Calling 2020 “an interesting year” would be an understatement. This year saw several major acquisitions and direct/indirect investments (think PayStack-Stripe, Slack-Salesforce) in the WordPress sphere, and a significant rise in WordPress adoption both on the small as well as enterprise scale.
As for us, we went fully remote, did some Good Work with several enterprises from around the world, participated in a myriad of events, released a few really cool plugins, and also welcomed new rtCampers from around the world! (Btw we’re looking for more, a.k.a. we’re still hiring!) Check out our full Year in Review here.
Insights
WooCommerce facilitated over $20bn in sales in 2020, which is more than double compared to 2019 – Matt Mullenweg revealed at the annual State of the Word. “Ecommerce was pulled forward many, many years.”
Matt also highlighted how Tonal, a premium fitness products and services company grew their revenue by 12X using their WooCommerce store, which goes to show the incredible scalability of ecommerce on WordPress. And Tonal is not alone.
News from Around the Web
WooCommerce acquired MailPoet, the integrated email marketing service/plugin for WordPress. MailPoet is being used by ~300,000 WordPress websites and a quarter of their customers run WooCommerce stores.
WordPress 5.6 Simone is the last major release of 2020. It ships with the new Twenty Twenty-One default theme. All the release leads were women and non-binary folks. 5.6 takes rtCamp’s core contribution streak to 21 consecutive releases.
The WordPress project launched Learn WordPress. Learn.WordPress.org has lesson plans, workshops, discussion groups, and more to upskill users of all levels on how to use, build for, and contribute to WordPress.
Fast Checkout is now on WooCommerce. Fast AF, Inc. is growing… uh… fast. This year, they raised $2.5M in pre-seed funding and $20M in series A funding, which was led by Stripe. Fast Checkout is currently exclusive to BigCommerce and WooCommerce.
Gutenberg 9.6 rolled out with the frequently wishlisted drag and drop support for blocks and many little QoL enhancements. Changelog here.
Local works as expected (mostly) with macOS Big Sur according to initial testing by the Local team. There are issues with trusting SSL certificates, but there’s a workaround. PHP 8 is available in Local Beta 5.9.7.
Events
WordCamp India is happening and will take place over 3 weekends between Jan. 30 and Feb. 14. The event is fully online and will feature 2 days each of workshops, contributor sessions, and speaker talks, along with special tracks and open conversation rooms. Tickets are free! Organizers from several local meetups and WordCamps across India have come together and this will be a big event.
WordFest Live 2021 is scheduled for Jan. 22. Besides WordPress, speaker sessions include topics such as remote work and mental health. The lead organizers belong to Big Orange Heart, a charity and support community working towards better well-being and mental health for remote workers. Registration is free. rtCamper Imran is a speaker.
Water Cooler
Popular on our #watercooler Slack channel
That wraps it up for December 2020. See you next month! 👋
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Links: rtCamp’s Year in Review
