This Week in WordPress – July 28 to August 4

Welcome, Divi Nation, to our new weekly feature, This Week in WordPress. Every Friday, we’ll have a round-up of the top news, tutorials, and resources that you should check out.

Starting next week, myself and a member of either the Elegant Themes staff (like Nathan B. Weller) or a community member or two will do a live-stream of This Week in WordPress, where we will discuss that week’s topics in-depth, answer your questions, and seek out community opinion. You can catch the live-stream of the cast at either our YouTube channel or Facebook page each and every Friday afternoon at 3pm Eastern (starting August 25th). In the meantime we’ll be getting our content curation and collaboration down by publishing these purely written roundups each Friday from now until then.

So let’s get into it!

News

The Next Chapter for Themes

The folks over at ThemeShaper bring up a very interesting point about how themes are being packaged an used these days. They say that users want to focus on the look of their site, not learning a new piece of software, that the focus should change from the functionality of the theme to design and UX.

Do We Really Even Need Gutenberg?

If there’s one thing that’s hot this week in WordPress, it’s Gutenberg. If you ask anyone in the WP community what they think about the up-and-coming text editor, they’ve got an opinion (if they’ve tried the plugin, that is). And Sunflower Child Themes is asking a question that echoes what a lot of people are saying about the much-discussed text editor. This article has a thorough look at the current version of Gutenberg so readers can see just what’s coming and how it compares to what we are currently used to. In the end, the consensus among WP users is “wait and see” because the software is so new. The question that SCT asks is still valid: are we waiting and seeing about something we even need in the first place?

The Missing Advice I Needed When Starting My Career

Basically, Smashing Magazine goes through, point-by-point what many of us need to hear. Specifically, they discuss the idea that you should stop obsessing over which tools you use (such as programming languages, themes, page builders…Gutenberg) and focus on the things that matter in the job itself.

How a VC-Funded Company is Undermining the Open-Source Community

The Outline discusses how a for-profit company went into multiple pieces of open-source software and inserted ads for their products as functionality. As the WordPress community is based on collaboration and trust, this topic could impact us in the future. Fear is growing among some open-sourcers that these actions may influence other bad apples to act similarly.

WordPress 4.8.1 Released

The first maintenance update for the “Bill” build has been released. Among the updates is yet another text-editing feature: an HTML-specific widget that works like the pre-4.8 text widget. So if you have code that needs to be put into widgets without the TinyMCE (and I assume that most of us do), that’s an option once again. And there was much rejoicing.

And there were, you know, other updates you can check out, too, that are just as awesome as the HTML widget.

The Future of the WordPress Economy

I am truly amazed articles like this still pop up, but they’re definitely still worth talking about. Every so often, there are people who cry doom for WordPress because of a new, shiny something that comes out. At this point, it’s page-builders (like our own Divi!), Squarespace, Wix, Gutenberg (see a trend?) and so on. WPShout’s article here tackles exactly why we all shouldn’t be worried: things change, so be good at what you do and ready to adapt if you have to.

Asides and Resources

Hacked and Corrupted Sites

These two articles 12 Signs That Your WordPress Site is Hacked and What is Cross-Site Contamination and How to Prevent It are super-mega-ultra important to understand. Two of the past three freelance clients I took on were because of these. Either shared server had been attacked or their WordPress site was hacked and taken over.

I made some pretty good money getting things back on track, recreating sites, setting up new hosting and security measures, etc. The flip-side is that they had to pay me some pretty good money to do all that, too. So read these articles please.

Snopes Got Held Hostage

It’s amazing to me how much trust people put in web professionals. I know that all of y’all are awesome and trustworthy. But not everyone is. The folks at Snopes learned that the hard way. They didn’t have full access to their accounts, hosting, or servers, and they basically got held hostage because of it. It’s a bad situation for them, but if anything good can come of it, it will be you taking a careful look at who you trust and what information and access you will be sure to keep.

Volunteer at WordCamp US

You should totally volunteer at WordCamp US this year. It’s in Nashville, TN this December, and it’s a pretty awesome city. And WordCamp itself is pretty awesome, too. And so are volunteers. There’s a whole lot of awesome going around, and you should be part of it.

Regional WordCamps Under Discussion

Turns out, the folks who oversee WordCamps are talking about making them regional, rather than just national or city-specific. The details are still being worked out, but now would be a good time to speak up if you’re interested in taking part in the discussion. I know I’d personally love a WordCamp South.

Social Media for Small Business

Strangely enough, even though I’m on social media constantly, when it is part of my paid work, I find of the hardest aspects of the job to keep up with and do well. Yoast recognizes that is true for people who aren’t me, too. They’ve put together a guide to making sure you put your best face forward to the people who follow you.

Tutorials of the Week

Catch Us Next Friday on This Week in WordPress

We’ll be back next week, same elegant time, same elegant channel. We will have more news, tutorials, and resources for you when This Week in WordPress returns next Friday.

The post This Week in WordPress – July 28 to August 4 appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.