Since we created WP Rollback two years ago, we’ve maintained it well by making necessary fixes and tweaks as the WordPress theme and plugin screens were updated. But generally speaking, it’s the type of plugin that needs very little day-to-day maintenance or updates. We’re sure our 30K active installs and 60+ 5-star reviews like it that way. Few updates means you just keep on using it and it keeps doing its job as intended.

We felt it was time to give the plugin a little love and introduce some nice new features. Here’s a quick overview.

Multisite Compatibility

This is the biggest update to WP Rollback since launch. WP Rollback is now fully multisite compatible. Because mult-site handles activates and updates very differently from a standard single install we had to make some important decisions to implement this well without adding a new settings screen or anything.

The problem of Admins versus Super Admins: Firstly, just making rollback available for multisite installs introduces a problem. Because multisites share the same codebase for all plugins and themes, you could run into an issue where an admin of a child-site rolls back a plugin or theme for the entire network. This doesn’t feel like the intended behavior that WP Rollback should have out of the box. So instead, we decided that if WP Rollback is installed on a multisite network, then the ability to rollback should be limited only to Super Admins in the network plugin/theme screens — not the child site screens at all. There may be cases where this isn’t ideal for you, and if so hit us up in support and we can provide a snippet to allow Admins to do rollbacks as well. Generally speaking, we followed the “decisions not options” mentality here and felt that this decision would suit 95% or more of our users automatically and avoid adding a settings panel for enforcing admin controls.

As a Super-Admin you can rollback from either the Network Plugins/Themes screen, or the Plugins/Themes screen of your primary site in your network.

The problem of the Themes screen: Secondly, multisite networks don’t display themes the same way that single installs do. For single installs we had to hook into the Theme modal to put the “Rollback” button near the standard “activate/deactivate” buttons to match user expectations for managing themes. But for multisite, they are listed like plugins are, in a table. Here’s a before/after:

The Rollback button on the single install versus a multisite install.

Preview Changelogs within the rollback screen

One of the main reasons why you might rollback a plugin version is because a fix or feature was implemented in a specific version that you want to rollback to. The primary way of knowing when that fix or feature was implemented is via the changelog. For some users finding the changelog is a bit tedious, so we wanted to make it as easy as possible for you to find the changelog for every version available. Here’s how that looks with our Give donation plugin:

The changelog preview with the Give Donation plugin.

Better UX for Version Saving

You might also notice in the GIF above that we’ve fixed the “Rollback” and “Cancel” buttons to the bottom of the screen. This is useful for plugins (like Give above) that have long version histories. Now you no longer have to scroll all the way down the page to click that “Rollback” button!

Changelog

Being an open-source plugin, we code in the open for all to see. This changelog links to the closed issues on the WP Rollback Github repo.

• New: You can now view plugin changelogs within the rollback screen. #7
• New: Added support for WordPress Multisite rollbacks for themes and plugins. #22
• New: Rollback button is fixed to the bottom of the page now to prevent long scrolls for rollbacks with many versions. #23
• New: Updated the WP.org plugin header graphic. #37

Install WP Rollback Today!

If you haven’t already tried WP Rollback, now’s as good a time as any. We’ll continue to maintain it and improve it, but feel free to install and send us your feedback. If you are a developer and like WP Rollback, feel free to star us on Github or contribute your ideas or PRs.

Gutenberg is the proposed new content editor for WordPress Core. It is currently in beta development. It is a radical departure from the simple WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) approach WordPress has traditionally had for content creation. As with any major change in WordPress, this will inevitably have ripple effects throughout the WordPress marketplace. With that in mind, here’s my take on how Gutenberg will affect the broader WordPress ecosystem.

The Awesome for WordPress Content Creators

From everything I’ve seen, the main motivation — primarily from WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg — is to dramatically improve end users’ experience with content creation in WordPress. With the advent of website builders like Squarespace and Wix, a cleaner WYSIWYG in Medium, and the plethora of full-featured page building WordPress plugins, the simple post editor has started to feel downright antiquated.

From all looks and appearances, Gutenberg is aiming to be the content creator of the future for WordPress. It’s not an interim improvement to the post editor — it’s a full-screen replacement for the entire post edit screen — en masse.

But will such a dramatic change actually help users or simply overwhelm them? Ideally, the Gutenberg editing experience should help users write better content with better search engine results. With that in mind, I asked a few folks who know what it takes to write great content in WordPress what they thought of Gutenberg and its potential.

Joost de Valk is the founder and creator of Yoast SEO — a plugin used by tens of millions of WordPress sites. I asked Joost if he thought this puts a giant wrench into his plugin or whether it opens new opportunities for the plugin and its users. In a word, Joost is excited.

This is good news for content writers, marketers, and advertisers. When each “little block” of your content can be customized you have more control and that ideally means better results as well.

Our own Marketing Manager, Bridget Willard concurs that if Gutenberg encourages better semantic writing, then it’s a win for content authors:

But as they say, “with great power comes great responsibility.” Just because Gutenberg enables you to write all kinds of awesome things doesn’t mean you should either. SEO and Marketing pro Pam Ann Aungst warns that having more power over your content doesn’t replace the need for professionals like herself.

Pam’s concerns are valid for sure. It wouldn’t be wise for WordPress to put a bloated page builder into core, or make AMP integration more difficult. Based on what I’ve seen from the code so far, Gutenberg doesn’t add anything additional to the front-end (except a tiny stylesheet as a basis for its layouts). Further, Gutenberg doesn’t make additional h1’s easier than currently with TinyMCE, so generally I think this will evolve to be something SEO Pro’s like Pam can eventually embrace. I think Pam and other SEO auditors and Pros are safe even if they might perhaps have more nuanced work to do; which also could be a win for them.

Generally speaking, it’s fairly clear that there is a lot of opportunity here for content writers and marketers. Gutenberg generally seems to be on track to meet these needs.

Reactions from Plugin Authors

While content authors might be already rejoicing, a lot of plugin authors are feeling hesitant and are experiencing trepidation. This comes primarily from the fact that they’ve been arm-wrestling TinyMCE into submission for years and they’ll have to reimagine how they can integrate their plugin into this new interface while supporting customers who might be totally lost. This doesn’t even factor the customers who are not on the current version of WordPress who also need support.

