WebProNews

Tag: WordPress

  • WordPress VIP Buying Parse.ly to Increase Enterprise Analytics

    WordPress VIP Buying Parse.ly to Increase Enterprise Analytics

    WordPress VIP (WPVIP), Automattic’s enterprise subsidiary, is buying Parse.ly to provide enterprise clients with content analytics.

    WPVIP currently offers enterprise-grade WordPress services to some of the biggest names in tech. Much of those services revolve around providing consultation, products and services to help clients get the most from WordPress.

    The acquisition of Parse.ly is a natural fit for WPVIP, adding powerful content analytics for the enterprise. WPVIP’s Nick Gernert highlighted some of the benefits:

    Over the years, we’ve been fortunate to see firsthand the impact of Parse.ly’s content analytics platform. Parse.ly isn’t simply capturing traditional traffic analytics. Instead, the platform goes deeper—revealing exactly how individual content pieces are impacting traffic in real-time. The upshot for content marketers? Rich reporting with detailed insights into the business impact of their content.

    With Parse.ly, the workflows that WPVIP customers use every day will surface insights that move beyond page views and visits. For example, commerce brands will understand which content converts visitors into buyers. They will also be able to deliver content recommendations for top-performing products.

    According to Parse.ly’s co-founder Sachin Kamdar, all of the company’s employees will now join WPVIP. Meanwhile, all of Parse.ly’s customers will gain access to WPVIP.

    Kamdar emphasized the further innovation that will result from WPVIP’s investment:

    Parse.ly’s open source WordPress plugin is already the most popular way to deploy Parse.ly to websites. And we have lots of ideas for how Parse.ly’s dashboard and API can improve enterprise WordPress sites. But, that’s not the only (or even the primary) place we’ll be innovating in 2021 and beyond. Our desire was always to make Parse.ly the top content analytics system on the market, and solve key real-time and historical analytics needs for editors, journalists, corporate marketers, and content marketers alike.

    With investment from the WPVIP team, and with wider product innovation support from the Automattic team, this dream will be a reality. You, our customers and prospective customers, will benefit directly from this investment.

  • Facebook Data Transfer Tool Now Supports WordPress and Google Docs

    Facebook Data Transfer Tool Now Supports WordPress and Google Docs

    Facebook has updated its data transfer too, adding support for Google Docs and WordPress.

    Like many online platforms, Facebook gives users the ability to download their data. Such services can provide a useful backup, or make it easier to use the data and posts in other mediums.

    Facebook has expanded its service to include Google Docs, as well as WordPress and Blogger. The company is also renaming the tool to better reflect its new abilities.

    To give people more control and choice over their data, today we’re introducing two new data portability types, Facebook posts and notes. People can now directly transfer their notes and posts to Google Docs, Blogger and WordPress.com. These updates extend the reach of the tool that already enables people to transfer their photos and videos to Backblaze, Dropbox, Google Photos and Koofr. To better reflect the range of data types people can now transfer to our partners’ services, we’re renaming the tool “Transfer Your Information.”

    The tool is available in Facebook Settings > Your Facebook Information > Transfer Your Information.

     

    Data Portability Infographic - Credit Facebook
    Data Portability Infographic – Credit Facebook
  • 100,000 WordPress Sites Vulnerable To Being Wiped

    100,000 WordPress Sites Vulnerable To Being Wiped

    A security issue in a popular WordPress plugin has left some 100,000 websites vulnerable to being completely wiped.

    Security firm WebARX discovered a flaw in the ThemeGrill Demo Importer plugin. The plugin imports other plugins developed by ThemeGrill. When WebARX first discovered the flaw, some 200,000 websites had the plugin installed, although that number has now dropped to 100,000. This is likely due to companies uninstalling the plugin to mitigate the risk.

    To make matters worse, this vulnerability is being actively exploited. WebARX has already stopped over 16,000 attacks attempting to exploit the plugin.

    “This is a serious vulnerability and can cause a significant amount of damage,” writes WebARX. “Since it requires no suspicious-looking payload just like our previous finding in InfiniteWP, it is not expected for any firewall to block this by default and a special rule needs to be created to block this vulnerability.”

    ThemeGrill has updated the plugin to fix the vulnerability. All impacted sites would install the new version immediately.

