releases for free.
- Post Status will host its first Twitter Conference on May 24. Michelle Frechette says the WordPress and web industry-focused event will feature two presentations every hour from 9am-4pm EST centered on the theme Give. Grow. Together.
- There's a new WordPress Product Community on LinkedIn. Courtney Robertson and Stunning Digital Marketing CEO Rob Cairns launched the group, which has attracted over 8,000 members in just four weeks.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Not subscribed? Join the most conversational weekly email
in the WordPress community!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
