The Gutenberg team released version 6.7 of the Gutenberg plugin last week. The announcement post listed a little over three dozen bug fixes and several enhancements to existing features. The most notable features included in the update are Storybook support and gradient backgrounds for the button block.
All of the bug fixes included in Gutenberg 6.7 were ported to the first WordPress 5.3 release candidate. WordPress 5.3 is expected to be released on or around November 12.
This release also includes updates for experimental features, which can be enabled via the “Experiments” screen under the “Gutenberg” admin menu. The experimental nav menu block received alignment fixes and now only shows nested menu items when the parent item is selected.
First Implementation of Gradient Backgrounds
Adding a gradient to a button block.
Version 6.7 introduces a new gradient background feature for the button block. The long-term plan is to make gradient backgrounds available to other blocks. The button block is a good testbed for the feature before moving forward with other blocks.
The problem with introducing gradients is that the team didn’t go far enough with theme support early in the process. This is par for the course with Gutenberg development. New features are implemented without knowing exactly how themes fit into the picture. It is only after the feature is implemented that theme support is patched on. Often, this leads to theme authors scrambling to keep up. It would be better for the feature and the theme support to be developed in tandem with feedback from more theme authors in the process.
At this stage, gradients are useless in most theme designs, which have custom color schemes that are unlikely to match Gutenberg’s gradient colors. At best, the gradients look OK with stock WordPress. At worst, they’re garish and an assault on the eyeballs. Starting with theme support would have at least offered theme authors a chance to make this a better experience for users.
There is an open pull request on GitHub to introduce theme support. Theme authors may be able to add custom gradients by version 6.8.
In the future, this should be a powerful feature that allows users via custom theme gradients to create some unique designs for their posts and pages. For now, it is only in the “fun experiment” stage.
Storybook for Developers
Gutenberg button component stories.
The Gutenberg development team introduced Storybook support for Gutenberg. Developers can test Storybook support via the Gutenberg Storybook page.
Storybook is a development and testing environment for user interfaces. It allows developers to create, test, and showcase components in an isolated environment apart from the primary platform or application. This essentially allows developers to build components without the dependencies of the platform before porting them over. A story within the Storybook system represents the visual state of a component. Storybooks are collections of stories.
The Storybook support uses the Knobs add-on, which allows developers to edit props dynamically via the Storybook UI. The dashicons component is a good place to test this out. Currently, it accepts values for the icon name, color, and size.
Marcus Kazmierczak, a principal engineer working on special projects at Automattic, wrote a tutorial and shared a YouTube video on how to create a story for Gutenberg components.
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On October 9, Juliette Reinders Folmer announced on the core WordPress blog that WordPress 5.3 will use the spread operator. The spread operator was one of the new features made available in PHP 5.6, a version released in 2014.
WordPress abandoned PHP 5.2 – 5.5 with the release of WordPress 5.2. This means the core team can start taking advantage of relatively new features, or at least 5-year-old features. For plugin and theme developers who maintain the same minimum version support as WordPress, they can also start exploring this feature.
PHP 5.6 introduced two new methods of using the spread operator:
A Parameter in variadic functions.
Function argument unpacking of arrays and traversable objects.
This feature shouldn’t be confused with unpacking inside of arrays, which is only available in PHP 7.4.
The change in WordPress 5.3 is not expected to affect themes and plugins except in the rare case that a developer is overloading the wpdb::prepare() method. Developers should read the announcement post to dive into what code has changed in core WordPress.
Developers should check their plugins and themes with debugging enabled in a test environment to check for any notices. There may be cases where the function signature doesn’t match.
The spread operator is a tool, and like any tool, it should be used when it makes sense. Because it is a language construct, it does offer speed improvements over traditional methods of using a PHP function.
The remainder of this post will dive into the using the spread operator to help teach WordPress developers how it works.
Creating a Variadic Function with the Spread Operator
Variadic functions are PHP functions that accept a variable number of arguments passed in. They have existed for years. However, they can be confusing without solid inline documentation from the developer who wrote the code.
In the past, developers would need to use the func_get_args(), func_get_arg(), or func_num_args() functions to work with variadic functions. In PHP 5.6, developers can use a parameter such as ...$var_name to represent a variable number of parameters.
Take a look at the following multiplication function. It will accept one, two, three, or even more numbers and multiply each.
If we use that function as shown below, it will display 1024:
echo tavern_multiply( 2, 4, 8, 16 );
This is simple to do with the spread operator.
Unpacking Arrays as Function Arguments
PHP 5.6 allows developers to unpack arrays and traversable objects as function arguments. To explain how this works, look at the following multiplication function for multiplying three numbers together.
Generally, you would need to manually pass the $x, $y, and $z parameters directly. However, there are cases in real-world projects where the data (numbers in this case) would already exist within an array such as:
$numbers = [ 3, 6, 9 ];
Prior to PHP 5.6, you would need to split that array and pass each value to the function as shown in the following snippet.
With PHP 5.6, you can simply pass in ...$numbers like so:
echo tavern_multiply_three( ...$numbers );
Both methods work and will output 162. However, the second method is easier to read and is less prone to typos because it uses fewer characters.
Comparing Code Changes in WordPress
For a more practical example, let’s compare a real-world code change in WordPress and how using the spread operator improves the code over other methods. We can do this by looking at the core current_user_can() function.
First, see how the code is written in WordPress 5.2 and earlier.
Without looking at the full function, most developers would assume that $capability is the only accepted parameter for this function. However, the function accepts a variable number of parameters. Previously, WordPress had to use func_get_args() to get all the parameters, slice the array, and merge everything back together.