  • WordPress Introduces a New Way to Earn Money: Subscriptions

    WordPress Introduces a New Way to Earn Money: Subscriptions

    WordPress is one of the most popular website platforms, powering some 19,500,000 websites around the world and 297,629 of the top one million websites. WordPress’ latest move will no doubt increase its popularity, with the announcement it is introducing Recurring Payments.

    WordPress is endeavoring to assist website owners and creatives in monetizing their content. While many rely on ad revenue, ad revenue isn’t always enough to meet the financial needs of website owners. Now, with Recurring Payments, WordPress and Jetpack-enabled sites will be able to accept scheduled payments.

    “Our new Recurring Payments feature for WordPress.com and Jetpack-powered sites lets you do just that: it’s a monetization tool for content creators who want to collect repeat contributions from their supporters, and it’s available with any paid plan on WordPress.com.

    “Let your followers support you with periodic, scheduled payments. Charge for your weekly newsletter, accept monthly donations, sell yearly access to exclusive content — and do it all with an automated payment system.

    “With recurring payments, you can:

    – Accept ongoing payments from visitors directly on your site.
    – Bill supporters automatically, on a set schedule. Subscribers can cancel anytime from their WordPress.com account.
    – Offer ongoing subscriptions, site memberships, monthly donations, and more, growing your fan base with exclusive content.
    – Integrate your site with Stripe to process payments and collect funds.”

    Recurring Payments should be a significant boon to creatives and website owners who want to focus on their creativity, rather than worrying too much about how to monetize their efforts.

  • HTTPS Launched For All Custom Domains On WordPress.com

    HTTPS Launched For All Custom Domains On WordPress.com

    Automattic announced that they’re launching free HTTPS for all custom domains hosted on WordPress.com. WordPress.com has supported encryption for WordPress.com subdomains since 2014, but now it’s being expanded to over a million custom domains.

    The company says users will see secure encryption automatically deployed on every new site within minutes.

    “We are closing the door to un-encrypted web traffic (HTTP) at every opportunity,” writes Automattic’s Chief Systems Wrangler.

    As he notes, encryption provides more than security.

    “Protocol enhancements like SPDY and HTTP/2 have narrowed the performance gap between encrypted and un-encrypted web traffic, with encrypted HTTP/2 outperforming un-encrypted HTTP/1.1 in some cases,” he writes.

    Google announced HTTPS as a ranking signal in 2014. Back in December, the search engine started indexing HTTPS versions of URLs by default.

    Earlier this year, Moz found that HTTPS URLs made up 25% of page-one Google results across 10,000 queries.

  • Shopify for WordPress Launched

    Shopify for WordPress Launched

    Shopify announced the launch of new themes and a new plugin for WordPress to make it easier to sell on WordPress sites.

    Both the themes and plugin are free. You can use them to add products to any of your pages or blogposts without leaving the content management platform.

    “As usual, you’ll still manage all of your pages and posts in WordPress, but you’ll have Shopify to manage everything else: payments, secure checkout, shipping and fulfillment, inventory, and taxes—all the hard things about selling online,” says Shopify’s Daniel Patricio.

    The themes are called Hype by Themezilla, Simple by Themify, and Pulse by Ultralinx. You can see them below in that order.

    “Installing the plugin adds the ability to easily drop products with buy buttons into any sidebar, page or blog post,” says Patricio. “Plus, you’ll get a slick pop-out shopping cart for your site, so customers can purchase multiple products at once.”

    While the plugin is free to Shopify users, it does cost $9 a month for a “lite” Shopify plan. The plan will also get you Facebook Shop, Shopify POS for iOS or Android, access to the Shopify app store, and 24/7 support.

    Images via Shopify

  • Facebook Launches WordPress Plugin For Instant Articles

    Facebook Launches WordPress Plugin For Instant Articles

    Not to be outdone by Google’s open source Accelerated Mobile Pages initiative, which recently got its own WordPress plugin, Facebook just announced one for Instant Articles.

    Facebook announced last month that Instant Articles will be available to all publishers on April 12. This means any publisher, regardless of size, will be able to have the same content advantage as the major players Facebook has already given access to the feature.

    To help these publishers, which by Facebook’s definition, includes any content publisher or blog, a new WordPress plugin is available.

    Facebook’s Chris Ackermann writes in a blog post, “We’re always looking for ways to make it easier for publishers to share their content on Facebook, so we’ve partnered with Automattic, parent company of WordPress.com VIP, to build a free plugin for Instant Articles, which simplifies the process of generating and publishing Instant Articles from WordPress. The open-source WordPress publishing platform now powers more than 25% of sites on the web, so we are excited to help millions of publishers all over the world bring the Instant Articles experience to their readers.”

