WordPress.org

W3Techs, a survey company that monitors usage of various web technologies, is reporting that WordPress has reached 30% usage or 60.2% market share of all the websites whose content management systems it knows about. This represents a 0.6% increase since February 1st and 13.1% over the last seven years.

Just five days ago, Matt Mullenweg, co-creator of WordPress, brought attention to the approaching milestone.

29.9%…

— Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt) March 2, 2018

When it comes to WordPress’ market share numbers, W3Techs is the most cited source. While some say that WordPress now powers 30% of the web, technically, it is used by 30% of the top 10 million sites based on traffic according to Alexa. All sub-domains on WordPress.com and WordPress.org count as one site.

All the subdomains of https://t.co/37ETZ4JMFf and https://t.co/YtO6Msd90U do indeed only count as one site. Sites that are hosted by Automattic under their own domain do count if they have significant traffic on that domain. These are 0.4%, 29.5% are hosted somewhere else.

— W3Techs (@W3Techs) March 2, 2018

The internet is larger than the top 10 million sites. According to Internet live stats, there are close to 2 billion sites on the internet although a majority of them are inactive.

W3Techs’ numbers show that WordPress’ use is growing on sites that receive a lot of traffic and shows no signs of slowing down as it makes its way towards 50%.

In 2016, WordFence published their findings of a vulnerability that could have compromised the servers that are used to send out WordPress updates. It turned out to be a complex, obscure vulnerability that ignited a conversation surrounding the security of api.wordpress.org and what could happen if the servers were compromised.

One idea that was brought forth is to digitally sign WordPress core, theme, and plugin updates. For at least five years, a trac ticket has laid semi-dormant with this idea in mind.

Fifteen months ago, Scott Arciszewski, Chief Development Officer for Paragon Initiative Enterprises, who is most widely known for his cryptography engineering work, published an article that has since been taken down, expressing his strong desire for Matt Mullenweg to make secure cryptographic signatures a priority. Mullenweg responded to his post with one of his own stating that although WordPress update signing is important, it’s not a high priority.

“We will at some point; as said above it’s a good idea — can’t hurt, might help,” Mullenweg responded when asked if WordPress was ever going to do update signing. “There are, however, some more important security issues in front of it, that impact millions of sites in the real world, so we are prioritizing those issues above a nice-to-have, defense in-depth effort.”

Eric Mann Launches Secure WordPress Updates Plugin

While WordPress does not digitally sign updates, Eric Mann, founder of Displace Technologies, LLC, has created and released a new plugin that adds code signing to WordPress core updates. It’s called DGXPCO or Digital Guarantees for eXplicitly Permitted Core Operations. You’ll find it on the plugin directory by searching for DGXPCO.

When installed and activated, the plugin integrates with the core updater and requires that any core update must have a valid signature before it can be installed. The signature provides a secondary source of truth that confirms the integrity of the files. The signatures are created using a Ed25519 public/private keypair and Libsodium to sign the files’ contents.

Mann keeps the private key offline and has published the public key online. The public key will not change and if a core update is signed by a different key, it is a red flag and the update should be avoided. In addition, commits made to the release hashes repository on GitHub are signed with Mann’s PGP key to verify that he is the one who added new code.

Mann admits that the solution is not fool-proof and is working towards improving it. In future versions, the plugin will only notify the user of a WordPress core update if a digital signature is available. Plugins and themes are on the roadmap as well with the ability to opt-in.

Although he is the only person allowed to digitally sign packages, the model is not sustainable.

“As I prove out the update system, I’ll also begin adding sets of public keys that are scoped to specific sets of packages,” Mann said. “This will, for example, allow me to whitelist a small number of trusted developers to also sign core packages. It might also empower plugin developers to sign their own releases (but not anyone else’s).”

Mann is seeking feedback and is hoping the project provides evidence that something like it can be added to WordPress core.

Welcome to the Post Status Draft podcast, which you can find on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, and via RSS for your favorite podcatcher. Post Status Draft is hosted by Brian Krogsgard and co-host Brian Richards.

This week BK and BR discuss a number of different aspects surrounding marketing and selling WordPress products and services. The conversation flows from selling benefits vs features, to social proof, to marketing and conversion funnels, to understanding and reacting to the problem space, to customer support, and many things in between. Whether you’re already selling products or services, about to sell something, or routinely buy things, there’s likely something for you in this episode.

Links

• Krogs’ WCUS funnel talk: and slides
• Price Anchoring session on WPS
• Tips for marketing WordPress products
• SiteGround’s Publish presentation
• TED talk on decision fatigue and the paradox of choice (also good “Why we make bad decisions”)
• Stripe Atlas guide to SaaS pricing

Sponsor: SiteGround

SiteGround is engineered for speed, built for security, and crafted for WordPress. They offer feature-rich managed WordPress hosting with premium support, and are officially recommended by WordPress.org. Check out SiteGround’s website for a special deal for Post Status listeners, and thanks to SiteGround for being a Post Status partner.

One of the keys to a successful roll out of Gutenberg is plugin compatibility. Without it, users will experience unnecessary frustration and hamper enthusiasm of the new editor. In an effort to figure out what plugins are already compatible with Gutenberg, Daniel Bachhuber has created a Gutenberg Plugin Compatibility Database.

Gutenberg Plugin Compatibility Database

The database contains 5,000 plugins that represent more than 90% of the total active install count. Plugins are compatible with Gutenberg if they meet the following two requirements.

• A WordPress user can perform the same functional task with Gutenberg active. For instance, if the plugin includes an ‘Add Media’ button, it’s considered Gutenberg-compatible when it has a block registered for the Gutenberg inserter.
• There are no (obvious) errors when the WordPress plugin is active alongside Gutenberg.

In order to participate in the testing process, you’ll need to register an account on the site. Once approved, testers will be able to create a fresh sandboxed WordPress install on the site and test randomly selected plugins. After a manual review is complete, plugins will be marked as is_compatible=yes or is_compatible=no.

Some plugins are already classified with is_compatible=likely_yes or is_compatible=likely_. As reports are completed, two pie charts that display compatibility results at the bottom of the site update automatically.

Bachhuber estimates that if each plugin takes about a minute to test, they’ll need roughly 75 person-hours to get through the remaining 4,500 plugins in the database. This project is a great opportunity for individuals and businesses to contribute back to WordPress via the Five for The Future initiative.

Ideal testers are those who can review dozens of plugins, but even reviewing a few will help the project. If you’re interested in contributing, check out the project’s GitHub page to learn what’s involved in the testing process. Alternatively, visitors can watch the following YouTube video.

Judging by the flurry of activity across the WordPress project throughout February, it looks like everyone is really getting into the swing of things for 2018. There have been a lot of interesting new developments, so read on to see what the community has been up to for the past month.

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WordPress 4.9.3 & 4.9.4

Early in the month, version 4.9.3 of WordPress was released, including a number of important bug fixes. Unfortunately it introduced a bug that prevented many sites from automatically updating to future releases. To remedy this issue, version 4.9.4 was released the following day requiring many people to manually update their sites.

While this kind of issue is always regrettable, the good thing is that it was fixed quickly, and that not all sites had updated to 4.9.3 yet, which meant they bypassed the bug in that version.

You can find out more technical information about this issue on the Core development blog.

The WordCamp Incubator is Back

In 2016, the Global Community Team ran an experimental program to help spread WordPress to underserved areas by providing more significant organizing support for their first WordCamp event. This program was dubbed the WordCamp Incubator, and it was so successful in the three cities where it ran that the program is back for 2018.

Right now, the Community Team is looking for cities to be a part of this year’s incubator by taking applications. Additionally, each incubator community will need an experienced WordCamp organizer to assist them as a co-lead organizer for their event — if that sounds interesting to you, then you can fill in the application form for co-leads.

You can find out further information about the WordCamp Incubator on the Community Team blog.

WordPress Meetup Roundtables scheduled for March

In order to assist local WordPress meetup organizers with running their meetup groups, some members of the Community Team have organized weekly meetup roundtable discussions through the month of March.

These will be run as video chats at 16:00 UTC every Wednesday this month and will be a great place for meetup organizers to come together and help each other out with practical ideas and advice.

If you are not already in the WordPress meetup program and would like to join, you can find out more information in the WordPress Meetup Organizer Handbook.

