The thousands of plugins in the repository are what make WordPress so powerful. With these plugins, you can mold the CMS into anything you need; finding and downloading any capability you might need to make your site work for you. However, not all of these plugins are being used. The WordPress.org Plugin Review Team announced they will be closing unused plugins in order to clear up space. According to the announcement, written by Mika Epstein, there are over 9,100 plugins that have been approved but are unused. That’s a huge amount of space that isn’t being properly utilized. If a […]

For the second year in a row, WPMU Dev’s Smush Image Compression has won Plugin Madness! This year’s competition was fierce, but in the end, the image compression plugin came out on top. The plugin beat out Autoptimize, ShortPixel Image Optimizer, Hummingbird Page Speed Optimization, previous winner Advanced Custom Fields, Custom Sliders, and finally Restrict Content to keep the throne. This year’s competition was even bigger and better than the previous two years. Huge competitors like Yoast and WooCommerce were knocked out fairly while Smush stayed consistent. Congrats to the team and to anyone who voted for the plugin! Thank […]

Editor’s Note: This post will be updated with each new group announcement.  WordCamp Europe, the biggest WordCamp in the world, is just around the corner in Belgrade, Serbia. Users gather from all over to celebrate the CMS. Organizers have started announcing speakers in groups based on the topic they’re talking about. Group One: Open Source and the Web The first group was announced last week and revolves around Open Source and the Web. Paolo Belcastro is going to be talking about “The World of WordPress” David Needham will tackle, “An Intro to Drupal for WordPress Users” Hajj Flemings will talk […]

What began as a blogging platform nearly 15 years ago is one step closer to taking control of the entire web. WordPress officially powers 30 percent of the web according to W3Techs. It is also the fastest growing CMS by far, with Squarespace and Wix barely coming close. These numbers are a huge victory for WordPress and the entire community. The CMS has outgrown its blogging roots and is now the most powerful CMS on the market. Not only does it power personal blogs, but it helps create digital experiences for enterprise companies. Let’s go over how we got here and […]

Let the madness begin! Voting for Torque’s 2018 Plugin Madness is now open. Modeled after the NCAA college basketball tournament March Madness, we use a bracket-based voting system to pit plugins against one another each week. This year we asked you to nominate your favorite plugins, and today we’re happy to kick things off with an impressive lineup of plugins. Head on over to pluginmadness.com to vote for your favorite plugins now. Vote for your favorite plugins here The voting schedule is as follows: March 5: The Enchanting 64 (Round 1) March 12:  The Thrilling 32 (Round 2) March 19: […]

You have a dedicated audience that comes to your site every day to read your content. They take the time to sit down and engage with what you’ve written. Unfortunately, that’s not possible for everyone. People are incredibly busy and aren’t taking the time to sit down and read an article. Users are listening to podcasts and music while they’re driving to work or cleaning the house. If you’re not considering these people, you could be missing out on potential viewers. With the Amazon Polly plugin, you can now reach anyone anywhere. The plugin, co-authored by AWS and WP Engine, […]

Accessibility has been a huge conversation in WordPress recently. At WordCamp US in 2017, nearly half of the talks focused on accessibility issues. It is an area where many sites can do better. While there are many plugins and tools to help boost accessibility, one area WordPress falls a bit short is text to speech. This is an invaluable tool for anyone who is vision impaired. Screen readers are out there but they can be clunky and if a site isn’t optimized for them, they can fail. In order to further these efforts and a partnership with WordPress, Amazon released […]

WordPress has grown from a blogging platform to a powerful tool that powers 29 percent of the web. It has become a place you can build a portfolio, enterprise site, or an ecommerce site. You can sell anything from plugins to sweaters using the CMS. We’ve compiled all the tips and tricks you need to know to create a fully-functional online store into a free ebook. Download the Ultimate Guide to eCommerce for WordPress Here! This ebook will teach you everything from A/B Testing to site design to customer retention all in one place. Create a beautiful website from start to […]

In 2016 at WordCamp US, the Marketing Team for Core decided to put out the WordPress usage survey. The survey aims to act as a resource for freelancers and agencies and to take the temperature of the platform. At his State of the Word address, Mullenweg announced that WordPress now powers 29 percent of the Internet. That’s a huge number and the CMS shows no signs of slowing down, however, it’s important to understand what that number really means. In November, the Marketing Team released the 2017 results, and they provide valuable insight on where the platform is going in […]

Gutenberg was the biggest WordPress news in 2017. Matt Mullenweg announced and strongly backs the project that is looking like it could change the landscape of the CMS. Because we still don’t have an official release date, there is still a lot of speculation surrounding the project. Could it make WordPress even more competitive than it already is? We spoke to Adam Warner, Open Source Community Manager at Sitelock, about where he thinks Gutenberg and WordPress will be in the new year. WordPress Will Continue to Dominate WordPress can scale large enough to power an enterprise site and still support […]