The new monetization tool, created for WordPress.Com and Jetpack-connected sites, is launched. It’s for content creators who want to collect repeat contributions from their supporters, and it’s available with any paid plan on WordPress.com. The payment processor is Stripe.
Recurring payments, the new monetization tool, is giving you the possibility to charge for your weekly newsletter, accept monthly donations, sell yearly access to exclusive content, and you will do it all with an automated payment system.
Check out the official blog for more informations!
Justin Tadlock, one of the legends of WordPress, has announced that he has sold the WordPress plugin Members.
The new owner is Caseproof, which was founded in 2003 by Blair Williams. The company has been building WordPress plugins for over 10 years and is the team behind the MemberPress and Affiliate Royale WordPress plugins.
This was not an easy decision for me. Over 100,000 of you have put your faith and trust behind me over the years to maintain a quality role management plugin. However, it would not be fair for me to keep the plugin while not being able to put in the time and effort required to maintain it. That is something I cannot realistically do at this point in my life. I would rather see Members in the hands of a team that can devote the resources necessary to continue making it a great plugin, Tadlock wrote on his official blog.
Justin Tadlock is known for Theme Hybrid. Theme Hybrid is one of the longest-running WordPress shops in the world with over 11 years of providing tools for people to run successful Web sites.
We had a pleasure to talk to Kyle Maurer from WordCamp Jackson 2019. Enjoy!
Please, introduce us shortly with the WordCamp Jackson 2019!?
WordCamp Jackson is a fun, intimate WordPress event in south-central Michigan. This weekend will be the third straight year it has taken place and it is always packed with great content and exciting activities. Jackson is a small town but full of charm and convenience. Our venues are always right downtown and perfectly sized for the event.
Tell us more about yourself and also about your WC team!?
I’m a WordPress and open-source fan and have been for many years. Formerly I was building websites for clients of mine with WordPress but for the past few years, I’ve been doing marketing and operations for Sandhills Development; a WordPress plugin company.
The rest of our organizing team includes my WordPress meetup co-organizer and beer brewing expert, Peter Shackelford as well as local agency owner Steve Bennett, freelance developer Evan Farmer, tech startup developer John Wright, and some of our friends from the Ann Arbor WordPress community, especially Ross Johnson and Cheryl Gong.
How many visitors do you expect this year!?
We’re expecting 75 attendees this year.
Sponsorships… Good response from global and local companies and brands!?
Our response from sponsors this year has been a little less than it has been in previous years but it was just enough for us to meet our budget goals.
Is there anything you will like to highlight as the especially interesting part of this year’s program?
There are many things I love about our WordCamp but some of my favorite things are: 1) Our venue is extremely intimate. Everything takes place in a small area so it’s easy to be a part of the fun and meet with all the other attendees. 2) We provide lunch vouchers to all attendees which are good at any of the restaurants in downtown. This gets everyone outside both afternoons and helps support the amazing eateries we have in this beautiful city. 3) We have a free high-end coffee service for the entire event from Fortress Cafe (a new establishment). They’re making lattes, cappuccinos, espressos, etc. all to order and WordCamp attendees get whatever they want at no extra cost above their ticket price.
Tell us more about Jackson!? What kind of place it is!?
Jackson is a modest little town that was once much larger but in recent decades has declined as the auto and manufacturing industries suffered in the region. The past few years though have been extremely exciting for all local residents because the city is experiencing a resurgence of investment and growth.
Lots of new developments have taken place or are in progress downtown and the entire city has been given a bright new look with the introduction of dozens of brilliant murals on the historic buildings. It’s a super cool place to be these days!
What would be your message (or advice) to the organizers of WordCamps all over the world?
There are so many WordCamps in the world right now. It can be hard at times to set yours apart. I believe that putting the spotlight on your city and emphasizing its unique qualities is the best way to really make a WordCamp you can be proud of and that brings your local community together.
#WPDEVMAG is bringing the exclusive interview with Susan Walker from WordCamp Philadelphia 2019, the legendary WordCamp known for being the first host city for WordCamp US. Enjoy!
Please, introduce us shortly with the WordCamp Philly 2019!?
WordCamp Philly is one of the oldest WordCamps in the United States, with the first event in 2010. In the past half-decade, we’ve had a turnout between 300 and 400 people, depending on the venue size. Philadelphia was also the first host city for WordCamp US, in 2015 and 2016.