GDPR Compliance in WordPress Core

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is an upcoming regulation that will affect all online services across Europe. In order to prepare for this, a working group has been formed to make sure that WordPress is compliant with the GDPR regulations.

Aside from the fact that this will be a requirement for the project going forward, it will also have an important and significant impact on the privacy and security of WordPress as a whole. The working group has posted their proposed roadmap for this project and it looks very promising.

To get involved in building WordPress Core, jump into the #gdpr-compliance channel in the Making WordPress Slack group, and follow the Core team blog.

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Further Reading:

• WPShout published a thorough guide to WordPress security.
• The Community Team has published interesting statistics from the WordCamp program in 2016 and 2017.
• An intriguing proposal has been made for a new ‘Onboarding’ team to be started in the WordPress project.
• The new editing experience for WordPress, named Gutenberg, continues to be actively developed with a feature-packed release this past month.
• The Advanced WordPress Facebook group held an interview with WordPress co-founder, Matt Mullenweg about the Gutenberg project.
• Two factor authentication is on its way to the WordPress.org network — this will be a great improvement to the overall security of the project.

If you have a story we should consider including in the next “Month in WordPress” post, please submit it here.

In this episode, John James Jacoby joins me live from Hutchinson, KS, to talk about the news of the week. We started off the show discussing the GDPR and the number of things that need to be considered surrounding the right to be forgotten.

We also have a lengthy conversation about AMP, the open web, and Automattic’s relationship with Google. Last but not least, we discussed Automattic’s recent hiring of Kinsey Wilson to be president of the company.

Stories Discussed:

Matt Cromwell Hosts Matt Mullenweg in Q&A Gutenberg Interview
New Team Forms to Facilitate GDPR Compliance in WordPress Core
For one-time NPR and NYT digital chief, a new adventure: WordPress

WPWeekly Meta:

Next Episode: Wednesday, March 7th 3:00 P.M. Eastern

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Listen To Episode #306:

Over the last few months, I’ve been having some deep talks with my HeroPress partner about what the future of HeroPress looks like. We came up with some changes that feel deeply satisfying. Changes we think should help HeroPress, help readers, and help us as content producers. So here we go.

Financial Changes

At various times in the past people have told me that the time I spend on HeroPress is worth compensation. When I first started it as a blog, I had no intention of getting money from it. However, being compensated for my time helped ease the burden on my family.

With that in mind, last fall I test-drove a donation page based on interest from some in the community.

It was a good idea, and I’m thankful for the support I received, but for now it’s not the right path.

So, I’ve pulled the donation page from the site and am no longer accepting site sponsors. You’ll notice I do have a Sponsorship page, but it lists organizations that have made material contributions like hosting, plugins, etc.

Content Changes

We’ve been publishing every Wednesday for several years now. Over time, readership has climbed quite a bit. That’s great, but it means that many current readers have never seen the earlier content, which remains quite evergreen.

To address this, we’re going to do new HeroPress essays once a month. The other weeks of the month will be replays of earlier essays.

This allows for some breathing room in gathering new contributors and brings back some really great content that shouldn’t be forgotten.

It also opens up my time to explore the community more. To see if there are new ways that people, particularly on the fringe, can be helped. Sharing stories is useful, but are there other opportunities and needs we’re missing?

The Future

So HeroPress will continue. I still love doing it. At various times we’ve discussed making it bigger, doing grand things. But not now. For now we’re going to let it grow organically and continue letting it serve its purpose: to give voice to WordPress stories, to make them known, to inspire.

The post Changes Coming To HeroPress appeared first on HeroPress.

As May 25th, the enforcement date for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) draws near, individuals and businesses are scrambling to make sure they’re compliant. I’ve read a number of blog posts throughout the WordPress community explaining the GDPR and what needs to be done for compliance and it’s a tough thing to grasp.

The EU GDPR was designed to harmonize data privacy laws across Europe, protect and empower European citizens data privacy, and reshape the way organizations across the region approach data privacy. In reading the regulation and various blog posts, the terminology makes it appear that the changes are geared towards large, international businesses that process personal data.

However, according to Heather Burns, a digital law specialist in Glasgow, Scotland, the GDPR affects sites large and small.

GDPR applies to all businesses, organizations, sectors, situations, and scenarios, regardless of a business’s size, head count, or financial turnover. A small app studio is every bit as beholden to these rules as a large corporation.

Determining if your site needs to be compliant and how to accomplish it can be overwhelming. If you do business in Europe or collect data from European users, you must protect that data in accordance with the GDPR as if you were in Europe. For example, if you operate a blog with a contact form that saves entries to the database from people who live in Europe, you must make your site GDPR compliant.

There are a lot of aspects to the GDPR and while an excerpt can not fully explain it at a glance, there are a few themes that stick out to me.

• Be upfront and concise about what data is stored, sent, and used on the site or form.
• Give the user a chance to consent without automatically opting them in.
• Collect the least amount of data possible for legitimate business purposes.
• Provide a way for users to download or access their data and remove it.

Many of these are common sense practices that are not implemented on many sites, WP Tavern included. How often do you visit a site’s contact form and see an explanation as to why those fields are required, where the data is stored, where it goes, and what is done with it? This is something I’ll be working on in the next few weeks.

Making WordPress Core GDPR Compliant

Earlier this month, a number of volunteers gathered to discuss GDPR compliance in WordPress core. The meeting took place in a newly created channel #gdpr-compliance that’s accessible to anyone with a SlackHQ account.

The team created a proposed roadmap to add privacy tools to core. The plan includes the following ideas:

• Add notices for registered users and commenters on what data is collected in core by default and explain why.
• Create guidelines for plugins on how to become GDPR compliant.
• Create and add tools to facilitate compliance and privacy in general.
• Add documentation and help for site owners to learn how to use these tools.

Earlier today, the team met and created a GitHub folder that houses the roadmap, knowledge base, trac ticket list, and other items associated with the project. There was also some discussion on whether the interface provided by the GDPR for WordPress project is a good foundation for core and plugins to report personal data. The GDPR Compliance Slack channel is also a good place to ask questions and discuss data privacy in general.

Popular form plugins such as GravityForms and NinjaForms have documentation available that explains GDPR compliance and how it applies to their products. For those who use the Contact Form module in Jetpack which saves entries to the database by default, you’ll need to wait for further updates. WooCommerce and Automattic have announced that they expect their products will be GDPR compliant by the time it goes into effect later this year.

GDPR Resources

If you’re like me, reading about the GDPR and its policies can make your head spin. It’s important to keep in mind that at the heart of the GDPR are common sense behaviors for handling personal data. If you’d like to learn more about the GDPR, check out the following resources.

• How GDPR Will Change The Way You Develop
• Heather Burns: Get To Grips With GDPR
• Data protection (GDPR)
• WPWeekly Episode 298 – GDPR, User Privacy, and More With Heather Burns
• GDPR FAQs
• Is Your Website GDPR Compliant? How to Get Ready for the General Data Protection Regulations

Matt Cromwell, Head of Support and Community Outreach for GiveWP and an administrator for the Advanced WordPress Facebook group, hosted a question and answer session about Gutenberg with Matt Mullenweg earlier today. The interview concludes the Advanced WordPress Gutenberg interview series that includes, Joost de Valk, Ahmad Awais, and Tammie Lister.

Mullenweg began the session by explaining why there is a concerted effort to improve the editor. “It’s really almost any user test that you watch,” he said. “Both watching people brand new to WordPress and those with years of experience on how they used the editor. It became obvious that we could make something more accessible to new users, but also, a lot more powerful for developers.”

With regards to a release date, Mullenweg confirmed that Gutenberg will ship when it’s ready. Later in the interview, Mullenweg was asked if he could provide a more concrete answer.

“For those who want a concrete date, we will have one or two orders of magnitude more users of Gutenberg in April,” he responded. “That doesn’t mean necessarily a 5.0 release, but it does mean that if you’re planning on aiming for something where a lot of users will be interacting with Gutenberg, aim for April.”

While the project’s name is Gutenberg, some developers have expressed concerns on how the name will be deprecated if at all once it’s merged into core. There are a number of educational resources, products, and tool kits referencing Gutenberg that could be a source of confusion once it’s merged into core and referred to as the editor.

