Over the weekend, roughly 1,800 people from all over the world attended the first ever WordCamp US at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in downtown Philadelphia. One of the biggest highlights of the weekend was the 10th annual State of the Word, delivered by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. The room is filling up for @photomatt‘s State of the Word. #WCUS pic.twitter.com/7tMUanUQOl — WordCamp US (@WordCampUS) December 5, 2015 Mullenweg kicked off the address by showcasing some WordPress statistics and other highlights that illustrate the platform’s tremendous growth and power. Later, he dug into what to expect from WordPress 4.4, Calypso, the […]

Being a WordPress plugin developer is kind of insane when you think about it. You write code that can be freely modified by anyone and is expected to work with any infinite different collections that make up a unique WordPress site. This is a huge part of why I love what I do, but still, I have to admit, it’s kind of crazy. Developing a plugin or theme that has to be compatible with a range of different WordPress versions, PHP versions, MySQL versions, web servers, and more is a huge undertaking. That doesn’t even include the infinite number of […]

There are various performance indicators used to determine the success of a WordPress plugin. Most plugin developers tend to focus on distribution — i.e., how to get more installs — but forget to tackle the churn rate. And you know what, no one can blame us! How could we, plugin developers, focus on churn? Until March 2015, the only number WordPress.org exposed was the total number of downloads. A new counter was then added to estimate the number of active installs. How can plugin developers gather any valuable insight from these two numbers alone? It’s quite simple, they can’t. The […]

November was a busy month for the WordPress community. While we await the release of WordPress 4.4, we witnessed the public release of the open-source desktop client for Mac, Calypso. Of course, as usual, there were several amazing free themes that were released during November. In this post, we take a look at some of the most awesome free WordPress themes from the month of November 2015. Free WordPress Themes Pro Blogg Meant for personal blogs, Pro Blogg is one of the most minimal and clean WordPress themes out there. Featuring a responsive slider, fully mobile-friendly layout, and clean typography, […]

The first ever WordCamp US is this weekend and we couldn’t be more excited. After a bidding process, Philly was selected as the site for the inaugural camp, so you can stop by the Liberty Bell between talks or maybe grab yourself a cheesesteak — with or without onions. Wappu already has his hands on one. Friday and Saturday will be chock-full of talks, while Sunday stands open for Contributor Day. Community Summit The Community Summit is a smaller, work-focused two-day session. The organizers have deemed the summit an “unconference.” This means instead of scheduled speakers and talks, the format […]

With the exception of earthquakes, wildfires, and other forms of natural disasters, there isn’t much that makes me get up at 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning. However, two weekends ago I was happy to jump out of bed. Why? Three words: WordCamp Berlin 2015. On this day, people from around Europe were swarming to the Technical University Berlin, where the camp was taking place. I was pretty excited since it was my first WordCamp. Tickets sold out weeks ago and I been just lucky enough to get one from the extra batch they released. If you couldn’t make it, […]

Maybe the WordPress origin story isn’t as legendary or contentious as Mark Zuckerberg’s. And maybe won’t be made into a movie written by Aaron Sorkin, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a fascinating tale filled with community and conflict. In her book, The History of WordPress, Siobhan McKeown shows the difficulties and triumphs of creating and maintaining an open-source software. It covers everything from Michel Valdrighi’s disappearance to the creation of Automattic. If you’re new to the WordPress community, it is a great way to become familiar with the platform’s roots, and for those who have been here a long time […]

You may have noticed that WordPress.com looked a little different this morning. The site got more than just a facelift and some of these changes are really exciting. Matt Mullenweg announced the changes on his blog, saying the project, code named Calypso, took over 20 months to complete. Introducing The New WordPress.com Managing all your WordPress sites is much easier and faster than it was before. There is even a new Mac app that allows you to access your dashboard right from your desktop. Let’s dive into some of the new features. Manage Multiple Sites Moving between your WordPress sites […]

Looking to start a WordPress business? Not a freelancing business. One that offers a product or service (or even productized services). And that you plan to scale. If that is you, then keep reading. I want to teach you the lessons I’ve learned since starting my business a year ago (you can learn about my business by reading my author bio at the end of the article). Obviously, these lessons apply to the early stages of your company. As you grow, things will change. And parts of these lessons will no longer apply to you. So, let me teach you […]

For the most part, learning WordPress is a steady process. Every day, we learn a little more, discover new plugins and tricks to get things done more efficiently, and push our capabilities in increments. However, every now and then we discover something big, something that that completely changes our workflow and opens up a world of new possibilities. A game changer. For me, one of those game changers was the discovery of Firebug. “You mean, I can directly change any element on my site in real time without any trial and error in my style sheet, reloading or anything? Woah!” However, […]