There is interesting insight on the Github repo for Gutenberg in this regard. The discussions around how it will support Custom Post Types and Custom Meta Boxes are complex and thoughtful.

Meta Boxes In Gutenberg

There’s no clear consensus yet, but the crux of the matter is that Gutenberg is written from top to bottom with Javascript and any plugin that does anything with the post edit screen or has a custom post type creates its own meta boxes in PHP. So how will Gutenberg manage to *not*completely ruin thousands of plugins that did everything right, but now in a language that won’t render?

This ticket is advocating for an “Extended Settings” section that will render all the PHP-based meta boxes in a static area at the bottom of the content screen. Personally, that would be a horrible user experience — but like I said, it’s the conversations around that question that are fascinating.

Gutenberg and Widgets & Shortcodes

Another big question is how will Gutenberg deal with widgets and shortcodes? This ticket  focuses primarily on the WordPress Core widgets but the implications for plugin widgets are pretty extreme. This quote from Joen Asmussen is particularly revealing.

So we might be looking at the end of hard bracket shortcodes as we know it. Personally, I say “Hallelujah!” Shortcodes are a terrible user experience particularly when a minor misspelling or missing character results in ruining the output completely. Generally speaking, plugin authors might question how much work it will be to re-code their shortcodes. I expect the Gutenberg contributors will ensure that registering new blocks would be as relatively straight-forward as registering new shortcodes. Meaning, it wouldn’t be all that much work in the end, only a matter of implementing your new block settings for the user to interact with in Gutenberg instead of memorizing shortcode attributes.

One criticism I’ve heard (and shared) from several developers is how Gutenberg identifies its blocks from a markup perspective. John James Jacoby first brought this to my attention. I expected well-defined markup; but instead, Gutenberg is using inline HTML comments to wrap block elements. What!? Here’s his summary of the problem:

He said it so well. But John’s solution is that each block would be saved like a child_post relationship and would have its own individual post_meta as well. Personally, I think that’s overkill, but I am concerned about the level of HTML markup not being consistent with either Best Practices or the WordPress Way. After all, Open Source is not just about democratizing publishing, it’s about educating future developers. This markup would be leading them astray, and that’s putting it mildly.

To get more insight, I contacted Weston Ruter. We both joined the WPwatercooler for a discussion on Gutenberg. I asked him afterward about the decision to go with HTML comments.

This is what he said:

Overall, those are all fair and reasonable points that I wouldn’t have considered at all. Further, a big part of John’s goal with child_posts is portability of blocks. The discussion is already happening about how that might be accomplished as well.

Gutenberg and Plugin Authors

Generally speaking, the plugin authors I’ve spoken with dare optimistic about and eager to see how they can make the most out of what it has to offer. For example, Adam Warner of FooPlugins likes that Gutenberg will allow plugin authors to make their features more apparent via the Insert feature, saying that

Some plugin authors have serious concerns though. Gregory Schoppe raises seven “flaws” that leaves him confused about Gutenberg.

Josh Pollock said he agrees with everything Gregory says and added to the discussion in his own article at Torque. Josh’s overarching concern is that Gutenberg can’t promise the highest level of backward compatibility that has made WordPress as successful as it has become. If backward compatibility really is ruined with Gutenberg, then it would be detrimental to WordPress as a whole. At this point though, I have faith that the Gutenberg contributors still ascribe wholeheartedly to the WordPress Philosophy of backward compatibility 100%.

Page Builders and Gutenberg

The challenge Gutenberg presents to page builders is the elephant in the room. Will Gutenberg gut and destroy all these major page builder companies that have banked on being the end-all-be-all of content and layout customization in WordPress? My short answer is — it depends.

It depends largely on the page builder in question and how they pivot. When chatting with Weston Ruter he mentioned that the Gutenberg team has been intentional about reaching out to page builder authors, like Beaver Builder, in order to learn from their insight and experience, as well as to prepare them for what’s coming.

In terms of the conversation around Gutenberg and page builders, this Github issue is really instructive. You can see the questions generally revolve around either toggling between editors (meaning they would not be integrated with each other in any reasonable fashion) or that whenever a “text editor” block is used in the page builder that it would be a Gutenberg instance. As of today though, the mock-ups being produced are primarily about having an either/or experience with page builders.

I reached out to Robby McCullough from Beaver Builder and he had this to say:

That part about “adapting to change is always tough” is the thing that will set folks like Beaver Builder apart from other page builders that will just die away.

Another factor is the nature of the builder itself. For example, Divi Builder has a huge user-base, but it’s also very tightly integrated with the Divi theme itself. With that amount of coupled control (functions inside a theme), they can do what they want with Gutenberg. But seeing it as a challenge and opportunity would be the smart move. The only problem with that is that I have no idea what coupling Divi with Gutenberg would even look like. Also,who in their right mind would want to work with that?

Tailor is a relatively new page builder that was developed intentionally simple. In many ways, it does what Gutenberg is now doing. I have a hard time imagining Tailor surviving Gutenberg — but I could be wrong.

Elementor is another one that has come to prominence recently. They have a relatively smart way of interacting with existing widgets and shortcodes. They could also easily pivot with Gutenberg, but it all depends on how they manage that pivot and that user experience.

Overall, Gutenberg could very well be a radically new content writing experience for many WordPress users. But that doesn’t mean everyone wants to use it or that everyone should be forced to use it. Allowing a natural and programmatic way for users to choose to edit their content with page builders instead of Gutenberg is a good idea. I hope that happens with finesse.

How to Stay Informed with Gutenberg Progress

If you’ve read this far, you must be really invested in Gutenberg — bravo! One thing you should have picked up through it all is that there still is a lot to be determined. It’s still very early in development of Gutenberg at this time.

Quite honestly, I think it would have been more helpful to call this release an Alpha rather than a Beta simply because many very significant and important features and code architectural questions have zero consensus still. That’s a really important aspect of this whole discussion. We are having this discussion now simply because of how much impact this new feature could potentially have on WordPress as a whole and that it might even make it into Core by the end of this calendar year.

