Apr 18, 2017 Web Development + Tech

What’s Trending in WordPress - April Edition

Be it the code or the community, WordPress remains in a constant state of iteration. It lives, breathes, and evolves. Learning experiences are everywhere, with each month an opportunity to expand your WordPress knowledge or network.

Let’s take a look at some of the recent highlights in the WordPress world from the past few weeks.

The WordPress Plugin Directory

The WordPress Plugin Directory, formerly known as the Repo, received both a design refresh and, most importantly, a tune up to their search terminology and methodology. The categories “Featured,” “Popular,” and “Beta” dominate the home page along with your own personal favorites. Regardless of how you feel about the design or features you wish were or were not there, in the end, this is a huge benefit to almost any end user who needs to search through the almost 50,000 WordPress plugins.

It’s (almost) WordCamp Season!

While winter may not be peak WordCamp season, in March three of the largest camps took place in Miami, Mumbai, and San Diego. As per norm, these were extra-busy WordCamps, with the main talks recorded for WordPress.tv.

Building lifelong friendships in just a weekend isn’t just for summer camp, folks. And the best way to keep up with the happy (Word)campers is on social media. Here are some favorite tweets from these WordCamps. Here are a few tweets!

GoDaddy Acquires Sucuri

Tony Perez and Dré Armeda, the co-founders of Sucuri, have been an integral part of the WordPress community for over a decade, especially in Southern California. From my perspective, it is a great move for GoDaddy to acquire not just Sucuri’s powerful software but also their robust expertise and knowledge. Sucuri is known throughout the WordPress community as a robust and forward-thinking software.

Tony gave his thoughts on the Sucuri blog: “Since our inception our goal was simple: protect our customers websites – at all costs. This was built on the premise that every website owner should be able to deploy enterprise-grade security, without the enterprise-grade costs.”

Secure websites mean a safer internet for all of us and this doesn’t distract from that. In fact, it extends that ability to a larger customer base. GoDaddy has plenty of WordPress users and this is a great move to beef up their security, making this move an easy win.

WordPress in Higher Ed

WPCampus.org, a community focused on higher education, recently announced the date for their conference in Buffalo, New York. Get ready to enjoy a New York summer with the conference taking place on July 14 – 15. Their speaker submissions are closed but registration is open until June 30. The implementation and use of WordPress in higher education is a community in and unto itself, so do yourself a favor and get involved.

WordPress Meetups

In March, the Marketing to the Community Team put out a Call to Meetup Organizers for video testimonials. Meetups are vital for a variety of reasons – they drive fresh conversations about WordPress innovations, discussing the progress of the core code, or simply just breaking the isolation that often comes with web development. As Stephen B. Johnson eloquently stated in his Ted Talk, “Chance favors the connected mind.”

My personal favorite meetup testimonial is this one from Costa Rica. One of the gentlemen says, “De verdad, muchas gracias a WordCamp por darme la oportunidad de aprender, gracias.” (“Seriously, thank you so much WordCamp for giving me the opportunity to learn). Isn’t that what it’s all about?

What’s stopping you? Find and join a meetup today.

About the Author Bridget Willard is the Marketing Manager at WordImpress.com, the creators of the popular donation plugin GiveWP.com. She is also the co-host of the podcast WPblab and co-organizer of WomenWhoWp.org. More by this Author