Mullenweg was asked if the Gutenberg name will be deprecated. “We’ll see,” he replied. “I don’t think it’s the most important thing to figure out right now. We’re tackling some much bigger issues. If the plugin is useful, we’ll keep it around for beta testing, if not, we’ll have it turn itself off.”

Mullenweg concluded the interview thanking the Advanced WordPress Facebook group for the passion and discussions shared by members. The group has more than 30K members, is free to join, well maintained, and often filled with interesting topics. You can watch the interview in its entirety below.

Welcome to the Post Status Draft podcast, which you can find on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, and via RSS for your favorite podcatcher. Post Status Draft is hosted by Brian Krogsgard and co-host Brian Richards.

In this episode, the Brians chat about the steady change that has played out in the WordPress ecosystem throughout the past decade and speculate about what is still to come. One aspect they explore rather deeply is the future trajectory of a website’s purpose and the role WordPress has to play in this transition. Plus, don’t miss their conversation about the new WordPress.com president and Google’s move to hire WordPress talent.

Links

• New WordPress.com President announcement
• Google’s WordPress job opportunity
• micro.blog

Sponsor: SearchWP

SearchWP makes WordPress search better. Instantly improve your site search without writing a line of code! SearchWP enables custom algorithms, searching custom fields, product data, and much more. Improve your site’s search today with our partner, SearchWP.

WordCamp Orange County, CA, 2018 will take place June 9-10. In addition to the regular WordCamp format of speakers sharing their knowledge, there is also a mini-event called Plugin-A-Palooza. This year marks the fourth contest where plugin authors will compete for one of three prizes.

• First Place – $3,000 cash and 1 Sucuri Business (VIP) license
• Second Place – $1,500 cash and 1 Sucuri Business (VIP) license
• Third Place – $500 cash

Teams will be judged live based on the following criteria:

• Originality
• User Experience/User Interface
• Code Quality
• Presentation of the plugin on WordPress.org.

Teams can have up to three participants, are required to build their own plugin, and upload it to the WordPress plugin directory by May 18th. Teams will present their plugins to the judges and audience on June 10th.

Previous winners and plugins include:

• 2015 Devin Walker- WP Rollback
• 2016 Robert Gillmer – WP Documentor
• 2017 Natalie MacLees – Simple Event Listing

Bridget Willard, WordCamp Orange County organizer, says the event encourages innovation and personal development which are important parts of WordCamps. “The first plugin that won was WPRollback by WordImpress,” she said. “It’s widely used in the community now. We’d love to see other camps doing this.”

If you’re interested in participating in Plugin-A-Palooza at WordCamp Orange County this year, you’ll need to fill out this entry form. The deadline for submissions is March 5th.

WordCamps are informal, community-organized events that are put together by a team of local WordPress users who have a passion for growing their communities. They are born out of active WordPress meetup groups that meet regularly and are able to host an annual WordCamp event. This has worked very well in many communities, with over 120 WordCamps being hosted around the world in 2017.

Sometimes though, passionate and enthusiastic community members can’t pull together enough people in their community to make a WordCamp happen. To address this, we introduced the WordCamp Incubator program in 2016.

The goal of the incubator program is to help spread WordPress to underserved areas by providing more significant organizing support for their first WordCamp event. In 2016, members of the global community team worked with volunteers in three cities — Denpasar, Harare and Medellín — giving direct, hands-on assistance in making local WordCamps possible. All three of these WordCamp incubators were a great success, so we're bringing the incubator program back for 2018.

Where should the next WordCamp incubators be? If you have always wanted a WordCamp in your city but haven’t been able to get a community started, this is a great opportunity. We will be taking applications for the next few weeks, then will get in touch with everyone who applied to discuss the possibilities. We will announce the chosen cities by the end of March.

To apply, fill in the application by March 15, 2018. You don’t need to have any specific information handy, it’s just a form to let us know you’re interested. You can apply to nominate your city even if you don’t want to be the main organizer, but for this to work well we will need local liaisons and volunteers, so please only nominate cities where you live or work so that we have at least one local connection to begin.

We're looking forward to hearing from you!

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Full text of the above video

Hey, y’all! Thanks for inviting me to come share my story on HeroPress. I’m so excited to be able to talk a little bit to the HeroPress community.

So, and I’m doing a video blog or vlog because this is what I do; I’m a YouTube person. I create YouTube videos every single Wednesday for what I call WordPress Wednesday to help you improve your online marketing inside of the WordPress world. So I’m used to doing videos, and I asked if I could do my HeroPress story in this format; and they said go for it, so I’m excited to talk to you at least in a face-to-face scenario.

I’m going to  share a little bit of my story and tell you how WordPress basically became my avenue for becoming a millionaire in just five short years.

The Beginning

So in 1998, I created my very first ever HTML website. My dad was actually doing websites at the time, and I needed a website for my band because that’s what I wanted to be is a rockstar; so I learned how to build a website, kind of, under his training and a little bit of self-taught stuff and had a lot of fun doing it that way in 1998.

And then in 2005, I started hearing about WordPress; but in 2008, as I was freelancing around, a client asked me to build him a website. And they said, “hey, Kori, can you, can you build me a website, but we absolutely have to have it on WordPress?” I was like, sure, no problem; straight to Google, “how do you build a WordPress website”, you know. And over the weekend I pretty much taught myself how to build out a WordPress website, and I loved it.

My mind was absolutely blown when I saw the drag and drop options inside of menus to create dropdowns, and a form builder; I was just blown away. So those of you who have struggled in the HTML CSS world, you know the magic or the majesty, if you will even, of WordPress and those environments and how easy it makes it. So when I saw that, I really just thought, oh my goodness, this is a full-circle moment for me.

I really want to use WordPress now from here on forward.

So I reached back out to my dad and said, “hey, dad, you know, this is a tool that our customers, all of our clients, have been asking us for”. They’ve been wanting access to their websites, and we’ve not been able to give it to them because, in the past, they had to download Dreamweaver, you know, Photoshop and an FTP program; and that was just too much nerd code for them. So we wanted to be able to give them something like this, and WordPress definitely was that solution.

So he and I worked back and forth for a few years learning, really truly learning, WordPress; and then in 2012, we decided to launch together, my mom, my dad and I, decided to launch WebTegrity in San Antonio, Texas. And it was a very small concept initially; you know, we just me, literally, the three of us, and me and my folks. And then we hired on a subcontractor who is a great graphic designer here in town to try to help us with the creative side of things, and we started to grow our team.

Going Big Time

So how did we, in five years, build it up in such a way that we were able to sell it for a deal of a million dollars’ worth of shares, which ultimately is a $20 million value deal? How did we do that? I’m going to give you a little bit of insight on how we were able to accomplish that in such a short time.

So the very first thing I want you to realize is we did this in a saturated industry in San Antonio, Texas. When I did a search for web developer or web design firms back in 2012, I had over 700 results of different either freelancers or agencies or ad agencies or some solution out there that was either in the general area, or in the nearby area, that provided that service. So how did we, in six years, end up becoming number six in the entire city? We ranked in the top 10; how did we do that?

One of the very first things we did, was we niched ourselves; and, thankfully, WordPress was that solution.

In 2012, there was not an agency directly in San Antonio that was trying to be the go-to place for WordPress; and we purposely started stepping up and saying we are WordPress only, WordPress only, WordPress only. So if you were looking for a different type of CMS solution, we were not the right fit for you. And very, very quickly, we also started teaching it in the city; so we would teach other agencies. We provided on-site training; we provided weekend workshops. All for a price tag, of course; but that was one of our revenue streams. And, again, it set us as the authority in the city for WordPress; so really important that you understand how to niche yourselves and not try to be all things to all people.

The second thing we tried to do was really build a culture.

And you can see, I don’t work around boring walls. Everything that I do has to have creative juices flowing around me, right. We just want to create a great culture, a great environment. So we had to hire the right people. So that’s my next tip to you is be very, very careful on who you allow into your culture of your business, who you hire on, and certainly who you bring on as a leader in your culture in your community. So one of the things that we did right away was realize that we can’t teach passion, so you gotta find people that have a passion to nerd out on stuff like this.