With that in mind, if you are interested in keeping up on Gutenberg progress, here are the best places to do that:

• Download and test it here but not on a live or production site. Updates are pushed there so you’ll get them as soon as they are stable and available.
• Gutenberg Github repo is where actual code is happening and all issues are being publicly discussed there as well.
• The Make WordPress blog is posting about Gutenberg regularly as well.
• General discussion about all things Gutenberg is happening in WordPress Slack in the #core-editor channel.

Also, check out this episode of WP Water Cooler with the gang and Weston Ruter and myself. It was a really helpful conversation overall.

PHP 7 is awesome. It’s one of the best things to happen to WordPress in a long time. It’s safer and faster than any previous version of PHP, and when you turn it on, your WordPress site is noticeably faster both frontend and backend.

With that context, I’m a huge fan of PHP 7. I want as many WordPress sites on it as possible. But with such a fundamental change of your server environment, there are necessary precautions you have to take.

Naturally, you’ll need backups and a good way to revert your PHP version if things don’t go well. Some WordPress hosts provide this ability really well. Honestly, if your host doesn’t allow you to safely update to PHP 7 and potentially revert that change if necessary, consider moving hosts.

The other important thing you need to do is make sure that the theme and plugins you use to run your WordPress website are compatible with PHP 7. For that, many users are going to a new plugin by WP Engine called the “PHP Compatibility Checker.”

Caveats and Pitfalls of the PHP Compatibility Checker Plugin

The PHP Compatibility Checker is a plugin you install on your WordPress website. Once activated, it can scan all your plugins and your theme and let you know if there are any functions that are not compatible with your given version of PHP.

This is a great plugin that is very useful for the greater WordPress Community and WordPress users. I like it. It’s helpful.

BUT!

It has a couple major caveats. Consider this quote from their plugin page:

“This plugin does not execute your theme and plugin code, as such this plugin cannot detect runtime compatibility issues.”

This means the PHP Checker does not actually RUN the code. This plugin depends primarily on a library of code called “CodeSniffer.” A lot of WordPress developers use CodeSniffer. It’s a great tool. But all it does is scan your code — similar to the way the Yoast SEO plugin scans the content of your page.

Scanning for obvious things is useful, both for Codesniffer and for Yoast. But that doesn’t mean the results of that scanning is definitive.

Here’s another quote from the plugin page:

“Please note that linting code is not perfect. This plugin cannot detect unused code-paths that might be used for backwards compatibility, and thus might show false positives.”

“Linting” is the technical term for scanning for developers. This quote basically says that when it finds code that isn’t compatible, it can’t tell you why that code is there or what it does or whether it will work at all. That’s not its job. The plugin’s job is to scan your code against a known list of functions that are deprecated for your given version of PHP. Whether that code is wrapped in other code for backward compatibility reasons or not, doesn’t affect the final results.

The PHP Checker Results

When you run the PHP Checker, it’s going to show you a list of items to be wary of. It will reference the file name and line number where it found the incompatible code. Typically, it will either indicate that the offending code has either triggered a “Warning” or an “Error.”

For example, if you run this plugin with our Give plugin active, you’ll see the following results:
_____________________________________________________________________
219 | WARNING | Use of deprecated PHP4 style class constructor is not supported since PHP 7.
1044 | ERROR | Function set_magic_quotes_runtime() is deprecated since PHP 5.3 and removed since PHP 7.0
280 | WARNING | INI directive ‘safe_mode’ is deprecated since PHP 5.3 and removed since PHP 5.4.
44 | WARNING | Method name “Give_Logging::__setup_hooks” is discouraged; PHP has reserved all method names with a double underscore prefix for future use
_____________________________________________________________________

If you’re an average WordPress user who wants to be informed and careful with your website and do everything correctly, you might see those errors and think: “Oh man! I can’t upgrade to PHP 7 because I need Give and Give isn’t PHP 7 Compatible!”

You’d be right to think that if you only used this tool to make your decisions. But in the end, that’s not correct unfortunately.

Instead, Give — like WordPress itself — seeks to be backward compatible to PHP version 5.3. In order to leverage the best parts of PHP 7 but still work perfectly with older versions of PHP, Give has built in these functions as fall-backs.

You see, we develop Give every single day in PHP 7 environments and have been for over a year now. All of our developers are on PHP 7 every single day. We live and breathe PHP 7. We love it and want every user to be running it all the time. We’d NEVER push code that wasn’t compatible with PHP7. Quite the opposite. Occasionally, we accidentally push code that isn’t compatible with PHP 5.4, or 5.3.

Like I said, the PHP Compatibility Checker plugin is really useful and helpful. Nine times out of ten it could highlight a plugin or theme that is just really outdated or unprepared for PHP 7 and it could save you a lot of heartache. But rather than run the scan, then throw your arms in the air and say “I can’t upgrade because of these crappy plugins!” reach out to the plugin authors with the results of your scan and ask them to clarify. Most likely they’ll be more than happy to clarify or jump on the chance to upgrade their plugins to be compatible.

The Only Way to Check for Compatibility

So what is the best way to check for PHP 7 compatibility? There’s only one answer: A test environment. While the PHP Checker plugin can be generally helpful, the only way to know for sure whether your site works on PHP7 is to run it on PHP7.

Some hosts provide one-click PHP version changing, like Siteground, for example. You can create a staging environment of your website, switch it to PHP7, fully test it, then change your live site with confidence. WP Engine — the authors of the PHP Checker plugin — also has a robust staging environment and their support team is very hands-on when it comes to migrating to PHP7.

Another type of test environment is a local environment. We’ve written many times about the advantages of working locally. There are some really great tools out there that will let you test your website on a local PHP 7 environment. Local by Flywheel or Kalabox are both valuable local environment tools which can help you with that.

If you find that your web host cannot or will not upgrade you to PHP 7, then it’s time to look for a new host. If you don’t have the ability to create a staging environment to test your site effectively before upgrading, then it’s time to either find a new host or invest in learning how to work with a local environment. This stuff is vital for a growing and thriving business or nonprofit organization. The last thing you want to do is cripple your website and your ability to take online donations because you didn’t have the hosting tools you needed to upgrade safely.

Upgrade to PHP 7 Today

With that in mind, upgrade to PHP 7. Today! It’s important, helpful, and fast. This might just be the kick-in-the-pants you need to learn a new skill (i.e. staging, or a local environment), or to spend time on your site in a way you never thought of before.

