This week: FOMO, Frontity & Gutenberg, Upstairs community, intro to WP-CLI & much more…
Guest Editor:
I’m a Croatian based developer and open source enthusiast. I work at Infinum as a lead WordPress engineer, where I make sure my teammates are always up to date with the latest news in PHP, WordPress, and other programming areas. I also love to contribute to WordPress. I was a team representative at Themes Team at wordpress.org, and I’m a member of the Coding Standards group. When not at the computer, I am either baking or somewhere in nature hiking.
If you’ve ever met me, or read some of my blogs, you know I love clean code and automating things. There is something exciting in writing a piece of code and seeing how it executes. Then finding ways to make it more readable or make it run faster.
There are always ways to improve it. It’s the nature of our jobs as engineers. Our platforms evolve, and our tooling evolves as well. So we must adapt.
One of the major changes that came to the world of PHP was without a doubt the arrival of PHP 8 a few days ago. And from the looks of it, it will have a pretty big impact. Part of me cannot wait to use it. Another part, the part that is working with WordPress, is a bit worried. From the looks of things, it will take a lot of time and effort in making WordPress PHP 8 compatible.
Which is sad. WordPress, with its huge user base, should be a leader in promoting the usage of the latest and greatest features PHP has to offer. After all, PHP still powers the core of WordPress. With the coming of a new core editor, the focus shifted away from its foundations to the more user-facing features.
If you want to read comprehensible features coming to PHP 8 you can read What’s new in PHP 8 by Brent Roose.
Besides the new PHP release, the WordPress 5.6 release is also very near. The changes in it are great: New application passwords for REST API; changes in the automatic updates; updates in the core editor; next step in deprecating jQuery and new default theme, are some of the updates you can read in the WordPress 5.6 field guide.
And since I love to write I thought that it would be fitting to end with one of my favourite online content writers: Marijana Kostelac (aka Marijana Kay). Her tips on writing more impactful content helped me a lot when writing blog posts. Go ahead and read about Blog Posts That Convert:
Also, she made an excellent post about creating a one-page website that gets results, so check that out as well:
And follow her on Twitter, she gives great advice on writing.
Nathan Wrigley & David Waumsley debate whether to use FOMO in marketing. I am firmly against it and think that basing marketing on any disorder is simply wrong. It is, however, worth knowing the arguments of both sides.
Stackable described the process of improving the UI & UX of their plugin very precisely. Such analyses read well.
Kinsta launched the Application Monitoring Tool, i.e., a tool for precise analysis of what goes on under our website’s hood. This way, we can easily detect any existing problems.
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.
Felix Arntz did a very detailed analysis of native Lazy Loading implementation stages in various CMS-es (WP included).
A guidebook that will help you start Frontity combined with SpinupWP.
Justin Tadlock explains why WP Tavern hadn’t prepared an entry with Black Friday & Cyber Monday sales this year.
Toolset published a step by step guide on how to create a website for real estate.
How to combine Gutenberg with Frontity? A fine case study shows how Frontity creators did just that during the rebuilding of their website. They discussed many relevant aspects – Full Site Editing included.
Pixelgrade has a unique system of creating their community – they are amazingly open & transparent. It’s worth finding out what is behind this kind of approach.
During Mega Meetup Plugin Draft, panellists chose plugins they considered the most useful. Though some of them are well-known, a few niche products appeared (e.g., WPCore). Check them out – you might find something that suits you.
A WP-CLI 101 appeared on Buddy.works. If you still hesitate to use it, you should read this guide.
RTCamp presented a fascinating case study concerning automating documentation. It might not sound very appealing, yet it is very compelling & useful.
Joost comes back with a monthly analysis of the CMS market. No change in general – WP still on top, and the market share – growing.
Upcoming Events:
The Making of Open-Source Story by Yoast with Blocks
Dec 10 at 2:30 pm EST (19:30 UTC)
If you are interested in using WordPress together with Buddy CI/CD, mark 15th December in your calendars.