That’s why we are excited for WordCamp Rochester 2023. This one day event is perfect for anyone looking to level up their website on Saturday and get back to work on Monday.

Held on September 30 at the Rochester School of the Arts, this conference is jam-packed with talks from experts ranging from page builders, the community, the future of WordPress, and much more.

Grab your ticket today!

Let’s dive into everything you can expect from WordCamp Rochester 2023.

What to Expect from WordCamp Rochester 2023

As we stated above, this is a one-day event. Talks kick off at 8:45 am EST on Saturday, September 30. There are two tracks that run until 6:15 pm.

When you’re not attending sessions, make sure you check out the Arts District of Rochester. Take in some culture at the Memorial Art Gallery across the street from the venue or catch a play at the Rochester Theater League’s Auditorium.

Don’t miss the after party at Jeremiah’s Tavern starting at 7 pm. A perfect way to unwind and network after a full day of learning.

Check Out These Sessions

WordCamp organizers have worked tirelessly to find the very best speakers. There are 18 incredible talks but there are a few we wouldn’t want to miss.

Kicking off the entire event is the Opening Remarks with Senator Jeremy A Cooney. Senator Cooney came into office in 2020 as the first Asian American elected to office from upstate New York. This is an excellent way to set the tone for the weekend.

Next up, catch Nyasha Green’s talk, Charity Beings at Home, Why Communities are Stronger Together. This talk looks at the way diversity and inclusion make the WordPress community a stronger place. Through examples and stories from around the world, Green will talk about how to impart empathy and and unity into the community.

Finally, you won’t want to miss WP Engine’s Damon Cook look at what’s to come in WordPress 6.4. The release is set to drop November of this year, so this is the perfect time to prepare yourself for what’s to come. Join Cook as he explores the beta of 6.4.

This is just a taste of the amazing sessions at the conference.

See You at WordCamp Rochester!

Make sure you snag your tickets for this weekend’s WordCamp. You won’t want to miss the opportunity to learn and network in beautiful upstate New York. Take in the changing leaves and learn about website development all in one place.

If you can’t attend in person, all sessions will be on WordPress.TV after the event.

The post Don’t Miss WordCamp Rochester 2023 appeared first on Torque.

The event was originally started by the Website Core Accessibility Team back in 2020 and has been carried on by volunteer organizers since.

According to the website, “Our mission is to demystify website accessibility for WordPress developers, designers, content creators, and users so that they can more easily build websites that work for everyone, regardless of ability.”

Registration is free and still open. The conference kicks off at 14:45 UTC and run for a full 24-hours hitting every time zone. Each talk will have live captioning and ASL (American Sign Language) interpreters for those who need them.

Can’t make the event? Everything will be posted afterward on the YouTube channel.

Why Web Accessibility Matters

Over 1 billion people in the world have a disability that affects the way they view the web. If a portion of the population can’t access your content, you are missing out on a potential fan, reader, or customer. Simple improvements can greatly benefit a wide number of people. Not only those who report a disability, but people who speak a different language or want to read your site on a phone in the park.

Simply put, any improvements you make to your website will make it easier to use for anyone. And making your site as accessible as possible is just the right thing to do.

The event site lists some examples of disabilities users might have that impede their ability to use the web without considerations:

• blindness or visual impairments,
• deafness or hearing loss,
• motor challenges ranging from loss of a limb to quadriplegia to the tremors and arthritis that are common as people age,
• cognitive disabilities related to conditions people are born with or traumatic brain injuries that happen later in life,
• epilepsy,
• motion sickness,
• and reading difficulties such as dyslexia

Why Attend Accessibility Day

Though it is true every site owner needs to make accessibly a priority, it can be hard to know where to start, especially if your site is already complete. No matter what stage your site is in, these experts will help you optimize it.

Don’t Miss These Sessions

The Keynote is a conversation with Global Accessibility Awareness Day co-founder, Jennison Asuncion. He will discuss how events like this can spread awareness, the state of online accessibility, and how WordPress is doing. Should be a fascinating conversation.

If you’re struggling with how to make sure your site is accessible stop by Gaby Gandica’s talk Is My WordPress Site Accessible? How to Perform Accessibility and Usability Tests. Learn simple tests to point to exactly what needs to be improved using data.

A great way to ensure an accessible site is to start with your theme. Join Gen Harris at her talk Building an Accessible Theme for Accessible First Sites and learn about accessible design.

You won’t want to miss out on these amazing expert-led talks.

Register for WordPress Accessibility Day Now

If you are looking to get a better understanding of accessibility and find ways to make actionable changes on your site, register for Accessibility Day. It’s free, it spans all time zones, and it is incredibly educational. You don’t want to miss out on this invaluable information!