Now, Styling Maps is Easy

Google Maps is such a powerful tool and many websites really just use it for showing a simple location. But one seemingly simple feature has always been extremely complex: colors and styling. That is, until recently.

Since we launched Maps Builder back in 2014 we supported the only way to apply map style themes easily with Snazzy Maps. In our free Maps Builder plugin, you can choose from 16 different preset themes. In our Pro version there are over 80 and if you had the know-how to create your own themes, you could upload them directly into your map. But the part about “if you had the know-how” was the really tricky part.

Recently, Google released it’s own tool for styling maps on your own. And guess what? It creates the color themes in the exact same format Snazzy Maps does so you can upload them directly into Maps Builder Pro today.

Navigating Google Styling Wizard

It may seem relatively easy to say “I want the roads red, and the other stuff blue or white” but there are a lot of different types of locations, routes, landmarks, and more that makes up Google Maps. Each element has space that it fills as well as borders. Further, the details change at different zoom levels. Generally speaking, in order to fully customize a Google Map you need A LOT of controls.

That’s what the Google Map Style Wizard does for you. It creates an interface with A LOT of options for customizing the colors and border widths of pretty much everything. Honestly, writing an article all about all the settings would be redundant and pretty much unnecessary. It’s best to just jump in and start customizing.

You can start by just choosing any of their preset themes. They’re fine, but they are basically already included in both our Free and Pro plugins. From there, you can choose your basic style then click on the “Advanced” options button. That’s where the real magic of this tool is found.

The advanced options do some smart things. Each root menu item can set a color which the sub-items can then inherit. This is really useful for keeping your colors simple. But if you want to customize further, you can open up the sub-items and customize those for more detail. With most items, we can set both a fill color and border color and border width. These three simple items can dramatically impact the overall look and feel of your maps.

For example, “Road” is a root menu item. In the example you’ll see below, I used the Orange from our WordImpress website. The side roads and highways all can inherit that color.

But here’s a few general things to keep in mind:

• Use a colorpicker (like the ColorZilla Chrome/Firefox Extension) to get the colors of your website to use.
• Keep it simple: 2-4 colors tops.
• Color contrast is really important. The side roads can get lost very easily.
• The map isn’t useful if people can’t understand where they are in relation to important landmarks.

Once you have that all dialed in, you need to apply your style to your maps.

Apply Your Styles with Maps Builder Pro

This is the easy part. In Google Style Wizard just hit “Finish” and you’ll see a popup like this show up:

Google Style Wizard JSON Popup

Once you hit that “Copy JSON” link, go into your Maps Builder Pro map, and in the “Display options” section click on the “Set a Custom Snazzy Map” button and paste the code into the text area that appears.

Here’s a quick video overview of how that works dynamically:

Try it out with our WordImpress Maps Styles

Here’s the JSON code I created when testing this out. Copy and paste the below into your map:

[
  {
    "elementType": "geometry",
    "stylers": [
      {
        "color": "#212121"
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "elementType": "labels.icon",
    "stylers": [
      {
        "visibility": "off"
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "elementType": "labels.text.fill",
    "stylers": [
      {
        "color": "#757575"
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "elementType": "labels.text.stroke",
    "stylers": [
      {
        "color": "#212121"
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "featureType": "administrative",
    "elementType": "geometry",
    "stylers": [
      {
        "color": "#757575"
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "featureType": "administrative.country",
    "elementType": "labels.text.fill",
    "stylers": [
      {
        "color": "#9e9e9e"
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "featureType": "administrative.land_parcel",
    "stylers": [
      {
        "visibility": "off"
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "featureType": "administrative.locality",
    "elementType": "labels.text.fill",
    "stylers": [
      {
        "color": "#bdbdbd"
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "featureType": "poi",
    "elementType": "labels.text.fill",
    "stylers": [
      {
        "color": "#757575"
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "featureType": "poi.park",
    "elementType": "geometry",
    "stylers": [
      {
        "color": "#181818"
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "featureType": "poi.park",
    "elementType": "labels.text.fill",
    "stylers": [
      {
        "color": "#616161"
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "featureType": "poi.park",
    "elementType": "labels.text.stroke",
    "stylers": [
      {
        "color": "#1b1b1b"
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "featureType": "road",
    "elementType": "labels.text.fill",
    "stylers": [
      {
        "color": "#8a8a8a"
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "featureType": "road.arterial",
    "elementType": "geometry",
    "stylers": [
      {
        "color": "#373737"
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "featureType": "road.highway",
    "elementType": "geometry",
    "stylers": [
      {
        "color": "#f39731"
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "featureType": "road.highway",
    "elementType": "geometry.fill",
    "stylers": [
      {
        "color": "#363636"
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "featureType": "road.highway",
    "elementType": "geometry.stroke",
    "stylers": [
      {
        "color": "#363636"
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "featureType": "road.highway.controlled_access",
    "elementType": "geometry",
    "stylers": [
      {
        "color": "#f39731"
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "featureType": "road.local",
    "elementType": "labels.text.fill",
    "stylers": [
      {
        "color": "#616161"
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "featureType": "transit",
    "elementType": "labels.text.fill",
    "stylers": [
      {
        "color": "#757575"
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "featureType": "water",
    "elementType": "geometry",
    "stylers": [
      {
        "color": "#729fc0"
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "featureType": "water",
    "elementType": "labels.text.fill",
    "stylers": [
      {
        "color": "#3d3d3d"
      }
    ]
  }
]

What’s Your Favorite?

There’s another tool called MapStylr which does a similar thing and has much more preset styles. You can see it in the video above. So there are more tools for this as well, your options really are many.

Have you customized your maps to match the look/feel of your site?

We’d love to see it live. Feel free to drop a link in the comments or even drop your custom JSON code there as well.

At Post Status’ Publish event this past December, I was talking to a web agency owner. He had a successful business, running large enterprise web projects. We talked a bit about advertising. He didn’t know who David Ogilvy was. As the father of advertising and a requisite study for most agency owners to operate successfully, I was surprised.

Then again, I have often heard from many in our space that building a business without advertising is something to take pride in. I don’t understand this notion.

