Tag Archives: wordpress

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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WordPress Enforces Plugin Check and 2FA for New Plugin Submissions – WP Tavern

[ad_1] Security Review Lead Chris Christoff has announced two new changes for the WordPress Plugin Directory, effective from October 1, 2024. These changes aim to enhance plugin directory security and promote best practices among plugin developers. Mandatory Two-Factor Authentication As of October 1, 2024, all plugin owners and committers must enable Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) to submit new plugins to the WordPress Plugin Directory. This change was announced by Automattic-sponsored developer Dion Hulse last month. Plugin owners are encouraged to enable 2FA, review committers’ access levels, and use additional security features like the SVN password option and Release Confirmation. Detailed guides on Configuring Two-Factor Authentication and Keeping Your Plugin Committer Accounts Secure are also available. Plugin Check Tool From now on, any new plugin submitted to the Plugin Directory will first go through a pre-submission check using the Plugin Check tool. If any errors are found, the submission will be blocked until they are fixed. This new step aims to reduce the review queue by enabling plugin authors to catch common issues before submitting their plugins for manual review. Plugin Check helps by identifying frequent issues, such as mismatched versions between the plugin header and the readme.txt file, incorrect text domains, and erroneous “Tested To” values in the readme. Although Plugin Check adds a layer of automation, it will not replace the manual review of plugins. David Perez from the Plugin Review Team recommended making Plugin Check a part of the development workflow as “In addition to things relevant for the review process, the tool flags violations or concerns around plugin development best practices, from basic requirements like correct usage of internationalization functions to accessibility, performance, and security best practices. It does so using both static checks using PHP_CodeSniffer and dynamic checks, where it actually activates your plugin to test it “live”.” The Plugins Team is working to expand Plugin Check’s coverage to existing plugins. A roadmap detailing this broader application will be released in the coming months. Contributors can help improve the tool via its GitHub Repo. The WordPress community has responded positively to these updates. Josepha Haden Chomphosy tweeted “This was years in the making and is a huge deal. Congratulations (and big thanks) to everyone who contributed!” These two measures are expected to help the WordPress Plugin Team improve the security of the platform while reducing the backlog of plugins awaiting approval. [ad_2] Source link

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8 of the Best SEO Tools & WordPress Plugins For Maximum Visibility

