In right this moment’s extraordinarily aggressive and saturated digital surroundings, the tales you inform are the issues that set you aside.
At WP Engine, we’re within the enterprise of serving to our clients inform higher tales by unimaginable digital experiences. However to make sure we’re doing every thing we will to assist our clients develop, it’s additionally necessary for us to pause, mirror, and take inventory of our personal story, in addition to the core values that underpin it.
All Fingers presents the chance to do exactly that, because the bi-annual, companywide occasion focuses on internalizing the place we’ve been over the previous six months, and the place now we have our sights set for the longer term.
At All Fingers Winter 2022, which passed off final week as an all-virtual occasion for workers all over the world, the headline story was WP Engine’s continued development because the unified self-serve platform of alternative for WordPress builders, designers, manufacturers, and companies of all sizes.
On this 12 months’s All Fingers keynote, WP Engine CEO Heather Brunner delivered a message of innovation and continued development to greater than 1,100 staff throughout the globe.
To inform our story, a glance to the previous helped set the stage for the place we are actually: a multi-product WordPress firm that has optimized the WordPress expertise from begin to end.
Our rising set of developer instruments consists of Native, the #1 native WordPress improvement instrument; themes and frameworks reminiscent of Genesis and Frost; and beloved plugins like Superior Customized Fields (ACF), WP Migrate, WP Offload Media, WP Offload SES, and Higher Search Exchange.
We’re in a position to put money into the way forward for these instruments for the complete WordPress neighborhood whereas making it simpler for our clients to make the most of these instruments to create highly-performant WordPress websites.
“Collectively, dwelling our core values, we’re delivering superb merchandise, superb improvements, and superb service to our clients on daily basis,” Brunner mentioned.
“As we speak at WP Engine, now we have such an unimaginable arsenal of merchandise that assist our clients design, construct, handle, and develop with us.”
By investing within the developer property WordPress customers already love, and persevering with so as to add to and optimize them, we will do our half to make sure the WordPress neighborhood retains thriving.
WP Engine is a long-time associate of the Webby Awards. We assist their efforts by sponsorship of the annual awards present, facilitating Crafted with Code (a challenge that shares a behind-the-scenes take a look at the method of constructing Webby-nominated websites), and powering the Webby Talks tour, throughout which the Webby workforce visits promoting, media, and know-how firms to share insights into the rising traits on-line.
This 12 months’s Webby Speak is titled By no means Area of interest Sufficient, and it’s a powerful deep dive into the methods during which Gen Z is reshaping the methods we join on-line. The Webby Awards Managing Director Ciel VanderVeen joined us nearly to share observations gleaned from a survey of greater than 3,000 Gen Z customers about their habits and pursuits on-line.
After three months of compiling information, Webby specialists discovered that Gen Z is disrupting the web monoculture in favor of smaller, extra distinctive and genuine experiences. The place Millennials have been deemed the “me era” on-line, utilizing social media to showcase private experiences and achievements, Gen Z is choosing a “we era” mentality, creating connection and inclusive communities by shared pursuits and hobbies.
“We began seeing these actually attention-grabbing new communities popping up, and it appeared like Gen Z was main a few of that cost,” mentioned VanderVeen. “We seen they’re flocking to those on-line communities, however not simply any communities—they’re going area of interest. There are these on-line areas which are hitting the candy spot between who [members of Gen Z] are and what they love.”
VanderVeen closed her discuss by reiterating that manufacturers and companies can lean into this new, area of interest way forward for the online by taking the time to study concerning the viewers they hope to focus on earlier than advertising and marketing to them. Gaining a deeper understanding of your viewers and their motivations is important to attaining buy-in from youthful generations, and interesting to each their radical individualism and emphasis on inclusivity is the one strategy to stay related for the lengthy haul.