It seems that a lack of advertising efficacy runs deep in the veins of our community. For me, and I’m sure much of the great business community, this is a blatant signal that us WordPress folks are much more “business beginner” than many of us internally conclude. Thankfully, that’s changing.

State of the Word

The culminating event of WordCamp US is Matt Mullenweg’s State of the Word — I’m happy that my team and I were there to listen live. Thinking about the conversation I had a few days prior, sitting in those little chairs — at a packed house — advertising became relevant in WordPress.

When Matt Mullenweg announced the start of the WP Growth Council at the State of the Word, I remember feeling the same energy from my childhood when I learned how to hit a real Hockey slapshot! Safe to say, I was stoked.

I’m proud of Matt for making this statement and taking the steps necessary to succeed in line with reality of our business and volunteer ecosystem. In 2008, WordPress got away with not advertising. In 2017 and beyond, we will not.

Wix and Squarespace are Spending Ad Dollars

First things, first: get to know David Ogilvy. He is the father of modern advertising. Ogilvy, arguably is the reason we have California wine, Colgate toothpaste, and marketing rigor. His book, Confessions of an Advertising Man written in 1963, is required reading.

As Ogilvy will teach you, competitors are lurking, trying to infiltrate, distract, and take market share. And they can lurk more easily with advertising budgets and become relevant and market-aware overnight.

Did anyone (other than the parents of the creators themselves) known anything about Wix globally, prior to this ad in February, 2016? Likely, no. Today, they are so prominent, that many of us obsess with their model, growing user base, and technology.

WIX SuperBowl Ad:

Back in 2016, our friends at AdWeek had something to say about an unscalable, un-versioned, no-developer network platform used for small businesses.

And guess who was getting talked about?

Wix. Not WordPress.

Ad Gold in 2017

And in 2017, Squarespace struck ad gold.

Have you seen their John Malkovich ad talk right against our friends at Woo? I was so stirred by emotions in this ad because it represents many of our hopes and dreams.

Even more, I was emotionally distraught as proprietary platform like Squarespace own our communities actual space. Like it or not, they are winning the ad game.

And the long form ad is what wins awards. It also takes market-share from WordPress based businesses.

It’s Our Turn, WordPress. It’s time to advertise .Org

On that sunny, Saturday afternoon in December, WordPress woke up and met Ogilvy. Now it’s time to run.

Here’s how building the ad-pool and raising the $14 million+ capital funds for WordPress to build a national advertising campaign might go:

1. First, Automattic must lead the way. The leadership has taken the first step with the WP Growth Council. They also need to ante up $750,000.
2. Next, the top website hosts need to step up and each put in $100,000.
3. Then, every WordCamp attendee (in the US) for the foreseeable future, should have $2 of their ticket to go to the WordPress Global Brand Fund. We are all in this together.
4. Automattic will be represented in the advisory council as lead. However, advertising will be governed by the fund participants.
   • Every WordPress Plugin and Theme Shop provides 0.5 percent of their gross operating income into the ad fund.
   • When the community steps up, they are rewarded.
   • All participants vote in the ad council and are given free WordCamp tickets (up to 10) for the year.
   • They also receive recognition on the WordPress.org website for supporting the Brand.
5. None of this violates our values. To succeed and compete, we all need to start agreeing more with Mr. Ogilvy.

Collective Ad Fund – The Math

Here’s the math on building a fund of $14,330,000/yr to advertise WordPress.org and all the glory and hope we deliver on.

As our business and volunteer ecosystem comes together, let’s remember why we are all here: to democratize publishing, bringing open and easy to access publishing tools for the web — for everyone.

Borrowing a term from 2008 ad campaigns: “now more than ever, in these times — we all need to step up.”

As of today, WordImpress is in and is ready to give 0.05% to a global ad fund.

Who’s coming with us? It’s a half of penny, CEOs!

Question 1: When did you first become interested in code and programming?

For most of my life, coding was a means to an end. As a youngster, I was always more interested in the end result, whether that was video games, 3D animation, or eventually, websites. I loved the element of interaction, and I understood that in order to create it, I had to learn how to code.

Over time, I developed a passion for coding itself, due mainly to the problem-solving nature of the work. While my internal designer-developer makeup has shifted over the years, I try not to stray too far in either direction as I believe a foundation in one field makes me stronger in the other.

Question 2: How did you come across WordPress?

I developed my first WordPress site as a student at Drexel University in 2006. An English professor discovered that I had an interest in design and computers and asked me to come on board at the student-run online journal. I began by designing graphics for articles (or “featured images” as we know them today) and within a couple of years I was redesigning the entire site in WordPress.

Even back then I was developing custom themes based on my own designs, mostly because I didn’t know there was another option! Looking back, I’m kind of glad I did since diving into code is what led me to where I am today.

Question 3: What inspires you about Open Source?

While I developed my first WordPress site back in 2006, it wasn’t until about 2014 that I discovered there was such a thing as a WordPress community. Easily the thing that inspires me most is the selfless nature of everyone who is willing to give back.

My first real interaction with the community was through the Advanced WordPress Facebook group. Since joining, I’ve spent countless hours giving and receiving help and just observing the work shared by others. It’s also where I first met Matt and Devin, so I owe a lot to that group.

Question 4: What problem was the most difficult to solve?

My biggest struggle is internal. I’ve always been a researcher, a planner, a thinker. I have this need to convince myself that I’ve considered all possibilities and this is the best way forward. The reality is sometimes you just gotta sit down and do it. I’m working on it

Question 5: What do you hope to accomplish this year?

I’m looking forward to putting some things on the record this year. I’ve never had a problem sharing experiences or offering advice in one-on-one conversation, but the impostor syndrome always kicks in when I start writing things down.

I’ve learned so much from the work shared by other WordPress developers over the years, so I’d really like to make 2017 the year when I start giving back in a more permanent way. That means less thinking and more doing across the board.

Question 6: What are your favorite non-screen hobbies?

I’m really fortunate to be able to work for WordImpress from my home office in Pittsburgh, which is where I was born and raised.

Not long ago my brother, sister, and I were spread out in cities across the East Coast with my parents back home in Pittsburgh. Now we’re all back within driving distance of each other, and I’m a proud uncle of two–soon to be three–beautiful nieces. Spending time with them is my favorite hobby.