[ad_1] Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is crucial for any website that wants to maximize its traffic and visibility. As such, most websites will want to employ a number of SEO tools to help. WordPress websites can also install plugins for all sorts of SEO-related tasks. The real challenge is to choose the most valuable ones to help get you to the top of Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). For this post, we’ll look at the best SEO tools around, mixed in with top-tier WordPress plugins. We’ll also summarize everything in a handy table towards the end, answer some burning questions, and give you advice on how to choose the right plugin for your needs. What You Should Look for in SEO Tools and WordPress Plugins While it would be straightforward to head to a list of generic, all-purpose SEO tools, this isn’t possible. In fact, you have two areas to consider when it comes to choosing SEO tools and relevant WordPress plugins: The tool’s focus. There are different types of tool that all cover different ground. For example, some help you manage 301 redirects, while plenty of others let you research keywords. Of course, you’ll want to look for SEO tools that match your specific needs. Your potential tool’s quality. Once you have tools on a shortlist, you have to make sure they are high quality solutions. There are a few ways you can do this, and combining them will be the best approach. When it comes to the latter, we recommend a few considerations. Social proof is important (such as ratings and reviews), as you will also likely be one of the happy bunch. Also, checking how much the developer updates a tool will help you decide how ‘invested’ they are in it. You won’t want to spend money on a premium solution only for the developer to move onto other products in their range. The Top 8 SEO Tools And WordPress Plugins For Maximum Visibility Next, let’s look at the eight SEO tools we want to feature. Right now, they’re in no order. Later on though, we’ll rank them – more on that shortly. For now, let’s go through the list. 1. Semrush Finding keywords is an SEO fundamental. Without them, your content won’t have any direction (from an SEO standpoint anyway). Semrush is one of many keyword research tools, and it’s also one of the best. In fact, this is a collection of over 55 different tools to help with lots of SEO aspects. It includes keyword research, but also competitor analysis, market analysis, on-page SEO, and much more. Semrush offers almost every tool you’ll need to help your SEO strategy succeed. 👍 Pros 👎 Cons Almost every tool you need for SEO Cost could be prohibitive Best-in-class keyword research The huge number of tools Semrush offers could be overwhelming The official WordPress plugin doesn’t have good reviews from other users. Pricing: Semrush offers three premium tiers starting from $129.95 per month. Each tier will include a greater number of features and functionality. Try Semrush 2. Rank Math Rank Math represents the first WordPress SEO plugin on our list. It lets you optimize your posts and pages using a variety of tools from the WordPress dashboard. Its on-page SEO functionality is excellent, but it can do lots more for your site. For instance, you can preview how your content will appear across SERPs, social media, and more from within the Block Editor. You’re also able to view Google Search Console content from the WordPress dashboard. This means you can log into your site and see all of the most valuable metrics to help improve your SEO. 👍 Pros 👎 Cons Fantastic SEO analysis within the Block Editor sidebar The whole package may be too overwhelming for some users who want simpler functionality. Plenty of extra Includes Content AI, which helps you write articles with near-perfect SEO Pricing: Rank Math’s core plugin is free to download. However, a premium subscription begins from $5.75 per month and gives you the ability to track a greater number of keywords, the use of a Schema generator, and more. Related: Rank Math Vs Yoast SEO: Which Is The Best WordPress SEO Plugin? Try RankMath 3. Yoast SEO When it comes to WordPress SEO analysis, the champion for millions of users is Yoast SEO. It was one of the first of its kind available, and uses a ‘traffic light’ system to highlight where your SEO is good, bad, and able to improve. While we could give you all the juicy details, we have a comparison article elsewhere on the blog that looks at Rank Math vs Yoast SEO in depth. You’ll want to read that to understand how to find out more about Yoast SEO, and how both of these excellent plugins differ. 👍 Pros 👎 Cons As a free SEO plugin, there’s arguably no better option on the market Lots of users don’t enjoy the inline ads for premium Yoast SEO products The traffic light system to analyze your SEO is near-perfect for efficiency and prioritization The plugin can be buggy at times, especially if an update breaks a particular piece of functionality Some of the metrics in the Readability section are valuable and unavailable in other SEO tools. Pricing: Yoast SEO is free to download from the WordPress Plugin Directory. The vast majority of users will only need this version of the plugin. However, the premium edition is $99 per year and gives you further ways to analyze your site’s SEO, social media previews, and more. Try Yoast SEO 4. Mangools If Semrush doesn’t appeal for whatever reason, there are numerous competitors. Mangools is one of the best, thanks to its straightforward usability and fantastic price. Our main focus is on the keyword research tool here, although there are other apps that focus on backlink mining, SERP rank tracking, site profiling, and SERP analysis for specific keywords. However, the keyword research app is almost a one-page tool. You have keyword

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WordPress XML Files: What They Are and How to Open Them

