Another year has passed. Can you believe that we’ve been preparing the Polish version of WP Owls since 2018? Apparently, it took time to create the first summary, yet we hope it becomes a nice tradition.

New site

We launched the 3.0 version of the site in June. Apart from aesthetic change, we optimized it to the limit and added a dark theme. You can read more about the new version here (it’s in Polish only, but owing to Google Translator, you can also read it in other languages).

English version

For us, the grandest event in 2020 was launching the English version. On October 20th, we officially started WP Owls website. Since then, knowing Polish is no longer necessary to read our newsletter.

It wouldn’t have happened were it not for the tremendous help of two people.

Maciek Swoboda, who, with his company WP Desk, significantly contributed to WP Owls’ activation, is the first of them. The domain had already been waiting for a few months, the plans were huge, but it was Maciek who made launching in just a month possible.

The other is Asia Kałuża, an English Philology graduate experienced in IT business who boldly translates WP Owls into English.

Great thanks to both of you – this summary would be much shorter if not for you.

Guest editors

On the one hand, we are aware of our habits, favorite tools, or topics. We’ve always intended only to publish links that we find appealing. Thus, you could even find the link to the article on how BioWare creates games or links to various libraries on GitHub. We avoid like the plague rankings such as ’30 best plugins’, ’20 best themes for all…’, etc.

On the other hand, we recognize that we live in a bubble. To broaden our view, we decided to invite guest editors who brought in a lot of fresh air. What’s more, they have inspired us incredibly.

The first to come was Maciek Swoboda (on September 21st). He shared great articles on plugins. He was followed by Maciek Kuchnik (Gutenberg), Kasia Janoska (remote work), Michelle Frechette (mental health), Greg Ziółkowski (Gutenberg), Denis Žoljom (programming & writing) and Marcin Andrzejewski (community).

One positive surprise was that despite our concerns, the people we had invited to contribute were eager to dedicate their time to prepare materials for us. Yet again, we confirmed that we are a great community.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank our editors very much. It might surprise you, but we anxiously await your materials as we always learn from them.

Some numbers

Starting from the Polish version – wordpressowka.pl. In 2020 we published 42 editions, exactly 571 links from unique sources.

Wpowls.co had 13 editions with 223 links from 133 sources.

Apparently, the number of articles in an edition has increased significantly since the English version started. Evidently, more appealing content appeared.

We’ve noticed a few more significant distinctions between the Polish and English version: Twitter & Facebook’s power is much different – in Poland, Facebook is the number one social network, and abroad it’s Twitter that carries us. Facebook is relatively insignificant for our foreign colleagues.

The numbers of interactions also differ completely – the English version receives more comments & shares (especially on Twitter). However, Poles give us private feedback more often.

Fame

We’ve always been creating WP Owls as a hobby, and the highest form of payment is the opportunity to help others. We know how hard it is to keep up to date in the WP world.

It melted our hearts when:

• Marcin Andrzejewski dedicated a pretty big part of his WordUp! Kalisz to us, and he was grateful that WP Owls made it possible to tell Monday from the rest of the week during Polish lockdown.
• Maciek Kuchnik dedicated a big part of his vlog to us,
• WP Talks invited us to talk about the WP Owls

We are deeply thankful for that. Last but not least, we also contribute to DailyWeb, where you can read our monthly summary of events. Thanks for the trust, Sebastian.

Plans for 2021

The current year taught us not to plan a lot, as the situation might do a complete 180 overnight. Nevertheless, there are a few ideas we’d like to develop. Continuity is crucial as we intend to publish the most engaging content continuously.

You can certainly expect many fascinating guests and soon.

We also plan to help promote various WP events. We already are media patrons for WordFest Live 2021 & WordCamp Prague 2021. More to come.

As you see, this is our first article on WP Owls. We hope to publish more!

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