The post WordPress Accessibility Day 2023 Registration Open appeared first on Torque.

The Gaylord National Resort was buzzing with the excitement of WordPressers eager to discuss the thing they love. People from all over the world gathered to learn, network, and celebrate the thing they love. 

The talks were informative, the hallway track was active, and the sightseeing was unmatched. If you missed any of the sessions, they will be up on WordPress.TV. 

Let’s get into big takeaways from WCUS 2023.

Looking to the Future

2023 marked WordPress’s 20th anniversary. An impressive milestone for anything but especially for a CMS. Talks ranged from accessibility to Core Web Vitals, but all looked at the power of WordPress and where we can go in the next 20 years. 

WordPress in Space

The first talk of the conference was presented by JJ Toothman and Abby Bowman from the Web Modernization Team at NASA. They were tasked with the mission to bring NASA.gov into the future using WordPress. 

The original site was launched in 1994, and has seen updates through the years, but really needed a big overhaul. The challenge wasn’t the design, or even convincing NASA to use WordPress. It was condensing all of NASA’s sites and content into one place so users don’t have to go searching for information. 

“Our goal was to basically build a WordPress Mission Control,” Bowman said. “No one should have to have a PHD in astrophysics or memorize the org chart to get information on a certain mission.”

This process took over a year because there was just so much content. To date the team has 440 users onboarded to the new CMS, they’ve created 3,023 new landing pages, and migrated 68,006 pages.

Because the Web Modernization Team made the site so intuitive, people started picking it up in no time and even suggesting new ways to use existing blocks. 

“One of the things we learned early on was to curate the editing experience to get them comfortable with the new editing tools at their disposal. One thing was to create way more block patterns,” Toothman said. “We even pre-filled out some example content that they could play with and understand right away.”

Another roadblock was teaching the content creators how to use Gutenberg and WordPress. Because there are so many writers from so many different organizations within NASA, reaching each one was a challenge. They ended up looking to the WordPress community as an example of how to do this. 

Instead of trying to touch each group, Toothman and Bowman taught a group of super users from each space who could bring their WordPress knowledge to the team. 

“The technology part was really easy and the really hard part was the people. We couldn’t have done this without the web content team.”

Abby Bowman

This was a massive project that should be launching any day now. To check out what the site will look like go to https://beta.science.nasa.gov/. 

The Future of WordPress

Executive Director of the WordPress Project, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, took the stage to talk about the future of WordPress. After 20 years, WordPress is rewriting itself and now it’s time to ask some big questions about how to maintain the CMS for the next 20 and beyond. 

According to Haden Chomphosy, there are three main areas we need to foster in order to keep WordPress healthy; the software itself, events, and the community. These are the heart and nervous system of WordPress. If the software is fast and accessible, more people will adopt it. If the events are easy to attend and informational, more people will learn how to code with WordPress. And if the community remains a safe place, more people will stay loyal to the CMS for life. 

She then went on to say that WordPress can change your life, your community, and the world only if people are able to access it and more importantly learn how to use it. 

“When you democratize publishing you’re providing easier access to knowledge, opportunity, and connections. You are giving a voice to the voiceless.”

Josepha Haden Chomphosy

The future of WordPress comes down to people and education. The thing that sets the CMS apart from others is the community. It’s the most powerful thing about WordPress and if supportive, will propel it into the future and beyond. 

Haden Chomphosy left the audience with three questions to consider:

1. What is the story you want to be able to tell about yourself?
2. What is the story you want to tell about your time in WP?
3. What is the story you want WordPress to tell?

What’s Next for Gutenberg

WordPress Co-Founder, Matt Mullenweg, closed out the weekend with a look at what to expect from Gutenberg in the coming years. He began by celebrating the 6.3 release, which was created by 640 contributors to that release. 207 of whom were first-timers. A very impressive showing.

Looking ahead to WordPress 6.4, which will be released in November. This is going to be another underrepresented gender release squad. With that comes the Twenty Twenty-Four default theme. Mullenweg announced that this theme will have a focus on bloggers and content creators. 

Font management will be added in 6.4, which allows you to download font files directly from Google and onto your site locally. This will make fonts so much more agile. 

A new feature Image Lightbox enables a user to click on an image on the front end and zoom in on it. This was only possible with plugins before. 

But possibly the most exciting thing about 6.4 for editors and writers everywhere, me very much included, is Collaboration. Phase 3 of Gutenberg will begin the work on bringing collaborative editing to WordPress. Imagine being able to write and design at the same time as someone else. This will greatly shorten the approval process and make it easier to get content spun up quickly. 