[ad_1] WordPress XML files see a lot of use for me as a content creator, and site owner. They let me perform many different tasks when running a site, developing layouts and designs, and much more. For you, WordPress XML files can help you to run an online store, or even set up crucial Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In this comprehensive guide, I’ll walk you through what WordPress XML files are, the importance of them for the platform, and much more. First, let’s look at what these types of files are. What a WordPress XML File Is In my years of working with WordPress, I’ve come to appreciate the versatility of eXtensible Markup Language (XML) files. As the name implies, it’s a markup language that lets you store and transport data in a format that’s both human-readable and machine-readable. My opinion is that XML is similar to HTML. However, while you use HTML to display data, XML describes and organizes it. This makes XML valuable for tasks in WordPress such as content migration, plugin configuration, and theme customization. Using XML files is a lot like using JSON in its application. For WordPress it plays a crucial role in various aspects of managing a site and shuttling data around. The Advantages of Using XML in WordPress There are a few positives in using XML over other formats relating to WordPress. First of all, XML provides a clear structure for complex data, which is useful for WordPress exports. What’s more, I can create custom XML structures for specific WordPress plugins or themes as I need to. For practical uses, XML is a great fit for WordPress: Compatibility. Various plugins and themes can read XML files, which makes data transfer between different WordPress installations or even different platforms smoother. Readability. Unlike some data formats, I can open an XML file and understand its contents, which is helpful if I need to troubleshoot a problem. Validity. You can validate XML documents against a schema, which ensures data integrity when you migrate WordPress content. These advantages means that WordPress XML files come in handy for a number of different tasks. Common Uses of XML Files in WordPress You’ll likely come across XML a lot when using WordPress. You can find the language in a number of areas, thanks to its readable format and simple customization: Content migration: WordPress uses the WordPress eXtended RSS (WXR) format to import and export content. WXR is a subset of XML, in that all WXR files are XML, but not the other way around. Plugin configuration. Some plugins use XML files to store complex configuration settings. Theme customization. You can sometimes use XML to define custom post types, taxonomies, or widget areas in classic themes. Content feeds. WordPress generates its syndicated content feeds in XML format for blog posts and user comments. Generating sitemaps. XML is the markup language a sitemap will use, and later, I’ll discuss how you can achieve this, and why a plugin could be the best option. API Interactions: Some external services interact with WordPress using XML-based APIs. I’ll look at a few of these aspects later, but before that, I want to show you the structure of an XML file and how to work with them. The Structure of WordPress XML Files I understand XML structure as three aspects. First up are elements. These are the building blocks of XML. In WordPress, you’ll often see elements such as , , or : My First Blog Post Welcome to my WordPress blog! From there, attributes provide additional information about those elements. For example, WordPress export files might use post_type or status: Finally, the date the element contains is its values. In practical terms, this will be whatever is in between elements: At the top of the XML file, there will likely be a declaration: This simply specifies the XML version and encoding the file uses. It’s similar to the declaration for that language. How to Open and Edit a WordPress XML File There are a few ways you can open an XML file within WordPress. Some are better than others, and I tend to opt for the simplest method unless I need to do heavy work on a file. For me, this is a text editor—TextEdit on the Mac: If you work on Windows, Notepad is just as good. Sometimes I will open the XML in a dedicated code editor, such as JetBrains’ PhpStorm: If I just want to quickly view the file structure (or the ‘tree’), I’ll drag-and-drop the file into a web browser window: There are other dedicated XML editors, such as XMLSpy or Oxygen XML Editor. However, I rarely (if ever) turn to these. For WordPress-specific tasks, they don’t hold much value for me. When editing XML files for WordPress, I try to remember and follow a few good practices: Always create a backup of the original XML file. Choose a tool that can read the WXR format, even if you may not work in that particular markup. Once you make your changes, I always validate the XML to catch any errors. I’ll take care with special characters. For instance, I’ll use entity references (such as & for &) when including special characters in content. Make sure to save the file with the correct encoding (usually UTF-8) to avoid issues with non-English content. Unless I work with web development projects that use JavaScript, PHP, CSS, and HTML files, I’ll simply open in a text editor. I may also use a lighter code editor to take a look, such as Sublime Text or my personal favorite, Onivim2. It all depends on the application and my specific need, and the options come in handy when deciding on the task at hand. Working With WordPress XML Files: 3 Use Cases I want to show you some typical ways you’ll use XML in WordPress. These are all tasks I carry out either very often or enough that it’s worth highlighting as part of my job: Let’s

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I Spent 20 Hours Testing 60+ Niche WordPress Themes, All Junk?

