Roundup of WordPress ecosystem #3 – April 2017

WordPress and some of the most well-known names within the ecosystem had a productive month, and here we come with some insights and news that will sure have an impact on the long-term development of this community.

So, here are the April’s top WordPress stories:

News & Updates

Community News

At the beginning of April, WooCommerce released a major update from version 2.7 to WooCommerce 3.0, also known as the Bionic Butterfly, who has been rolling out in beta since December 2016. This important update includes interesting new features and some important improvements to the product gallery, such as:

• A brand new product gallery and logging system
• New Command Line Interface and Rest API v2
• Performance improvements
• Improved CRUD classes (objects and data-stores)

BuddyPress Survey Report

BuddyPress has published the results from their 2016 Survey that performed between November 1st, until December 31st, 2016 and comprised information from more than 300 WordPress Developers and Site Builders. There are several interesting information on this study, starting from the use of BuddyPress which proved for the fourth year in a row that users install the plugin on their own site (62%), and other 37% use it to build BuddyPress sites for others. Speaking of websites, we see that BuddyPress is used to build generic websites (33%), Academic (29%), Sports (16%), Artistic (15) and Gaming (12%).

The list goes on with more data available and all the complete answers to the survey, created by BuddyPress can be found here.

WordPress News

WordPress 4.7.4. Maintenance Release

WordPress has released it’s latest version namely WordPress 4.7.4 that fixed around 47 issues, regarding the visual editor compatibility with the upcoming version of Google Chrome. Also, the REST API got and upgrade with a few enhancements related to data handling.

Check out the full list of changes on the WordPress Codex.

The tabbed interface is back on the WordPress Plugin Repository

After WordPress launched in March, the new redesign of the WordPress Plugin Directory has gathered mostly negative feedback from the community, because of the tabs removal from the plugin pages. The change was seen as confusing and many WordPress contributors opened tickets to complain about the usability of it.

So, by the end of the month, the issue was fixed and tabs returned to the repo. alongside stats and links to the older versions of plugins.

Editor Experience Survey Results

Not only BuddyPress has a survey running, but also WordPress wanted to study which is the general feedback on the Editor Experience and questioned around 2.563 WordPress users. The main audience of the study was sure, developers, counting 1.703 out of the total of 2.563.

This study had a generic positive feedback with users working with the Editor almost on a daily basis (+50%) and weekly (30%), and finding it very accessible and easy to use.

Sure, there were some issues mentioned, but the Core Editor team mentioned that are working hard to offer a User Experience to WordPress users, that would be a joy to use it daily. Check all the data available on the Make WordPress Core Blog Post.

WordPress Events

WooCommerce has announced the third edition of WooConf, that will take place in October 2017, this time in Seattle, Washington. This edition will have a focus on developers, agency owners, freelancers and at the same time will bring some amazing speakers on stages, such as Rand Fishkin (Moz) or John Maeda (Automattic). Discover more information and speakers on WooCommerce’s announcement.

Also, if you are going to WordCamp Europe for the first time (as me, for example) there are a few things you should know and Torque has summed everything up, here.

WordPress Resources

With WordPress empowering 30% of the websites around the world, it’s interesting to see which famous brands are actually using it as a content management system and also based on which purposes. To feed this curiosity of some of us, the team behind CodeinWP published a thorough editorial with  100+ famous brands using WordPress. Check out the list of corporations, tech companies, and other artsy ones, on their blog.

If we talked a lot about surveys on this roundup article, it’s also worth to mention that guys from WPengine have also published an industry report that will guide you on choosing The Best Website Hosting. You can get to know which are the most important Market Leaders, The Satisfaction Ratings among users, various features comparison and more on the Grid Rating Methodology.

Beginner’s Guides & WordPress Tutorials

• How to Properly Update WordPress Plugins (Step by Step) – WordPress plugins are similar to mobile apps, just that they extend the functionalities of your website. And as you constantly update your mobile apps to ensure they are still running properly, you should update your plugins. This way, you will not only ensure that changes from the last versions are applied to your site immediate, but also improve its security and performance.
• How to Make Switching Domain Names Easier With a Simple WP-CLI Trick – Get to know more about what is the WP-CLI Project developed by Automattic. together with Bluehost, DreamHost, SiteGround, and WPengine. Also, you will find some actionable steps to quickly backup your database and switch domain names.
• Developing an App using The Rest API and WordPress – This is a free ebook edited by Torque that will show you how to add and test data, choose a front-end solution, add custom points, and more.
• How to Setup HTTPS Locally Without Getting Annoying Browser Privacy Errors – Learn how to setup self-signed certificates by yourself and get to know some tips and tricks that will help you with browser privacy errors.

WordPress Marketing & Business Tips & Tricks

• The Decision Makers Guide to E-commerce – Building your own online shop it’s quite a challenge, beyond the fact that it requires a lot of work, finding the best solution may give you some headaches. So, here is a thorough guide to help you choose between WooCommerce, Shopify, and Magento.
• What does it feel to have your company acquired w/ J. R. Farr & Tony Perez? – MOJO Marketplace was acquired by EIG four years ago and now with Tony Perez’ company recently getting acquired by GoDaddy, it’s important to discuss what it’s like to go through an acquisition of this size and touch upon the future of WordPress at hosting companies.
• Think Big, Learn Fast, and Listen: My Lessons from Building a WordPress SaaS Product – Here is the journey of Jack Slingerland while building Kernl and his lessons learned along the way.

 

To sum up the things above, we conclude April as the month of important improvements and releases, not only for WordPress but also for well-known projects.

We’re thrilled about how quick things are advancing around WordPress and curious at the same time for the next major release of WordPress 4.8, which has been announced earlier today. This update will improve existing features and build the foundation for the Gutenberg project.