One of the biggest announcements of the evening was what Mullenweg is calling WordPress LMS. This is bringing four different LMS or Learning Management System plugins together to create a standard for how LMS plugins are built. TutorLMS, Sensei, LearnDash and LifterLMS met this week to look at questions like, can we use some of the same SQL formats? In order to create rules for what an LMS plugin should have. Mullenweg is hoping to do this with other plugins such as SEO or forms plugins. If you are interested in getting involved there is a new LMS channel in the WordPress Slack. 

Mullenweg echoed Haden Chomphosy saying, “We are 20 years into WordPress and we are thinking about the next 20 and beyond and creating and thriving.” 

He urged the audience to think in the long term. We don’t just want WordPress around for another 20 years, we want it around for the next 100. We want it to thrive for the next generation and beyond.

A Sense of History, And Long-Term Thinking 

WordCamp US 2023 was an exhilarating experience. Thank you as always to the incredible volunteer organizers and speakers who made it all possible. WordPress has experienced a lot in the last 20 years. The community has overcome a global pandemic, and was able to come together and create beautiful website experiences. 

Don’t forget to check out Torque’s Doc Pop’s interviews with people around the conference! He was able to meet with 12 people. The playlist is here:

Whether we are going to space or supporting the local bakery, WordPress can take you where you need to go. Here’s to the next 20 years of WordPress and the community, there isn’t a group of more passionate people out there. 

See you next year, WCUS!

The post WordCamp US 2023 Looked to the Future and Beyond appeared first on Torque.

Since 2015, WCUS has been a staple of the WordPress community providing a place to come to together to celebrate WordPress, meet new people, and catch up with old friends. 

This year’s conference will be held at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center. Contributor Day is on August 24 with the conference occurring August 25 and 26. Organizers are expecting over 1,700 attendees over the three days. 

Can’t make it in person? Live stream WCUS for free here, and catch all of the full sessions after the fact on WordPress.TV.

Let’s take a look at what you can expect from WordCamp US 2023.

WordCamp US Basics

Every WordCamp is different, so even if this is your first or seventh time, these tips and tricks will help  you  focus on learning and growing WordPress skillset. 

The Venue

The conference will be held in three rooms in the Gaylord Convention Center. Though it will be clearly marked, see the map below to make sure you don’t get lost. 

You won’t want to miss the Sponsor Hall where WordPress companies host demos, meet customers, and most importantly, give out SWAG. Make sure you pick up all your stickers, socks, and shirts, and come say hi to the WP Engine team at Booth 301! You’ll score one of WP Engine’s legendary WCUS t-shirts, and you can chat with WordPress experts about the latest in WordPress development, including headless WordPress, Advanced Custom Fields, and WooCommerce.   

What to Bring

WordCamps are made up of very rewarding but very long days. You won’t want to miss a minute of programming so it’s important to arrive prepared. 

Here’s our WordCamp essentials packing list:

• Comfortable shoes for running between talks easily.
• A water bottle. It is going to be hot and humid, so make sure you’re staying hydrated.
• Phone and computer chargers, or external chargers. There will be charging stations throughout the venue, but those can fill up fast. 
• A bag for SWAG. Trust us, you will walk away with more than you intend to. 
• Quick and easy snacks. Lunch and light snacks will be provided with your ticket, but you don’t want to have to leave the venue mid-afternoon to grab a bite. 
• Optionally, business cards. We know it sounds outdated, but business cards are still the easiest way to quickly give someone your information. 

Don’t Miss These Talks

Just like previous years, there will be three tracks of talks from experts all over the world. Whether you’re fitting in a lighting talk or setting aside more time for a workshop, there is something for everyone to enjoy. 

Make sure you go through the schedule and mark off the talks that you want to attend. Here are some we’re excited about seeing. 

Contributor Day

Ahead of the talks is Contributor Day, a day where volunteers get together to contribute back to the WordPress project. 

This is a great place for first time contributors to dip their toes into the process. If you are feeling nervous about contributing or just need the dedicated time to do so, sign up for Contributor Day and work among friends. 

Day 1- Friday

Day one is chock-full of content! Let’s dive into some talks you can’t miss. 

Kicking things off, we’re excited to stop by developer Shambi Broome’s talk, How to Make a Difference in the World. The talk looks at the importance of teaching WordPress to high school students and empowering the next generation of developers to keep WordPress dominant for years to come.

Next up, WordPress Technical Director at AmericanEagle.com, Sean Blakeley, hosts The Headless Block Editor. Dive into how you can make your block editor headless with the “Block Editor Bridge.”

Day 2- Saturday 

Saturday is another jam-packed day with talks you won’t want to miss. 

WordPress Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy discusses the Future of WordPress. On the heels of the 20th Anniversary of WordPress, Chomphosy will look at how we can move the CMS forward. 