See how the workforce at Europe’s largest fintech firm, 11Onze, labored with WP Engine Company Associate WONDR to construct an genuine Webby Award-winning digital expertise—La Plaça. Constructed on the pillars of neighborhood, schooling, and belief, the non-public social community (PSN) and studying portal empowers youthful generations like Gen Z with monetary instruments and information.
On this 12 months’s All Fingers breakout session, WP Engine Supervisor of Developer Relations Kellen Mace spoke concerning the evolution of WP Engine’s headless WordPress platform, Atlas. What started as an entire platform for headless WordPress has advanced right into a complete assortment of headless WordPress instruments, a lot of that are open supply and accessible to anybody who needs to construct headless websites with WordPress.
The Atlas ecosystem reduces friction for headless builders, providing high-quality grain management over the event expertise as they navigate the ins and outs of headless structure. The total record of Atlas instruments and frameworks consists of a number of items which, Mace defined, make headless WordPress improvement extra accessible proper out of the field for builders experimenting with this know-how.
Faust.js is the frontend javascript framework that’s tailored for headless WordPress. It consists of authentication, put up previews, template hierarchy, and simple WordPress information fetching—all baked in and prepared, proper out of the field.
WPGraphQL is the free, open supply plugin that turns any WordPress web site right into a GraphQL server, and the just lately launched WPGraphQL Good Cache plugin creates a brand new strategy to cache generally run queries to make sure customers have lightning quick experiences.
Whereas it may be used for conventional or headless WordPress websites, Superior Customized Fields is the preferred customized fields plugin for WordPress, and makes it simple for builders to implement any vital customized fields on their headless websites. Moreover, Native’s headless add-on (accessible within the Add-ons library) makes native improvement for headless websites a snap.
And eventually, the Atlas Search plugin gives superior search capabilities on all headless websites constructed with Atlas.
When mixed, these instruments make headless WordPress improvement sooner, simpler, and extra highly effective. A lot so, actually, that Mace was in a position to spin up a demo web site in the final 10 minutes of his presentation!
WordPress continues to evolve due to its vibrant neighborhood of devoted contributors. In his closing All Fingers session, WP Engine Developer Advocate Nick Diego made this truth abundantly clear.
“WordPress will decline or stagnate with out lively neighborhood contributors,” he mentioned. “WordPress is constructed and maintained by neighborhood members, and if now we have a voice in these discussions, we can assist direct the best way that WordPress is constructed.”
Diego started his session with an summary of how a lot WordPress core has modernized throughout the final 12 months alone. 2022 opened with the discharge of model 5.9 in January. This launch introduced the Web site Editor to the fore, and it essentially shifted the best way builders and designers can create and edit their websites.
Model 6.0 got here round in Might, and introduced with it main enhancements to customers’ enhancing capabilities, together with the flexibility to handle web page and put up template varieties. Most significantly, new content material locking capabilities enable web site admins to maintain sure facets beneath lock and key, stopping different web site editors from unintentionally breaking necessary web site options.
In November, model 6.1 got here to be, thanks in no small half to the contributions of WP Engine staff. In reality, two of the ten type variations accessible for the default theme in model 6.1 (Twenty Twenty-Three) have been designed by WP Engine staff!
To meet the mission of WordPress and actually democratize publishing, WordPress core will proceed full pace forward with block enhancing, making it simpler than ever to construct stunning, highly effective websites on WordPress. And to that finish, WP Engine is dedicated to offering much more contributor hours in 2023, placing direct effort and time into bettering WordPress core for the complete neighborhood.
Trying ahead, WordPress will proceed to emphasise the significance of design—in spite of everything, Design Issues!—and WP Engine is Dedicated to Give Again to the WordPress neighborhood that has fueled our success.
Winter All Fingers 2022 informed the story of an organization that’s rapidly turning into the unified WordPress platform of alternative for builders worldwide. With our core values prime of thoughts and a tremendous workforce behind us, the following chapter appears vivid for WP Engine.
Be taught extra about WP Engine and our story right here, or develop into part of our story by looking for an open place right here!