[ad_1] It downloads as a zip file, which contains three other files inside of it: You then need to scroll a little further down and upload those files in their respective areas: Again, it’s not terribly difficult at all, but it also doesn’t explain it anywhere. For someone like maybe a typical Squarespace user who’s deciding to give WordPress a shot, it could feel confusing. If WordPress Core included a standardized demo importer that was user friendly, it could streamline demo content imports for everyone. Having said that, I also realize that from a technical perspective, attempting to create a tool like this could get messy. Importing demo content involves handling various types of data, including posts, pages, media, custom post types, taxonomies, menus, and widget settings. Ensuring compatibility and proper import for all these elements could get rather complex. Even with just the difference in block themes versus classic themes and how they are built would possibly require two tools. I do think that if the installers omitted auto-installation of plugins and forced users to install and activate their plugins manually that it would make the idea more feasible. However, I’m still not dismissing how challenging the task would be. My suggestion is from the end user perspective only. Developers’ websites are not always well maintained I might catch some flack for this one, but hear me out. I’m not expecting everyone’s website to be 100% flawless with every single thing up to date. I get it. People are working on other things and most companies don’t have a dedicated website auditor who is watching every element, every day. But when you have a developer with 13 themes that they’ve built, I would hope that the demo page for each theme at least shows the theme. Having an entirely different theme on the page, with even the live preview link going to the other theme feels careless to me. I mean someone manually updated this page, right? Luckily, this issue was not as widespread as some of the others, but I did come across it here and there. So what’s the solution to all of these problems? Well, I believe that it is up to all of us who care about WordPress and the internet as a whole to do our part to make things better. Below are my suggestions on how we can do that. My parting request to theme developers and WordPress users 🙏🏻 At the risk of coming across as overly preachy here, I’m going to share my thoughts on what all of us can do, depending on what hat we’re wearing at any given moment. For developers First, to all the theme developers out there, I’d like to say that you greatly inspire me with the amazing creations you come up with. But addressing the issues I’ve raised in this article (if they apply to you) would make a world of difference in improving the WordPress ecosystem: If your theme is a commercial theme, be up front about it. Don’t offer blank shell themes by dangling demo content that’s only available behind a paywall. Many people love Elementor, but many people is not everybody. If your starter site was built with Elementor, and the user is going to need to use Elementor to build their site, then disclose it. Make it crystal clear. Do it at the top of the funnel, not in the middle or bottom after the person has already invested time installing your theme. Create a neat divide between plugins that are required for your theme to work and those that are only recommended. Don’t just bundle them all into one suggestion and prompt people to download and install them all. For minor functions, try to build them into the theme. Maintain the important parts of your websites. I understand it’s tough to keep everything up to date all the time, but having the right theme on the right page is a pretty basic ask. If you go on the starter sites page for our flagship theme, Neve, you will see that we make it easy for our users to search for both Elementor-based demo content and for demo content that we built with Gutenberg (the WordPress editor). In addition, we label any paid demo content with a “Pro” tag so you know which starter sites are available in the free version of Neve and which ones you need to upgrade to get access to. Nothing is ambiguous. This is not only transparency in action, but it’s good practice that wins people’s business. There’s an SEO agency that I came across randomly not too long ago. I don’t remember the exact context of how or why I ended up on their page, but they made an impact on me with their blunt core values. I’m talking about the first one in particular: And in a nutshell, that’s what it boils down to. The only thing I would add to the sub line is “…and our users.” Care about your users. Stop throwing together low effort niche themes just for the sake of targeting search terms. I know you wouldn’t like it if you were on the receiving end, so why would you give another person that same kind of experience? It’s bad internet karma. Cut it out. For WordPress users If you’re reading this, then it’s highly likely you use WordPress in some capacity. And as a WordPress user, you can make a difference with small (or optionally, big) gestures to help developers that actually care about their users. If you use a theme or come across one that you’re testing out and it’s both good quality and transparent, then leave a positive comment in the repository. This will help other users (just like you) who are browsing for themes that don’t suck, and it will let the developers of the theme know that you appreciate the work they put in to make a solid theme. Share it on your social

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WordPress Community Team to Retire CrowdSignal for Jotform – WP Tavern