Don’t miss this panel called BlackPress: Amplifying Black Professionals in WordPress. Join panelists Ray Mitchell, Maestro Stevens, Destiny Kanno, and George H. Woodard III as they discuss how to empower Black individuals in WordPress. Learn how and why BlackPress was created, look at ways the community can better support Black individuals, and more. 

Finally, end the entire conference with the keynote presented by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. The talk will go over the benefits of an open source ecosystem and how we can keep it healthy in the future. 

What to Do After the Conference

After you have filled your brain, it’s time to fill your heart with sightseeing and after parties with friends. 

After Parties

Friday night from 7:00-9:00 pm, WP Engine is hosting a networking event at Topgolf National Harbor. Stop by for food, drinks, and a unique golf experience as well as the opportunity to expand your WordPress Rolodex. Don’t forget to RSVP here.   

Saturday night, from 7:30-10:30 pm, head over to The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History for the official WCUS after party. Make sure you bring your badge to enter and enjoy the exhibits. 

Sight-Seeing

You came all this way, you might as well see some sights! Just minutes from the hotel is the Capital Wheel, a massive ferris wheel that offers incredible views of the harbor. 

Being only minutes away from Washington D.C. gives you access to US monuments such as The Lincoln Memorial, The Washington Monument, The White House, and more. Beat the heat with thousands of free museums, or take a walking tour of the National Mall. 

See You There!

Doc Pop and Emily Schiola will be on site live-tweeting, conducting interviews, and meeting new people. We can’t wait to see all of you in person again!

The post Get Ready for WordCamp US 2023 appeared first on Torque.

Image source: make.wordpress

Enjoy some of Hampton’s fast fingers in “Hot Mallets” as we go through the exciting updates to WordPress. 

WordPress “Lionel” 6.3, makes creating beautiful and powerful sites easier than ever before. There are updates for non-coders creating their first website and ones for long-time developers looking to optimize theirs.

We have compiled some of our favorite new features, for a comprehensive list, check out the blog post.

Site Editor Updates

The update bookends Phase 2 of Gutenberg and lays the groundwork for Phase 3. Because of this, the Site Editor was the centerpiece of WordPress 6.3.

According to contributor Justin Tadlock in an interview with Torque, “I’m really excited about being able to play around with a visual interface. I feel like we’ve kind of reached that point that we’ve been waiting for, for 5 years or so. And there’s still a lot more work to do, but it should be really nice for especially non coders to make changes to their site in any way they want.”

Check out the full interview here. 

There were a variety of enhancements that make the CMS more intuitive and streamlined. Let’s get into it. 

Improved Navigation

Navigation enhancements make the Site Editor even more powerful. A new sidebar makes it much faster to pull up what you want to edit. With a few simple clicks you can edit:

• Pages
• Templates and template parts
• Patterns
• Styles  

This simple change saves clicks and speeds up the editing process by having everything in one place.

See Themes Before Choosing Them

For years, WordPress users have been asking for a way to see what a theme looks like before committing to it. In the past, this was only an option for classic themes but now even block themes can be previewed. 

The next time you’re shopping for a new theme from the repository, simply hit Live Preview and get a good idea for what your website will look like with it activated. 

Style Revision History

Over the years, revisions have been a huge topic of discussion among the community. While they’re a great way to save content that could be lost if something goes wrong, they can slow down your site. 

The feature has gotten a facelift and can now be used for design changes. Click on the block you want to edit, select the little clock icon in the upper right and review the style changes made to the block and even restore old versions. 

Block Updates

It wouldn’t be a WordPress update without some great updates to blocks. While Gutenberg is being updated twice a month, these updates were done especially for 6.3. 

New Blocks

Two new blocks were introduced with WordPress 6.3, the Details Block and the Footnote Block. 

The Details Block allows a user to click an arrow and reveal more information. This is a great tool for hiding spoilers in movie or book reviews, or FAQ’s. 

The Footnote Block lets you quickly add a footnote and a link. This feature looks really good and is incredibly easy to use. It’s a huge win for academic and professional content. 

Introducing the Command Tool

We have saved the best for last. If you have ever found yourself unable to find a feature in WordPress and wishing you could just CTRL + F, your prayers have been answered! The new Command Tool works just like the Spotlight Tool on Mac. Hit CTRL + K and you can type what you’re looking for. When it comes up, select it and you’ll be taken right there. 

Other Updates

There are so many more things “Lionel” has to offer:

• Distraction-free mode can now be used when designing your site. 
• You can now drag and drop and delete directly from the List View.
• Support for PHP 5 is being discontinued so update now.

WordPress 6.3 and Beyond

Back when the Gutenberg Editor was announced in 2018, Phase 2, Site Editing, seemed like a decade off. Thanks to all the incredible work from the contributors and volunteers, we are now moving onto Phase 3. 