    “We’ve worked with a small group of publishers on WordPress to beta test the plugin as a seamless way to adapt web content for the Instant Articles format, with a built-in suite of interactive tools that help stories come to life on mobile,” he adds. “For example, the plugin recognizes the image found in this Foreign Policy article and specifies the correct markup so the photo renders properly in the Instant Article. The photo expands to fill the screen when tapped and allows exploration by simply tilting the phone.”

    When Instant Articles opens up to all publishers next month, those using standard WordPress templates will be able to activate the plugin to create Instant Articles.

    The plugin is open source, so the developer community will be able to participate in its continued development.

    WordPress discusses the plugin more here.

    According to Facebook, Instant Articles get more shares.

    Images via WordPress/Facebook

  • Google On AMP As a Ranking Signal

    Google On AMP As a Ranking Signal

    Google has been talking up Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) for months, promising a February launch date for when it would start sending search traffic from Google results to pages using it. Many are no doubt wondering if utilizing AMP will give them a ranking boost. Well, Google addressed that.

    Have you set up AMP for your site yet? How was the experience? Discuss.

    Earlier this week, Google began showing AMP results in search results. In fact, this came a day earlier than expected and earlier than when Google actually made the announcement. We posted about it prior to the announcement, but let’s take a moment and look at what Google has said since then.

    The announcement came on Wednesday. Google said:

    In just over four months, AMP has come a long way, with hundreds of publishers, scores of technology companies and ad-tech businesses all taking part in this joint mission to improve the mobile web for everyone. And starting today, we’ll make it easy to find AMP webpages in relevant mobile search results, giving you a lightning-fast reading experience for top stories.

    Now when you search for a story or topic on Google from a mobile device, webpages created using AMP will appear when relevant in the Top Stories section of the search results page. Any story you choose to read will load blazingly fast—and it’s easy to scroll through the article without it taking forever to load or jumping all around as you read. It’s also easy to quickly flip through the search results just by swiping from one full-page AMP story to the next.

    According to the company, pages built with AMP load an average of four times faster and use 10 times less data than equivalent non-AMP pages.

    The company didn’t mention AMP as a ranking signal in the announcement. Word around the industry was that Google would likely make it one. At launch, however, it is not. Still, that doesn’t mean it won’t become one.

    During a recent webmaster hangout, Google’s John Mueller was asked about this. Here is what he said (via Search Engine Roundtable):

    AMP a ranking signal…At the moment, it’s not a ranking signal. So it’s obviously one way to make mobile friendly pages, so that might be an option where I’ve already seen some sites where they’ve moved their whole website to the AMP format, and obviously that’s a mobile-friendly set-up, so that kind of gets that mobile-friendly boost, but just AMP itself is not something that we have as a ranking signal at the moment.

    Mobile-friendly was of course announced as a ranking signal roughly a year ago. Even if AMP isn’t directly a ranking signal on its own, it will naturally put you on the path of another ranking signal.

    In fact, stands to reason that it will help you out beyond just mobile-friendly, but also with page speed, which Google announced as a ranking signal quite some time ago.

    This week, WordPress.com sites began supporting AMP automatically, and there’s a new plugin for self-hosted WordPress sites. From the WordPress.org plugin directory:

    With the plugin active, all posts on your site will have dynamically generated AMP-compatible versions, accessible by appending /amp/ to the end your post URLs. For example, if your post URL is http://example.com/2016/01/01/amp-on/, you can access the AMP version at http://example.com/2016/01/01/amp-on/amp/. If you do not have pretty permalinks enabled, you can do the same thing by appending ?amp=1, i.e. http://example.com/2016/01/01/amp-on/?amp=1

    Note #1: that Pages and archives are not currently supported.

    Note #2: this plugin only creates AMP content but does not automatically display it to your users when they visit from a mobile device. That is handled by AMP consumers such as Google Search.

    You can find an FAQ page for AMP here.

    Do you intend to support AMP with your site? Do you already? Let us know in the comments.

    Image via Google/AMP

  • WordPress Gets Important Security Update

    WordPress Gets Important Security Update

    WordPress announced that WordPress 4.4.1 is now available. It’s described specifically as a security release for all previous versions, and they “strongly” encourage you to update your sites ASAP.

