This week: WordPress & pandemic, WordFest Live 2021 summary, Newsletter Glue case study, and much more…
Guest editor:
He is a programmer with several years of experience and a fan of web technologies, which he uses creatively. He creates websites based on WordPress & Publii, web applications using Vue.js, and desktop applications based on Electron.
Almost three years ago, when GDPR came into force, it seemed that users’ privacy would become an essential issue for software creators. It turned out that in many cases, GDPR has boiled down to a set of added unpleasant obligations, and all types of abuse in gathering & processing personal data still take place.
However, due to a clash of tech giants over users’ privacy, something changed, and this war entered a new dimension. It will significantly impact internet analytics, the internet ad market, and the way software is created in the nearest future.
I provided a few links on users’ privacy that directly or indirectly impact WordPress-based websites.
It seems that many people haven’t yet realized that Google Analytics – the service used on a vast number of websites – has an anonymize IP option. Due to GDPR, in many cases turning it on might be a prerequisite. It would result in a limited capability of locating a user based on their IP. The article below shows how using this option influences the possibility of geolocating a user.
Hoarding is a tendency common not only to individuals but also to companies that collect data. It might result in violating GDPR, and therefore it’s worth considering whether our websites (especially the old ones) don’t keep personal data for too long. This phenomenon was even given a name: data graveyards and the article below describes it extensively:
Since I’m regularly asked to optimize websites’ performance, I daily encounter efficiency problems that lie not in the website itself but in all sorts of analytical, social, and advertising services. To cut it short – the less data we share with third parties, the better for our users’ privacy and our website’s performance. The article on Kinsta shows how to quickly analyze what our website loads from outside of our server.
The prevalent opinion on the internet is that, due to enhancing user privacy, more and more companies will collect users’ behavioral data individually rather than share it with tech giants. Thus, it’s worth knowing there are extensive, and most importantly, open-source solutions, which allow collecting analytical data. Some even have ready WordPress plugins.
Alex Denning analyzed the trends in searched keywords related to WordPress. The mark of the pandemic is evident here – lots of businesses had to go virtual to survive.
WordPress search trends for 2020: amazing for WooCommerce, good for plugins, bad for themes
Dan Maby summarized WordFest Live 2021 very thoroughly. From technical issues, through how they chose the lecturers, to the info that a second edition still awaits us this year.
Matt Medeiros had an opportunity to talk with Matt Mullenweg. I recommend listening to their chat just because of the number of threads they picked up.
WP Feedback becomes Atarim. Apart from the name, they also change their business model. Atarim will no longer be just a plugin but a SaaS-based platform. The lack of WP prefix also suggests that it isn’t for WordPress only anymore.
The second episode of WP Briefing, the official WP podcast, came out. In it, Josepha Haden Chomphosy focuses mainly on “freedoms” given by WordPress.
Jason Bahl described his developer’s stack. An excellent opportunity to observe how others do it and what we can change in our environment.
An interesting case study detailing how Newsletter Glue facilitated creating newsletters on Gutenberg Times.
Joe Casabona shares the reasons for his failure to monetize his podcast. Among many compelling remarks, I especially appreciated observations on community building.
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.
You can now submit nominations for Plugin Madness 2021.
I am rooting for Advanced Custom Fields.
The Gutenberg plugin 10.0 has just launched. Apart from a batch of bug fixes and new features, it’s worth mentioning that it is the 100th edition.
Congratulations to all contributors – you are incredible.
Justin Foell from WebDevStudios outlined how to substitute FTP with rsync. It’s an excellent idea.
WP Tavern described the Phoenix theme, which is the first based on blocks and to have a sidebar.
We have been writing a lot on Gatsby & headless, but we forgot to inform you about a stable gatsby-source-wordpress v4 version. Know that it already exists and works fine.
Daniel Stenberg is the leading curl developer. He lately depicted his unpleasant adventure, which, unfortunately, might happen to any open source project creator. It’s worth realizing some dark sides of such projects.
Josepha Haden Chomposy i Matt Mullenweg porozmawiali na wiele tematów związanych z WordPressem, Indiami czy Otwartym Oprogramowaniem.
Josepha Haden Chomposy & Matt Mullenweg chatted about WordPress, India, and Open Source Software.
Imran Sayed made a compelling presentation showing what Full Site Editing is.
Leonardo Losoviz introduced the viewers to the GraphQL world with his presention.
In his lightning talk, Greg Ziółkowski showed how to create your own blocks.
Upcoming events:
23.02 – ‘17 Ways to Undo Mistakes with Git’ – a webinar organized by Git Tower & Buddy takes place.
27.02 – WordCamp Praha takes place – online, of course.
04.03 – DE{CODE} 2021 conference.
Jason Cohen, Marieke van de Rakt, and Mike Little are among the speakers.
11.03 Benefits of connecting Gatsby with WordPress – a webinar.
16.04 – 18.04 – WordCamp Greece 2021 Online. A call for speakers and sponsors has been issued.