It is inelegant coding, but it got the job done for old versions of PHP.
Now compare what the same function looks like in WordPress 5.3. First, you can see the ...$args parameter clearly in the function statement. You can also see there is no need for the clever coding to pass along a variable number of arguments.
The change in WordPress 5.3 is a massive improvement in readability in comparison to earlier versions. It is nice to see these types of improvements to the core code.
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Last week at the AMP Contributor Summit 2019 in New York City, the AMP project announced that it will be joining the OpenJS Foundation incubation program. OpenJS was formed by a recent merger between the JS Foundation and the Node.js Foundation. AMP will join webpack, jQuery, Mocha, Node.js, ESLint, Grunt, and other open source projects that have OpenJS as their legal entity.
Over the past year, AMP has been evolving its governance, moving to an open, consensus-seeking governance model in 2018, similar to the one adopted by the Node.js project. One of the primary objectives of changing AMP’s governance and moving to a foundation was to foster a wider variety of contributions to the project and its technical and product roadmap. The incubation process will address AMP’s lack of contributor diversity and inclusion, as only past or current Google employees have commit rights on the code base.
In recognition of how the project’s connection to Google has been problematic for adoption, the company is transferring AMP’s domains and trademarks to OpenJS, which is a vender-neutral organization, as outlined in the FAQs of OpenJS’ announcement:
The OpenJS Foundation prides itself on vendor neutrality. Our vested interest resides solely in the ecosystem and the projects that contribute to that ecosystem. The OpenJS Foundation’s Cross Project Council is committed to supporting AMP in addressing these issues and ensure continued progress. During onboarding, AMP will also go through a multi-step process including adopting the OpenJS Foundation Code of Conduct, transferring domains and trademarks and more to graduation from incubation. AMP has made incredible strides by adopting a new governance model and by joining the OpenJS Foundation, they’ve made their intentions clear-AMP is committed to its vision of “A strong, user-first open web forever.”
Google is, however, a Platinum member of the OpenJS Foundation with annual dues of more than $250K per year. This membership guarantees the company direct participation in running the Foundation, a guaranteed board seat, and have a direct voice in budget and policy decisions. Google plans to maintain its team of employees who contribute full time to the AMP project.
According to Tobie Langel, a member AMP’s advisory committee, one of the changes in moving to the OpenJS Foundation is AMP’s governance model will no longer be under the purview of Google and the ultimate goal is that Google will cease funding AMP directly. Instead, the company will direct funds through the foundation and work to remove the project’s Google dependencies for its infrastructure and tooling.
OpenJS Aims to Disentangle AMP Runtime from Google Cache
Gaining full infrastructural independence from Google will be no small feat for AMP contributors. The OpenJS Foundation’s announcement states that one of the long term goals in moving the project over is to disentangle the AMP runtime from the Google AMP Cache:
The end goal is to separate the AMP runtime from the Google AMP Cache. The Project is currently in the incubating stage and Project leaders are still determining the next steps. Ideally, hosting and deployment of the AMP runtime to the CDN would fall under the purview of the OpenJS Foundation, much like the foundation is handling other projects CDNs, such as the jQuery CDN.
Untangling the runtime from the cache is a complex endeavor requiring significant investments of time and effort which would be planned and implemented in collaboration with the foundation and industry stakeholders during and after incubation.
The OpenJS Foundation CPC is committed to having a long-term strategy in place to address this issue by the end of AMP’s incubation.
AMP is used on more than 30 million domains. While many see this news as a positive move towards AMP’s eventual independence from Google, it doesn’t remove Google’s power to compel publishers to support the AMP standard by prioritizing AMP pages in search results. The news was received with skepticism by commenters on Hacker News and Reddit, who deemed it “mostly meaningless window-dressing,” given how aggressively Google is pushing AMP in its search engine. AMP remains deeply controversial and moving it to a foundation that is heavily financially backed by Google is not enough to win over those who see it as Google’s attempt to shape the web for its own interests.
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The core WordPress team released version 5.2.4 of WordPress on October 14. The release addresses six security issues that were all privately reported through WordPress’ responsible disclosure procedure.
Like any security release, users should update immediately to the latest version to keep their sites secure.
For those with automatic updates enabled, the new version is already rolling out to sites. All major branches of WordPress from version 3.7 to 5.2 received the new security fixes. If automatic updates are not enabled, users should update from the “Updates” screen under “Dashboard” in the WordPress admin. Otherwise, users can download WordPress from the release archive and manually run an update to make sure their site is not at risk to what are now publicly-known vulnerabilities.
In the release announcement, the following security issues were noted. They were corrected in all updated versions.
Stored cross-site scripting (XSS) could be added from the Customizer screen.
An issue that allowed stored XSS to inject JavaScript into <style> tags.
A bug that allowed unauthenticated posts to be viewed.
A method to use the Vary: Origin header to poison the cache of JSON GET requests (REST API).
A server-side request forgery (SSRF) with how URLs are validated.
Issues with referrer validation in the WordPress admin.
For developers who want to dive more into the code changes, the changeset is available on GitHub. Most changes should not affect plugins or themes. However, it is worth noting that the static query property was removed in this release. This removal affects both the WP and WP_Query classes. Developers should test their plugins against this version to make sure nothing is broken if their projects rely on this property. It is unlikely that many plugins rely on this query variable.
WordPress 5.2.4 also includes a couple of other bug fixes. One removes a line of code that makes an extra call to the wp-sanitize.js script in the script loader. The second fix addresses an issue where the directory path wasn’t normalized on Windows systems, which led to the wp_validate_redirect() function removing the domain. This fixes a bug created in WordPress 5.2.3.