    The update is a response to WordPress versions 4.4 and earlier being affected by a cross-site scripting vulnerability that could allow sites to be compromised.

    In addition to the security fix, the update also includes some additional bug fixes (via WordPress.org Blog):

    Emoji support has been updated to include all of the latest emoji characters, including the new diverse emoji! ??????

    Some sites with older versions of OpenSSL installed were unable to communicate with other services provided through some plugins.

    If a post URL was ever re-used, the site could redirect to the wrong post.

    The update fixes 52 WordPress 4.4 bugs in all.

    H/T: Marketing Land

  • GoDaddy Launches Partner Program For WordPress Plugin Developers

    GoDaddy Launches Partner Program For WordPress Plugin Developers

    GoDaddy launched a new WordPress Plugin Partner Program to help with the discovery and use of plugins in the WordPress community.

    The company announced thew news at WordCamp U.S. on Friday.

    “With 40,000+ plugins available, it can be difficult for developers to have their plugin rise above the noise. GoDaddy’s program boosts visibility of the best WordPress plugins, giving authors a chance to drive downloads, and making it easier for small businesses and web developers to find a plugin that meets their needs,” a spokesperson for GoDaddy tells WebProNews.

    When plugin authors become GoDaddy-verified partners, they get access to exclusive, on-demand support and a direct line of communication to the company’s customer service. They also get platform-tuning assistance to allow the plugins to maintain a “high quality user experience” on GoDaddy’s platform.

    “We’re thrilled to be a part of the WordCamp US conference and celebrations this week, and to announce our Plugin Partnership Program, the first of its kind to market,” said Jeff King, SVP & GM Hosting, Security, GoDaddy. “Through new relationships fostered by this program, we hope to help authors stand out among the over 40,000 plugins and roughly 10,000 themes in the rapidly growing and expansive ecosystem, raise the bar for plugins, drive more downloads and delight customers with quality offerings.”

    Verified partners also get referrals from integrated GoDaddy placements, which the company says will help boost downloads and activity.

    Partners will receive a badge to display on their website.

    Images via GoDaddy

  • WordPress.com Adds Support For WebP Image Format

    WordPress.com Adds Support For WebP Image Format

    The WordPress.com image service, which delivers the images bloggers use in their posts to their audiences, now supports the WebP image format.

    With this addition, served images can be reduced by up to 34% in file size compared to a JPEG image of the same quality. This means images will load faster and annoy users less.

    Here’s the comparison WordPress provides:

    Screen Shot 2015-12-07 at 11.01.07 AM

    “While WebP isn’t currently supported by all browsers (see the WebP FAQ for more details), you don’t have to worry about anything,” says David Newman on the WordPress.com blog. “We auto-detect which browsers your readers are using to make sure they can enjoy your travel photography, family pictures, or recent illustration work at the best possible quality. Our system will always serve your viewers the best image format at the highest speed possible.”

    For more on the format, Google has a study comparing compression between WebP and JPEG here.

    Images via WordPress.com

  • WordPress.com Gets Refresh With New App and Features

    Automattic announced the launch of a new version of WordPress.com, which it has built from the ground up to let you update pages and respond to comments from a desktop app, manage all blogs and sites from one spot on any device, spend less time on administration/uploading, and find “the best content” people publish with WordPress.

    The new WordPress.com includes previously launched features like the new editor, improved stats pages, and a new reader, but now there’s also a new Mac app.

    “Use the desktop app to focus on your content and design with no other browser tabs to distract you — or to keep your sites sidelined but accessible,” writes Michelle W. on the WordPress.com news blog. “Build your site anywhere, in whatever way helps you get your best work done: the app is powered by the same technology that runs WordPress.com, creating a seamless experience for publishing and browsing whether you’re in a browser, a mobile app, or the desktop app.”

    “And all of WordPress.com, app included, is built with new technologies that are faster and smoother,” she adds. “Use the time you save uploading photos or configuring menus to focus on your magnum opus instead. WordPress.com should be nimble enough to keep up with you, today, tomorrow, and ten years from now — and now it is.”

    Apps for Windows and Linux are on the way. You can sign up here to be notified when they become available.

    In addition to the new app, the Jetpack plugin now provides self-hosted sites with access to the new publishing and site-building tools and app.

    They also open sourced the whole codebase on GitHub.

    There’s also a new “Discover” feature in Reader to help you discover new content published with WordPress.

