On today’s episode we’re going to talk about my WordPress predictions for 2018 right here on Your Website Engineer Podcast episode number 369.

Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Your Website Engineer Podcast, my name is Dustin Hartzler and today we’ve got a short episode for you as we wrap up 2017, we’re gonna be talking about some of the predictions that I have that’s gonna happen in the WordPress space next year, or in 2018. Let’s go ahead and dive into the four announcements that I’ve got and one plugin to share with you today. The first piece of announcements or the first news of the week is that WP Site Care has acquired WP Radius, and so, if you’ve never heard of WP Radius it is a – it’s a subscription service that you can sign up for it’s about $87 per month and you get full access to WordPress experts with unlimited site changes or jobs or projects within your WordPress site, and unlimited email support. And the price’s ranges go up from – from 87 to 127 and what not just to – to help you keep your website up to date, and manage backups, cloud security, all the good stuff, so WP Site Care has acquired them and so, for right now it is going to be run as two separate brands, on the WP Radius and WP Site Care. And if you are one of those customers, I’m sure that you’ve got some notifications about that, but that is one piece of news that happened this week in the world of WordPress.

Another thing that’s happened this week in WordPress news is that there was a year in review for Jetpack, and Jetpack what’s happened in 2017, there’s been 12 new releases, one per month, like clockwork, and they’ve done a ton of work with Jetpack, they’ve done redesigns and rebuilds, they completely rebuilt VideoPress from the ground up, did a major overhaul in the settings interface, and redesigned the hugely popular contact form and the way that it works, there’s new services that are built in, so now you get hundreds of free WordPress themes, and then if you are a Jetpack professional level, you get unlimited premium themes as well, they now have social media scheduling, there is a beta version of Elasticsearch that’s built in and you give – can now have monetization tools like, PayPal payments and high-quality ads, there’s been a lot of simplifications with Google Analytics, and they now support accept PayPal for planned purchases, and tons and tons and tons and tons of things, it’s a great article it talks about how they have 33 happiness engineers, they – they now have a chat for Jetpack, and now they enjoy a concierge service, a face to face session for you – to guide you when you sign up for a brand new plan. So, that is some of the news, they’ve also – one of the other key pieces is that they blocked over 50 billion malicious login attempts by bots and spammers, so that’s another just piece of news that’s out there in the world of Jetpack. So, if you want to see all about the Jetpack stats and see the brand-new Jetpack logo, go head on over to Jetpack.com and check out the blog, or you can find the show notes, I’ll link directly to it in the show notes for episode number 369.

There’s another article that – that came out on Torque Magazine this week, and it was about how WordPress has evolved in 2017. It’s a fairly decently long article and just talks about some of the things that have happened. It starts with a timeline that goes back to December 2016 about the REST API and points for content in WordPress 4.7 Vaughan and then talks through some of the things that happened in 2017 like the security patch in January, in April they – they have new improvements to the REST API in May, there was more bug fixes in 4.8 happened in – in June of 2017, and then in 2017 in November then that brought Tipton which – 4.9, and with those new adjustments and those new features in the customizer. Talks a lot about some of the things that are coming up in Gutenberg and what not and so, they’ve got a big long timeline and talking about some of the things that just happened this week in the world, or this month in the world of news within WordPress.

And then the last news I have also comes by way of Automattic but it is an article about Simplenote, and Simplenote is one of those unknown brands or less known brands from Automattic, talks about how it has been updated, it has a brand new look, the interface has been updated to match the – the – the design on Windows and Linux, I guess that’s the Mac look of course, and there’s a new toolbar at top with new buttons that you can share your notes, there’s the improved note sharing will allow you to quickly share your note via the Mac OS sharing features, and there’s better search now, and there’s a lot more changes. I love Simplenote, I use Simplenote for a bunch of things in – and mainly it’s my like, kinda my scratchpad, instead of using the – the Apple notes app for – for those types of things, like if I have a quick thing that I wanna jot down or maybe my – my weekly to-do list or whatever the – the big notes I need, I’m going to Lowes, I need to pick up 10 things, like, I type them out on my computer on Simplenote and they’re there instantly, I remember back when I very first started using Simplenote and the syncing between devices wasn’t very fast within – within Mac OS, I would end up – I would type something on my computer and then by the time I opened it up on my iPad or my iPhone, the app itself, the text would be already there, which was pretty amazing back in the day, and now I still use that so that I could type things up on my computer and I know as soon as I launch the app it’s going to be in my phone or on my tablet. So, if you’re interested in checking out Simplenote, head on over to Simplenote.com and check it out, it does have a dark interface if you are using the Mac version and you wanna have a dark interface, I really like the dark interface, and that’s what I use for – for all kinds of notes, if I’m on a team meeting, just basically like, taking notes on my computer, I open up Simplenote and that’s where I put them, so there’s a big update to that in the past week.