Every now and then I get to do some teaching of my own. For the last few years, I’ve taught an Hour of Code at the local elementary schools. It’s challenging, rewarding, and something I hope to do more of in the future.

Kevin teaches a class of 50 third-graders how to think like a developer, starting with the “big picture.”

Question 7: What is your favorite book or movie?

Good Will Hunting – There’s a theme of unlocked potential that resonated with me since the first time I saw it. I’m also a sucker for a good monologue and Robin Williams in the park scene is up there with the best of all time.

Question 8: Quotes to live by?

“By idolizing those whom we honor, we do a disservice both to them and to ourselves. By exalting the accomplishments of Martin Luther King Jr. into a legendary tale that is annually told, we fail to recognize his humanity, his personal and public struggles, that are similar to yours and mine. By idolizing those whom we honor, we fail to realize that we could go and do likewise.” – Charles Willie

In our line of work, where we are surrounded by and depend upon the accomplishments of others, it’s easy to convince ourselves that we’re not capable or worthy of doing likewise. We allow plugin sales, or Twitter followers, or 5-star ratings to define the person, and in doing so, we fail to realize that even the most successful among us deal with the same struggles as the rest of humanity.

What I love most about this quote is the sense of obligation and responsibility that it makes me feel, especially towards the WordPress community. It’s important that we honor those who have laid the foundation for our success, but it’s equally important that we go forth and attempt to do the same. I am so proud to be part of a team that makes that attempt every day.

There is a lot more to SEO than just the technical. SEO is way more than keywords.

“Optimization is really the last step of a really long process.” Joost de Valk

Some people think search engine optimization (SEO) only matters for big box companies or for e-commerce sites. But Joost believes that SEO is for everyone. In fact, that’s their new mission.

Organic Search is Not Dead

Optimizing your text for search is still important and it’s important to note that organic search is still a major factor.

“22.6% of all e-commerce in the US came from organic search.” Joost de Valk

Make sure that Google has access to titles, robots.txt, and JavaScript. There is a lot more to SEO than just optimizing that exact post or page. Your whole site should be able to be crawled by a search engine.

Take Advantage of Google Search Console

Joost believes that the better source of data, rather than Google Analytics, comes from Google Search Console.

“Every single one of you should have a Google Search Console account.” Joost de Valk

By the way, there is a beginner’s guide to Google Search Console from Moz.

Utilize Proper URL Structure

One of the things Joost brought up is the URL structure in WordPress. It’s important that the words in your link (URL) contain your keyword and relate to your page or post’s content. Your URL (permalink) should say something about your content.

Currently, the default in WordPress for permalinks is plain. That looks like domainname.com/?p=123. That’s not optimized for SEO.

“Make [your URL] as simple as possible and that they make sense. If it doesn’t say anything about your content, it’s probably not a good URL.” Joost de Valk

In the settings of your WordPress dashboard go to Permalink Settings to change your URL structure. Since Google counts the words in your permalink as part of a ranking signal, that’s going to be good choice. High volume sites can use time-related permalinks. For most businesses, post name is perfect.

Write About Your Product, Simply

Keyword research is still an important part of optimizing your site. But think of parallel searches, think of how your customers find you, and do some sample searches.

“Because you can’t really install a plugin to do this for you, you need to do keyword research.” Joost de Valk

Joost also emphasizes that your product’s name is not what people are searching for, as much as you think they are. So find out how people are searching for you.

This means writing about each topic separately. Don’t try to rank for several keywords on the same post or page.

“You simply cannot be found for words that you never use. Each topic needs its own post or page.” Joost de Valk

Your Site Should Be Mobile Responsive

One in four (28%) of WordPress websites are not mobile friendly. This is not good. Even though Google rolled out ranking factors for mobile-responsive sites in 2015 (do you remember Mobilegeddon?), Joost says, “we need to get better and we need to get better soon.” When he says “we,” he’s referring to us as a community of WordPress developers.

It may be surprising, but not every theme in the WordPress repository is mobile-friendly. Not just that but not every theme contains mobile responsive elements (like images and embedded content). You’ll need to test as you develop your custom themes.

“Not having a mobile friendly theme like taking a knife to a gunfight.” Joost de Valk

Watch the the whole presentation here:

“Meetups are a leading indicator of WordCamps”

You cannot hold a WordCamp on $20 a day alone. The cost isn’t $40; it’s closer to $516 which is made possible by the sponsors and volunteers. There were 115 WordCamps in 2016 with 41 unique countries and 36,000 people attended with 750 unique organizers and 1,036 sponsors and over 2,000 speakers.

“Meetups are a leading indicator of WordCamps.” Matt Mullenweg

As we know, meetups are the groundwork for WordCamps. In 2016, there were 3,193 official Meetup events in 58 countries. And 99.9% of the revenue that runs through the WordPress Foundation is WordCamps.

And, what’s more, the presentations at WordCamps are available for anyone to watch on WordPress.tv. This is an untapped resource for beginners in my view and it’s good to see they’re expanding to YouTube as well.

“We had a 26.7% increase in videos published this year on WordPress.tv.” Matt Mullenweg

Improvements to WordPress.org

WordPress as a software or content management system (CMS) is improved by a team of volunteers and contributors. If you want to begin contributing, forums is a good way to start.

“Participating in forums is not just great way to help other people but to learn as well.” Matt Mullenweg

The Contributor team is also working on making the plugin repository, often referred to as the repo, more searchable and user friendly.

“You’ll start to notice in your dashboard [and in the repo] much better search results.” Matt Mullenweg

WordPress is working toward making plugins accessible to more languages with the GlotPress team. They’re making progress, but there’s a lot more to do. So if language translation is your thing, this is a good way for you to give back.

“The top 10 plugins are 82% complete in Top 12 languages.” Matt Mullenweg

Last year, Matt’s call to action was to learn JavaScript, deeply. This year he said, “28% of WordPress is JavaScript. It was about 28% last year, too.”

Security will become important, too. In fact, you will have more options and features if WordPress detects that https is enforced.

“Starting next year, WordPress is going to have progressive enhancements [if you have #SSL].” Matt Mullenweg

Though WordPress still has a commitment to backward compatibility, they now suggest running on PHP version 7. We recently made this change on GiveWP.com and the difference is significant. We applaud the move to go forward.