[ad_1] The WordPress Community Team has announced plans to retire CrowdSignal in September 2024 in favor of Jotform for post-event attendee surveys. Automattic-sponsored Community Engagement Specialist Isotta Peira has shared more details about the decision and the future plans.  Why the Change? CrowdSignal (previously Polldaddy), owned by Automattic, has been used by the community to collect responses, including at large events like WordCamp Europe. However, it has some limitations.  Isotta Peira explained, “We decided to move away from CrowdSignal primarily to address the need for a multilingual solution, ensuring that all attendees worldwide can choose the language in which they complete the survey. This shift allows us to overcome an inclusion barrier that has been a challenge until now.” Accessibility experts like Alex Stine have previously raised concerns about CrowdSignal’s accessibility, while the WordPress Training Team has reported problems like data capture failures during surveys.  In a Slack conversation, Thijs Buijs, Team Representative of the WordPress Sustainability Team, shared his experience: “The experience we had with the team reps vote for #sustainability is that a lot of votes were not recorded in the backend as well as at front-end. We did not apply any restrictions like ip-limitations etc. I feel sorry to say but the tool appeared to be unreliable even after having tested it multiple times prior to launching the official voting.” After evaluating various alternatives, the WordPress Community Team identified Jotform as the best tool to meet their needs. “It’s user-friendly, allows easy addition of collaborators, facilitates sharing results while maintaining confidentiality, and includes built-in accessibility checks. This move is a significant step towards more inclusive and effective feedback collection.”, said Isotta Pereira. Jotform will enable the Community Team to grant organizing team members access as collaborators, allowing them to customize surveys as needed and receive submissions directly. Implementation Plan Isotta Pereira outlined the implementation plans: “We will begin with the English Attendee survey for local WordCamps and Events and coordinate the implementation of translations between Q4 2024 and Q1 2025. This transition will also include the Organizer post-event Debrief survey and Sponsor surveys if needed. We encourage Flagship WordCamps to adopt this tool so that both organizers and the community team can collect and access responses efficiently.” For local event organizers, the new WordPress Event Attendee Feedback Survey link will be included in the updated organizer reminder post-event. They can also volunteer to translate the survey into various languages before the official translation initiative begins. The Community team also appreciates feedback from Flagship organizers about using Jotform and the challenges they anticipate. The team is keen to understand whether standardizing surveys across different Flagships would be beneficial for gathering consistent feedback. Feedback from the Community Julia Golomb, Lead Organizer of WordCamp US 2024, commented on the transition: “We’ll try this new tool to survey our attendees… will share this tool with the WCUS co-organizers and together we will adapt it to use for WCUS 2024. I’ll report back on our experience!”  Steve Mosby, WordCamp Europe organizer, also expressed a positive outlook. He said, “If the system can provide a multilingual survey this could support increasing the number of responses – whilst also still providing generic values in the back-end (e.g. Yes/No questions, Enumerated type questions) – this would help with analysis!” Community members can provide feedback about the transition till September 30, 2024. [ad_2] Source link

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Automattic is Migrating Tumblr to WordPress  – WP Tavern

[ad_1] Automattic announced last week its plan to migrate Tumblr to WordPress, a move described as “one of the largest technical migrations in internet history.” This move comes after Automattic acquired Tumblr in 2019, marking the company’s biggest acquisition at the time. During the acquisition, Matt Mullenweg had pointed out that “Tumblr and WordPress have always been very philosophically aligned.” An emerging Tumblr/WordPress plugin and theme ecosystem were on the cards, and Matt said that once Tumblr’s backend is on WordPress, the idea of plugins can be explored. After the acquisition, Tumblr faced tough times, with Matt revealing last year that it was spending about $30 million more than its annual earnings. The porn ban didn’t help matters, but the Twitter Exodus of early 2023 following Elon Musk’s acquisition of the social media site gave it a sudden boost.  The migration announcement post said, “We’re not talking about changing Tumblr. We’re not turning Tumblr into WordPress. That would defeat the purpose. We acquired Tumblr to benefit from its differences and strengths, not to water it down. We love Tumblr’s streamlined posting experience and its current product direction. We’re not changing that. We’re talking about running Tumblr’s backend on WordPress. You won’t even notice a difference from the outside.” Automattic reiterated that “The changes will be exclusively at the backend.” The migration though not easy – with Tumblr hosting over half a billion blogs – will be a win-win situation for both WordPress and Tumblr. Automattic believes that “Tumblr will benefit from the collective effort that goes into the open source WordPress project. And WordPress will benefit from the tools and creativity we invest into Tumblr and contribute back to WordPress.”  Men Wanted for Hazardous Journey Automattic is actively seeking experienced PHP programmers to undertake this migration project. Matt compared this to the famous British explorer Ernest Shackleton’s recruitment ad for his Antarctic expedition, which read, “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.” The advertisement continues, “If you’re an experienced programmer… if you’re a SQL‑slinger… if you’ve worked on other big audacious projects like this… if Gordian knots tremble in your presence, we want to work with you!” “We’re already seeing interesting candidates apply and resume review is underway for full-time roles. All relevant experience is welcome, particularly those who have worked on other large migrations or are just excited about working on a challenge of this size.” – Bob Ralian, Tumblr Migration Lead Interested candidates can apply through the website giving a brief introduction about themselves. The post does not give any details about the remuneration or the application deadline.  Community Response  Matt tweeted “I’m excited about this one.”, while Eric Karkovack of Speckyboy quipped “Will there be a project status blog? If so, I’d recommend calling it “Tumblng Into WordPress”.” Platform Lead Engineer at Pew Research Center Seth Rubenstein tweeted, “This is so exciting. I hope this means it becomes easier to create Tumblr themes in the future; especially, dare I say, if they’re just block themes…” Courtney Robertson, Open Source Developer Advocate at GoDaddy, also hopes to see more “ block themes supporting post formats SOON.” Head of WP Relations at Elementor, Miriam Schwab dubbed it “The ultimate “data liberation” project” while Developer Advocate WPEngine Damon Cook speculated, “I wonder if there will be outcomes from this large migration that could overlap and help solve pieces of the Data Liberation project.” Product Designer Yash Bhardwaj was excited ”This will go down in history books similar to some ancient empire conquering another.”  Nick Weisser of Openstream is optimistic “This would represent a significant increase in the market share of #WordPress, pushing it from around 43% to over 60%?” I’m sure no one foresaw these developments when Jeff Chandler wrote “WordPress To Be More Tumblr Like” in 2010. Category: News, WordPress [ad_2] Source link