Our last three local WordCamps were at the University of the Sciences in West Philly. This year we’ll be at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, which is in Center City. Our Happiness Lounge and two of the rooms for our tracks are in art galleries. It’s a very different vibe.
Tell us more about you and about WordCamp Philly 2019 organizing team!?
We have so many new organizing team members for 2019! Of our 11 members, this is the first or the second WordCamp as organizers for eight of them. It’s been an opportunity to revisit the way we’ve done things in the past and try out new ideas.
Our past organizers have been generous with their time and experience, and we’ve been able to go to them for insights and historical perspective when needed. We’re grateful we have so many good people offering their support.
What are the trends this year… or what would be the main subjects of this year’s sessions and program of WC Philly 2019!?
One of the changes we made this year is to do away with designated tracks, such as a Developer Track and a Designer Track. This freed us up to consider talk topics liable to be overlooked when working with a formal track structure. For instance, we have a talk on voice UX that is something new and not a topic that would have fit neatly into the old framework.
From a broader perspective, my first WordCamp as an attendee in Philly was 2012, and since that time I’ve noticed less emphasis on building themes and monetizing blogs and more on creating quality content and optimizing for SEO. And of course, there are more presentations on JavaScript than on PHP in the past couple of years with the release of Gutenberg.
Is there anything you would like to highlight as especially important or interesting in this year’s WC Philly 2019 program?
Our panel, “The Art of Getting Found Online,” is going to be amazing. We have four highly-qualified panelists, and we’ve given them a double-time slot so they’ll be able to go into much more depth than we could with past panels.
Tell us more about Philadelphia!? What kind of place it is!?
Philly is so wildly underappreciated. It’s earned a reputation for being a gritty working-class city, but the thing folks often miss is that it’s wonderfully unpretentious and full of friendly people. and it has so much to offer in the way of history, the arts, architecture, cuisine, and lovely green spaces.
Folks coming to WordCamp will be within walking distance of Philadelphia City Hall, the Avenue of the Arts, Reading Terminal Market, Chinatown, the Mural Mile, and Independence Hall.
There’s an intangible quality to Philly I haven’t encountered so far in other American cities. Maybe it’s a continuity of the spirit of its — and the country’s — founding. Figures like William Penn and Ben Franklin aren’t merely names enshrined in a history book. They’re real people whose contributions to the modern city are powerfully present.
What would be your message to the fans of WordPress and WordCamp organizers all over the world?
To WordCamp organizers: dependable volunteers are priceless. Cherish and cultivate them. Bring in a new organizing team member or two every year if possible. As veteran members take a break from organizing and make way for new leadership, you’ll have greater continuity and institutional memory, which makes organizing a WordCamp much easier.
And to fans of WordPress and WordCamps generally: come see us in Philly! We’d love to meet you.
This is probably the fastest and easiest way to have your own theme on ThemeForest! We’re talking about The First WordPress Theme Framework and the team behind this extraordinary solution is Schiocco.
Schiocco (Pixor) is a web development company from Italy and it’s headed by Federico Schiocchet. Schiocco is having the Elite author status on ThemeForest.
So-called WordPress Theme Framework or The First WordPress Theme Framework, as officially stated, is a combination of unique features that are making this Framework the most flexible, productivity-oriented and simple to use WordPress Framework ever built.
You will need only 5 minutes to have your own theme ready to be deployed on ThemeForest, Schiocco team writes on their official page.
This solution is made and published during the 2017 year and it’s definitely something that could be very interesting to many developers. It’s worth to be checked!
As stated on the official page, you need only to create the design and insert the content. You don’t need to write not even one single line of HTML, JavaScript or PHP code. Extended license allows web developers and designers to build WordPress and HTML templates and to sell them on ThemeForest. This starting theme and plugin is already reviewed and approved by ThemeForest.
Check it out HERE for more details!
We’re very excited to officially announce the launch of a new development resources site on the BuddyPress.org network, BuddyPress team stated on the official blog.
Site developer.buddypress.org is coming with a complete handbook documenting the BP REST API. This API will be introduced into the next major version which is scheduled on September 30, 2019.
Check out here for more details!
Automattic announced a new funding round and here is what Matt Mullenweg said about it on his blog:
Today Automattic announced it has closed a new $300 million Series D, with Salesforce Ventures taking the entire round. This puts us at a post-round valuation of $3 billion, three times what it was after our last fundraising round in 2014. It’s a tremendous vote of confidence for Automattic and for the open web.
