Welcome to the 49th edition of my newsletter. Some would say this edition is an important one because it signifies change, new beginnings, inner strength, and growth. Numerologically speaking and all. I just like it that number 49 matches my current age 🤓.
Anyway, let’s see what this week brought us, shall we?
🗞 WordPress News
It’s been a quiet week since a little less than 50% of the WordPress Community was preparing for Thanksgiving (and happy Thanksgiving to my American friends on that!) and certainly the other 50% was preparing for Black Friday. Right?!
I’m starting off with Mike McAlister’s hat-trick:
- In my WordPress + Mastodon newsletter I mentioned Mike having published an article how WordPress could find itself opening up the community side of the internet with adding some nice flows and things like ActivePub. He’s received a lot of positive feedback and has dedicated a brand new site to this idea: OpenPress.
It reminds me a bit about John O’Nolan’s proposal back in the day to revolutionize WordPress’ editor which ultimately led him to launch Ghost CMS. I don’t think OpenPress warrants a (spiritual) fork, but I think it most certainly is something that will enrich our WordPress Community as a whole. Act as a bridge between the various portions of the WordPress Community hidden in blogs, Twitter, Mastodon, LinkedIn, etc. All while allowing other communities to be powered by it as well. It’s time we let go of Big Social where we can, IMHO.
I also think there’s a place for BuddyPress to part of this conversation, by the way.
- My buddy Noel asked for feedback on an interesting question on LinkedIn. It’s about whether blocks need to be higher up the food-chain and have their own self-contained lifecycle with regards to distribution, iteration, engagement insights, etc.
We’ve had discussions about this in the early days of the Gutenberg Project, but at the time it was deemed not necessary. I think Noel asks a good question here and agree that we should reevaluate. We have a much more mature Block Editor now, and a lot more experience with it as well. What do you think? Join the conversation on LinkedIn here.
- A poll of mine on what kind of page builder folks were going to use for their next WordPress Project showed some interesting things.
💡Interesting finds
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an ever-changing game that can require everything ranging from pure magic to RTFM to become good at it. I’d argue the content of WIRED’s article “Your Google Searches Are Quietly Evolving. Here’s What’s Next” is a great example of RTFM. Specifically this quote:
On mobile, fast-loading content that renders well on a mobile screen tends to rank higher
– Danny Sullivan
In other words, we’ve suspected this to be the case for a while, but it’s pretty clear that mobile search is dominant and leading. The entire article is a must-read for anyone doing any kind of SEO.
Adjust your strategies accordingly!
📖 What I am reading
Haven’t done much reading of books. Been mostly caught up in watching tutorials on video content creation in my spare time (as if that’s a concept 😂). Published some Shorts on YouTube to see what they would do. It’s interesting how something I put zero effort into garners almost 5K views in two days. Earl Cruz shared with me even more information to read up on over at Search Engine Journal to learn more about how Google / YouTube favors video content.
🎁 Bonus
My bonus link, just like last week is a bit of cheat 😏. I’m using it in this edition to highlight the fact I’ve crossed 200 subscribers (by quite a bit of margin, btw!) and have opened up sponsorships for it. Check it out and let me know if there’s ways we can collaborate 🖖🏻.
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