And you have to find people who have great integrity to just do their best at all times, and you have to find people who love to be creative and love to solve problems for clients, right, who aren’t just salespeople, right? So if you can find those things, you can teach nerd code all day long; so be sure to just find people with the right hearts to join your community and then train them up the right way, be sure that you just grow and grow and grow your culture in a healthy way, right.

And another thing that we did, so this is another tip, was understand how to really build a revenue stream that was going to be sustainable.

All right, so wrap your heads around this one because this one’s key. Very early on in our model as we were selling WordPress websites, part of my pitch was, oh, it’s just five grand and no more after that. It’s a one-time fee and you’re done. That’s a horrible business strategy. We learned very early on, inside of WordPress world, that you have rain or shine, right; so there’s a lot of clients coming or there are no clients.

You’re either slammed working from home even in the evening trying to catch up, or you’re out on the golf course wondering if you’re going to get a paycheck next week. It’s really rain or shine. So how do you create a sustainable model in your business, in your small agency, in your startup; how do you do that, so that when those slow seasons come, you can still pay your team members, you can still keep your lights on?

Well, we were sitting at a WordCamp; and Jason Cohen from WP Engine was keynoting; and one of the things he said right away is, if you don’t understand how to create a reoccurring revenue stream in your small agency, you will turn your sign to closed in the next year or two. And he was so right; and it was such a light bulb moment for me that I went back straightaway from that weekend WordCamp up in Austin and I started writing out, okay, how can we create a reoccurring revenue stream? What would that look like inside of our industry?

And, of course, it was support packages. We didn’t call them maintenance plans. We certainly didn’t use retainer, which can have a sense of a negative connotation, right, because of lawyers; sorry! But, still, we didn’t want to use those words because we’re already almost creating a, uh, I don’t think I want to sign up for that type of attitude.

What we did is we called it support, and very easily, clients were signing up saying, oh, goodness, yes, I need that ongoing support. So use that phrasing, create a model structure where it’s required, at least for the first 12 months out of the gate as they launch that you are charging them something even as small as $99 a month. And don’t shortchange yourself on that; put together a great package that you give them that type of value.

If you were to check out WebTegrity.com, you would see our support plans and what they consist of and the pricing. We’re very transparent with that. That’s the way our revenue stream almost doubled our sales in one year and allowed us to keep our lights on when June and July roll around and nobody cares about their websites because they’re on the beach.

All right, reputation was another huge part of it.

That’s one of the reasons why we named ourselves WebTegrity, but reputation, understanding that that every client that signs up, whether they’re a $5,000 website or a $50,000 website gets the same type of boutique-style, white glove, handholding relationship, right? Every single project that you launch, you want to produce the absolute, absolute best. You’re not shortchanging them; you’re not, you’re not wiring something that you hand off to the client and hope to God it doesn’t break. You really are trying to find the absolute best solution.

One of the things that also kept us in high standing with our reputation, of course, was offering that training because what we don’t want to do is keep the veil covered where nobody can see what we’re doing, right. We really want to be transparent and train our clients the nerd lingo, train the clients what SEO is and what expectations should be. Having that type of open communication really just started to build together a relationship with our clients that they trusted us; and we met their expectation, right. So be sure to hold strongly to your core values for your reputation. Be sure that you’re asking people to give you great reviews because that’ll make a difference.

And the last thing I want to talk about is give back.

So at one of the WordCamp US’s that I went to, Matt himself said, listen, if you’re making a living with WordPress, you really need to try to figure out how to give back 5% of your time, just 5% of your time a week. How can you do that to give back to the community? Can you start a meet-up group, teach a meetup group; can you facilitate a meetup group where maybe you’re just the organizer and you never have to speak because you’re not a fan of speaking?

Can you organize a WordCamp, volunteer at a WordCamp? Can you write a tutorial and tell people how to do things? Can you teach a workshop; can you make a video?

And, again, I had a light bulb moment. Of course, I can make videos. So my giveback to the WordPress community is my YouTube channel; every single Wednesday, I’m creating a video and putting it out there for free to the WordPress world of how to improve your online marketing. That’s made a huge impact not only, thankfully, inside the WordPress community, but also in my own business model.

I actually go into WordCamps around the US and people are like, hey, aren’t you that WordPress girl; don’t you do videos? It’s a really cool feeling to be able to give back to the community because I’ve made my living using WordPress.

Understanding

So ultimately how did I turn five years into a multi-million dollar buyout? Because we have just recently sold; how did we do that? Ultimately, it was understanding that you have to be able to grow something of value. So as soon as you start your business, you should also be thinking about your exit strategy, right, even in how you name your company.

If I were to name this Ashton Agency, do you think that I could’ve just walked away and handed the keys to somebody else named Johnson; it wouldn’t have worked. Think even about your name; will it stand alone? Can that become a brand that you can hand off and sell as a holistic entity?

You also want to think about that revenue stream, right, and watch those sales margins. Be sure that your margins are healthy. Don’t hire until it hurts, until it absolutely hurts. Be sure that you’re structuring your offerings in such a way that you’re actually recouping your value. What does that mean? Just understand business better; watch Shark Tank, read more tutorials like this, watch more videos.

Get a hold of the WordPress community, the core leaders, the speakers that travel around to all the WordCamps. Start following them on Twitter and trying to understand what it is that they’re training and teaching. There’s a lot of resources out there for you to gain some ideas from, but ultimately it was me stepping out in the San Antonio community because it was a larger firm here in San Antonio who purchased us.

So we just kept hammering on the fact that we were the go-to place here in San Antonio for WordPress. We kept training; we kept doing free opportunities, going out and speaking at different events; and people kept seeing us. We kept showing up, so you’d be surprised what happens. If you keep giving back and you keep showing up to places, you keep establishing yourself as the authority, you keep learning and training and growing your own skill set and growing your team, before you know it, it can happen for you.

I hope this has been helpful. If you have questions about some of this though, if you’re trying to grow up your startup, or if you’re trying to learn how to improve your revenue margins, I’m always open to a quick twitter conversation or send me an email. I’d love to connect with you.

Thanks again for the opportunity to share this on HeroPress.

Bye, y’all; catch me over on YouTube. Bye!

The post How To Build A Company With WordPress appeared first on HeroPress.

On Automattic's internal BuddyPress-powered company directory, we allow people to fill out a field saying how far their previous daily commute was. 509 people have filled that out so far, and they are saving 12,324 kilometers of travel every work day. Wow!

Version 4.0.3 of the Akismet plugin for WordPress is now available.

4.0.3 contains a few helpful changes:

• Adds a new scheduled task to clear out old Akismet entries in the wp_commentmeta table that no longer have corresponding comments in wp_comments.  This should help reduce Akismet’s database usage for some users.
• Adds a new akismet_batch_delete_count action so developers can optionally take action when Akismet comment data is cleaned up.

To upgrade, visit the Updates page of your WordPress dashboard and follow the instructions. If you need to download the plugin zip file directly, links to all versions are available in the WordPress plugins directory.

New versions of WordPress are released about three times a year, and WordPress itself supports PHP versions all the way back to 5.2.4.

What does this mean for you as a plugin developer?

Honestly, many plugin developers spend too much time supporting old versions of WordPress and really old versions of PHP.

It doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t need to support every version of WordPress, and you don’t have to support every version of PHP. Feel free to do this for seemingly selfish reasons. Supporting old versions is hard. You have to “unlearn” new WordPress and PHP features and use their older equivalents, or even have code branches that do version/feature checks. It increases your development and testing time. It increases your support burden.

Economics might force your hand here… a bit. You can’t very well, even in 2018, require that everyone be running PHP 7.1 and the latest version of WordPress. But consider the following:

97% of WordPress installs are running PHP 5.3 or higher. This gives you namespaces, late static binding, closures, Nowdoc, __DIR__, and more.

88% of WordPress installs are running PHP 5.4 or higher. This gives you short array syntax, traits, function-array dereferencing, guaranteed <?= echo syntax availability, $this access in closures, and more.

You get even more things with PHP 5.5 and 5.6 (64% of installs are running 5.6 or higher), but a lot of the syntactic goodness came in 5.3 and 5.4, with very few people running versions less than 5.4. So stop typing array(), stop writing named function handlers for simple array_map() uses, and start using namespaces to organize and simplify your code.

Okay, so… how?

