This Month In WordPress — January 2015 Edition

OK, seriously… How is it possible that we’ve already blazed through the first month of the new year? Winter is starting to wind down a bit — unless you live on the East Coast (stay warm out there guys!) — and the world of WordPress is still going strong.

Winter is starting to wind down a bit — unless you live on the East Coast (stay warm out there guys!) — and the world of WordPress is still going strong.

We’ve been doing these round-up posts for some time now, and we have another one here for you today.

Here is January’s list of news in the WordPress community.

This Month In WordPress

WordPress Is Getting A Front-End Editor

Picture by Author 360b via Shutterstock

For years, the WordPress community has been begging for a front-end (visual) editor. Well, after much begging and pleading, your wishes have finally come true — almost.

For the moment, the front-end editor for WordPress is in its Beta phase and is currently only in the form of a plugin. Brenda Barron took some time to test out the plugin and gave a nice little tour of what the visual editor can do. Even though the upcoming front-end editor is a plugin, the plan is to work out some of the kinks before fully integrating the function into WordPress Core Software. Will is be the upgrade that we all want?

Eh, we’ll see, but my fingers are crossed.

Blogging U. Is Now Open For Registration

Blogging U. — Learn To Blog With WordPress

Blogging U. is short for Blogging University — a free blogging and writing course offered by the Automattic Team to help new bloggers reach their blogging and writing goals.

Registration for the free courses is open and starts February 2nd, and there are a few to choose from:

• Blogging 101: Zero To Hero
• Blogging 201: Branding and Growth
• Writing 201: Poetry

The courses are broken up into simple exercises and assignments and come with a great support community where you can connect with others in WordPress land. You can sign up for one or all of the courses available. You can also read more about what these courses have to offer on

You can also read more about what these courses have to offer on The Daily Post.

Pressable Gets Hit Hard

It’s always a downer to hear when a great WordPress company is going through some tough times. Pressable is one such company.

Back at the beginning of the month, the WordPress Hosting company was hit by an outage which lead to all the sites they hosted going down for quite a long time. As a result, the company has lost a lot of customers. Though they are fully qualified to handle this sort of outage, the struggle for the company is that they only have a team of 5 people that can handle it, which makes it hard to handle the issue on top of customer support. As of now, they are still trying to work out the issue, but here’s to a better tomorrow!

GoDaddy + WordPress = New Hosting Package That Is…Good?

GoDaddy has long been the go-to resource for many people looking to purchase a domain name. However, the company recently launched their very own Managed WordPress Hosting service thereby putting themselves in the ring with other WordPress hosting leaders like WP Engine and Flywheel.

Though the low price point will make more than a few people happy (usually $6.99 but they’re running a special right now for $1.00 per month for 12 months), that may not mean that they’re going to be the best WordPress hosting option out there. Many GoDaddy users have complained about the lack of support that comes from the company, however, others are looking forward to the lower price point.

Will their WP Hosting be up to par and deliver a great overall service? Only time will tell.

Cloudways WooCommerce Hosting Is Now Varnish Compatible

Cloudways Adds Varnish To WooCommerce Hosting

Great news for all you WooCommerce store owners. Cloudways — a top-notch host provider — is now the first host provider that is fully compatible with Varnish for WooCommerce hosting.

Just what is Varnish and why is it awesome? Well, according to Cloudways, “Varnish is a caching system deployed on the front-end of the server that handles HTTP requests. It speeds up the web application’s performance by a significant margin (Varnish-cache.org official statement claims that it speeds up the performance by 300 to 1000 times.)”

What does that mean for a WooCommerce site? It means that using Cloudways will increase your site speed by at least 100% — pretty spiffy! If you run a WordPress and WooCommerce powered site, but you’re looking to significantly boost your page speed, then Cloudways should be your first stop when trying to find the right host provider.