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I don’t write fluff pieces. I call ’em like I see ’em. If your project is a dumpster fire, I’m going to say it’s a dumpster fire.
Whenever someone comes to me in hopes that I review their product, I give them some form of the preceding paragraph. It doesn’t matter if it is a plugin, theme, web host, or some other product. What matters is that I write my review with honesty and offer my genuine opinion about the thing they built.
I rarely read most product reviews in the WordPress community anymore. Far too often the reviewers are not offering their genuine experience with a product. You get something like “XYZ is a multi-purpose theme that is built for…yadda, yadda, yadda…” Yawn. It reads as if publishers are trying to sell a product. If you dig deep enough, you realize that is what many are doing (hello, affiliate links).
I also have it on good authority (I’ve seen some of the email exchanges) that a lot of money exchanges hands behinds the scenes for reviews. Most of the time, publishers are not writing a review of the product. They are selling you their dreams of a continued working relationship with the product maker.
There’s nothing wrong with affiliate links if a publisher loves a product. There’s no issue with paid reviews if such reviews are honest experiences with the product. There’s also no problem with writing a love letter to your favorite plugin and theme with no financial incentive.
However, what I generally see are shallow reviews at best. Many, dare I say most, reviews are not genuine. They are certainly not real journalism.
The best place to find genuine reviews are from the user ratings on WordPress.org, assuming the plugin or theme is available there. Users tend to not hold back, particularly if their review is negative.
It is tough as an artist (yes, I consider all programmers artists). I’ve been on the receiving end of negative reviews of things I’ve built. You learn to grow thick skin after a decade of putting your art out into the world.
When I was younger, I tended to be a bit hot-headed whenever I got a bad review for something I had built. After pouring my heart and soul into a project, it cut deep to read a negative review. I wasn’t always the most gracious receiver of such reviews. There are responses I wish I could take back. Looking at those times now, I wish I would have been more open to hearing what the reviewer was saying. Even if I disagreed with every word, it did not mean that the person wasn’t providing me something of value with their review.
With age and I hope a little more wisdom, I usually give myself time to think about what someone is saying before I respond. I allow my thoughts time to develop and mature. Often, it turns out, critical reviews are far more helpful in making better art than all the five-star ratings in the world.
When I took the writing position at WP Tavern, I wanted to bring a review format to the website that is missing within our community. I wanted to do reviews based on my experience as both a user and a developer. I admit that I was not prepared for a negative reaction to what was in part a negative review. As always, I gave myself time to read and think over what some commenters were saying. This article is my response.
Reviews Are About Personal Experience
One of the things I learned early on as a writer is to not second guess myself, especially when writing an opinion piece. It is not good for one’s mental health.
An opinion piece is about the moment. It is raw. It is passionate.
Writers’ opinions may change over time. They are human and have the freedom to change their minds later. However, an opinion-based story should reflect that single moment in time and what the author’s feelings are at that moment.
There’s a common (and wholly incorrect) notion that journalism should be nothing more than facts, that subjectivity is not allowed. Throughout the several hundred years that some form of journalism has existed, there has never existed a point where the whole of the field was objective. Even in the early days of U.S. journalism, my country’s founders published articles in newspapers to sway public opinion on ratifying the U.S. Constitution.
Reporting, which is one form of journalism, does not represent the whole. It is the most objective form of journalism in which the reporter simply tells the news to readers. We certainly do plenty of that at the Tavern. However, other forms like editorials, features, and reviews are as important. These forms take a different approach.
Reviews are the unwieldy beasts of journalism. They are hard to tame. They’re not always pretty. However, they should always be true to their nature. They can bring out angry hoards of fanboys down on the critic (ever read the comments of a critical review of an Apple product?).
Honest reviews are about personal experience. If a film critic dislikes the latest movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it is that critic’s duty to write about their experience watching it. The reviewer has an obligation to not huddle in fear of Iron Man fanatics who will inevitably send ad hominem attacks his way. Holding back one’s opinion within a review is the ultimate sin of a critic.
Like with any products or forms of art, WordPress plugins and themes are not immune to this same criticism. Such criticism is even more important when the software costs money and potential buyers may be looking for genuine reviews.
Disagreement with a review is OK. Disagreements are more interesting than everyone nodding their heads in unison. What a boring world it would be if we were all in agreement.
However, I did want to address comments on my previous review about it being unfair, specifically the unfairness of my personal experience. It’s that personal experience that makes a review genuine. Not everyone’s experience will be the same. One person’s one-star rating does not discount another’s five stars. They are equally valid because they represent different experiences.
Developers Are Users Too
There’s a common idea in the WordPress community that developers are not users, that our experiences don’t count because our knowledge and skillsets are more advanced than the average. At first glance, the argument makes some sense. However, after giving it some serious thought, I reject the notion.
Martin Scorsese can’t criticize films because he makes films. There’s no way he can feel what the average person does at the cinema.
Beyoncé can’t judge a music competition because she’s a singer. She’s not listening with the ears of a normal human.
Wait; that’s not right, is it?
Why is it that developers’ opinions are so easily discounted when they are critical of user experience? I use WordPress, different themes, and various plugins every day. I use those that make me happy or serve essential functions. I don’t necessarily pick plugins out because I like their code. I use them because I too am a user in every way that a non-developer is a user. Having the ability to articulate the problems from a different viewpoint doesn’t change that.
In many ways, developers can provide more useful software reviews than “average” users because we have some past experience solving the same problems.