This exciting release brings WordPress into the future. With every new update, the CMS is easier to design and create with. It’s powerful, intuitive, and inspiring. Welcome to the family, Lionel! 

The post WordPress 6.3 “Lionel” Streamlines Site Design appeared first on Torque.

However, a new in-depth study by the WordPress Performance Team indicates that translations could slow your site down. Testing showed that localized websites, or websites that  are tailored to specific target audiences and languages in different regions, can load up to 50 percent slower than non-localized sites. 

According to WordPress Contributor Pascal Birchler, “In addition to core itself, each plugin and theme has its own translation file, which has to be loaded and parsed on every request. Loading and parsing all these translation files is an expensive task.”

The blog post goes on to discuss a number of ways to speed up sites with translations. One option is to use a different file format. When downloading translation packs from translate.worpress.org, they are in .mo file format. Converting them to .php may help speed up your site. To do this you’ll have to use an external tool like GlotPress.

Another option is to cache the translations on a disk or database, this will definitely free up space on your site. This isn’t the most realistic option for most people because it requires disk or database space.

A third way to speed up your site is to use the gettext PHP extension. Because the extension is not as commonly available, most sites are using the built-in .mo parser. Installing gettext has shown significant performance improvements. 

The blog went on to detail three more solutions, though all require developer experience. 

Suffice to say, the conversation around translations in WordPress is taking on a language of its own. While there have been no decisions made about how the Performance Team will move forward to fix the issue, they are collecting feedback, which you can submit here starting Aug. 6.

The fourth phase of Gutenberg, is slated to include Core implementation for multilingual sites, but because we are just ending Phase 2, that could take some time. 

Because this is such an important issue to the community, we’ve provided a few additional ways you can continue to translate your site without slowing it down.

Why You Want Translations on Your Site

As we stated above, WordPress is an increasingly global CMS. Just last year alone, there were WordPress community events in every continent. Only displaying information in English automatically excludes a huge part of the population, not to mention large segments of the WordPress community. 

An English-only site could limit new contributors and users, and it might prevent potential customers from finding you. On the other hand, enabling translations can set you apart from your competitors. If a customer can read a product description in their preferred language, they’re more likely to engage with it. 

Finally, translations give you more search engine visibility, automatically increasing your SEO. Different languages can present unique keyword opportunities and search patterns. By conducting keyword research in each target language, you can optimize your content for those specific search terms and rank higher in local search results. 

Translations also make it possible to receive backlinks from other websites in those languages, expanding your reach. You also have the opportunity to localize your content to different regions. 

Translation Plugins

If you’re still looking to translate your website, using a plugin can be a great way to do just that without slowing down your site. 

While there are a wide array of choices when it comes to translation plugins, they ultimately break out into two categories: automatic and manual. 

Automatic translation plugins will, as the name indicates, automatically translate everything to your visitor’s preferred language. These plugins are less time intensive but can be less accurate. 

Manual plugins require you to manually translate all your content. Though this can be incredibly time consuming, you are less likely to make errors. 

All of them will allow users of all languages to enjoy your content. Here are five of our favorites:

Weglot

Weglot is incredibly easy to set up and has a big focus on SEO. It automatically translates all content on your site and updates in real time so you don’t have to continue updating anytime you add an article, though you can edit translations when you need to.

It detects your visitor’s preferred language through your browser and displays that language. If for some reason they want to view another language, the convenient Language Switcher allows for quick and easy language changes. 

TranslatePress

TranslatePress supports both manual and automatic translating, integrating with Google Translate for machine translations and is compatible with various themes and plugins, including certain page builders and WooCommerce. 

A nice plus with this plugin is you can translate metadata, URLs, and create separate sitemaps for each language. The free version allows you to translate your site into one language though the premium version has support for unlimited languages. 

GTranslate

GTranslate uses Google Translate to automatically translate your website content into multiple languages. The plugin uses a cloud-based approach keeping your website light and focuses on SEO. Like Weglot, it also offers a customizable language switcher which can be added as a widget, shortcode, or menu item.

There is both a free and premium version but unlike most premium plugins, it uses a monthly subscription rather than a yearly license. 

WPML

WPML or The WordPress Multilingual Plugin is the only one on the list that doesn’t offer a free version, but it is incredibly powerful. The plugin supports manual translations but also integration with professional translation services, giving you options.

It supports translating custom post types, custom fields, menus and widgets. And of course it is incredibly SEO friendly, allowing you to translate your metadata, permalinks, and more. As we mentioned, WPML isn’t free but it’s a full-featured option. 

Polylang

Polylang is a manual language translation plugin. You can translate in as many languages as you want, use a different domain per language, and the ability to language switch via widget. 

