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The Hidden Gems Of WordPress

Bud Kraus

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Development, Featured

Published

February 21, 2018

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One of the most frustrating things about WordPress is that parts of the WP Admin are difficult to find – if not outright hidden. That makes getting things done not so easy or intuitive. But as with any application, some elements of the User Interface need to be hidden or obscure for various reasons. Usually, it is because a function or feature is not frequently needed until it is. That’s when the hair pulling begins. Don’t end up hunting around for that WP Admin element as if you’re looking for lost treasure. Here are the most common hidden gems of […]

13 Performance-Boosting Site Speed Tips for WordPress

Janna Hilferty

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Development, Featured

Published

February 20, 2018

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There’s no doubt about it: Site performance is crucial to the success of your website. Today, over 25 percent of users will leave a page if it takes more than 4 seconds to load. And a delay of just a second can compound with dropped conversion rates, decrease your page views, and increase your bounce rate. A delay of two seconds could make your bounce rates spike up 103 percent. All these factors combined lead to user dissatisfaction, and for ecommerce sites, high shopping cart abandonment rates. Most users also expect the same speedy experience from your website on mobile, […]

WordPress Translation is an Accessibility Issue, Don’t Fall Behind

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February 16, 2018

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WordPress is a global platform. With over 29 percent of the Internet, a lot of those users aren’t in English speaking countries. In fact, since 2014, there are more downloads not in English than in English. While WordPress defaults to English, it supports many languages and there are many great ways to translate WordPress post content. WordPress’ translation-friendliness is not just necessary for global growth, but it fits with our community’s values of inclusivity and accessibility. One of the many prospective changes in accessibility I’ve had as a result of being involved in this community was that I need to […]

Rebuilding ACCESS NYC with Blue State Digital

Blue State Digital Staff

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Agency, Featured

Published

February 14, 2018

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It’s not always easy to figure out which government benefit programs you qualify for—information and ease of use are key barriers for families looking to avail themselves of social services. Alongside our work with New York City on Growing Up NYC, we also partnered with the Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity (NYC Opportunity) to rebuild ACCESS NYC, which provides New Yorkers with helpful information and critical resources about the social service benefits and programs available to them. ACCESS NYC functions as a public online screening platform in which residents answer a brief set of questions to discover whether they’re eligible […]

Amazon Polly Helps WordPress Speak

Emily Schiola

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Featured, News

Published

February 8, 2018

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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 […]

A Beginner’s Guide to the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Initiative

John Hughes

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Featured, News

Published

January 29, 2018

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Just when you thought it was safe to conduct business with the European Union (EU) after the Cookie Law situation, along came the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) initiative. However, unlike the Cookie Law, the impact of this change on WordPress website owners could be significant – so it pays to comply. In short, the GDPR provides a method for users to control the way their data is collected and used, so it’s crucial for anyone who regularly deals with clients in the EU to understand. There are some important aspects for you to consider (such as how you currently […]

WordPress Usage Survey- How We Can Move Forward in 2018

Emily Schiola

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Community, Featured

Published

January 19, 2018

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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 […]

What’s Next for WordPress: Why the Future is Great with Gutenberg

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January 11, 2018

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This article is a part of series of articles about Gutenberg development for WordPress developers. Back in the day when Custom Post types had just been merged in core, in WordPress 3.0, I used to think about how innovative the WordPress 5.0 release would be. Not long ago, I started calling it the Next WordPress. Well, fast-forward to 2018 and we have an expected date of release for WordPress 5.0. In the State of The Word, 2017, Matt Mullenweg announced the focus of next year’s WordPress development, the Gutenberg project. Gutenberg is the new and exciting project set to join WordPress Core […]

Gutenberg and WordPress in 2018: An Interview With Adam Warner

Emily Schiola

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Featured, News

Published

January 10, 2018

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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 […]

The Technology That Will Change the Internet (and WordPress) Drastically

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December 12, 2017

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Since its humble beginnings, the Internet has changed dramatically. We have come from plain-text HTML websites without images to well-designed web presences full of multimedia content. Those who have seen it from the very beginning probably still can’t believe the change in the last twenty-some years. Since then dozens of web design trends have come and gone and the look of websites changed over time together with the possibilities of modern technology. By now a lot of the functionality and design of websites is highly refined. However, in the next few years, we will see technical advancements come to fruition […]

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