Offering a Genuine Review
One thing you will always get from me is honesty. When I review a WordPress-related product, you will always read about my personal experience.
I was fully prepared to say that the gloves are coming off, but the gloves have always been off. I will never hold back criticism. I’m always ready to pile on the praise too.
But, I won’t lie to you.
Who’s ready to have their theme or plugin reviewed next?
Would you like to write for WP Tavern? We are always accepting guest posts from the community and are looking for new contributors. Get in touch with us and let’s discuss your ideas.
Often we’re asked about what are the best WordPress SEO plugins and tools that we recommend.
That’s because search engines are a major source of traffic for most websites on the internet. Optimizing your website for search engines can help you rank higher in search results and significantly grow your business.
In this article, we will share the best WordPress SEO plugins and tools that you should use. Some of these tools offer similar functionalities, so we will also highlight which ones are the best for specific use-cases.
Things You Must Know About WordPress SEO Plugins & Tools
When reading SEO tips or searching for “best free WordPress SEO plugins”, you will come across articles that feature several dozen tools.
This can be quite overwhelming for beginners and non-techy users.
The truth is that you don’t need dozens of top SEO tools to get higher search rankings.
While most blog posts (including ours) will share the top most popular SEO plugins, it is extremely important for you to understand the use-cases of each tool.
For example, you never want to use more than one WordPress SEO plugin on your website. We will mention Yoast, All in One SEO, Rank Math, and SEOPress. You need to pick only one to avoid plugin conflict.
We’ll mention SEMRush, Ahrefs, and few other powerful tools, but you don’t need them all when you’re first starting out since they have similar feature set. We will share what tools we use in our business, and which features are the best among each tool.
With that said, let’s take a look at our expert pick of the best WordPress SEO plugins and tools.
Yoast SEO is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market. It offers a complete website optimization tool that helps you improve your website.
It lets you easily add SEO titles and descriptions to all posts and pages on your website. You can also use it to add Open Graph metadata and social media images to your articles.
Yoast SEO automatically generates an XML sitemap for all your website content which makes it easier for search engines to crawl your website. It also helps you easily import your SEO data if you have been using another other SEO plugin.
We use Yoast SEO plugin on WPBeginner to help optimize our on-page SEO meta titles and descriptions, manage SEO redirects, control index settings, generate sitemap, etc.
However we don’t use all of Yoast SEO features such as content analysis because we feel it falls short when compared to a more comprehensive writing assistant solution like SEMRush.
SEMRush is the best overall SEO tool on the market. Used by professional SEO experts, marketers, bloggers, and businesses of all sizes, it provides a comprehensive set of tools to grow your traffic.
You can use it to find organic keywords and search terms that you can easily rank for. It also allows you to do competitive research and see which keywords your competitors rank for, and how you can beat them.
SEMRush SEO Writing Assistant tool helps you improve your website content to beat the top 10 results for your focus keyword. It integrates with WordPress, and this will help you write more SEO friendly content.
Google Search Console is a free tool offered by Google to help website owners monitor and maintain their site’s presence in Google search results.
It alerts you when Google is unable to crawl and index pages on your website. You also get helpful tips on how to fix those crawl errors.
Most importantly, it shows which keywords your website is ranking for, anchor texts, average position, impressions, and more. You can use this data to find keywords where you can easily rank higher by simply optimizing your content. You can also use this keyword data to come up with new blog post ideas.
Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO tool for marketers, bloggers, and businesses. It is a popular alternative to SEMRush and offers a lot of similar tools and features.
It allows you to do keyword research, competition analysis, backlink research, monitor keyword rankings, and more.
It also offers a detailed content analysis tool that helps you improve content while targeting specific keywords.
While there’s a huge feature overlap, what Ahrefs does really well is backlink analysis. We can use it to see which sites are linking to multiple competitors, but not us. This helps us get more backlinks and build more partnerships.
They also help us identify which content multiple of our competitors are ranking for that we aren’t, so we can create content on those subjects to get more exposure.
Last but not least, Ahrefs helps us better identify duplicate content and keyword cannibalization which helps us merge and upgrade the right content to boost our rankings.
For the reasons above, we pay for both SEMRush and Ahrefs because they’re both good for specific use-cases.
No one on the planet has more insights into what people are searching for than the search giant Google.
Did you know that you can get your own keyword ideas from Google itself by using the Google Keyword Planner tool.
This free tool is offered to Google’s advertisers for free and anyone can use it. Its main purpose is to show advertisers the keywords they can bid on for their advertising campaigns.
It also helps advertisers choose the right keywords by showing them an estimate of search volume, number of results, and difficulty level.
As a content marketer or blogger, you can use this data to find keywords with high search volume, high advertiser interest, and more importantly keywords where you can easily outrank all other sites.
All in One SEO Pack is a popular WordPress SEO plugin offering a comprehensive set of tools to improve your website. It allows you to easily add SEO title and meta tags, open graph meta tags, XML sitemaps, image sitemaps, and more.
It works out of box with WooCommerce to optimize your online store for SEO. It comes with easy setup and allows you to control access to different settings using a feature manager.
All in One SEO Pack Pro plugin gives you access to more addons, and it is a more affordable solution than Yoast SEO which is why it’s the second most popular WordPress SEO plugin in the market.
Note: All in One SEO Pack is a Yoast SEO alternative. Remember, you only need one WordPress SEO plugin on your site.
SEOPress is another simple yet powerful WordPress SEO plugin. It includes all the features you would expect from a SEO plugin like meta title, description, open graph support, image and content XML sitemaps, redirects, and more.
