Hello!
We recently helped Google design and build amp-wp.org, the website for the WordPress branch of the AMP project. We wrote about our experience here.
With page experience signals joining Google’s ranking system, having a fast website is going to be critical for maintaining a top spot in Google search. AMP is a great resource-effective way to make your website fast and consequently, achieve good page experience.
If you are a publisher looking to optimize your website and are wondering if AMP is the right choice for you, get in touch with us, we would love to help you out!
Insights
Full Site Editing (FSE) is an upcoming feature in WordPress that will bring the drag and drop WYSIWYG editor out of the content area and make your entire website editable with blocks. It’s still early days, but this is the future. Some of the FSE functionality will ship with the next WordPress major release – WordPress 5.8, which is coming in July. Everything FSE-related is opt-in, so site administrators can update WordPress as they normally do. We are experimenting with FSE and are excited for the future that is block-based themes. This WP Briefing podcast episode is a great first introduction to FSE.
News from Around the Web
Google’s page experience update, which will introduce Core Web Vitals as search ranking signals, has been delayed to mid-June. Refer to this post for more details.
Automattic launched Jetpack Boost, a new performance optimization plugin that will help WordPress sites to improve their Web Vitals scores in a few easy steps. This is a great addition to the repository in light of the upcoming page experience update and the Jetpack team is working towards bringing new features and modules.
Getty Images is acquiring Unsplash. For now, there seem to be no immediate plans to change Unsplash’s current licensing model, and the company “will continue to operate as a standalone brand and division of Getty Images.”
The WordPress project has acquired CC Search, a search engine that offers access to over half a billion images licensed under the public domain and other open licenses. We can expect deep integration of Creative Commons licensed content into WordPress in the near future.
Gutenberg 10.5 and 10.4 were released. New features include block widgets in the Customizer, new block patterns, with some UI updates and bug fixes. Changelogs here and here.
Water Cooler
Popular on our #watercooler Slack channel.
- Doing good work with good people – Muhammad Muhsin
- Build your own [insert technology here]
- exa – A modern replacement for “ls”
- Cloudflare Images beta
Events
Page Builder Summit 2.0 is happening from May 10-14. Industry experts and professionals from companies like Elementor and more will talk about how to get the best out of your page builder tool. Tickets are free.
That’s all for April, see you next month!
Links: Building amp-wp.org
