Join Our Survey About WordPress Brand Tone and Voice

[ad_1] Over the past few years, we have seen increased efforts to better position and market the WordPress brand. Along with these efforts, we now have a Brand Writing Style Guide that defines how the WordPress voice should sound and what tone it should convey. The brand book was first created in August 2018 and has undergone several updates since then. It serves as a manual for all marketing messages, campaigns, and communication from WordPress. However, the place where the brand book should have the most influence is the CMS itself – the interface, the dashboard, the WordPress Admin. This is the product that powers 43.5% of all websites. This is where the brand can make the biggest impact. Of course, there’s WordPress.org, Make WordPress, and social platforms like X/Twitter or even TikTok now. But these channels have limited reach, targeting just a portion of WordPress users – what we often refer to as “the WordPress community.” The average user doesn’t follow WordPress developments or attend WordCamps. That’s why I believe the end-user’s interaction with WordPress itself is what ultimately shapes the brand. This is where the stakes are highest and where most efforts should be focused to keep everything on-brand. But let’s get to the point. Here’s your chance to speak up about how things look from your side of the dashboard. The survey has two parts: The first part covers WordPress’ tone and voice. The second part looks at specific phrases used throughout the WordPress interface. Feel free to jump in! It takes between five and eight minutes to complete. And don’t hesitate to add your input whenever the listed options don’t reflect your perspective. 🤔 Not many of you may remember, but this isn’t the first survey we’ve conducted on this topic. Back in 2015, WPShout was the first to discuss the need for a unified brand voice for WordPress. However, with only 62 respondents, the insights were limited. This time, I hope we can gather feedback from a much larger group – so 👉 please share the survey link with your peers! The more responses we get, the clearer the picture we’ll have of how WordPress is truly perceived. No matter how many responses we receive, I’m confident we’ll learn something valuable, and who knows – we might even help shape the future of the WordPress brand. Thank you for taking the time to participate! … Don’t forget to join our crash course on speeding up your WordPress site. Learn more below: Was this article helpful? No Thanks for your feedback! Yay! 🎉 You made it to the end of the article! 10 articles Sabina enjoys reading for pleasure and sometimes writes for a living. Loving the outdoors and climbing. Or start the conversation in our Facebook group for WordPress professionals. Find answers, share tips, and get help from other WordPress experts. Join now (it’s free)! [ad_2] Source link

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State of CSS 2024 Survey Now Open – WP Tavern

[ad_1] The annual State of CSS 2024 Survey is officially open. The survey aims to explore the “world of styles and selectors to try and identify upcoming trends, and figure out what features and tools to learn next.” Organized by Devographics, with support from contributors, translators, and volunteers, the survey is open to everyone. CSS users are encouraged to take the survey by September 7, 2024. This year’s survey introduces several new features and takes around 15-20 minutes to complete, with all questions being optional. The survey covers 11 key topics, including Layout, Shapes and Graphics, Colors, Interactions, Accessibility, and a concluding ‘About You’ section. Since its launch in 2019, the survey has grown in popularity, with 9,190 developers participating last year. Some insights from the previous survey include: Most participants were from the USA, followed by Germany and the UK. 61.3% of respondents identified as male, 7.7% as female, and 1.4% as non-binary or gender non-conforming. Bootstrap and Tailwind CSS topped the list in terms of usage, while Tailwind CSS and PureCSS led in retention.  CSS was primarily used for web apps, blogs, and marketing sites.  Subgrid was the most commented feature, Open Props the technology with the highest percentage of returning users and Panda the tool most mentioned in freeform questions.  The survey data is valuable for browser vendors, influencing their focus areas and roadmaps. Rachel Andrew, content lead for web.dev and developer.chrome.com at Google, shared that the State of CSS survey is one of the methods they use to learn what’s important to the developers. “These surveys let you tell us exactly what you are using, and what you want to use but can’t due to bugs or lack of support. They help us to see the places where more learning materials might be helpful, or which things we should prioritize for implementation in the browser.”, she said.  Sacha Greif mentioned that this year, the team aims to release the results within weeks after the survey closes. The next surveys on the schedule are the State of HTML 2024 (September 10), the State of React 2024 (October 10), and the State of JavaScript 2024 (November 10). [ad_2] Source link