It comes with easier setup for beginners and advanced controls for more experienced users. It is comparable to all top WordPress SEO plugins on the market in terms of features and ease of use.
A big reason some users choose SEOPress over Yoast SEO is because the premium version is significantly cheaper and comes with a lot of the similar features.
Note: SEOPress is a Yoast SEO alternative. Remember, you only need one WordPress SEO plugin on your site.
Rank Math is a fast growing user-friendly WordPress SEO plugin that allows you to optimize your website for search engines and social media. It comes with a setup wizard and allows you to import data from other SEO plugins during the setup.
It allows you to easily add meta title, description, and Open Graph metadata to your blog posts. The plugin also allows you to generate an XML sitemap, connect Google Search Console, and control access to plugin features based on user roles.
Note: Rank Math is a Yoast SEO alternative. Remember, you only need one WordPress SEO plugin on your site.
Rich Snippets allow you to make your website stand out in search results by showing star ratings below a review, prices below a product, image or video next to the description, and so on.
Search Engines use data available in Schema format to get this information. All in One Schema Rich Snippets helps you optimize your website by adding that Schema metadata to your website.
It supports reviews, events, people, products, recipes, software apps, videos, and articles as Schema content types. It works nicely alongside your existing WordPress SEO plugin.
Keyword Tool is one of the best free keyword research tools available right now. It allows you to simply generate keyword ideas by typing in a keyword. These keyword suggestions are gathered from Google’s autosuggest feature. It also shows you keyword suggestions from Bing, YouTube, Amazon, and more.
These keyword suggestions are a treasure of information. You can also get search volume, cost per click, and other data for each keyword by upgrading to their paid plan.
Broken links can affect your site’s SEO and create a bad experience for your users. If you have been running a blog for some time, then you should check your site from time to time for broken links and fix them.
Broken Link Checker is a free WordPress plugin that allows you to find broken links on your WordPress site. You can then fix those links without even editing your posts. See our tutorial on how to fix broken links in WordPress with Broken Link Checker.
It is a highly useful plugin, and it’s totally free. The only downside is that it can become resource-intensive and may slow down your WordPress hosting server. Some hosting providers like WP Engine already block this plugin.
Because this plugin can slow down your site if you have a lot of content, we use Ahrefs tool for broken link detection because it helps us make sure our website is always fast.
Bonus:Redirection is a free plugin that helps you redirect broken links to an appropriate page on your website.
SEOquake is a useful SEO tool for website owners. It is available as a browser addon for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Safari web browsers.
It provides SEO related information for any website. This data includes page health, age, last updated, Alexa rank, and many other parameters. It is one of the most downloaded browser addons by SEO professionals.
Apart from that, the SEOquake toolbar can show you all the same data search results when you type in a keyword. This information can be extremely useful if you are gauging competition for different keywords. You can even download search results in CSV format and prepare your own excel sheets of search data.
Bonus Plugins for WordPress Website Owners
These tools give you additional advantage when optimizing your website for SEO. They do not advertise themselves as SEO tools but they are essential for every website and play a significant role in your website’s search performance.
Site speed is a major factor in search rankings. That’s why you need to monitor your website speed & performance to make sure it’s not affecting your SEO.
The easiest way to boost your website speed is by enabling caching. WP Rocket is the best WordPress caching plugin on the market, which allows you to set up caching without diving into any technical stuff.
Many beginners rely on their best guess to make their marketing decisions. You don’t need to do that when you can easily get the insights you need to improve your website’s SEO strategy.
It tells you where your users are coming from, your top content, what users do on your website, and more. It also allows you to track your WooCommerce SEO by seeing which products are popular and where you are losing customers.
We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress SEO plugins and tools for your website. You may also want to see our proven tips to easily increase your website traffic.
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Nine months after the announcement of Newspack by WordPress.com, the Chilean news site El Soberano became the first publication to launch on the new platform. On October 16, the small news team relaunched with a fresh design powered by the Newspack theme and its newsroom-focused plugins.
Newspack is a project of Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com. Its goal is to work with leaders in the news industry to create a platform that brings WordPress to more newsrooms. This year, the team behind Newspack has worked with several publications to address obstacles in journalism on the web.
The Newspack team was primarily advised by 12 publications during their first phase. Most of those publications are based in the U.S., but a few, such as El Soberano, are from other countries. The Daily Maverick from Johannesburg, South Africa, and Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting from California came on as advisers from the outset. However, they may also launch on Newspack sometime in the coming months.
“We had 10 sites that we’re going to launch as soon as possible,” said Steve Beatty, head of Newspack Communications. “Of the 10, one dropped out as they changed publishers. So that leaves El Soberano and eight others, and those eight should launch in the coming weeks — certainly by year’s end. We’ve got the next few queued up.”
During the initial phase, Beatty said the team was looking for small to medium-sized newsrooms that were covering local news or niche publications. The development hurdles would likely have been much higher starting with large organizations.
“We wanted newsroom leaders who were willing to experiment and try something bold and different, knowing that there was a very real chance of growing pains,” said Beatty. “The partners in our pilot newsrooms have been incredibly helpful, patient, understanding and cheerful. I’m not sure we screened for all that in the application process, but it’s worked out quite well.”
El Soberano is a Fitting Launch Partner
Content Director Roberto Bruna (left) and Executive Director Ana Arriagada (right).
WordPress.com claims its “mission is to democratize publishing one website at a time.” El Soberano, based in Santiago, is a smaller news publication with three people on the current full-time staff. Their goal is to connect citizens with organizations that will help defend their rights. The publication covers social movements within the country and to be an outlet for independent journalism.