    Images via WordPress.com

  • WordPress.com Gets New High-Speed Editor

    WordPress.com Gets New High-Speed Editor

    WordPress.com announced that it now has a new editor that’s faster and cleaner. According to the people behind it, it’s fast, responsive, and lets you create posts and pages more quickly both on desktop and mobile.

    According to WordPress.com, the new editor includes instant saving and quick sharing. You can easily manage posts regardless of if you have one or multiple blogs and authors. You can access draft posts in a single click, and content is saved automatically.

    You can drag/drop photos, music files, documents, and videos into the post or page. There’s also a revamped post calendar to make scheduling easier.

    The new editor is available for self-hosted WordPress.org sites as well. It just requires a Jetpack download.

    Images via WordPress.com

  • WordPress.com Gets A New Action Bar

    WordPress.com Gets A New Action Bar

    WordPress.com has a new action bar, which makes it easier for readers to follow blogs of interest and for bloggers to make changes to their own sites.

    If you’re a blog visitor, and you’re on a WordPress.com blog that you’re not yet following, you can click the “Follow” button that appears in the bottom-right hand corner so new posts from that blog will appear in your WordPress.com Reader. If you click on the three dots that appear on the button, you’ll get more options such as the ability to add the blog’s theme to your own blog, copy the shortlink, report the content, or manage the sites that you follow.

    follow

    following

    options

    If you’re on one of your own pages, you’ll have “Customize” and “Edit” options. You can use these to go to the customizer where you can adjust your site’s appearance, change themes, change settings, etc, or go to Edit to make changes to your actual content.

    The action bar will appear on the desktop, tablets, and smartphones. You can minimize it if you don’t like it.

    Images via WordPress.com

  • WordPress Has ‘Reinvented’ Its Video Feature

    Automattic announced a big update to VideoPress, its service that powers videos on WordPress.com and Jetpack-connected self-hosted WordPress sites.

    It describes the new generation of VideoPress as “dynamic, responsive, and lightning fast”.

    “Out of the box, the new VideoPress is lightweight and responsive for beautiful playback on any screen, from smartphones to desktops,” explains Guillermo Rauch on the WordPress blog. “VideoPress works on all modern browsers and devices, and gives blog and site authors the power to engage their audiences no matter where they are. Not only do videos look amazing on WordPress sites, but you can also embed your videos anywhere on the web — other websites, social media, chat services — by using a permalink or a snippet of code.”

    According to the announcement, VideoPress is optimized for speed, taking up far less space. Posts with video content should laod faster, and that should only help blogs in SEO. Search engines do like fast sites. It should help mobile users a great deal too, particularly when their connections aren’t running as well as they’d like.

    “The new VideoPress puts your content front and center. The player is ad-free and unbranded to ensure your videos look and feel like an integral part of your website or blog, not like they belong to a third-party video platform. Unlike other video hosting services, VideoPress starts and ends on your video, keeping traffic on your site and giving you full control over the content to which your visitors are exposed.”

    There’s also a new feature called “Seek” that lets you skim through videos:


    They’ve also made it easier to share and embed videos with new options, including starting playback at specific times, looping, and autoplay:


    VideoPress is available under Premium and Business plans.

    Image via WordPress

  • WordPress.com And Automattic Just Turned 10. Here Are Some Stats

    Automattic reminded us on Friday that it just turned ten years old along with WordPress.com. Come to think of it, that sounds about right as we recently celebrated ten years of YouTube.

    Naturally, the company has released a video and is sharing some stats to celebrate.

    “In addition to building a world-class publishing platform, our company has redefined what it means to be a global company working on the internet: we have nearly 400 employees, working from home (or their preferred coworking spaces), around the world,” writes Automattic’s Mark Armstrong in a blog post. “We use our own p2 sites to communicate with each other, and we all spend time doing support rotations with the people who matter most: Our users.”

    “And we’re just getting started: 24% of websites on the internet now use WordPress to power their sites, and we believe there’s more for us to accomplish together to continue to make WordPress.com the engine that powers your creativity, your thoughts and ideas, and your business,” he adds.

    So what about those stats?

    – 2.5 billion posts written with WordPress.com and Jetpack

    – 137 languages used across those posts

    – 3 billion comments

    – The longest title on a WordPress.com post has 19,176 words

    – The longest post ever published has over 10 million words.

    – There have been 2.3 million total support messages between customers and “happiness engineers”.

    We recently spoke with WP Engine CEO Heather Brunner about how and why so many businesses are using WordPress. Check that out here.

