Remkus’ Ramblings #047 – Don’t Call it a Comeback!

So, yeah… I went silent for a while. For those of you anxiously checking your inbox every week… I’m sorry. Life happened. In fact, a lot happened. Call it a bit of a sabbatical, because that’s certainly how I experienced it.

For those of you who don’t know yet, I left Servebolt. For a great many reasons. You can learn more about the why in my blog post about it.

The last couple of months I’ve been rethinking my WordPress agency (what do I and don’t I want to do) and how will I incorporate some long outstanding ideas that I’ve had.

I got into WordPress back in early 2005 because I was looking for software to use that allowed me to create content for the web. In other words, my first drive was creating content. This time around, I not only want to have a process and flow in place that allows me to publish more content more regularly, but I also want to take it the next level.

What that is? I’ll explain after the break 🤓. First some news.

WordPress News 🗞

• We’ve all seen WordPress 6.1 drop, so I’m not going to bore you with that news, but I do want to highlight one huge feature it introduced: Performance upgrades. Huge ones. Making WordPress a helluva lot greener in energy consumption and faster. What’s not to love about that?!
• The team of Insytful published an interesting post about optimize using the WordPress REST API for where you’re indeed using the REST API outside of the Block Editor.
• My friend Rich Tabor published an insightful post about how to simplify WordPress patterns with content-only block editing. Highly recommend you check out the rest of his last posts as well.
• Same goes for my friend Mike McAlister’s new site and content as well. On OllieWP.com he’s published two articles I highly recommend you to read.
  1. One is about the how and why of theme.json in modern day WordPress theme building
  2. The other, in the same vain, is how to use Block Styles.
• Do you find those missing Site Editor links in your WordPress Dashboard as annoying as I do? Block Styles has got you covered with their Missing Menu Items plugin.
• I listed two things you should never do in WordPress. LMK if you agree or disagree.
• Lastly, I’ve been playing with WordPress Full Site Editing (FSE) functionality from the start. Just finished two themes from scratch with it now. Big shout out to Carolina Nymark’s Full Site Editing site with loads of helpful information on the topic.

Interesting finds 💡

• If you’re looking for beautiful fonts to use in your next project, check out the answers to Rich’s tweet.
• I’m really diving deep into the world of NoCode lately and wanted to share this small thread of 9 excellent NoCode options.
• Tibor pointed out the existence of Logo Ipsum. Too cool to not use for your next project, right?

What I am reading 📖

I’m currently re-reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. If you’re not familiar, check it out on Amazon.

Bonus 🎁

Usually, I list some kind bonus links here that doesn’t fit in any other section above, but today this will be the “after the break” section.

As mentioned, I’ve always been extremely focused on performance and my agency reboot has been done with an even more intense focus on this in mind.

Additionally, I will start to create different types of content as well going forward. Not only will I breath live into my WordPress + Performance YouTube channel, I will also be hosting a podcast around this topic. Where “this topic” can be seen in the broadest sense of the word, though. Not just WordPerf. Any kind of hunt for performance improvement.

If you or anyone you know should totally be on this podcast, send them my way. Or reply to this email and I’ll reach out to them myself. Whatever works for you or them 😄.

So there you have it. You’re in the know again. If you support what I do here, I would very much appreciate you sharing this newsletter on your socials, or forwarding it to you colleagues and friends for them to subscribe. Appreciate it!

That’s it for this week’s ramblings. Thanks for reading!

Best,
Remkus