“In our news outlet we believe that only the organized people are sovereign of their destiny,” said Roberto Bruna, Content Director at El Soberano. “Our name ‘El Soberano’ is all about el pueblo soberano, the ‘sovereign people’ in English. For us, individual rights and freedoms are crucial. Then, things like a secular state and civil rights, such as the legalization of cannabis, homoparental adoption or the right to a safe abortion, are things we report about.”
Bruna further defined the publication’s goals.
In El Soberano we defend an environment free of contamination; equal opportunities for women, ending the precariousness of their lives; a real pension system for citizens; sexual dissidence, to guarantee their equal rights and inclusion; a new development model based on innovation and knowledge; a secular state and freedom with critical thinking; urban planning and good housing solutions; consumers and a healthy and sustainable market and, finally, mechanisms that aim to create truly democratic constitutions for our countries.
El Soberano does not give space for other interest groups because such groups have the means to make their opinions publicly available. Instead, its mission is to report on social issues directly from citizens. “In them lies the power of decision regarding the direction that our democracies must take,” said Bruna.
Launching El Soberano with Newspack
As one of the first publications to launch with a new system, it’s tough to be a pioneer when a lot is riding on success. Ana Arriagada, Executive Director of El Soberano, was ready to take the news website to the next level after three years.
“When we decided to take the next step and transform El Soberano into a sustainable environment, it was a great achievement for us to be chosen for the Newspack pilot with other eleven news outlets,” said Arriagada. “We were the only news site in Spanish and from Latin America, so we felt very proud.”
Arriagada has worked with the Newspack development team over the past six months to help guide them on what tools are needed to run a newsroom.
The decision to apply for the Newspack pilot program was in part due to avoiding pitfalls they had seen with other digital media websites. “Friends with their websites hijacked by a former ‘friend’ developer when they try to move to a new platform, custom developments that only the author understood, huge invoices for maintenance hours, or even spending months working on a design that was not possible at the end,” said Arriagada. They wanted to avoid other problems such as taking too long to apply changes to the homepage in the fast-paced world of journalism where new stories should be front and center.
Arriagada said such problems were resolved with Newspack and their team can concentrate on editorial and revenue generation.
El Soberano originally launched on WordPress.com in January 2016. Arriagada said it was nearly impossible to find a good selection of templates that were built specifically to solve the problems of the news industry. “In Newspack we have the chance to combine different content blocks adapted to our needs, showing content in flexible ways,” said Arriagada. “Now we have tools designed to generate revenue with the experience and best practices from world-class digital media.”
Arriagada called working with the Newspack team a “journey of discovery.” In the beginning, it wasn’t clear how the team would use the information they were collecting from El Soberano and other publications or how the team would resolve issues based on the information provided. Eventually, they received design proposals, which allowed them to get a feel for what they wanted and to further provide feedback to the Newspack team.
“Later, we received the access to the platform where we were able to play around, putting things in order, creating and implementing what we were looking for,” said Arriagada. “More feedback, corrections, hopes, and dreams.”
She said that working with the Content Blocks system allowed her team to better create and assemble their homepage and articles. “But maybe the most interesting thing for us,” said Arriagada, “was that Newspack team and other news sites from the pilot program proposed things that we don’t consider for our site, such as an ultra-flexible donation system or workflow systems. We see a lot of power in that collaborative way to develop a product.”
The Future of Newspack
Newspack launched phase two of its program in July, which sought to bring 50 more newsrooms to the platform. The new publications should be announced shortly.
“Both the initial pilot group and this group of 50 (or so) are part of the one-year development period, which ends on February 29,” said Beatty. “We’re still determining what will happen on March 1. We’ll have a better sense of that when we start working with the 50 and see how quickly we can turn them around.”
Like much of Automattic’s work, it is open source and freely available to the public. Newspack is a collection of packages to create a platform for newsrooms. Of note are the following repositories.
Developers can find all eight plugins from the Automattic GitHub page if they want to give them a spin.
Would you like to write for WP Tavern? We are always accepting guest posts from the community and are looking for new contributors. Get in touch with us and let’s discuss your ideas.
Do you need to change your WordPress URL? Whether you’re moving from HTTP to HTTPs, changing your domain name, migrating from local server to live site, or transferring to a subdomain, you will need to know how to change your WordPress site URL.
The WordPress address and site address are extremely important fields because they reference the address of your website on the internet and the location of your website files.
In this article, we will share four different ways to easily change your WordPress site URLs (step by step). This guide will specially come in handy when you are fixing common WordPress errors or moving a WordPress site.
Why Change WordPress Site URLs?
There are many reasons why you might need or want to change your WordPress URL. For example:
Apart from that, you may need to change the WordPress address settings if you are seeing too many redirects error in WordPress or when troubleshooting another WordPress error.
WordPress Address vs Site Address
When changing WordPress site URL, you will need to update two separate settings: WordPress Address and Site Address.
This can be confusing for many beginners because they don’t know what’s the difference between the two settings.
Your WordPress Address (URL) is the address where WordPress files and folders are stored including your admin pages, media files, plugins, themes, etc.
Your Site Address (URL) in WordPress is the public facing part of your website. This is what your visitors will type in to reach your website. This is also the link that you put on your business cards.
For majority of users, the WordPress Address and Site Address URL will be the exact same link.
However in some cases, large companies may host their WordPress site on a different server because their corporate website has many other applications, and they want to isolate where each app is hosted.
But for majority of users, these two WordPress URLs need to stay the same.