“WordPress.com is now 100% on PHP 7.” Matt Mullenweg

The Release of WordPress 4.7 “Vaughn”

For the first time ever, Mullenweg previewed the WordPress Release video and announced the Jazz singer in advance of the release. The audience at the State of the Word learned live that 4.7 would be named after Sarah “Sassy” Vaughn and saw the release video.

Lead developer Helen Hou-Sandí talked about the features and themes of WordPress 4.7 including the new default theme “Twenty Seventeen” that is more business-focused.

“When you set up a menu from your site, now you can add new pages.” Helen Hou-Sandí

“In 4.7 we will have live previewing of custom CSS. It will work with Jetpack. I promise.” Helen Hou-Sandí

“WordPress 4.7 includes the content implements for the #RESTAPI.” Helen Hou-Sandí

Even the website to the Guggenheim Museum is built using the REST API endpoints. Let’s continue to build the web!

New Approach to the WordPress Release Schedule

Previously, WordPress has been on a release schedule with 3 major releases per calendar year. There have been 14 major releases in the past five years resulting in the growth the market share for WordPress.

“In the past five years we’ve been able to grow WordPress’ market share from 13.1 to 27.2%” Matt Mullenweg

In 2017, the coming releases will be lead by design and will not have hard dates. They feel it’s important to focus on UI/UX.

“If the core of WordPress is about publishing and writing I think we should have the best interface in the world…” Matt Mullenweg

WordPress Growth Council

Matt recognizes the importance of advertising for the growth of WordPress as a CMS and a community. We believe that the move to set up a council is good. Market research and determining how to target both end users and developers has been something we’ve worked on for a few years now.

“There’s no one company in the WordPress ecosystem to match 300 million dollars in spending.” Matt Mullenweg

WordPress has grown but can still do so much more. As a plugin development shop, we like where this may be going. We’re interested to see how we can collaborate more as an ecosystem; especially, with sharing benchmarking and indexing data.

Our team is very excited about this new development. We’ll be writing more about it in the near future.

The Trend in Nonprofit Work

As you know, Give is our flagship plugin for online donations and donor management. So of course, we’re most excited about the announcement that the WordPress Foundation will partner with more nonprofits. We’re finding that nonprofit work isn’t just a niche, it’s part of all of our lives.

Part of the call to democratizing publishing is, in fact, giving a voice to the voiceless. WordPress wants to return to that mission with in-kind grants and scholarships to nonprofits.

In 2017, The WordPress Foundation is going to promote hackathons to build sites for nonprofits. We saw a lot of success with groups like Website Weekend in Los Angeles and GiveCamp. As a company, we’re proud to participate with in-kind donations to both of those in 2016. It’s exiciting to see what 2017 will bring with WordPress’ new emphasis on nonprofits.

Let’s all continue to press forward, build community, and give a voice to the voiceless.

Watch The State of The Word:

So, how do you spend days in another location, hours on a plane, and still work with product development, support, finance, and marketing without missing a beat?

Here’s our game plan, by department.

Devin Walker, Head of Product

Development never sleeps. Just because we’re going to be at WCUS doesn’t mean our code sits in wait. That said, there will be fewer commits and a pull request (PR) might take a little longer while we are focusing on getting the most out of WCUS. We’ve planned for this slowdown within our milestones and have scheduled accordingly so there are no gotchas.

That said, surprises can happen. If there’s a critical bug that’s discovered, rest assured we will be there to jump on it. We planned to all have laptops and WiFi at nearly every location throughout the week, so hotfixing won’t be a problem. I don’t anticipate this will come up at all, but you never know, and it’s always better to be safe than sorry.

Matt Cromwell, Head of Support

Support is a very “high touch” type of service — meaning we can’t really be multitasking while providing support to our customers. Since our whole team will be at WordCamp US it proves to be particularly challenging for us to provide the full Priority Support that we normally provide.

As a Support Team, we have two main goals for WordCamp US:

1. Provide an excellent team-building experience that improves and enhances us as a Team and thereby improves our overall Support strength.
2. Keep in communication with our customers to ensure their issues can be resolved even if somewhat slower.

Balancing those two goals is the challenge. In order for us to really have a team-building experience, we need to be able to “unplug” a bit and spend time with each other away from our computers. We are aiming to do that without slowing our support too much by doing the following:

• We’ll have prominent notices throughout the Support area informing Customers of our slower Support responses. We believe communication and properly setting expectations are vital to top quality Support team.
• All ticket confirmations will reflect our slower response times as well.
• We do have WiFi throughout the time we are away and are scheduling times for each of us individually to focus on responding to new inquiries. This means the following:
  • Questions that can be answered easily without much additional troubleshooting should be able to continue to be resolved same-day.
  • Questions that require a higher than normal amount of troubleshooting might have to be responded to in full after our return.

Here’s an overview of our Support Calendar for WordCamp US:

• Monday, November 28 — No delays
• Tuesday, November 29 — No delays
• Wednesday, November 30 — No delays for WordImpress customers; Give customers might experience some delay
• Thursday, December 1 — No delays for WordImpress customers; Give customers might experience some delay
• Friday, December 2 — Some delays for all customers
• Saturday – Sunday — We are closed as normal
• Monday, December 5 — Some delays for all customers
• Tuesday, December 6 and onward — Back to normal Support hours. Pending replies from the previous week will be addressed first.

We are highly committed to your success with your website, your business, and your online donations. Feel free to reach out to us via our Contact Form or Support Form. Especially, if you have any concerns at all about the timing of our retreat and your website goals.

Jason Knill, Head of Finance

Day-to-day finance is currently focused on meeting forecasted goals while ensuring each of our business positions remain strong and healthy. I completed forecasts for the coming 18 months ahead in early Q4 so I’m well-prepared for business travel. Even while at WordCamp US, I’ll be monitoring our average job size, advertising cash flow, and our daily revenues against planned monthly goals.

This year there have been several key activities that resulted in our business outperforming its monthly forecasted revenue, while also increasing expenses. One of those activities are local WordCamps. Though we are not a sponsor of WCUS (we are sponsoring the Post Status Publish event), I project unplanned growth from the week in Philadelphia.