  • WP Engine CEO On Why So Many Businesses Flock To WordPress

    We recently looked at a study highlighting how big WordPress is in the job market. WP Engine provided a glimpse into the “WordPress economy,” looking at jobs that call for WordPress skills throughout the U.S.

    It’s the most dominant content management system on the web by far, and is heavily used by businesses of all sizes.

    We had the opportunity to engage WP Engine CEO Heather Brunner in a Q&A.

    On the main reasons enterprises are adopting WordPress to host their content, she told us, “Companies of all sizes, including enterprises, are adopting WordPress as their content management platform because it is flexible, intuitive, customizable, and easy-to-use. WordPress empowers major brands to become content producers and publishers, and it gives them the tools they need to create terrific websites to showcase who they are. WordPress has proven itself to be secure, and it has become the gold standard for online publishing—WordPress now powers nearly a quarter of sites on the web, and it shows no sign of slowing.”

    WordPress has long been a major platform for bloggers, yet it only continues to dominate the landscape more and more.

    On what the other platforms aren’t getting right that WordPress does so well, Brunner said, “What sets WordPress apart is its flexibility, customizability, and ease of use. WordPress makes it easy for businesses of any size to become publishers—it’s a familiar intuitive system and makes broadcasting content via the web simple.”

    We asked her what she thinks are the biggest improvements to the WordPress ecosystem over the years.

    “At its core, WordPress is all about the democratization of publishing,” she said. “It gives everyone a voice on the web. At the same time, it’s an open source platform powered by the wisdom of a vibrant community. These two things have combined to make WordPress the amazing publishing platform it is today. It’s challenging to pinpoint specific improvements that have made the largest impact. WordPress’ progress has been exciting to watch.”

    WordPress recently bought WooCommerce to ramp up its ecommerce efforts. On what this means for WordPress users who want to sell things, Brunner told us, “WordPress has grown into an incredible platform for ecommerce. Many WP Engine customers are high-volume ecommerce stores that rely on WordPress and WP Engine to safely and securely conduct business on the web. Ultimately, these moves will shine a light on ecommerce on WordPress and will create even more opportunities for WordPress and for WP Engine to attract online stores. It will also encourage businesses that are already using WordPress for some of their sites to bring their ecommerce store to WordPress as well. Eventually, this will lead to the creation of more businesses being powered by WordPress.”

    Asked for her opinion on what the best plugins are, she had this to say: “The beauty of WordPress is the ability to make websites stunning digital properties and customize them through the vast plugin ecosystem. Of the tens of thousands of plugins, each has its own distinct use case and is specific to the desired outcome a site is trying to achieve. Given this huge variety of use cases, it is impossible to choose a favorite.”

    A while back, WP Engine put out a fascinating widget showing live WordPress stats. The numbers are pretty crazy as they show things like pages read, new readers, new posts, etc. in real time. Check it out here.

    Image via WP Engine

  • A Fascinating Look At The WordPress Job Landscape

    WP Engine released some interesting research into the “WordPress economy” and jobs that call for WordPress skills throughout the United States. The study utilized online listings from Indeed.com for WordPress-centric positions, and analyzed which jobs are most in demand, which areas show the most interest in WordPress skills, and which salaries are most common.

    “WordPress is the most dominant content management system on the web today,” the report says. “It has a diverse user base comprising personal bloggers, Fortune 500 companies, and all types of businesses in between. WordPress’s flexibility makes the platform capable of meeting almost any business’s needs. When companies rely on WordPress for their blogging and content management system needs, they’re looking for competent professionals to handle the day-to-day operations. These roles can range from theme designers and software developers to writers and system administrators.”

    Looking at data from Wappalyzer.com, it found that WordPress has 65% of market share for sites using a CMS.

    Basically, there’s WordPress and then there’s everything else. It’s not even close.

    Here’s a snapshot of the WordPress jobs scene across the country:

    Here’s a look at the top cities:

    They also compared developer and designer jobs:

    The most common salaries range from $30,000 to $49,000 a year, followed by $50,000 to $69,000. Cumulatively, the report says, salaries of more than $50,000 comprise the vast majority. The largest salary category for WordPress developer positions was $40,000 to $59,000, but $60,000 and up were the majority. WordPress designer salaries of $30,000 to $49,000 are the most common, with those of $50,000 making up the majority.