That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily change WordPress site URLs. We will show you the following methods, and you can choose the one that works best for you.
Ready? let’s get started.
Method 1. Change WordPress Site URLs from Admin Area
This method is the easiest. If you can already access the WordPress admin area, then we recommend using this method.
Simply login to your WordPress website and go to Settings » General page. From here you can change WordPress site URLs under the ‘WordPress Address’ and ‘Site Address’ options.
WordPress Address and Site Address are usually the same address.
Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings. You can now visit your website to make sure that everything is working OK.
Method 2. Change WordPress Site URLs Using functions.php File
This method is recommended for users who cannot access the admin area of their WordPress website.
Simply connect to your WordPress site using an FTP client and go to /wp-content/themes/your-theme-folder/.
From here you need to locate the functions.php file and edit it using a plain text editor like Notepad or TextEdit.
Next, you need to add the following code at the bottom:
Don’t forget to replace https://example.com with your own site URLs. You can now save your changes and upload the file back to your website hosting using FTP.
You can now visit your website to see if everything is back to normal.
The advantage of this method is that it updates the site URLs in the database. WordPress updates the database option for site URLs every time your functions file is loaded.
Once everything gets back to normal, don’t forget to remove the two lines of code from your WordPress functions file.
Method 3. Change WordPress Site URLs Using wp-config.php File
This method is only recommended if you are unsure which WordPress theme you need to edit or cannot find the functions.php file.
For this method, you will be adding the site URLs to your WordPress configuration file called wp-config.php. This file is located in the root folder of your website and contains important WordPress settings.
Simply connect to your website using an FTP client and edit the wp-config file. You need to add the following code just above the line that says ‘That’s all, stop editing! Happy publishing’.
Don’t forget to replace https://example.com with your own domain name.
You can now save your changes and upload them back to your server. After that, visit your website to make sure that everything is working fine.
Method 4. Change WordPress Site URLs in the Database Using phpMyAdmin
Another way to update WordPress site URLs is by changing them directly in your WordPress database.
First, you need to make a WordPress database backup. This step is really important and will help you undo database changes in case anything goes wrong.
After that, you need to go to your web hosting account’s dashboard and click on the phpMyAdmin icon under the Databases section.
Note: Our screenshot is from Bluehost but most other WordPress hosting companies will also have the ability for you to edit database settings.
Once you click the link, it will launch the phpMyAdmin app, which provides a web-based interface to edit MySQL databases. To learn more about it, see our guide on how to WordPress database management with phpMyAdmin
Inside phpMyAdmin interface, you need to click on your WordPress database from the left column. The app will now display tables inside your WordPress database.
Next, you need to scroll down to the options table. By default the database prefix is wp_ but since you can change WordPress database prefix, your screenshot may have a different prefix.
PhpMyAdmin will now display the rows inside the options table. You need to locate the rows where option_name is siteurl and home.
Next, click on the pencil icon on the left to edit each row and change the option_value field to the new site URL. After that, click on the tiny Go button at the bottom right corner to save your database changes.
You can now visit your website to see if everything is working fine.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Over the years we have helped hundreds of thousands of users create a WordPress website, start a blog, or start an online store. In this time, we have answered many different questions related to changing WordPress URLs. Below are some of the most frequently asked questions.
Why are my WordPress Address and Site Address fields greyed out?
If the WordPress address (URL) is greyed out on the settings page of your admin area, then it means that the URLs are hard coded in the wp-config.php file.
To change your WordPress URL, you will need to follow method 3 in our article to edit the wp-config.php file and change the URL accordingly.
How to recover WordPress after url address change in settings?
Sometimes non-techy users can accidentally change WordPress URL and Site Address settings from the WordPress admin area. To recover from that, you will have to follow our guide above to change the WordPress URLs back using functions.php, wp-config, or the database method.
Is there a WordPress change URL plugin that can bulk update URLs in all blog posts, pages, and other content areas?
When you change your WordPress URL, you will need a way to bulk update links through your WordPress posts, pages, and other areas in your database. The above plugins are a huge time saver.
Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, and various other products, announced earlier today that Mark Davies has joined the team as its Chief Financial Officer (CFO). This news comes fresh off the heels of Automattic’s acquisition of Tumblr in August and a $300 million Series D investment from Salesforce Ventures in September. The investment round gave the company a $3 billion valuation after the funding.
Davies graduated from Western Washington University with a bachelor’s degree in accounting and earned his MBA in finance at Arizona State University. He has since worked for large companies in key roles. Prior to taking the position with Automattic, Davies served as the CFO at Vivint, a North American smart home technology company.
Vivint was founded in 1999 and claims over $1 billion in annual revenue. In 2012, The Blackstone Group purchased the company for over $2 billion. Davies came on board in 2013 and would have played a large role in growing the company’s annual revenue.
Vivint announced on October 15 that Davies was leaving the company. “Mark has created a talented and experienced finance team with a solid track record of growth and financial discipline,” said Todd Pedersen, co-founder and CEO of Vivint Smart Home. “We thank him for his six years with the company and wish him the best in his next role.”
Before joining Vivint, Davies served as president of global business services with Alcoa. He was also a member of the Alcoa Executive Council. Prior to that position, he spent 12 years at Dell Inc. in various roles. His most recent position was as the managing vice president of strategic programs. He earlier served as the CFO of Dell’s Global Consumer Group, which is a $14 billion enterprise with operations across the world. He held positions with Applied Materials and HP earlier in his career.
Davies should play a key role in helping Automattic grow beyond its current levels of revenue. He has the credentials and experience to do so.