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Key Insights From WooCommerce Survey 2024 – WP Tavern

[ad_1] WooCommerce has unveiled the results of its 2024 summer survey, shedding light on how store owners, developers, and partners gear up for Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) and the holiday shopping rush. Here are the key takeaways from the survey: BFCM Sales Account for a Major Share of Annual Revenue BFCM plays a crucial role for online merchants, contributing to approximately 30%-50% of their yearly sales. The survey revealed that 66% of stores reported increased sales during the holiday season, highlighting its significance for businesses. In fact, for some stores, up to 50% of their annual revenue comes from this period alone. 46% of stores see up to 30% of their yearly sales during this time. 26% generate over 30% of their annual sales. 8% surpass 50% of annual sales during BFCM. Stores & Early Planning Larger stores with annual revenues of $250K+ are 12% more likely to begin preparations early. In total, 81% of stores actively plan for BFCM promotions. 26% of stores begin planning 1-4 weeks before BFCM. 27% start preparations 1-3 months ahead. 13% dedicate 3-6 months to preparation. 4% start more than 6 months in advance. Preparation Tactics & Strategies 26% of stores planned to increase inventory as their primary preparation strategy. This was followed by marketing, promotions, and website optimization. When it comes to marketing channels: 29% of stores find email the most effective, followed by organic social media (25%). Other popular channels include paid social (13%), search ads (8%), and content marketing (6%). For the 2024 holiday season, 34% of stores are adjusting their strategies, focusing on: Introducing new products (26%) Improving marketing efforts (24%) Enhancing website performance (16%) Starting sales early (10%) Offering special discounts (9%) Making changes to customer engagement, social media, and inventory management completes the list. Multi-Channel Sales The survey also noted that 67% of stores sell through multiple channels, including physical locations and online marketplaces. Specifically, 11% of stores sell on Amazon, 8% sell on Etsy and 6% sell on eBay. Customer Engagement & Analytics A significant 91% of stores use analytics tools like Google Analytics, WooCommerce Analytics Dashboard, and Meteorik to evaluate campaign performance. Despite the busy season, 89% of stores do not implement a special refund or return policy  Woo’s Chief Marketing Officer, Tamara Niesen, has shared more insights on the survey results on the WooCommerce blog. [ad_2] Source link

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Last Call for the 2023 State of Open Source Survey – WP Tavern

[ad_1] OpenLogic, a company that provides technical support for enterprise open source infrastructure, and the Open Source Initiative (OSI), the nonprofit stewards of the Open Source Definition (OSD, have collaborated to put together the 2023 State of Open Source Survey. The annual survey collects data from professionals to identify trends in the adoption and challenges of using open source technologies. It takes less than 10 minutes to answer the 31-question survey. Respondents are asked if their organizations have increased the use of OSS over the last year and in which categories of software they have invested the most in terms of projects, budget, and resources. The 2022 survey had 2,660 respondents. It found the #1 reason respondents are using OSS is access to innovation, followed by cost reduction and security/availability of patches. More than 36% of respondents indicated that they significantly increased their use of OSS over the past year. The 2022 survey found the biggest barrier to adopting open source software was the lack of internal skills to test, use, integrate, and support it. The last call has gone out to contribute to this year’s survey. It would be good to have WordPress software organizations represented in the results as part of the broader OSS community. Respondents who take the time to fill out the survey are entered for a chance to win a $200 Amazon gift card. OpenLogic is also donating $1 for every response to the World Food Program, a humanitarian organization working to end world hunger. [ad_2] Source link

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Open Survey for WordPress Theme Authors on JSON Files and Block Themes – WP Tavern