Highlights From The Elegant Themes Blog

• The 41 Best Free Web Fonts for 2015 | Ready to shake up your typography? Nathan lists over 40 of the best web fonts that you can download and start using on your site (or anywhere else) today.
• How To Use Twitter For Business | Want to take advantage of the power of Twitter but don’t know where to start? It’s not as hard as you may think. Brenda covers some great tips for optimizing your Twitter account and using it for your business.
• 20 Social Media Books Website Owners Should Be Reading In 2015 | Social Media is a powerful tool that all those who are serious about creating a web presence should do all they can to learn. Nathan lists 20 book on the subject of Social Media that are worth considering.
• Powerful Methods For Capturing Email Subscribers | Looking for ways to build your email list? Many of us are. However, that’s easier said than done. If you need help building that list, then be sure to take a look at this post.
• The 15 Best Webinar Software Products From Around The Web | Webinars are becoming increasingly popular. They give business owners the chance to connect with their viewers and share great content. Want help picking a webinar software? Look at our curated list of the top 15 softwares out there.
• How To Optimize Your WordPress Site For Local Search | We all know that SEO is important, but ranking in Google’s Local Search can be challenging for many. There are ways that you can optimize your site to help your SEO efforts along. Brenda covers some of these methods.
• WordPress SEO Best Practices In 2015 | Speaking of SEO, are you up-to-date with everything you need to know? If you want tips about your WordPress On-page SEO, then be sure to read over this post — you’ll be happy you did.
• Creative Ways To Drive More Traffic To Your Website | Getting traffic to your site is something we all want, but it’s also one that can be rather challenging. Nathan offers up some great tips on how to get traffic to your site with some methods you may not have thought of before.

Other Great Articles From Around The Web

• Integrating WooCommerce with Visual Composer | WooCommerce and Visual Composer are two of the most popular plugins out in the WP market. Wouldn’t it be great if they could work together? Well, now they can! Eric on the Envato Blog wrote a great tutorial on how to get these two working together like PB and J.
• WordPress Freelancer Tools To Help Run Your Business Smoothly | Every freelancer and business owner knows just how hard it is to keep all that business-y stuff in check. Brandon with Torque lists some awesome tools to help you keep your business running the way it should — nice and smooth.
• How and Where to Outsource Your WordPress Related Work | Many businesses eventually hit that point where they have to outsource some of their workload, however, just handing over the reigns to the cheapest guy on the block is probably not the best idea. Karol with CodeInWP gives some helpful suggestions on where and how to outsource your WordPress related work.
• Jetpack Quick Tips: How To Make Google+ Share Publicly | Jetpack is a plugin that many people love and use on their WordPress website. One of the best features that it has to offer is the Publicize Module, but many have run into the issue of the Google Plus account they have connected to Jetpack not sharing their post publicly. This tutorial is simple and right to the point to help fix that.
• How To Optimize Images For WordPress, A Complete Guide | WordPress 101 includes knowing the ins and outs of image optimization for your posts and pages. Sourav with WPExplorer explains some 10 common errors made with images and how to avoid them.
• How to Block a WordPress User Without Deleting Their Account | There are instances where blocking a user without deleting their account is just what needs to happen. This post on WPBeginner explains how to do just that.
• 7 Proactive Ways to Get Backlinks That’ll Actually Boost Your Traffic |Backlinks are a great way to get traffic and gain authority for your site, but acquiring them has to be done correctly or you could do more harm than good. Niel Patel lists 7 ways to build backlinks that won’t get you in trouble with Google.
• The Ultimate Guide to 150+ Google Analytics Resources for 2015 | Google Analytics is what just about everyone is using to measure traffic, bounce rate and more on their websites. Kristi Hines on KissMetrics curated a mega-list of more than 150 online resources to help you learn all there is to know about GA.

Wrapping It Up

2015 is already moving fast, but it’s clear that it’s going to be a great year for WordPress. Have you found anything WordPress related that proved to be helpful for you? Be sure to share.

Article Thumbnail by Author kowition via Shutterstock