The plugin also allows you to translate custom taxonomies, sticky posts, RSS feeds, custom post types, and more. 

Conclusion

Translating your site opens you up to a wide range of new users. While the WordPress Performance Team works on ways to speed up local translations, these plugins will keep you going. Make your site more accessible, enhance your SEO, and reach people you wouldn’t have otherwise. 

Whether you choose manual or automatic translations, your future fans from across the globe will thank you. 

The post Translations May Slow Down Your WordPress Site, Plugins Can Help appeared first on Torque.

Tickets are still available.

It’s going to be an amazing weekend full of sun, food, and learning. Let’s dive into what you can expect.

Learn

Organizers did not skimp on the content for this year’s event, and there is absolutely something for everyone. Because so many people applied to speak, they have added an entirely new speaker track. Talks cover topics like AI, the WP-CLI, security, and more.

Here are some we don’t want to miss:

Women and Non-Binary Folx of WordPress: A prestigious panel of people will lead a discussion on underrepresented people in WordPress. This conversation will undoubtably be eye-opening and educational, so come with questions.

The Art of Code Review: Code review is incredibly necessary but can be daunting. Developer Tim Nash, will teach you how to make the most out of the process and have fun while doing it.

Building Interactive Blocks: Interactive blocks can entirely change the functionality of your site. This workshop led by developer Luis Herranz, will take you through the process of creating one step-by-step.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love our AI Rulers: AI has been a huge topic among WordPressers over the last year, and some people are reticent. Technical Architect at WP Engine, James Dominy, wants to assuage some of those fears and take a look at how to leverage these tools responsibly.

Variations on a Theme: 20 Years of WordPress: WordPress Co-Founder, Matt Mullenweg, and WordPress Executive Director, Josepha Hayden Chomphosy, will wrap-up the conference with a look at the last 20 years of WordPress and what’s in store for the next.

This list doesn’t even skim the surface of the amazing content available. Make sure you go back and watch all the talks on WordPress.TV after the event so you don’t miss a minute.

Check out our conversation with Global Lead for WCEU Evangelia Pappa:

Connect

After you have soaked up all the knowledge you can, it’s time to relax and connect with the other attendees. WordCamp is a great time to meet new people and catch up with old friends, and there are a plenty of chances to do that.

WP Engine is hosting an after party on Friday at 7 pm at Le Grand Balcon, located on the 6th floor of the St. George Lycabettus Hotel. The even is free to anyone who registers. There will be drinks, appetizers, and of course, networking.

Come for the drinks, stay for the great company.

As always, organizers have put together a rockin’ after party for anyone with a badge. At 8:30 on June 10, head to the Lohan Athens Nightclub and compliment your favorite speaker.

There are also a variety of side events to attend including a pre-event picnic and a Pride event. Check out the entire list here.

Explore

The conference will be held at the Megaron Athens International Conference Centre. It is near historical sites and a metro ride away from city center.

While you’re there, make sure to do some exploring of Athens. Whether you want to practice your Greek, lay on a beach, or eat your weight in tzatziki, there is something for you!

WCEU organizers have written up great guides on transportation and local customs so you’ll fit right in.

Whether you’re there for the sun, talks, or networking, WCEU is going to be an incredible experience.

Buy your tickets here.

The post Get Ready for WordCamp Europe 2023 appeared first on Torque.

20 years later WordPress powers over 40 percent of the web, a number that is growing steadily. It’s been used by the likes of the New York Times and Beyoncé. It has outlasted MySpace, the iPod, and a global pandemic. 

But most importantly, it is the reason why we are all here. We as a community, as an ecosystem, would not exist without that spark of inspiration back in 2003. 

This is a love letter to 20 years of WordPress and a toast to 20 more. 

WordPress: A History 

The tale has been told a thousand times. The features of the existing blogging platforms in 2003 were incredibly limiting. They lacked customization and expandability, so 19-year old college student Matt Mullenweg wrote a blog post in January wondering what a better blogging platform could look like. Across the world in England, professional developer Mike Little commented on that post expressing interest in the project. With a little help from some friends, the skeleton for WordPress was created.

However, every WordPresser worth their salt knows the lore of these two men and that fabled fork. We are going to celebrate what makes WordPress so special and how it’s endured two decades. 

Free for All 

In 2003, the biggest competitor to WordPress was Moveable Type, which had strict licensing restrictions that limited what most bloggers wanted to do. From day one, Mullenweg was committed to keeping the WordPress project open source. Crucial to this mission was instituting a General Public License (GPL) with every instance of WordPress. 

The GPL provides four core freedoms: 

1. The freedom to run the program for any purpose.
2. The freedom to study how the program works and change it to make it do what you wish.
3. The freedom to redistribute.
4. The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others.

