Category: WordPress

fourteen

A couple of days ago WordPress.com greeted me with this anniversary badge.

I must say this is beginning to ‘scare’ me because of all the things happened to me (and to the world) in all those years.

The focus of this blog has changed many times, and probably I could give it more love… but the luxury of a personal blog, with no economics involved, is the freedom to do whatever we want, when we want.

So Thank You all for having read me, or leaved a like or a comment. That’s why I still find energy and will to stay here.

Outside of WordPress, all major open source CMSs are declining.

I’ve gone through the list of CMSs and looked up whether they’re open source or not. On the whole, in the beginning of 2018, open source CMSs combined had a 41.6% market share. Now they command 43.4% and if the trends continue the way they’re looking, it’ll be 45.7% this time next year.

Now, those open source totals obscure an important fact:

  • without WordPress, open source CMSs would have lost a full percentage point over the course of this year, from 9.4% to 8.4%.
  • if the trends continue, the group of open source CMSs – excluding WordPress – will decrease next year as well, to 7.6%.

So, while WordPress is shining and growing, the open source CMS ecosystem outside of WordPress isn’t getting stronger. We’ve seen the first moves for Gutenberg to be adopted by Drupal, maybe it’s time for more collaboration to prevent further decline?

Joost de Valk

Joost on his analysis has pointed out lots of data to study. Every aspect is important but – to my heart – this is the situation that needs more analysis from every developer out there. Clearly there’s something in the WordPress community that’s winning, and avoiding learning the good things this project has put on the table in its 15 years of existence is leading to… nothing.

So it would be better to cooperate each other and try to compensate the bad things each project has and elevate the strongest points…

The Cost of Contribution

… as WordPress was not the development tool I had hoped it would be, mainly because it prioritizes end-users over developers (and for a valid reason). And just when I considered switching, I experienced the one thing that has continued to keep me in this space: the WordPress Community.
It’s a community full of passioned and inspiring people, and when you come into contact with it for the first time, it can be very intoxicating – I was hooked right away!
But with time, I noticed more and more that this highly inspiring and addicting environment did have a negative long-term effect on some community members.

Alain Schlesser

Open.film

Thousands of volunteers make WordPress, while a $10 billion industry powering one-third of the web profits. What drives so many to give so much of their time and energy? OPEN explores the open-source community making WordPress. This is a story about community giving freely of their time, expertise and energy to software driving the online economy.

OPEN was filmed at WordCamps, local events around the world organized by volunteers to further the mission of democratizing publishing. With over 150 WordCamps and 600 meetups worldwide, this grassroots community brings together more than just programmers and bloggers. WordCamps can attract hundreds of local WordPress users, each with their own story of how and why they use WordPress.

WordCamp Bari 2019 ~ the Call for Speakers

In a couple of months in Bari will take the second edition of ‘our’ WordCamp. The other day, as organizers, we begun spreading our Call for Speakers … and today I’m here to convince you to come and participate!

What we’d like to learn / listen / discuss

Any kind of talk is welcome. As you may have seen on WordPress.tv or participating to a WordPress meetup in your city the overall mood is friendly and informal. But if you’re new to our kind of events there’s no problem, here’s a list to inspire your proposal:

  • Web Development (event not related to our preferred CMS)
  • any topic regarding Software Free/Libre Open Source
  • any topic regarding the legal aspects of running a website (GDPR, Selling and Privacy Laws, Taxes)
  • WordPress Community
  • WordPress themes and plugins development
  • SEO
  • Security
  • WordPress and its future
  • Performance
  • Best Practices

There are two kind of talks

Really, we have two main formats for the talks::

  • Regular – 30 minutes, of which about 20 for the talk itself and 10 for Q&A
  • Extended – 45 minutes, of which about 30 for the talk itself and 15 for Q&A

Choose freely the one you like!

Talks’ voting

Once the Call comes to its deadline, we gather and anonymize all the talks proposed – hey, did I tell you can submit more than one talk ? – and the organizers will have a list of titles and abstracts to vote. The talks with most preferences are officially invited to our Speakers’ roaster … Organizers will not know who will talk about ‘topic A’ until the voting are over, so to avoind any kind of favoritism.

Of course we will also try the widest range of proposals, so we will not have 10 talks about plugin development since we’re gonna try to have a thing for anyone coming.

So be creative and entertainign while proposing your talk. Sympathy is a good arrow to your bow.

Submit your talk !

We are anxious to read it

announcing WordCamp Bari 2019

It’s with immense pleasure that we can finally announce to the world the forthcoming of the second edition of the WordCamp Bari.

We’ve launched the new website, with a refreshed graphic made by Antonio Trifirò and our “social media & marketing” team has begun the promotion on the various channels. Very shortly we’ll launch also the Call for Speakers and the Call for Sponsors. Are you coming to say hello next May 17 and 18 ???

join WordCamp Bari 2019

Proposal to Increase the Maximum Ticket Price for WordCamps

wapuu-collector-pin-for-community On the Make WordPress.org website yesterday was posted the article Proposal to Increase the Maximum Ticket Price for WordCamps ☞ . There it was asked to the Community – you and me, in fact – what’s the arguments in favor and disfavour of WordCamp tickets price raising.

WordCamps are events by the WordPress Community for everyone following the main goal of the WordPress foundation that’s “Empowering Web Publishing”, and are organized locally everywhere in the world from New York to Pokhara (Nepal) — mentioned as an example, I’d love to attend there…

So, after having read the first reactions, I’ve decided to add my reply … which was:

To me the most important thing is: I think that pricing should not be “imposed”.

Each organizing team has to study what are the goals of the Camp, decide how many people to handle and then calculate the event’s ticket price as a ratio between costs of the basic services (ie venue) and visitors with an elementary division.
Like I’ve written above free food or drinks or after-party is nice to have, but not mandatory.

There are lots of cool things to have (swag, green room for speakers, free hotel room for them or free transport from air/stations to the venue) but not all of them are required – or will make me decide to come to your camp … it’s mostly the quality of the topics of the Camp and, in second place, the fame of the organizing community and ease to reach the city / nation of the event.

My invite is to add YOUR comment to the topic, and help us to choose what’s best to do… Community and Open Source means participation, and this time you won’t be asked to code.