First off, a warm welcome to all of you new subscribers here. I’m very happy to see that, since I picked up the newsletter again end of November last year, more than 235 of you have subscribed as well. Thank you and do reply to my email(s) and let me know what you think or if you have any questions!
Alright, let’s dive into what into what happened in the last 10K or so minutes.
🗞 WordPress News
I’m going to look at ChatGPT again in this edition. I’m seeing more and more different usages for how to use ChatGPT in the context of WordPress. I was triggered early this week by a tweet by Sergio Pereira where he highlighted how ChatGPT has changed software development. And I realized quickly that that point of view is but a slice of the pie in the context of the entire WordPress thing.
I’m working on a video for my upcoming YouTube channel that aims to highlight as many ways as I can think of, but I thought I’d let you know here how I’ve been using it this week with a few examples.
- One of the client projects I work on regularly has a lot of inherited spaghetti code. I’m using ChatGPT to help me explain what’s going on in those tangled up lines of code. It’s doing a remarkably good job of just explaining in words what’s going on.
- In the same context, I let it create PHPDoc block documentation so whomever is going to touch that code next has a much better grasp of what’s going on.
- I asked ChatGPT to create a JavaScript function that fetches my subscriber counts from my Mailchimp audience list. All I did was ask it to fetch it. It figured out itself how to connect to the API and enqueue the file in WordPress. Crazy how it worked right out of the box.
Now, these are just a few simple examples, but if this is what we’re able to do with it now, imagine what the next version of ChatGPT will be able to do. From what I understand, the dataset that next version will use will be 500 times larger.
Are you ready for what’s coming?
- Gutenberg is used in many contexts outside of WordPress. Gutenberg Hub published a great article helping you deep dive into the Standalone Gutenberg Block Editor.
If you didn’t know, I’ve been on board with our new Block Editor from the get-go and am very appreciative of where it’s going. Other software solutions using it as well will only make it better. I do wish we start using it for all the places inside WordPress as well. Like term descriptions, author bio’s, that sort of stuff. I think it’s time, don’t you?
- My friend Ronald Huereca published an article listing what he calls 15 essential WordPress plugins for local development. It has some things I hadn’t seen before.
My favorite from that list is Slash Edit. What’s yours?
🚀 Performance
This week’s performance tip is to make yourself heard if you’re working with WooCommerce.
- I’m happy to see the WooCommerce team actively asking for feedback on a Github issue.
Many people don’t know how to properly make WooCommerce fast. I think that’s simply because they’ve never looked at the foundation of how to make it fast. I also think there’s a lot that needs to improve in WooCommerce in order for it to be faster than it currently is.
💡 Interesting finds
- Regardless of whether you actively work with SEO or not, it most certainly has an impact on you. In that context, I read this interesting analysis of last year’s winners in Google Search.
As Jono Alderson said on Twitter, some really interesting stuff in here, like Shopify’s rocket-powered international SEO strategy and resultant growth.
- I came across this WebPerformance Report service that sends you a weekly personalized report. Cool service if you’d like that sort of thing automated.
🔆 WordPress Highlight
The highlight of the week is WP Migrate Pro which now finally does full site exports and plays nice alongside LocalWP.
📖 What I am reading
Moved on to the next book on my list of unread books: The Happiness Advantage. I’ve only read one chapter, but I love what I’ve read so far. It’s main premise is that happiness is not the belief that we don’t need to change; it is the realization that we can.
🎁 Bonus
My bonus for this week is a lame one. Based off of the poll I did in last week’s newsletter, it was made clear that the vast majority of you actually enjoy reading this newsletter on Friday. So, that’s what I’m sticking with. Thanks to everyone who voted!
That’s it for this week’s ramblings. Thanks for reading!
Best,
Remkus
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