This pivotal decision is what sets WordPress apart from so many other CMSs. Anyone with a computer and a Wifi connection can create a beautiful website or contribute to the project at large. It is this foundational step that has set the CMS up for the phenomenal success it has seen. 

To further ensure the future of the project, Mullenweg announced his Five for the Future initiative in 2014. This urges every single contributor and company to donate either five percent of their time or money back into WordPress. 

Expanding Your World With Plugins

In May 2004, just a year after its inception, plugin architecture was added to WordPress. This decision is what took WordPress from a blogging platform to a website builder. As of writing, there are over 60,000 free plugins in the Plugin Repository. 

The plugin ecosystem not only allows you to expand your website, it is also an incredible way to become a business owner. You can develop plugins at any time of day anywhere in the world giving WordPressers the freedom to take control of their lives.

Any functionality you can dream up is achievable with the addition of a plugin. Can’t find what you’re looking for? Develop and submit one of your own. The possibilities are truly endless. 

Make it Beautiful With Themes 

Another crucial WordPress component was introduced in version 1.5 in 2005, themes. The theme framework changed the game. No longer did all WordPress sites look the same. As with plugins, anyone can develop a theme and submit it to the repository, which currently houses over 10,000 unique options.

Starting in 2010, a new default theme was included with each major release. In this year’s Twenty Twenty-Three Theme, designers from around the community submitted style variations, a trend that will continue in the future.  

Each theme has a variety of customization options so no two sites will look alike even when using the same template. You are not boxed into a handful of templates your platform provides. 

Full Site Editing and Gutenberg 

Speaking of boxes, the most impactful change to date occurred in 2018 with the Gutenberg editor. For the first time in 15 years, Mullenweg announced a huge change to the editor. Instead of the classic WYSIWYG model, pages are now broken down into blocks. 

This announcement came with some trepidation, but has since been embraced, spawning block developers all over the world.  

With the world changing and the likes of Squarespace and Wix entering the market, WordPress had to do something to capture the attention of non-developer website owners. Blocks are intuitive and getting better every day, making it easier for someone with little experience to build something they love. 

Gutenberg led to Site Editing, a way to customize every part of your site using blocks. 

This is an exciting advancement and one Mullenweg sees taking on a life of its own outside of WordPress entirely. 

In a conversation with WP Engine at DE{CODE}, Mullenweg was joined by Matías Ventura, Lead Architect of Gutenberg; Developer Experience Team at Automattic to discuss just this.

“We’re seeing designers who haven’t touched code at all be able to express and share their creations using Gutenberg,” Ventura said. “What I really want to see is that expansion of catering to all the facets of human creativity and expression and I think all these tools speak to that.”

Mullenweg agreed saying, “We are aiming to build something for humanity, for the web, not just for the WordPress community.”

The WordPress Community

While all of these things make up the bones of WordPress the most important aspect makes up the heart, the community. At times intimidating but more often uplifting, the group of people that build, use, and sell WordPress are unlike any other. At any time of day there is someone to answer a tech question, or give design advice. 

In Mullenweg’s annual State of the Word Address in December, he announced there were 22 in-person WordPress events held in 2022. When the pandemic shut down travel, folks all across the globe held online meetups and conferences, starved for the companionship that is the community. Something that should have separated us even more managed to bring us back together stronger than ever with the biggest WordCamp Europe to date in 2022. 

Code is Poetry

From the outside, WordPress is an excellent CMS that can support websites of any size . But from the inside, it is a living, breathing thing with the most passionate people you will ever meet. When I joined Torque in 2015, I had no idea I would travel the globe and make lifelong friends. I had no idea I would grow both professionally and personally with the guidance of the people in this community. 

20 years is both a long time and a blink of an eye. All of you reading this were brought here at this moment by the same thing. 

So raise a glass, update your plugins, and celebrate 20 years of WordPress. 

For more, check out this conversation with Executive Director of the WordPress Project, Josepha Haden Chomphosy:  

The post Celebrating 20 Years of WordPress appeared first on Torque.

Crafted with Code, now in its fourth year, provides a closer look at the people and processes involved in Webbys-nominated projects, and highlights some of the most dynamic websites on the web. 26 percent of the projects were built on WordPress. 

No one knows better than WordPressers, the blood, sweat, and tears that goes into a really innovative website. Crafted with Code dives into the processes and technologies that went into the development of each honoree. 

Offering a peek behind the curtain of the successes and difficulties that went into these innovative projects gives future developers and designers inspiration to create the next great site. These winners not only show what WordPress can do but sets the standard for what the web can look like. 