“Automattic is creating the operating system for the web, from websites to ecommerce to social networks,” said Matt Mullenweg, founder and CEO of Automattic and co-founder of WordPress. “As we zoom past 1,100 employees in over 70 countries, we wanted a financial leader with experience taking businesses from hundreds of millions in revenue to billions and even tens of billions, as Mark has. I’m excited about working alongside such an experienced leader day-to-day to build one of the defining technology companies of this era.”
Mullenweg if often cited saying that he would like to see WordPress have an 85% share of the web. Currently, WordPress runs over 34% of the top 10 million websites. Automattic would certainly play a role in pushing the platform toward that lofty goal. He and David Heinemeier Hansson discussed the dynamics of power in open source communities and whether such a goal was healthy for the web earlier this month. In the discussion, Mullenweg clarified that 85% was a “trailing indicator” rather than a goal.
Stuart West served as Automattic’s CFO for the last seven years. He will continue working within the company, but there is no word on what that new role is. “I want to thank Stu for his significant contributions to Automattic during his seven and a half years as CFO,” said Mullenweg. “He built a talented finance team during a period of 10x growth in staff and revenue and played an essential role in the success of our company.”
Would you like to write for WP Tavern? We are always accepting guest posts from the community and are looking for new contributors. Get in touch with us and let’s discuss your ideas.
One of the best things about WordPress is the easy customization options that you get with WordPress themes and plugins.
You can also take these customizations to the next level by adding your own code snippets and CSS styles to your WordPress theme.
The problem arises when an update becomes available for your theme. If you are not careful, then there is a high chance that you’ll lose some of those changes you made to your theme.
In this article, we will show you how to easily update a WordPress theme without losing customization. We will also cover how to properly customize your themes, so you are not affected when a new theme update is released.
How Theme Updates Work in WordPress?
WordPress comes with a powerful system to install updates for not just WordPress itself but for plugins and themes as well.
Your WordPress website regularly checks for updates and display them under Dashboard » Updates page.
When a theme update becomes available, you’ll also see a notification on the Appearance » Themes page.
Updates are really important for the security and performance of your WordPress website. Aside from security and bug fixes, theme developers can also introduce new features with these updates.
You can simply click on the update button to install the new version.
WordPress will then download the theme package, unzip it, and replace the old files with the newer version.
This will overwrite all old theme files installed on your website. If you manually added custom code to your WordPress theme files, then you’ll lose those changes.
That being said, let’s take a look at which theme changes are safe and which customizations will be erased.
What Type of Theme Customizations Can You Lose During an Update?
There are multiple ways you can customize a WordPress theme. Some of these theme customizations are safe because your changes are stored in the WordPress database itself.
This includes all changes made through the built-in WordPress theme customizer which you can access by visiting Appearance » Customize page.
The theme customizer allows you to modify your WordPress theme and store all changes in the WordPress database. You can change the header image, colors, layout, custom CSS, and more.
Your WordPress widgets and navigation menus are also not affected by the theme updates.
Popular WordPress themes like Astra and Ocean WP now come with companion plugins. These plugins are used to add extra features to your theme. Any theme changes made using these companion plugins are also not affected by the theme update.
If you have added any code to your theme’s functions.php file, then it will disappear. Any CSS changes that you have added directly to your theme’s stylesheet (style.css) file will also be wiped off.
Now that we know which changes will be erased, let’s talk about how to preserve and restore them after the theme update.
Once connected, go to the /wp-content/themes/ folder and download your theme folder to your computer.
This folder will be the backup of your theme, and we will use it later to copy and paste customizations after updating the theme.
Step 2. Download The Updated Theme and Move Customizations
Now we want to transfer customizations we have made to the old theme files to the updated version.
Simply visit your theme’s website and download the latest version to your computer. Locate the theme’s zip file and extract it.
You should now have both, the new version and your old customized theme on your computer.
If you remember the changes you made to your theme, then simply copy and paste the code snippets from the old theme to the new version.
On the other hand, if you do not remember the changes you made, then you will have to find them first. The easiest way to do this is by comparing your theme files.
You’ll need to use a file comparison software like WinMerge (kaleidoscope for Mac, Meld for Linux).
Open both theme folders in file comparison software. It will show files side by side allowing you to quickly compares files to locate the customizations you have added to the old theme.
You can then copy and paste the code from the old theme file to the same file in the new theme.
Step 3. Upload the New Theme Folder
After copying your changes to the new theme, you are now ready to upload the updated version to your website.
Simply connect to your website using the FTP client and go to the /wp-content/themes/ folder. Select the new theme folder and update it to your website.
Your FTP client will warn you that the files with the same name already exist. You need to choose <strongOverwrite to make sure that your old theme files are replaced by new files.
That’s all. You have successfully updated your WordPress theme. Visit your website to make sure that everything is working as expected.
How to Avoid Losing Changes During Theme Update
If you want to add code snippets or custom styles to your WordPress theme, then there are some best practices that you should follow.
The best solution is to create a child theme and add your custom code to child theme’s files.
However, many WordPress beginners may not feel comfortable creating a child theme. Luckily, there are easier solutions available.
It allows you to safely add custom code snippets without breaking your website, and your changes will not be affected by theme updates. You can even change your WordPress theme without losing those changes.
For CSS code, you can save it all under the theme customizer’s ‘Additional CSS’ tab.
Alternatively, you can also use the powerful CSS Hero plugin to easily customize the styles without even writing any CSS code.
We hope this article helped you update your WordPress theme without losing customization. If you come across any issues, then check out our guide on most common WordPress errors and how to fix them.
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