Alright, moving on to the, is there a plugin for that section. There is one called WP config file editor, and it isn’t the – the prettiest of – it’s not the prettiest plugin that’s out there, but it’s one of the most useful ones, especially when you’re doing debugging and if you are on a service end or support team like I – I am, it is a great way to turn on and off different features, so you can get the right information that you need. A lot of times when you’re in the support site, you have to ask for code to be added to the WP-config file and if a user isn’t that technical or doesn’t know how to do it, or even have the ability to do that, then it’s really hard to get that information into that file, but with the WP config file editor, this is a – this is a plugin that you could install on your WordPress site and now you can add the code that you need right from within the WordPress dashboard. It’s really slick and it just gives you that awesome ability to do what you need without having to log in via FTP, get their FTP credentials, trying to log in, figure out which site their using, if they have – on shared hosting plan and have dozens and dozens of sites, it’s really, it just makes a simple process very, very simple, so its got more than 10,000 active installs so I recommend if you – if you do have that ability or you do need to – to edit that file and you don’t wanna be messing around with an FTP editor, or maybe breaking something then this would be the plugin. It’s called WP config file editor, and you can find it in the WordPress repository, or you can find it – I’ll link to it in the show notes for episode number 369.

Alright, well, today let’s talk about the WordPress predictions that I have for 2018, and it’s just kind of a – a fun list that I thought I would start and – and maybe next year at this time I’ll look back and see how close that I was, well, was I close, was I not? And just kinda run with it, but there’s some predictions that I have that – that I think’s gonna happen this year in WordPress, I think that some of my – my numbers or my estimates are gonna be a little low, I think we’re gonna go much, much higher than that. But, let’s go ahead and just run down these real quick as we wrap up this calendar year. The first one is I think Gutenberg is going to revolutionize WordPress, I think it’s going to be amazing when it comes out, its still got about four months’ worth of development, three and half, four months of development, but I think when it comes out, it’s gonna be a big shock to the entire WordPress community, especially those that haven’t been following along recently, but once they get an idea of how it works and how to use it, I think it’s going to be phenomenal, I think we’ll get rid of some of those visual builders that are out there, and everything is going to be much better of an interface within WordPress, it’s gonna be a seamless – a seamless process and I think people are gonna really love that feature to build those blocks and automatically see what they’re – what they’re writing and I think that’s gonna be really, really cool.

Along the way with Gutenberg I think the customizer is gonna get some more love this year as well, and I – I feel that there’s going to be a lot of implementation by plugin developers and theme developers to make – make it easy to make changes and customizations to themes and plugins and watch the customizations live right there on the computer screen without refreshing, I love this, that the widget area is now in the customizer and you can – you can add and change and – and – and fix things with the – with the widgets, and you could see the live preview right away, you don’t have to go and save it and then do a refresh on the other page to see the front end of the website, and I think the customizer is – is here to stay and we’re going to get a lot more cool things that are coming with the customizer and maybe even a lot of the – the dashboard things that, maybe we can start managing media in the customizer, or maybe we could do all of the settings, the general settings, all that stuff will be ported over to the customizer, who knows, we’ll – we’ll have to wait and see, but I think we’re gonna get a lot of love for the customizer in 2018.

Right now we’re sitting at about 29 percent or so of the – the percentage of number of websites on the web and that’s – that number comes from the top 10 million, or top million websites, that’s where that number comes from, so the – of the top million or the top 10 million websites, 29 percent of those are using WordPress as the software or the content management system to keep the website up and running, I think we’re gonna hit the one third of the web, the 33 percent, point three three percentage points, and I’m pretty sure that we’ll hit that very easily over the next 12 months, but we’ll see where that is when we close out the year next.

I also think we’ll – we’ll cap out over 50,000 plugins in the WordPress repository, that’s not too big of a goal because we’ve already got 47,000 in there, so just a few thousand more and that will get us to the 50,000-goal mark, that’s really incredible, I think there’s a – a ton of plugins out there, there’s tons of value in that free WordPress repository, and it’s gonna be really exciting to see that hit the 50,000 – or 50,000 free plugins in the WordPress repository mark.

A couple more things that I do think are gonna happen this next year, I do think that there’s gonna be more sites that are using WordPress that are using HTTPS, having secure URLs, I think that this is because it’s gonna be much easier for the hosting providers to just give this away for free, with – with all of the technology that’s out there with less – Let’s Encrypt, a lot of companies are just automatically adding that to the hosting package. Right now, it was – it was stated in the State of the Word that we’re at 38 percent of WordPress sites are now using HTTPS and I think we’ll be well over the 50 percent mark by the end of the calendar year.