I recommend that your main plugin file just be a simple bootstrapper, where you define your autoloader, do a few checks, and then call a method that initializes your plugin code. I also recommend that this main plugin file be PHP 5.2 compatible. This should be easy to do (just be careful not to use __DIR__).

In this file, you should check the minimum PHP and WordPress versions that you are going to support. And if the minimums are not reached, have the plugin:

1. Not initialize (you don’t want syntax errors).
2. Display an admin notice saying which minimum version was not met.
3. Deactivate itself (optional).

Do not die() or wp_die(). That’s “rude”, and a bad user experience. Your goal here is for them to update WordPress or ask their host to move them off an ancient version of PHP, so be kind.

Here is what I use:

View code on GitHub

Reach out on Twitter and let me know what methods you use to manage PHP and WordPress versions in your plugin!

---

Do you need WordPress services?

Mark runs Covered Web Services which specializes in custom WordPress solutions with focuses on security, speed optimization, plugin development and customization, and complex migrations.

Please reach out to start a conversation!

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Welcome to the Post Status Draft podcast, which you can find on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, and via RSS for your favorite podcatcher. Post Status Draft is hosted by Brian Krogsgard and co-host Brian Richards.

In this episode, Lisa Sabin-Wilson shares about the entangled history of WebDevStudios and eWebscapes and how she and team are targeting every level of the market. WebDevStudios focuses heavily on the upper and enterprise market segments, providing a high degree of attention and support to those clients.

Sometime in 2017 Lisa did the math on all the lower-end projects that they were referring away and realized that WDS had a prime opportunity to re-introduce her former web studio, eWebscapes, as a way to serve these smaller-scope projects. This rebirth, so to speak, has positioned them to better target local communities, provide staff with more variety of work, and bring simplified processes alongside those they use for larger projects.

Key take-aways

• Lisa observed a market opportunity and did the math first
• Relaunching started with a solid content strategy
• Simplified processes for managing a project
• Utilized talent already on staff
• Lots of opportunity to target local communities
• Evaluating the success of this strategy after 6 months

Links

• WebDevStudios
• eWebscapes
• Profitable Project Plan
• Lisa Sabin-Wilson on Twitter

Photo Credit

Sponsor: Prospress

Prospress makes the WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin, that enables you to turn your online business into a recurring revenue business. Whether you want to ship a box or setup digital subscriptions like I have on Post Status, Prospress has you covered. Check out Prospress.com for more, and thanks to Prospress for being a Post Status partner.

Reed Albergotti has a great article titled Latest Amenity for Startups: No Office. You can put in your email to read I believe but it's behind a paywall otherwise. The Information is a pretty excellent site that alongside (former Automattician) Ben Thompson's Stratechery I recommend subscribing to. Here are some quotes from the parts of the article that quote me or talk about Automattic:

So it’s no coincidence that one of the first companies to operate with a distributed workforce has roots in the open source movement. Automattic, the company behind open source software tools like WordPress, was founded in 2005 and has always allowed its employees to work from anywhere. The company’s 680 employees are based in 63 countries and speak 79 languages. Last year, it closed its San Francisco office, a converted warehouse — because so few employees were using it. It still has a few coworking spaces scattered around the globe.

Matt Mullenweg, Automattic’s founder and CEO, said that when the company first started, its employees communicated via IRC, an early form of instant messaging. Now it uses a whole host of software that’s tailor-made for remote work, and as the technology evolves, Automattic adopts what they need.

Mr. Mullenweg said Automattic only started having regular meetings, for instance, after it started using Zoom, a video conferencing tool that works even on slow internet connections.

He’s become a proponent of office-less companies and shares what he’s learned with other founders who are attempting it. Mr. Mullenweg said he believes the distributed approach has led to employees who are even more loyal to the company and that his employees especially appreciate that they don’t need to spend a chunk of their day on a commute.

“Our retention is off the charts,” he said.

And:

“Where it goes wrong is if they don’t have a strong network outside of work—they can become isolated and fall into bad habits,” Mr. Mullenweg said. He said he encourages employees to join groups, play sports and have friends outside of work. That kind of thing wouldn’t be a risk at big tech companies, where employees are encouraged to socialize and spend a lot of time with colleagues.

But for those who ask him about the negatives, Mr. Mullenweg offers anecdotal proof of a workaround.

For example, he said he has 14 employees in Seattle who wanted to beat the isolation by meeting up for work once a week. So they found a local bar that didn’t open until 5 p.m., pooled together the $250 per month co-working stipends that Automattic provides and convinced the bar’s owner to let them rent out the place every Friday.

They didn't need to pool all their co-working allowance to get the bar, I recall it was pretty cheap! Finally:

For Automattic, flying 700 employees to places like Whistler, British Columbia or Orlando, Florida, has turned into a seven-figure expense.

“I used to joke that we save it on office space and blow it on travel. But the reality is that in-person is really important. That’s a worthwhile investment,” Mr. Mullenweg said.It might take a while, but some people are convinced that a distributed workforce is the way of the future.

“Facebook is never going to work like this. Google is never going to work like this. But whatever replaces them will look more like a distributed company than a centralized one,” Mr. Mullenweg said.

Kinsey Wilson is joining Automattic to run WordPress.com. Poynter covers the news and has a great interview with Kinsey.

In this episode, John James Jacoby and I discuss the news of the week. We also chat about the Winter Olympics, crypto mining in order to access content on the web, and the joys of taking care of a puppy. Last but not least, we talk about Elasticsearch in Jetpack 5.8 and whether or not improving WordPress’ native search functionality through a service is the way to go.

Stories Discussed:

Jetpack 5.8 Adds Lazy Loading for Images Module
Free Virtual WordPress for JavaScript Conference June 29th
10up Turns Seven
“Not Updated In …” Warning

WPWeekly Meta:

Next Episode: Wednesday, February 21st 3:00 P.M. Eastern

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10up, a web development agency founded by Jake Goldman in 2011, has turned seven years old. In a blog post celebrating the occasion, Goldman reviews the previous year and highlights some notable events for the company.

“We welcomed more than 30 new clients to our portfolio in another record sales year,” Goldman said. “We launched new websites along with web and mobile apps for major brands across verticals as diverse as finance, healthcare, academia, high-tech, big media, consumer packaged goods, food and beverage, and fitness… to name a few.”

He also highlighted the company’s commitment to open source and giving back to WordPress. Throughout the past year, the company has released a number of WordPress plugins and developer tools including, Distributor, WP Snapshots, WP Local Docker, Async Transients, and more.

Goldman describes three trends he’s noticed in the past few years.

1. Integrations with innovation happening in other projects and platforms has become increasingly important as the web matures. You see it in React.js and Vue.js emerging as popular front end standards, in the rise of Elasticsearch and NoSQL platforms, with two factor authentication and Google single sign on, with the rise of modern Asset Management Systems.
2. For publishers, it’s increasingly becoming about distribution to multiple platforms, more so than just building a website. Google AMP, Facebook Articles, Apple News, Alexa, YouTube channels to name a few.
3. If you need any more evidence of WordPress dominance, look no further than how highly in demand top-tier engineering talent is. It’s probably – literally – around a factor of 1.5x – 2x what great engineers were earning 3-4 years ago.

With seven years of experience under his belt, Goldman offers the following advice for those who are in their first or second year of running an agency or in a leadership position.

1.  Don’t be quite so hard on yourself – when you run a business – when you’re a lease – there will always be highs and lows – don’t dwell on the lows.
2. Put more emphasis on building systems, routines, and check-ins that offer a better pulse on the collective and individual fulfillment, engagement, and health of the team, rather than relying on transparent upwards communication.

Congrats to 10up on seven years in business. To learn more about the company and employment opportunities, visit their official site.

I never remember dates. I know the birthday of more or less five people. I insist on saying that my son was born on May 11. Incorrect, I was born on May 11, he on May 17. But for some reason, my WordPress dates are permanently etched into my brain. I think it’s because meeting the global WordPress community and helping restart the Italian community are very meaningful moments in my adult life. Please join me in a walk down memory lane

May 15, 2015

I started building websites with WordPress in 2010: my first website was my own blog, whose only purpose was to publish photos of my son so all the grandparents could enjoy seeing him grow. I enjoyed tinkering around with it, and to my surprise someone wrote asking me to build something similar for them. And they wanted to pay me for it!

