In this issue: PHP 8, WordPress and Jamstack how long should a website live and many more…
Michelle has over twenty years of experience in higher education; ten years owning a web design and marketing company; and currently serves as the Head of Customer Success for Impress.org (developers of GiveWP.com and WPBusinessReviews.com). She is the podcast barista at WPCoffeeTalk.com, a volunteer for Big Orange Heart, and. is the author of (ironically in these times) “A Good Firm Handshake (and other essential business tips)” available on Amazon.com. Say hi to Michelle on Twitter at @michelleames and check out her work at worksbymichelle.com.
This week’s links will focus on mental health and charitable giving within WordPress. As the Head of Customer Success at GiveWP, and a volunteer for Big Orange Heart, my own heart aligns with helping nonprofits succeed, and also the success of Big Orange Heart, a nonprofit dedicated to the wellbeing of remote workers, with its origins in the WordPress community.
This week WebDevStudios announced that it has, to date, completed more than 8,000 hours of dedicated time to the Five for the Future initiative for WordPress. According to Laura Coronado, “Since 2014, WDS has been actively contributing to #5ftf by dedicating entire workdays to the effort. We have no intention of stopping.”
It’s efforts like theirs that keep the open source project community-driven, and community-stewarded.
Yoast uses their platform to recognize individuals who have gone above and beyond to give back to WordPress. Anyone can recommend someone in the WordPress community as a recipient on their site, and, if selected, that person’s interview will be posted on the site, and they will receive a monetary award in recognition of their dedication.
To date, 45 people worldwide have been lauded for their local and global contributions to WordPress and the WordPress Community. To nominate someone or learn more about the program, click here:
Katarzyna said so perfectly in her post here October 20, working remotely is new for many of us. And even for those for whom it’s not new, there are still challenges to face in protecting both your physical and mental wellbeing.
WeWorkRemotely has a great article on how to recognize the signs of distress, and how to help keep yourself from sliding into depression and anxiety. Their first note is: It’s ok to not be ok. So give yourself a little room, and discover what YOU need to feel better.
Bonus: I wrote about this here too:
I may be cheating a bit to cite my own article here, but did you know that a side effect of good business coaching is less stress and anxiety? That’s right, having a good business coach can actually help with not only the health of your business, but also your own wellbeing.
Finding a good coach can help you focus on prioritizing your efforts and ideas, sifting through for which should or should not be implemented, and give you a definite direction to move forward.
January 22, Big Orange Heart will host a 24-hour virtual conference to celebrate WordPress – allowing us all to come together, learn, have fun, network, and support the charity all at the same time.
The event is free (although you may voluntarily contribute a donation at registration). Sponsorships (including microsponsorships) will provide for the event, and also help fund the next year of fulfilling Big Orange Heart’s mission: “To support and promote positive well-being and mental health within remote working communities.”
Register to attend, apply to speak, or look into sponsorship here
Chris Coyier was a moderator of Matt Mullenweg & Matt Biilman’s discussion. What is more, his summary in the article below is a well-balanced voice on WP and Jamtack future.
WordPress and JamstackYoast published a preliminary report on WordPress compatibility with PHP8. It looks like all the developers will face tons of work adjusting the WP itself as well as numerous plugins & themes for the new PHP version.
As every year, Automattic invites you to take part in a questionnaire on WordPress. Collected data will help us find out who the users are, which parts of WP appeal to them the most and which they consider a weak point. You can check the data from previous years.
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.
Riad Benguella shares his story as a Gutenberg contributor. He reveals what his work on following stages of the new editor creation involved.
Pantheon developed a new service that will facilitate implementing headless CMS (not only WP). They are currently launching ‘Decoupled Bridge’ service that will enable rendering pages based on node.js (e.g., using Frontity will be available). More novelties next year.
Recently, Akismet, the plugin probably known to every WordPress user, celebrated its 15th birthday. It’s the oldest spam blocking plugin that monitors forms on the website.
A few interesting thoughts on how Open Source developers differ from the ‘enterprise’ ones.
An engaging article appeared on the Upstatement blog that explains how long a website should last. The curious fact may be that different parts of the website may have different expiration dates.
Though a bit on the side of WordPress, this article is still worth familiarizing with in the era of WP as Headless CMS. Sean C Davis made an in-depth analysis of page generation time with the most popular static site generators.
Rich Tabor’s enticing proposal concerning block styles preview. I fully support his idea – I think it will be helpful, especially with more complicated styles.
Mark Wilkinson explains how to use & why it’s worth using escaping data functions in WP.
WordPress Core finally welcomed automated tests at GitHub level. From checking coding standard to testing if NPM errors occur on Windows. That is tremendous news that everyone supporting WP development will surely appreciate.
WP Punk shows what Dependency Injection is & why it’s worth familiarizing with this design pattern.
Igor Benić shows how to create a plugin integrating WordPress with Mailchimp. It’s a very comprehensive tutorial presenting the whole process – settings, custom post type, your own widget and form handling using React.