[ad_1] WordPress 5.8 introduced an opt-in system for themes to configure block settings, styles, templates, and more. It is done through a new theme.json file that authors can put at the root of their theme folders. Anne McCarthy, the lead of the FSE Outreach Program, announced a survey earlier today to get feedback from developers on this feature. “Since this new mechanism is an early step towards a comprehensive style system for the future of WordPress, it’s important to hear from everyone who is currently using theme.json to learn more about how folks are using this tool and what might make sense to include in Core going forward,” she wrote in the announcement. The survey is open to all theme authors who have used theme.json, giving them a chance to put in some early feedback and help steer the ship going forward. Because I have worked extensively with this system over the past few months, I had a few things to say. Plus, I just like participating in WordPress-related surveys. I also decided it would be an opportunity to share some of my unfiltered thoughts from a development perspective on the current state of theme.json. What follows are my responses to the survey’s questions — well, the tidied-up version. Note: This is a developer-centric post that might not universally appeal to all of our readers. I have attempted to explain some things in user-friendly terminology, but some prerequisite knowledge of theme development may be necessary. Experience The first question of the survey is pretty cut-and-dry. It asks what your experience is with building block themes or using theme.json. It provides four choices (and an “other” option): I have built and launched block themes. I have experimented with building block themes. I have explored using theme.json with a classic theme. I have used a block theme, but I have not built one yet. I chose the first option because I have already built two block themes for family and friends. These were simple personal sites that I already maintain for free — honestly, I need to start charging. I am also working on a theme that I hope to release publicly. How It Started and How It’s Going The second question asks how one got started with block themes and theme.json. The choices are between forking an existing theme, using the Empty Theme, or starting from scratch. Again, this is one of those things where I have experimented with each direction, but I cannot remember the exact starting point. The bulk of my work has come from forking a theme that I last worked on in 2019. I plan to release this as a new theme for free at some point. I am mostly waiting on the following: Navigation block development to settle down The Post Author block to be split into smaller blocks A robust set of comment-related blocks Post Featured Image block to have a size option I think I could realistically release a use-at-your-own-risk beta version of my theme today if those items were addressed. Templates and Template Parts The survey asked which templates and template parts themers always include in their block-based themes. There was a freeform comment field — steps upon soapbox… I have a love/hate relationship with block templates at the moment. The static nature of HTML templates reminds me of simpler times when theme development was less complicated. However, this also presents a problem in a dynamic system. I cannot remember the last time I have built a traditional, PHP-based theme with more than one top-level template: index.php. The dynamic pieces have always been the guts of the thing, which are template parts. With PHP, it is easy to set some variable or use a function call to contextually load the templates parts necessary for whichever page a visitor is currently viewing on a site. The block template system does not work like that. It essentially forces developers into breaking the Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) principle. For example, if a designer wanted to display a different header template part for pages and posts, they would only need to create a header-page.php or header-post.php template in traditional themes. However, because the block template system is different, they must now create two top-level templates, single.html (post) and page.html, to accomplish the same thing. This is a “bad thing” because theme authors must duplicate all the other code in each of the top-level templates. There is no way to contextually load different template parts. To answer the question: I am using almost all of the possible top-level templates out of necessity. I also answered the second part of the question and listed my most commonly used template parts (broken down by hierarchy): Header Content– Loop– Sidebar Footer The content-*.html and loop-*.html template parts are those with the most variations. Defining Colors The next section of the survey asks how theme authors define their color palette slugs in theme.json. Believe it or not, naming colors may be the most controversial topic in the theming world in years. The only two things generally agreed upon are “background” and “foreground” colors. Morten Rand-Hendriksen opened a ticket in 2018 for standardizing a theme color naming scheme. It was not the first discussion and has not been the last. The problem it was meant to address was the slugs for colors in the system, which is how themes define their palettes. Once a user makes use of a preset color, the slug is hardcoded into their content. Switch to another theme with different slugs, and the old colors disappear and do not automatically change to the new theme’s colors. I use semantic names that follow something that closely resembles the Tailwind CSS framework’s shading system. Instead of red-medium (descriptive), I would use primary-500 (semantic), for example. A semantic approach would allow theme authors to define a set of colors that are updated each time a user switches themes. Of course, there are other schools of thought, and even everyone who prefers

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