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WordPress Training Team Seeks Ideas to Attract New Learners – WP Tavern

[ad_1] The WordPress Training Team is currently seeking ideas and feedback from the community to prioritize activities that will increase engagement with the newly revamped Learn WordPress platform and attract new learners.   Automattic-sponsored Kathryn Presner stated, “We want to have a steady flow of new learners discovering the site and taking advantage of the valuable resources it offers.” She has outlined three types of potential activities that the Training Team is considering –  expanding marketing initiatives, increasing the Training Team’s visibility at WordCamps, and equipping learners and contributors with resources to promote Learn WordPress.  Community members can go through the list of planned promotional activities, workshops, and events in Kathryn’s post. They can also share feedback and suggest new activities by September 10, 2024.  Home to high-quality educational resources, Learn WordPress, was launched in 2020 and received a revamp very recently.  Lately, various WordPress teams have been exploring ways to attract new members to the WP ecosystem. Just last month, the Community Team proposed updating WordCamp budget guidelines to draw in new attendees.  These initiatives are encouraging especially when there have been talks of the WordPress market stagnating. Category: News, WordPress [ad_2] Source link

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#135 – Jonathan Bossenger on Enhancing WordPress Learning Experiences – WP Tavern

[ad_1] [00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley. Jukebox is a podcast, which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, enhancing WordPress learning experiences. If you’d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast, player of choice. Or by going to wptavern.com/feed/podcast. And you can copy that URL into most podcast players. If you have a topic that you’d like us to feature on the podcast, I’m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head to wptavern.com/contact/jukebox, and use the form there. So on the podcast today, we have Jonathan Bossenger. Jonathan based in Cape town, South Africa, has been an integral part of the WordPress community for nearly a decade. Transitioning from software development to web, and then WordPress development, he found his passion in education. Since attending his first word camp in 2015, he has focused on creating educational content for WordPress developers. Now employed at Automattic as a developer educator, he contributes to the Learn platform, helping to train and guide new developers in the WordPress ecosystem. He’s on the podcast today to explain some of the ways that you can learn WordPress with up to date, freely available content. We discuss the goal of making WordPress learning accessible globally, especially for those who can’t afford expensive courses. The discussion gets into the transformative potential of the Learn WordPress platform, especially in the era of Playground, which will enable interactive coding practice without the need for external tools. Jonathan sees this as a game changer for web agencies, providing a streamlined training resource for new developers and conserving valuable time and resources. We cover Jonathan’s journey from software developer to developer educator, supported by his former employer, Castos. He shares the challenges of keeping educational content current amidst WordPress’s rapid evolution, and the importance of staying updated with WordPress core developments. The conversation also touches on the structured learning pathways, designed to guide learners from beginner to advanced levels. Segmented into user designer and developer categories. The professionalism of WordPress projects like Learn, and the essential role of contributors in translating and internationalising content to reach a broader audience ,comes under the microscope as well. And Jonathan reflects upon the dynamic nature of open source communities, stressing the need for decisive leadership in software development decisions from time to time. Towards the end, we talk about the many ways that you can assist the Learn project, and there are many more ways than you might imagine. If you’re curious about how people learn about WordPress, and how you can be a part of that project, this episode is for you. If you’re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast, where you’ll find all the other episodes as well. And so without