I also plan, buy, and manage the advertising campaigns, so there are several several paid Twitter and Facebook social campaigns continuing while the team is at WCUS. We’ve been running a WordCamp US campaign for a few weeks and will continue our WCUS Speaker feature series. Our head of Support, Matt Cromwell, recently gave a knockout presentation on SSL, so we’ll be promoting that to our WordPress and Cause audiences. Finally, we’ll continue with our WordCamp-centric, “Happy WordCamping” Campaign, targeting the hashtag #WCUS.

These ad dollars will extend our reach beyond organic audiences by upwards of five times and will positively impact the business in conjunction with WCUS.

Bridget Willard, Marketing Manager

The good thing about marketing is that can be adjusted, planned, and implemented ahead of time. Also, we can adjust our goals. During normal times, we publish four pieces of content between our two main websites, WordImpress and Give. But for this week, we reduced our goal to two posts instead of four. We also plan ahead. For our editorial calendar, we plan to publish this post, for example, on Monday, November 28, but we are writing it November 18.

Social media monitoring is easily accomplished during travel by using my iPhone. This is when it’s good to switch planes as opposed to a direct flight, because I’ll be able to check Twitter and Facebook while waiting for the next flight. If my flight has WiFi, even better! I will also bring my MacBook to schedule tweets, manage emails, and, of course, live tweet during the WordCamp US sessions.

What are you doing to get the younger students more digitally literate?

“In Kansas City, I’ve worked long and hard to get WordPress curriculum built into K-12 structure, which is difficult. We recently ran a couple of pilot programs, one as an after-school program and one as an accelerated summer class. The local WordPress community has also collaborated with Connecting for Good, a group that works with Google Fiber’s team.”

Josepha mentioned that the collaborative and non-hierarchical nature of working on an open source project has been a surprising sticking point in elementary educational structures. That said, she’s excited to see WordPress being used and enthusiastically supported in the Higher Education Community with conferences like WP Campus.

Josepha goes into detail about bridging the digital divide in her 2015 talk at WordCamp New York City that you can watch on WordPress.tv.

When bridging digital divides, do you set up a meetup or go in a school? How is this done?

“For the most part, I teach teachers and administrators at this point. Just taking information and providing easy access to it without educating on why it’s important, isn’t really effective. It can be easy to find people who want to work with children, Automattic is halfway through a pilot program with a group called Hack the Hood, but the really, really hard work is convincing the decision makers in a child’s life that digital literacy is important and WordPress can get them there. It’s hard work and a hard sell.”

Why is it a hard sell?

“In a lot of cases, where you have adults who are not already involved in technology, in their minds, the best way to take care of their students is vocational training.”

In many cases, the parents of those underserved in technology are living hand to mouth and, not surprisingly, they encourage their children to work in a job that pays money immediately, rather than sitting down at a computer. Josepha believes it’s important to reach and educate this demographic as the marketable skills taught in development have a higher pay potential, though not necessarily immediate.

What’s Josepha’s WordPress Origin Story?

“My mom actually introduced me to WordPress in 2009. She had an extra ticket to a WordCamp.”

Josepha’s background was in vocal performance and data analysis. It seems like a strange combination but has helped her in her current role in technology advocacy.

Learning to encourage others in the team-building aspects of drama and theatre has given her the tools to communicate her passion in digital literacy. She sees a need, like digital literacy, and addresses it. She was a founding board member for the group Kansas City Women in Technology.

Where are you at with planning your WCUS talk?

“My outline is done. Slides mostly done. I’m at the part where I run through it regularly and know what I’m saying. I don’t like to memorize my presentations, and I don’t like to plan all of it. I plan about 68% and just watch the audience and see what’s resonating.

I’ve been giving speeches in public since I was 16. It’s been a long time. I’m really familiar in front of people and the performance part of it. I had that training in high school.”

As a performance artist, do you practice facial expressions / body language, too?

“I don’t necessarily keep track of my facial expressions but I do pay attention to the hand gestures that are likely to go with certain thoughts. The part of your brain that is trying to remember a word, is closely related to the part of your brain that controls hand gestures.

I pay attention to how much I’m pacing. It can often look like a tiger in a cage. That is not good in a speaker.

I work really hard to memorize the part in my thought stream where I switch my slides. And also, if there’s a particularly interesting aside, I do try really hard to practice the timing and intonation.”

What is your advice to this year’s WCUS Speakers?

The first step to speaking at a WordCamp is applying. It seems obvious but so many people don’t apply because they’re afraid.

Josepha noted that first-time speakers may have a hard time submitting a good speaker application, but the worst that can happen is a no; then you try again.

As for the actual presentation, she recommends against using slides as your speaker notes.

“Avoid the desire to put all of your words that you’re going to say with your mouth onto your slides. When I see words on the slide, I start reading the words and stop listening to the talk.”

Josepha also recommends making eye contact to connect and engage with the audience.

“There’s something about making eye contact when you’re a nervous speaker. The thing to remember is that we don’t actually have to look at the audience’s eyeballs. You can look at their ear, it’s pretty convincing from stage.”

What are some of your goals in attending WCUS as an Automattician?

“I have broad open goals and specific goals with our team. My broad open goals are always to meet new people, I try not to meet the people I talk to every day.

When you get out to 2,000 – 5,000 attendees, the ability to connect with strangers really plummets — even with 500 people. I make a specific effort to look around the room for people who look lost.”

From an idealistic and inclusive mindset, she’d like to see enough WordCamps for an event to be an easy drive/train ride for anyone. WordCamp Central says they’ll support about 118 WordCamps this year.

Having more local WordCamps, as opposed to larger regional camps, lessens the financial burden for freelancers (travel, hotel, time loss for work). She notes that one out of four people we meet are working in WordPress and they’re just like you and me.

“If WordCamps are a ½ road trip away without too much financial burden, that will cause the whole program to reflect what we’re doing with WordPress in general.

If you think of WordCamp as a celebration of your local community meetup, then regional WordCamps are a celebration of what your civic group is doing. That’s a celebration of WordPress in the United States. How cool is that? I think there’s nothing stopping us getting 10k at WCUS or WCEU.”

Watch Josepha Haden’s 2015 WordCamp US Talk here.

We can’t wait to attend her talk at this year’s WCUS!