While the Webbys and Crafted With Code highlight projects built on a wide variety of tech stacks, the following creative, beautiful, groundbreaking sites are all made on WordPress.

StarWars.com

StarWars.com was launched in 1996 but since then the universe has grown substantially. The famed brand needed a place where fans from all generations could find what they were looking for. This needs to be a one stop shop for fans so it contains quizzes, breaking news, episode guides, and even an online encyclopedia. That’s a lot to ask from a single site.

Because of the demands, the team opted to go with a proprietary platform on WordPress that can properly power each unique section.

Arlo Hotels

The Arlo Hotel site, created by CMYK, had a big objective; combine the corporate platform and every hotel property onto one CMS while also improving the customer experience. In short, an entire back end and front end rework.

For the front end, the team decided to feature large, dynamic photos that show off what the properties have to offer. The landing page includes interactive rollovers and parallax scrolling that make the experience aesthetic and functional.

To conquer the back end pain points, the team leveraged a multi-site WordPress implementation. This allowed for each landing page to be accessed in one place but maintain its individuality.

Jimmy Nelson

When considering the redesign of famed English photographer Jimmy Nelson‘s website, agency Lama Lama knew they wanted something engaging, something that hadn’t been done before. The team decided on a non-linear navigation approach to allow the visitor to explore the site, much like Nelson explores the globe.

This remarkable site was built entirely on WordPress with a WooCommerce shop. Lama Lama leveraged three different libraries Three.js, GSAP, HLS.js, Locomotive Scroll, Lottie, Tailwindcss and the DeviceOrientation API to make this innovative website possible.

BlackSpace

The next impressive honoree is a collective of artists, urbanists, and policymakers working to affirm Black presences in public spaces. BlackSpace needed a dynamic website to explain and amplify their mission. Because the BlackSpace team is small, the site needed to be simple to modify and update while also looking incredible.

To accomplish this, WordPress was the obvious choice. Now that the site is up and running, it can be updated with ease, positioning BlackSpace in front of more potential volunteers and donors.

Smashed Online

Smashed Online was created to help teens understand the risks of underage drinking in an engaging and narrative way. Not only that, the team wanted a design that could be customized for different countries and regions. Certainly not an easy task.

The obviously choice was a WordPress Multisite experience, with technologies such as Video.js, Sass, Node.js and NPM. The team had to push the CMS further than they ever had before and the end result exceeded their goals.

Crafted with Code

These are only 5 examples of the powerful WordPress websites highlighted by Crafted with Code. Head over to the website to read about all the projects and get inspired to create the next big thing using WordPress.

This showcase shatters the stereotype that WordPress is a blogging platform. The universe of the web is so much bigger than that and no one knows this better than the people building and creating beautiful websites. 

The post Crafted with Code 2023 Highlights The Power of WordPress appeared first on Torque.

Congratulations to our 2023 Plugin Madness winner, Advanced Custom Fields! ACF was the very first Plugin Madness winner in 2016, and it has come back to take the crown again seven years later.

ACF knocked out huge contenders such as Yoast, former Plugin Madness Champion Smush, and WooCommerce to come out on top.

Wow! We are thrilled and grateful that ACF has won this year’s Plugin Madness. On behalf of the ACF team, thank you to all who voted for the plugin. It’s a testament to the team’s hard work, dedication, and our commitment to being good stewards of the plugin.

Iain Poulson, Sr. Product Manager, ACF

About ACF

As the name indicates, ACF allows you to add fields to any page of your WordPress site. It’s incredibly easy to to use and customize. Whether you need to add a customer review to the bottom of your site or a product description, ACF can do that.

The plugin is incredibly customizable and adaptable to any kind of site. ACF can make any kind of field you can think of.

ACF has over 4.5 million active users and has been a pillar in the WordPress community. The plugin has maintained a commitment to finding powerful ways for WordPress developers to create sites. 

The team just released an historical update that allows site developers to register custom post types and custom taxonomies from directly within the plugin. These are features users have been asking about for years and they are available on the free and PRO version.

This update saves developers time by eliminating the need to switch between different plugins or command lines while building. You can create custom post types and taxonomies all from your ACF dashboard.

Past Plugin Madness Winners

Plugin Madness has been running for eight years and in that time, amazing winners have been crowned. Last year, first-time competitor The Plus Addons for Elementor had a slam dunk and brought home the prize.

In 2021, FluentCRM, another first timer, rose to the top. With popular page builder, Elementor, taking the crown in 2020 and 2019. Smush Image Optimization held the title in both 2018 and 2017. 

Thank you so much to everyone who nominated a plugin and came back every year to vote. This competition is a great way to say thank you to your favorite plugins, and highlight some that don’t get as much love as others.

The post ACF Wins Plugin Madness 2023 appeared first on Torque.