I think we’ll have three major releases this year, with the first one coming in April, or around April, May time period with 5.0 and that will include Gutenberg, and we’ll probably also see 5.1 and 5.2, one of those will be all about the customizer, giving us some more updates to the customizer and the other one will be probably more like, API driven, like getting things on the backend ready for more JavaScript related apps, and that’s my next prediction, I think we’ll see a lot more API driven events and – and – and have JavaScript apps do a lot more, the – maybe even the WordPress app, be able to customize and do a lot more things within the app itself without having to open up your WordPress dashboard, just adding to that Calypso interface so you can do a lot more things. So, I believe we’ll see a lot of that, I think that we’re gonna see a lot more JavaScript, I think we’re gonna see a lot more – just – just even on the plugin side of things, when you update settings in the plugin, you won’t have to see a entire page refresh, you’re gonna be able to hit save and it’s automatically gonna save by using JavaScript and just sending that information to the database without refreshing the entire page, so, I – by – by saying that I think it’s gonna seem like WordPress is gonna get a lot faster, it’s gonna be a lot snappier, it’s gonna work a lot better, and that’s mainly because everything is going to be on the JavaScript side. So, that’s something to think about if you are gonna be somebody like me, I am really anticipating a lot of changes with JavaScript, and I’m not very JavaScript savvy, so that is going to be one of my goals in 2018, I’ve been saying this for years, that I really need to get on the bandwagon and learn some JavaScript, and I’m – I’m trying to carve out some time each day within my work day to try to figure out how I can – and pick up some skills and learn a little bit about JavaScript, how I can implement that, how I can make my website a little bit faster, and how I can pull data in with JavaScript and just make things load faster, and it seem like my sites a lot snappier, so that’s something that I’m gonna be working on.

And then the last thing that I think is going to happen this year in the world of WordPress is there’s gonna be more focus on translation support, I don’t know if more is the right word, but there is going to be a lot more community support, community driven lead initiatives for that customization or those – those translations, and I think when WordPress 5.0 comes out in more like – you’ll see more and more of them top plugins in the WordPress repository be translated into more and more languages, especially WordPress and it be native in – in a lot more languages when it’s – when it’s released at that 5.0 version.

So, those are some things that I thought of, I know that there’s tons of other things that we could’ve talked about today and just kinda dove in and – and think about there’s gonna probably more themes, there’s gonna be obviously more plugins, there’s going to be more hosting companies, there’re gonna be more services that are out there, there’s gonna be more sass services to help you keep your website up and running, there’s gonna be more backup plugins that are out there, there’s gonna be tons of everything, and these are just some of the things that I wanted to shout out and think about and kind of talk about this week. It’s been a crazy – crazy 2017, I’ve seen a lot of changes in my personal life, we went from a family of three to a family of four, I got three months off as paternity leave from Automattic, I got back to work and right away I started attending Word Camps’ Grand meet up, I travelled for a family vacation, I went to Word Camp US, there’s been a lot of crazy things going on in the last few weeks and it has been just an amazing year. And I’m excited as – as my children get a little bit older and they sleep a little bit longer I’m excited to – to spend a little bit more time digging into code like I said, focusing on some JavaScript in 2018, just kind of levelling out my skills and see how I can contribute back to WordPress, how I can help them lead this initiative, or kind of follow or help out the initiative of JavaScript.

So, those are some things that are going in the WordPress space, I’m starting to lay out the plan for the next quarter, that first quarter of 2018, build a content for those each three months and – and get ready to – to dive back in and learn some things and – and continue to take your WordPress site to the next level, and continue to – to focus and drive forward and – and just continue to stay on top of the technology that’s out there and the things that are evolving in the latest, I guess whatever’s happening in 2018. I’m really excited to see what’s to come, I love the technology, I love spending time with WordPress, and I love hanging out with WordPress people. Speaking of travel, the last minute travel plans I do have, in a couple weeks I’ll be heading out to Word Camp Albuquerque and be spending a – a few days out there and doing a session on the Friday of that – that Word Camp weekend, and doing a WooCommerce one on one, and just spending some time like at deep – deep diving into what WooCommerce is, how we can use it, what we can set it up for, what we can sell, all those good things, I know that I could spend hours just going through all the settings, but I’ve got one hour, I’m tuned to one hour, and talk about some of the things that you can do with WooCommerce and some of the extensions that are out there, so if you’re in the Albuquerque area and you’re heading out that way, definitely let me know, I’ll be happy to say hello, and – and hang out for a while and be excited to head out to a Word Camp on that side of the US, I’ve never been passed – I guess Wisconsin has been the farthest west that I’ve ever been from Ohio, so I’m excited to see a little bit of the desert in the – in the – in the – the freezing cold of Ohio winter, so head out there and that’s kinda the – that the – the first Word Camp of 2018, I’m sure I’ll be to more, and spend some time learning WordPress, and educating in the WordPress space.

So, that’s what I wanna share with you this week, I’ve got stuff that I’ve got planned, or I’m working on the outlines for January, February, March, what the theme of the months are gonna be, and then we’ll roll out more great WordPress content in 2018, and until then take care, and we’ll talk again soon. Bye-bye.