For a few years I worked as an administrative manager during the day and as a web designer at night until I decided to make the jump and become a freelancer.

I never thought about contributing to WordPress because I wasn’t a back end developer and I didn’t think the project needed people that were not code wizards. Heck, I didn’t even know how WordPress was made or how open source worked exactly!

And then I went to a Freelancers conference in Italy and on May 15 I gave my first talk ever.

Up until that moment I taught small classes, but I never talked in front of more than ten people. I was terrified: in the audience there were more than a hundred people. Some of my friends, but also a lot of seasoned professionals that I respected and admired, and here I was talking about how they should and shouldn’t build a website. I was so nervous, when I grabbed the mic I did such a wide gesture with my arms that the bracelet I was wearing flew through the air to the other side of the room.

After my talk a guy came to compliment my talk, and I realised that he was one of those people that I respected and admired from afar: Luca Sartoni, an Automattician whose blog I have been following for a while.

For the three days of the event we kept chatting about websites, WordPress, entrepreneurship, open source until he convinced me to start a WordPress meetup in my hometown of Torino, Italy. He put me in contact with other people that he knew wanted to do something similar and in less than a month from that conversation we started a meetup. The group now has more than one thousand members, and in March we will celebrate thirty events.

November 7, 2015

Luca didn’t stop his proselytism in Torino That same year, WordCamp Europe was held in Seville and at the Polyglots table a revolution was started. A small group of Italians, used to travelling abroad to attend WordCamps, met there and decided that it was time to organise the Italian community.

The first step was to revive the blog on the Italian WordPress website: it was dormant for seven years and the first thing we did was publish the dates of meetups that were slowly but surely appearing in the whole country. At the beginning of 2015 there were two meetups in Italy, by August there were eight and their number kept growing.

Now, if you have met Italians, you know we talk a lot. The two Francescos from Apulia, Franz Vitulli and Francesco Di Candia, took the second initiative that was crucial to bringing us together: they opened a Slack workspace for the Italians, modeled after the UK workspace. For the whole summer we chatted every single day: about WordPress, about how to grow and manage the community that was forming in front of our eyes, how to communicate, how to contribute.

And then chatting wasn’t enough, we wanted to meet in person. We wanted to put a face and a voice to the avatars. With the help of Sara Rosso and Jenny Wong we carried out a bizarre plan, almost unheard of: a stand alone WordPress Contributor Day. We would meet in Milano for a day to get to know each other and to learn how to Contribute to WordPress.

I like to think that November 7 2015 is the day we became a community: we were not an abstract idea anymore, we were people, meeting in person to make WordPress in Italy.

 

April 10, 2016

The next few months went by in a blur of activities: the meetup organisers in Torino applied to host the first WordCamp in Italy in three years and I lead the organising team, I applied to attend the Community Summit in Philadelphia and I got accepted, I attended the first WordCamp US, my first WordCamp, and volunteered at it. I met a lot of people that helped me become more active and more focused: as a new contributor it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the abundance of amazing projects and tasks you can be part of, but it’s important to keep your focus to be more effective.

After meeting people from all over the world and sharing our experiences I realised the story of the Italian community could be inspiring for other communities and it was worth telling it to a wider audience, so I got completely out of my comfort zone and submitted a talk to WordCamp London.

On April 10th 2016 I gave my first talk at a WordCamp and my first talk in English. I think I didn’t sleep for days before and after the event. It was nerve wracking, but I did it without throwing any bracelet in the air this time.

I gave the same talk at WordCamp Europe in 2016 and realised the story was relatable to many communities. Photographer unknown, sorry

September 17, 2017

Over the following year I kept contributing to WordPress, mostly in the Community team. I participated in the Polyglots activities for a while but then I had to pick and focus my attention. The more I interacted with people from all over the world as a hobby, the more I wanted that to become my job. Although my business as a web designer in Italy was doing good, I felt I wanted to be able to reach more people and find a way to be more involved with the community.
So I started looking for a job. I was hesitant at first: all the insecurities I had about myself came back to haunt me. The voice in my head was telling me: you are too old, you don’t have enough technical expertise, you have been contributing for a very short time, English is not your native language, you are a single mom from Italy for crying out loud, who would want to employ you?

Well, it turns out that if you actually look for a job instead of just telling yourself that you really would like a job, chances are you might get one.

Last September I started a new chapter in my career as the WordPress Community Manager at SiteGround and I couldn’t be happier.

The past 33 months have completely changed my life, personally and professionally: along the way I learned a number of lessons that I know will stay with me forever.

Step Up

If you want to achieve something, start today. Just start. Start a meetup, leave a comment to encourage someone else, volunteer to take notes of a meeting, participate in the discussion, bring your own ideas to the table. Be a fire starter, for yourself and for the people around you.

Step Back

None of the above is about you: the community is bigger than you, you are here to build a path for the future. Once you started something, don’t become too attached, let it go and let other people step up and shine. Mentor them, if they ask and if you can.

If you want to go faster go alone, if you want to go further go together

I am not a huge fan of motivational quotes, but this one is very dear to my heart and it’s one I have to remind myself quite often. I am a perfectionist and a quick learner: this is ok when you start your own business (and it’s ok only at the beginning, but this is a topic for another article!), but when you are part of a team, you are part of something bigger. It might move slower, but its impact is immensely more powerful than anything you’ll be able to achieve on your own.

Representation matters

I dislike speaking in public. When I say this people tend to laugh it off because I am good on stage. It doesn’t mean that I like it. I am much more at ease when I am behind the scenes, making things happen.

But representation matters: I feel that I am responsible to be on stage for all the women who haven’t found the courage yet to share their stories.

I am responsible for the young ones, so they can see that it’s possible to create a life when you can be both a good, albeit a bit absent mom, and a kick ass professional. I am responsible for the older ones, so they can see that we are represented, that this industry accepts us and recognizes our contributions. I am responsible to show my eleven year old son that women can do whatever they set out to do.

Make it better, give it back

I wish I came up with this, because it’s an incredibly powerful sentence. John did and I am grateful every day that I get to share my life with him and his wisdom.

Contributing to open source can be very frustrating: things go slow, sometimes things don’t go at all (there are numerous tickets in the WordPress bug tracker that are five or more years old), sometimes you might disagree with that will be decided, sometimes you might work alongside people that you dislike.

When this happens, remind yourself that you are working on a brilliant piece of software that is helping the lives and the businesses of millions of people.

The post My WordPress Anniversaries appeared first on HeroPress.

Zac Gordon, who launched his Gutenberg development course earlier this year, is organizing a virtual conference called JavaScript for WordPress. The conference will take place June 29th and is free to watch.

“Making the event free and online was really important for me so we could have as few barriers to entry for folks wanting to learn,” Gordon said. “I have a feeling a lot of folks who can’t tune live will still appreciate having all the talks available on YouTube for free.”

So far, 15 speakers have been confirmed with more to be announced soon. The speakers include WordPress core developers, theme and plugin developers, agency owners, and educators. Some of the talks will be from designers allowing user experience and usability to be part of the conversation.

Gordon says he’s been wanting to an in-person event for a while but considering the challenges involved, a virtual conference was the next best thing.

“I used to run in-person workshops in the Washington DC area, which I miss, and have wanted to do an event for a while,” he said. “But doing in-person events is so difficult, so the online format seemed like the best option to go with. I got some good advice from Human Made and WP Campus, who both have experience doing online events, so hopefully everything will go smooth.”

To reserve a seat and receive updates, visit the JavaScript for WordPress conference site.

Now that you know how I deploy WordPress sites and how I configure WordPress environments, what about the maintenance of keeping a WordPress site’s plugins up-to-date?

Since I’m using Git, I cannot use WordPress built-in plugin updater on the live site (and I wouldn’t want to — if a plugin update goes wrong, my live site could be in trouble!)

The simple way to update all your plugins from a staging or local development site is to use WP-CLI:

wp plugin update-all
git commit -am 'update all plugins' wp-content/plugins

That works. I used to do that.

I don’t do that anymore.

Why? Granularity.

One of the benefits of using version control like Git is that when things go wrong, you can pinpoint when they went wrong, and identify what code caused the issue.

Git has a great tool called bisect that takes a known good state in the past and a current broken state, and then jumps around between revisions, efficiently, asking you to report whether that revision is good or bad. Then it tells you what revision broke your site.