    Here’s what the freelance landscape looks like:

    There’s plenty more where all of that came from. Take a look at the full report.

    If you really want to get a sense of just how huge WordPress is, check out these insane stats.

    Images via WP Engine

  • New WordPress Update Improves Sharing

    New WordPress Update Improves Sharing

    Automattic released version 4.2 of WordPress, which is named “Powell” after jazz pianist Bud Powell. It’s now available for download/update. The company says its new features are designed to help bloggers communicate and share.

    For one, there’s a new “Press This” feature in the tools menu, which you can add to your browser bookmark bar or on your mobile screen. When you have it installed, you can share your content quickly.

    The update includes extended character support as well. In a blog post Matt Mullenweg writes:

    Writing in WordPress, whatever your language, just got better. WordPress 4.2 supports a host of new characters out-of-the-box, including native Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters, musical and mathematical symbols, and hieroglyphs.

    It also includes emoji.

    Here’s a look at some additional new features:

    Mullenweg gets more into the under the hood stuff in the post.

    Images via WordPress

  • Twitter Now Has An Official WordPress Plugin

    Twitter announced the release of its official WordPress plugin, which brings various Twitter features and functionality together into one package for WordPress sites.

    Included are Twitter Cards, Analytics, Embedded tweets and video, the tweet button, the follow button, Twitter advertising, and a base library.

    “We created this plugin to serve the common needs of most modern publishers while allowing for extensibility and WordPress API integrations by other WordPress plugins or site-specific customizations,” says Twitter developer advocate Niall Kennedy. “All Twitter JavaScript is loaded through WordPress resource managers for optimized execution. Twitter Cards are customized by post format and post type. Sharing options are only presented for a public post status. The plugin is globally available in 28 languages. If you’re a PHP or WordPress developer interested in learning more,our full plugin code, including underlying PHP libraries, is available on GitHub under the MIT license.”

    The company says the plugin will help sites grow their Twitter audiences.

    For Cards, the plugin automatically generates them for your webpages to highlight content you’ve shared.

    Cards must be enabled on your domain before they appear alongside a tweet. You can submit a URL to the Twitter Cards validator to request Twitter add the card type for your domain.

    The Analytics part lets you track your site and author Twitter accounts.

    With the plugin, you can customize your embeds.

    “Since there is unique content every day on Twitter, our new plugin for WordPress makes it easy to include an embedded Tweet on your website that matches your site design,” explains Kennedy. “Choose a widget theme, link color and border color from your WordPress administrative dashboard to visually integrate Tweets into your webpages and articles. We’ve also included support for video embeds to highlight Twitter video content.”

    In an FAQ document, it notes that if your custom link color and border don’t appear in embdedded tweets or timelines, your site may have a content security policy blocking Twitter’s JavaScript from inserting your custom styling. It’s also possible that you configured an embedded timeline widget with a non-default link color. The widget configuration overrides your page/theme configuration.

    You can add the tweet button to posts from the admin interface, and the plugin automatically configures it to include “the URL of the post, site and author Twitter accounts, custom share text and hashtags specific to each post.”

    The plugin also makes it easy to add a follow button to your theme’s widget area or alongside author info, according to the company.

    For advertisers, Twitter says the plugin simplifies conversion tracking and tailored audience creation with a WordPress macro.

    The plugin doesn’t add any additional tracking of your site’s visitors, according to the FAQ.

    Developers can contribute to the plugin, submit pull requests, or run test suites through the GitHub repository. Documentation is available here.

  • Check Out These Insane WordPress Stats

    Check Out These Insane WordPress Stats

    Earlier this month, Automattic gave us a look at a bunch of stats about WordPress.com blogs in 2014. They were pretty impressive. For example, there were a total of 18,300,771 new blogs created throughout the year. That’s up 12.5% compared to 2013. It works out to nearly 50,000 new blogs per day.

    There were also 555,782,547 blog posts created, which is over 1.5 million per day with 47 million published from mobile devices.

    WP Engine analyzed how WordPress activity on the web compares to other activity, and is sharing some interesting stats in the form of a cool widget.

    “More WordPress-hosted pages are read each second than the combined total of tweets/Instagram photos posted per second,” a spokesperson from WP Engine points out. “There are about as many WordPress pages viewed as there are for Wikipedia.”

    Check it out:

    via wpengine.com – Having trouble viewing this? Click here.

    According to WP Engine, over 60 million sites run on WordPress, accounting for over 23% of the Internet.