This week: Page Builders & Gutenberg, WordFest Live 2021, headless CMS, the review of DevKinsta & much more…
Guest Editor
Marieke van de Rakt is the CEO of Yoast. She fills her days with running the business and coming up with new growth strategies. She also runs the marketing department at Yoast and currently homeschools her 4 children. Marieke talks about SEO at major conferences around the globe. You can find her on Twitter or read her blogs on Yoast.com.
Blogging, writing and creating content.
This week’s collection of links is all about writing content. I have been writing my entire life. When I was younger I wrote in my diary. Every single day. My life was pretty boring and my spelling was horrific, so I can’t read what I wrote as a teenager without feeling awkward and ashamed. I wrote a thesis and a dissertation to graduate college and obtain my PhD. At Yoast, I write blog posts about SEO and about content. And in my free time I wrote a novel (still looking for a publisher). Writing is hard. Even when you do it every single day.
At the same time, writing is really important for SEO. Content is king. Great content is what can set you apart from your competition. Great content is the thing that’ll allow you to outrank your competition.
The best thing for a writer to do is to read a lot. Reading helps you to come up with new ideas and new ways of formulating sentences. In this newsletter, I’ll share some links and posts that help me to grow as a writer. I hope it helps! Enjoy!
Content design
My team did a workshop at the content design academy and they are really enthusiastic about that. Lots of valuable content on how to write effectively.
Update your marketing strategy!
As a marketer and an SEO specialist, I am a big fan of SearchengineJournal. This post about how to build a marketing strategy in 2021 is really useful for everyone who’s planning to get marketing done right in 2021.
Full site editing
Full site editing is one of WordPress’ next promises. I am really curious about what it’ll look like. I wonder whether it’ll make my writing experience that much better. If you want to stay informed about the progress of full site editing in WordPress Core, this article in WP tavern is a great way to catch up!
Digital story on Open Source
At Yoast, we are Open Source fanboys and girls. And, we like to create new and innovative ways of sharing content. That’s why we build a digital story about Open Source. If you want to learn more about the creation of this story, check out one of the latest episodes of the Gutenberg Times webcast, in which Willemien Hallebeek and Omar Reiss (both Yoasters) tell all about designing and writing the digital story.
In his article, Chris Lema touches upon many important issues: from Page Builders limiting WP ecosystem to acknowledging that the Gutenberg based themes are introducing similar limitations.
Endangering Ecosystem Flexibility
Along with the new president of the United States comes a new website. It’s WordPress again, and I admit it’s aptly optimized.
If You missed them or couldn’t sit for 24h in front of a screen, I recommend watching all WordFest Live 2021 lectures now.
LearnDash is taking cutting-edge e-learning methodology and infusing it into WordPress. Trusted to power the learning programs for major universities, small to mid-size companies, startups, entrepreneurs, and bloggers worldwide.
WebDevStudios explain what headless CMS is and why WordPress is worth choosing for the role.
WP Buffs decided to enter 2021 with a bang and acquired WP EZI. This is their first acquisition in history.
So congratulations WP Buffs, I hope this is just a start of a very successful year.
Leonardo Losoviz has just released the GraphQL API for WordPress plugin, which is GraphQL server for WP, as the name suggests. It looks appealing, and I suppose people working with GraphQL will like it.
It’s also worth looking at this article on CSS Tricks. It’s an excellent intro to how to start using GraphQL for WordPress.
Many people using WP are bloggers, which is why I think Oana’s article on writer’s block is a must in this week’s edition. In the article, Oana deals with many issues concerning this topic. I especially appreciated one subheading: ‘The writer’s block gets unblocked when you’re writing.’
If writing a blog is your new year’s resolution and you have run out of ideas for posts, use a guidebook by Ben from LayerWP. In his entry, he collected many interesting ideas that will help you warm up.
Lewis Warren published an article where he thoroughly explains why developers should use SVG.
I completely agree with him – SVG is excellent and can simplify lots of things.
If You want to sponsor WordCamp Praha 2021, you still have a chance. We strongly encourage it! It’s a fantastic WordCamp created by marvellous people.
Gary Pendergast wrote an enticing series of articles on WP importers – how they got old and should change.
Tom McFarlin shared his first observations on DevKinsta.
I reckon I agree with him – it’s a solid base yet it still needs improvement.
A survey concerning how 2020 impacted your WooCommerce-based business turned up on DoTheWoo.
Pandemics created a lot of virtual events. Their multitude becomes somewhat tiring. The Events Calendar advises on how to persuade people to participate in the ones you organize.
Did you know you can use readme.md file in plugins on wordpress.org? I have just found out.
Igor Benić created a useful guidebook on how to add interactive prompts in WP-CLI commands.
Events
On January 28, Zagreb will host the English version of WordPress Meetup.
On January 29, the Gutenberg Times Q&A: Updates on WordPress Site-Editor (FSE) and Themes takes place.
Carolina Nymark, Ari Stathopoulos, and Anne McCarthy will participate.
On February 23, Git Tower & Buddy organizes a webinar – ‘17 Ways to Undo Mistakes with Git.’
On February 5, GiveWP honours its 100000 users, so they decided to invite them all to celebrate together.