further delay, I bring you Jonathan Bossenger. I am joined on the podcast today, once more by Jonathan Bossenger. Hey, Jonathan. [00:03:59] Jonathan Bossenger: Hello, I’m back. [00:04:01] Nathan Wrigley: Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. We’re going to be talking about a really important subject, and a subject which I think is getting more importance. We can get into the politics or what have you of that in a moment. Before we begin the conversation all about Learn, and what’s going on over there, Jonathan, for those people who don’t know who you are, do you want to just give us your brief potted history? Maybe your current job, and your history with WordPress and so on? [00:04:24] Jonathan Bossenger: Sure. So for those who don’t know, my name is Jonathan Bossenger. I live in Cape Town in South Africa, which is the country right at the tip of Africa. I have been involved in the WordPress community now for about nine years. I went to my first WordCamp in Cape Town in 2015, and I am a web developer, originally a software developer, then a web developer, then a WordPress developer. And I’m now transitioned to this wonderful new thing that I call, or at least people call developer educator. I’m currently employed at Automattic, I’m sponsored to work full-time with the WordPress training team, and my job is basically creating educational content for WordPress developers. So everything that is on Learn, that has to do with WordPress development, I have got some hand in somewhere there. [00:05:05] Nathan Wrigley: Was this a pivot that you kind of had as part of your north star five or six years ago, or is this very much an evolution that kind of happened to you without it meaning to be the case? [00:05:16] Jonathan Bossenger: I did pivot from software development to developer education kind of organically, but also with a little bit of support. You’ll appreciate the story, Nathan. So as you will know, I was working at Castos for a number of years. I was the initial developer that Craig hired when we first kicked Castos off. I became lead developer as the company grew. And in conversations that I had with Craig, as my CEO, as the company grew, and as we run about the time the TinySeed thing happened and Craig had some money that he could spend to grow the team and all those things. He sat me down and he said to me, right, what does the future look like for you? As the company grows, we’ve got potential to get big, what does the future look like? And he said the word engineering manager, and the term CTO came up, and I realised in those conversations that that was not what I wanted to be doing. As much as I enjoyed developing software, I’m not great at leading people. I

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WordPress Blog WPLift Joins E2M Solutions – WP Tavern

[ad_1] The popular WordPress blog WPLift has been acquired by E2M Solutions, a leading white-label partner with operations in India and the United States. Founded by Oliver Dale in September 2010 under Kooc Media, WPLift has undergone several ownership changes over the years. Dan Tol acquired the blog from Oliver Dale in 2016 and managed it until 2023 when it was acquired by UnlimitedWP, a WordPress White Label service provider. UnlimitedWP was then acquired by E2M Solutions in June this year, making this latest transition somewhat anticipated. Manish Dudharejia, the CEO of E2M, commented on the acquisition saying: “Bringing WPLift into the E2M family is about more than just expanding our reach. It’s about collaboration and community, WPLift enhances our ability to engage with and contribute to the WordPress ecosystem… WPLift is more than just a great media partner for E2M; it’s our way of supporting and giving back to the global WordPress community.”  Future Plans The E2M team has confirmed that “WPLift will continue its mission to deliver insightful articles and updates.” Future plans include featuring WP expert interviews, sharing the latest news, and covering WordCamps as a Media Partner. WPLift’s acquisition announcement says, “ Some things may be changing around WPLift HQ, but we remain as committed as ever to being your trusted source for verifiable news… If there’s just one thing we want you to take away today, it’s that, even after being acquired, the only way things are going to change around here is for the better.” Another WordPress blog, WP BizDev, reacted to the acquisition: “Great to see an agency invest in media. A smart move too.” [ad_2] Source link

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