If you lump all your plugin updates into one commit, you won’t get that granularity. You’ll likely get the git bisect result of “great… one of EIGHTEEN PLUGINS I updated was the issue”. That doesn’t help.

Here’s how you do it with granularity:

for plugin in $(wp plugin list --update=available --field=name);
do
    echo "wp plugin update $plugin" &&
    echo "git add -A wp-content/plugins/$plugin" &&
    echo "git commit -m 'update $plugin plugin'";
done;

This code loops through plugins with updates available, updates each one, and commits it with a message that references the plugin being updated. Great! Now git bisect will be able to tell you which plugin update broke your site.

And what if you can only run WP-CLI commands from within a VM, and Git commands from your local machine? For instance, if you’re using my favorite tool, Local by Flywheel, you have to SSH into the site’s container to issue WP-CLI commands, but from within that container, you might not have Git configured like it is on your host machine.

So what you can do is break the process into two steps.

On the VM, run this:

wp plugin list --update=available --field=name > plugins.txt
wp plugin update-all

That grabs a list of plugins with updates and writes them to a file plugins.txt, and then updates all the plugins.

And then on your local machine, run this:

while read plugin;
do
    echo "git add -A wp-content/plugins/$plugin" &&
    echo "git commit -m 'update $plugin plugin'";
done; < plugins.txt

That slurps in that list of updated plugins and does a distinct git add and git commit for each.

When that’s done, remove plugins.txt.

All your plugins are quickly updated with WP-CLI, but you get nice granular Git commits and messages.

---

Do you need WordPress services?

Mark runs Covered Web Services which specializes in custom WordPress solutions with focuses on security, speed optimization, plugin development and customization, and complex migrations.

Please reach out to start a conversation!

[contact-form]

Welcome to the Post Status Draft podcast, which you can find on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, and via RSS for your favorite podcatcher. Post Status Draft is hosted by Brian Krogsgard and co-host Brian Richards.

In this episode, Brian and Brian continue their discussion on WordPress market opportunities with a focus on the upper-market and enterprise clients. They take a look at discovery projects, pitching WordPress against competing platforms, and considerations to make before pitching on these high-budget projects. There are plenty of positives and negatives when working on long-term projects that may have a dramatic impact on your company in many ways.

In addition to these market opportunities, the boys also discuss recent news including iThemes acquisition by Liquid Web, a welcome change to the WordPress.org plugin directory, and an unfortunate and far-reaching bug that shipped with the 4.9.3 release last week.

Links

• Liquid Web acquires iThemes
• Plugin directory notice changes
• 4.9.4 technical details
• Infusing Websites with Brand VoiceWPS Team Training

Sponsor: WooCommerce

WooCommerce makes the most customizable eCommerce software on the planet, and it’s the most popular too. You can build just about anything with WooCommerce. Try it today, and thanks to the team at WooCommerce being a Post Status partner

Jetpack 5.8 is available for download and includes a handful of new features for Professional, Premium, and Personal plan users. In October of last year, Jetpack 5.4 began beta testing a new search module based on Elasticsearch. Jetpack 5.8 concludes the beta and the new search service is available to Professional plan customers.

The new search module replaces the native search functionality in WordPress and Jetpack developers claim sites with a large amount of content, images, or products will see significant speed improvements and more relevant results. Developers can fine-tune the user experience by using custom queries and template tags. Users can sort results by categories, tags, month/year, post type, or any taxonomy.

In addition to the Content Delivery Network, users have another method to optimize their sites with a new module named Lazy Load Images. When activated, Jetpack will display a page’s textual content first. When a user scrolls down the page, Jetpack will request and download images so they appear when that section of the page comes into view. Sites with a large amount of images will benefit most from having this module activated.

Premium plan customers can now perform security scans on their sites at any time, upload an unlimited amount of videos, and access SEO tools that were once restricted to Business plan customers.

Other notable improvements include:

• Support for timezone and site language settings
• Improved display of notices
• The GettyImages shortcode now uses the new format required by GettyImages

To view all of the additions in this release, check out the Jetpack 5.8 changelog.

In the last analysis, every profession is a conspiracy against the laity.

The Sir Patrick Cullen character in George Bernard Shaw’s play The Doctor’s Dilemma

In this episode, John James Jacoby and I are joined by Marc Benzakein, Operations Manager for ServerPress, LLC. We discussed recent updates to DesktopServer and received a progress report on 4.0. Marc also shared some of the struggles the team encountered throughout 2017.

We learned what’s new with WP SiteSync and what customers can look forward too later this year. We also talked about Marc’s journey of becoming a healthier person both physically and mentally. He recalls the issues he had to overcome and shares advice on how others can improve their health.

Stories Discussed:

WooCommerce 3.3.1 Released, Addresses Template Conflicts
WordPress 4.9.4 Fixes Critical Auto Update Bug in 4.9.3
Unpatched DoS Flaw Could Help Anyone Take Down WordPress Websites

WPWeekly Meta:

Next Episode: Wednesday, February 14th 3:00 P.M. Eastern

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The early years

I’ve always been an art kid. One of my first school memories is of drawing a clown and my art teacher being so enamored with it, she hung it up on her door for the whole year.

The first time in my educational life I didn’t take an art class was my first year of college. By the end of the year, my fingers were itching and I was ready to scream — I had to take art. It didn’t take long for me to declare a Studio Art minor, which eventually became an Arts and Technology minor my senior year.

I’ve also always been an internet kid. We received our first internet-connected Windows desktop in 1997. I’ll never forget the sound of dial-up as I signed into AOL, day after day for years to come. When my older brother started working for an ISP, we were able to go beyond just using AOL to connect, and I started spending more time exploring websites (rather than just AOL’s apps and chat rooms). I wanted to be like my older brother and learn how to make sites. I taught myself basic HTML by using View Source on existing sites — even back then, I was benefiting from the open web!

Angelfire was my earliest web canvas. A couple of my friends eventually got into making websites, but I was always a little disdainful of them for using Homestead’s GUI builder, while I was making my sites from scratch. I had a blast making image-rich personal and fan sites with tables and HTML styles. Landing a copy of Photoshop Elements in high school only intensified my enjoyment of web design. I kept that passion up through college, when I found my first design gig.

Could this be a career?

My first year of college got off to a bit of a rough financial start. By the time my financial aid was finalized and I was finally able to pick a work study job, my options were pretty limited. A dance professor needed an assistant to help her with some photocopying and organization tasks, along with helping her build out a print and web portfolio.

I was honestly a terrible assistant, but I did a pretty good job with the design work. I continued to refine my skills working in the computers labs in subsequent years, and in my Junior year of college (ten years ago!) I landed an internship at a local web design agency. That internship turned into a part-time job, which opened up doors to more local web design opportunities, and soon I was graduating college and pretty well situated into the start of my career.

It was at these agencies that I started learning how to build WordPress websites. I’d used WordPress a couple times in college and felt comfortable with it, but now I was focusing a lot more on building my skills as a designer and front-end developer. My girlfriend (who was working at the same web agency) and I managed to convince our boss to start letting us create totally custom websites, rather than customizing existing themes, and that opened up a whole new world of design opportunities.

My first WordCamp

It was around then that my girlfriend, who attended WordCamp NYC the previous year, noticed the conference organizers were looking for some volunteer designers to help create some graphics. She passed along the information, and I got in touch.

I collaborated with a few other designers to create the WordCamp branding, which was used across the website, t-shirt, signage, and stickers:

It was amazing to see it everywhere at the WordCamp. It felt really special. Though I didn’t get “props” for this, I still consider it my first contribution to WordPress.

WordCamp NYC was a ton of fun. I met interesting people, learned a lot about WordPress, and started to get a feel for the community. I left with a desire to get more involved. I browsed through WordPress.org, stumbling upon the “Make” section. I was stoked to see that there was a design group. I couldn’t write much code beyond CSS, but I could contribute my design skills. I joined a couple of the core channels on IRC, including the design channel (#wordpress-ui), and observed for while. I watched how the other designers in the project communicated, what they worked on, where they presented their work, etc. By observing before participating, I could learn the social queues and mores of the community. I didn’t want to embarass myself — I wanted to do things the established way based on community standards.