I met Marc Benioff earlier this year, and it became obvious to both of us that Salesforce and Automattic shared a lot of principles and philosophies. Marc is a mindful leader and his sensibilities and sense of purpose feel well aligned with our own mission to make the web a better place. He also helped open my eyes to the incredible traction WordPress and WP VIP has seen in the enterprise market, and how much potential there still is there. I’ve also loved re-connecting with Bret Taylor who is now Salesforce’s President and Chief Product Officer. Bret’s experience across Google Maps, Friendfeed, Facebook, Quip, and now transforming Salesforce makes him one of the singular product thinkers out there and our discussion of Automattic’s portfolio of services have been very helpful already.
For Automattic, the funding will allow us to accelerate our roadmap (perhaps by double) and scale up our existing products—including WordPress.com, WordPress VIP, WooCommerce, Jetpack, and (in a few days when it closes) Tumblr. It will also allow us to increase investing our time and energy into the future of the open source WordPress and Gutenberg.
The Salesforce funding is also a vote of confidence for the future of work. Automattic has grown to more than 950 employees working from 71 countries, with no central office for several years now. Distributed work is going to reshape how we spread opportunity more equitably around the world. There continue to be new heights shown of what can be achieved in a distributed fashion, with Gitlab announcing a round at $2.75B earlier this week.
Next year Automattic celebrates 15 years as a company! The timing is fortuitous as we’ve all just returned from Automattic’s annual Grand Meetup, where more than 800 of us got together in person to share our experiences, explore new ideas, and have some fun. I am giddy to work alongside these wonderful people for another 15 years and beyond.
If you’re curious my previous posts on our fundraising, here’s our 2006 Series A, 2008 Series B, 2013 secondary, and 2014 Series C. As before, happy to answer questions in the comments here. I also did an exclusive interview with Romain Dillet on (WP-powered) Techcrunch, Mullenweg wrote on his blog.
#WPDEVMAG had a pleasure to talk with Stephanie Brinley from WordCamp Jacksonville. She shared with us her experiences, introducing us with the WordPress community in Jacksonville and this year WordCamp Jacksonville 2019. Here is what Stephanie has told us… Enjoy!
Please, introduce us shortly with the WordCamp Jacksonville 2019!?
WordCamp Jacksonville 2019 was our 4th event. We’re the “small, regional camp” compared to our neighbors in Orlando & Miami, FL and Atlanta, GA.
We had over 200 attendees this year. Our organizing team had 14 individuals this year, 39 speakers, and over 20 volunteers.
Are you satisfied with sessions and programs!?
We have a very diverse group of WordCampers that run the gamut from experienced developers to small business owners, to free-lance web designers, and beginning bloggers. We try to offer a good mix of sessions for all these people. The dearth of attendees in the Hallway Track speaks to the quality of our sessions this year.
CHECK OUT THE GALLERY: WORDCAMP JACKSONVILLE 2019
Is there anything you will like to highlight as the especially interesting part of this year program?
This year was our 3rd year hosting a KidsCamp. It’s a great place to introduce kids to technology and WordPress. If another camp is interested in hosting a KidsCamp, they can email kids@wordcamp.org.
I was also pleased that we had lots of great sessions for experienced developers.
2019.jacksonville.wordcamp.org
Tell us more about Jacksonville!? What kind of place it is!?
Jacksonville is located in the Northeast area of Florida, near the Georgia border. We have the St. Johns river running through town and are just down the road from St. Augustine, the oldest city in the continental United States.
Although people think of Florida as a warm vacation spot for tourists, Jacksonville doesn’t quite meet those stereotypes. We actually get cold (down to freezing some years) and don’t have a lot of major tourist destinations.
With multiple military bases in the area, we are more of a military town than a tourist town. In some ways, we’re a hidden gem: we have beautiful beaches and all sorts of wonderful food and local breweries, our local zoo is a delight to visit with a premier tiger and primate exhibits, and all our out-of-town WordCampers say everyone is so friendly and welcoming.
What would be your message (or advice) to the organizers of WordCamps all over the world?
Put together a good, solid team you can count on, and the more you can divide up the jobs, the easier it is for everyone. Visit other WordCamps and “steal” their best ideas while learning from their mistakes.
With good organization and planning, you will have time for some hallway tracks and even some sessions during WordCamp.