What I found to be one of the most difficult parts of contributing was adapting to the technology used to build WordPress. I had to learn how to use command line and SVN. Getting set up in SVN and terminal was probably the biggest thing that stopped me from contributing code during my early years.

But most of all, it came down to conquering fear. Fear that my design skills would be unwanted and unwelcome; fear that other contributors would look down on me or ignore me, or that they’d find me irritating; fear that I just wasn’t good enough to contribute. Some of this fear persists today, albeit greatly reduced.

There’s a point at which I managed to conquer a little bit of that fear, stop observing, and really start to pitch in. Slowly, I started chiming in and volunteering for design tasks in IRC and the Make Design p2. I ended up doing a lot of small projects on the community side (rather than the core side) at first — some new landing pages and redesigns of sections on WordPress.org, graphics, and design for my own local meetups. I started feeling more and more confident with my contributions.

Core Props

By this point, I had done some wireframes and mockups for the core WordPress software — I’d even spoken at a WordCamp! — but I hadn’t actually gotten any code committed. Which meant, at this point in time, I didn’t have any “core props.” I was still really intimidated by Trac and SVN. I was a designer, and most design conversations happened in explicitly design space. But I really wanted to get some code committed into core, so I needed to find a CSS bug I felt qualified to fix.

At WordCamp Philly in 2012, I finally got a chance. Sunday was devoted to contributing to WordPress. There were experienced core contributors present who could teach people how to make a patch, how to submit a ticket, and suggest tickets for people to work on.

Aaron Jorbin, a core contributor and fellow speaker (and, now a friend), found a CSS issue I could work on: bringing the alternate “blue” color scheme into sync with the default “grey” scheme. He helped me get set up, helped me through saving my changes as a patch, and then helped me submit that patch to Trac. Andy Nacin, another core contributor (and future friend!) subsequently committed that patch, and I received my first core props.

After creating my first patch, contributing became easier and easier. My confidence grew, and I spent more time participating in IRC, p2s, and Trac discussions. Then, in January of 2013, major design changes started coming to WordPress.

My WordPress apprenticeship

It started with icons.

Ben Dunkle, WordPress’s official icon designer, proposed some shiny new icons for the WordPress dashboard. They were “flat” — one color, not a ton of details. The icons were awesome, but they didn’t really fit stylistically with the rest of the admin. The flat styles clashed with WordPress’ heavy use of gradients.

So, I helped imagine what the admin could look like totally flat. We tried out a couple ideas, got them committed, and refined in code. The stark styles looked really fresh after years of gradients!

Unfortunately, flattening the admin unearthed a whole lot of other issues. There wasn’t enough time to flesh out the new design before the next version of WordPress launched, so the flat styles got reverted and tabled for another time.

Pretty soon after, I received an email via my site’s contact form:

Name: Matt
Comment: Add me on Skype when you get a chance.

I think my heart stopped when I realized I had been emailed by the co-founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg. Matt invited me to come join a group that would take a broader look at redesigning the admin (codenamed “MP6”). It meant a lot for someone as important as Matt to recognize my skills. I spent a lot of my early years as a designer plagued with self-doubt, and suddenly I had someone pointing at me, going “I believe in you!”

I leapt at the chance.

Our group worked together on Skype. We quickly scoped the goal of MP6 to only update CSS and a little bit of JS. I helped Ben make some new vector icons, gave feedback and critiqued design proposals, and made some design proposals of my own. It was an intimate group where we all felt free to safely share and critique each other’s work. The mentorship I received from more experienced WordPress designers was invaluable to my growth. Working with these veterans of WordPress really helped me to grow into my fledgling wings.

WordPress 3.8 shipped with the updated admin interface, and I knew it was time to take my design career to a new level.

Leaving the nest

I’d had my eye on Automattic, the makers of WordPress.com, the Jetpack plugin, and many other products, for most of my time contributing to WordPress. A couple of the designers I worked with on MP6 were Automattic designers, and it was an absolute joy to collaborate with them. At this point I’d spent so much of my career as either a lone designer, or in a competitive environment, that having a supportive, collaborative group of people helping me improve my work was a revelation.

I desperately wanted to work at Automattic.

While MP6 was in the works, I participated in a three month long design apprenticeship at a local agency. I worked alongside experienced mentors and fellow apprentices to hone my interface and user experience design skills. It was challenging and thrilling and totally complemented the mentorship I was receiving from WordPress folks. Plus, working in a positive environment reinforced my desire to work somewhere similar.

After the apprenticeship, I finally felt like I had the skills and confidence to apply. I spent a lot of time writing my cover letter, and redesigning my portfolio to use in-depth case studies on a small number of recent projects. I finally sent off my application and crossed my fingers.

A couple weeks later, I received a reply back asking to schedule an interview. I was terrified, but luckily, Automattic conducts interviews via text, so I was able to hide my fear behind my keyboard and hopefully try to project confidence. (Aside: I also show all my emotions on my face, so online communication is the best.)

It must have worked, because I was moved on to the next phase of the application, doing a self-contained trial project, which was a whole ton of fun. I was able to put my recently refined research, interviewing, and user testing skills to use. I loved being given a real challenge to tackle. My trial went well, so I was moved along to the final interview with Matt Mullenweg. We spent a couple hours chatting on Skype, and at the end of our conversation I was given an offer. Welcome to Automattic!

After working so hard on my apprenticeship, and on MP6, joining Automattic felt incredibly validating. The work I put in, the mentorship I received, all of the collaboration, led to this moment. I felt like I had graduated from apprentice and was now embarking on my adventure as a design journeyman. And boy, has it been an adventure!

Design leadership

The past four and a half years at Automattic have been fantastic. I have the best coworkers anyone can ask for. I’ve worked with some incredibly talented and empathetic designers, whose guidance and feedback constantly encourage me to improve my skills.

I’ve continued to contribute to WordPress, slowly gaining more responsibility in the project the longer I stuck around. That’s the secret to becoming an open source leader, I discovered — decisions are made by the people who show up.

In 2016, I was asked to by the Release Design Lead for WordPress 4.5 “Coleman.” I worked alongside the other release leads to make design-related decisions that impacted the release. This was the first release we experimented with having a Design Lead. I felt like design finally had a seat at the table.

This continued to be the case last year, when Matt Mullenweg announced core focuses for the year: Editing, Customization, and the API. Both Editing and Customization had designers co-leading their focus. I was named the Customization co-lead. I’d been working on customization and site building on WordPress.com for over a year, so I had relevant experience.

I worked with my developer co-lead, Weston Ruter, on low-hanging fruit, most of which we released in WordPress 4.8. The release was smaller, focused more on improvements than new features. We made a lot of updates to widgets, which had been long neglected.

After that, we turned our sights to some more ambitious projects: drafting and scheduling changes in the Customizer, improvements to code editing in the WordPress admin, even more widget updates, and upgrades around the flow of changing themes and building menus for your site. We took a design-first approach to building out these new features, and I think it really shows in the work that we produced during the 4.9 release cycle, which Weston and I co-led.

WordPress 4.9 “Tipton” launched in November. Since then, I’ve pivoted to work on Gutenberg, the new editing experience for WordPress which should be released in 5.0. Once the editing experience wraps up, we’re going to start looking at how we can extend Gutenberg to cover site building and customization. It’s a big, audacious goal that I hope to pursue with caution, humility, and a spirit of adventure.

I owe WordPress a great deal. The connections I’ve made, the skills I’ve honed, and the mentorship I’ve received have all contributed to making me the designer I am today. I hope to give back for years to come!

The post Becoming a Better Designer Through WordPress appeared first on HeroPress.

WooCommerce 3.3.1 is available and fixes template conflicts discovered in a handful of WordPress themes that forced the team to revert WooCommerce 3.3. The team reviewed handful of the most common themes running WooCommerce and tested them for compatibility with 3.3.1.

WooCommerce developers recommend that theme authors use hooks instead of template overrides to ensure maximum compatibility.

According to Mike Jolley, WooCommerce lead developer, this release highlighted issues with the template system’s extensibility and a disconnect between theme authors on external marketplaces. “We hope to find solutions to these problems in the near future,” Jolley said.

WooCommerce 3.3.1 has at least 90 commits. Users are encouraged to create a full-backup of their sites and then browse to Dashboard > Updates to update WooCommerce from within WordPress.