Read to the end to see a bunk bed for cats. (Yes, really!)
In today’s edition:
- We get a thrilling affiliate offer we can’t refuse from WP Forms.
- Twenty Twenty-Five and the like, impermanent beauty of the passage of time, man.
- How to make sure your WordPress site (and your XML sitemap) doesn’t get lost in translation.
Hot Off The Presses: What’s New?
We Love You Too, WP Forms!
We were delighted to recently see WP Forms joining the conditional logic party. And not a decade too soon! (what is it about decades here🤔)
Innovative! Fresh! I bet you this really has Gravity Forms quaking. Quaking, I say!
Or could it possibly be because Forminator (which has had this stuff available for free for eons) continues to steal a march in the wp.org plugin repository.👀
Not that they are too worried about that. I mean buying forminator.com (and redirecting it to WP Forms) is absolutely not the sign of a man who’s worried. Absolutely not. Also, classy.😎
But, perhaps best of all, we recently received this excellent offer from the WP forms division over at Awesome:
I’d love to invite you to join our affiliate programs, which have a commission rate starting from 20% (and can increase based on your performance). We can discuss more benefits for you, like free licenses and personalized code.
Oh man, it’s so nice for you to think of us! We’ll mull it over and get back to you😀
WordPress Playground Has Now Made The World Your Uhh… Playground
You can WordPress on a plane, you can WordPress on a train, you can WordPress here or there, you can WordPress anywhere!
*Ahem*
Sorry, that was a bit Seuss-picious, but we were just thinking about all the places you’ll go.
Okay, we’ll seriously stop now.
If you’ve ever wanted to keep playing around on WordPress Playground, even while you’re on a train, plane or in the middle of nowhere with a fox in socks but no internet access, you’re in luck.
WordPress Playground is now available in offline mode, and it can be installed as a Progressive Web App (PWA), so you can develop your ideas wherever you are.
Fun times for those jet-set digital nomads and productivity hackers who want to keep working in every conceivable moment!
Or, for anyone who dreams of grabbing their laptop and a walking stick and wandering off into the forest never to return. Good luck out there!
Psst… If Your WordPress Meetup Group Is Inactive, It’s Gonna Be Removed
Now’s a good time to check on that WordPress Meetup Group you damn near forgot about because you created it so long ago.
If it hasn’t been active in a while, it’ll be given the ol’ heave-ho by Sept 16th, 2024 as the Community Team does a bit of a clear-out.
Here’s the list of groups that are marked for removal, so if yours is on there you’ll need to email [email protected] before the deadline.
Hey… now that you don’t need a reliable internet connection to use Playground to demo WordPress to first-time Meetup participants, maybe you can have your next Meetup somewhere remote and exciting… like the surface of the Moon or beautiful sunny Hell, Michigan*.
-
*We almost felt bad about suggesting you go to Hell, but after looking at that tourist info page it actually seems like a genuinely fun place.
Twenty Twenty-Five Is Coming.
Last week, WordPress announced the release squad for 6.7 and also announced that the default theme for the next release will be Twenty Twenty-Five (no surprises there…)
When WordPress themes are in development there’s often a lot of highfalutin descriptions that sound like they were whispered by an art student wearing a beret and smoking a tiny cigarette.
This one is no exception:
The glimpses of natural beauty and ancestry woven into the theme evoke ideas of impermanence, the passage of time, and continuous evolution.
I mean, come on. It’s a website theme, not a Georgia O’Keefe painting.
HOWEVER, we will admit that it is looking pretty nice and elegant, and should be a great fit for personal blogs, photography portfolios, news sites and online stores.
The new theme will be fully compatible with the Site Editor and will use new design tools, such as the Grid block and Pattern/Section Styles.
Have opinions about it?
Think it needs more or less natural beauty and impermanence?
Whether you love it or hate it, you can jump into the Figma file and leave your comments. Or, tune into the weekly Slack meetings in #core-themes to chime in (beret optional).
New Annual Hosting Plans: We’re Ready to Lock It Down (If You’ll Have Us)
Up until now, we’ve just been taking things month by month… not really thinking about the future.
But we’re finally ready for a longer term commitment.
What do you say?
Mind Bloggling Stats
- Apparently, less than one percent (0.2%) of people who use WordPress plugins take the time to review them. (Source)
- After English (52.1%), the languages most frequently used on the internet include Spanish (5.5%), German (4.8%), Russian (4.5%) and Japanese (4.3%). (Source)
- At least 13 thousand WordPress websites are hacked every day. Ummm yikes! Double check those dodgy plugins! (Source)
- The number of spam messages received on WordPress sites is 6,208 times higher than the number of real comments. *sigh* Turns out bots are working harder than us! (Source)
Deep Dive: Traducción de WordPress: ¿Cómo Puedo Hacer Que Funcione?
56% of WordPress sites are created in languages other than English, and the number of non-English websites is on the rise.
There are obvious reasons to translate your WordPress website, such as making your site accessible to a global audience, expanding your user base and of course, making sure that terrifying little green owl doesn’t kill you in your sleep.
There are plenty of plugins out there that promise to do the trick, including TranslatePress, Loco Translate, WPML and Polylang.
But what should you keep in mind when it comes to translating your site?
Keep reading for a bit of handy savoir-faire (je suis vraiment désolé) and pitfalls to watch out for.
First, Figure Out If You Really Need a Multilingual Site
Translating your WordPress site will take a bit of work, so make sure you’re actually getting international traffic first. There’s a great walk-through here on how to use Google Analytics to find out what languages your visitors have set their browsers to.
Also, think about the importance of quality and accuracy for the content on the website. Is it a website that sells products and services where there’s no room for confusion, like law, medicine or finance?
Be Wary of AI-Powered Translations
WPML recently introduced their AI-powered translation engine, using OpenAI’s API to analyze the entire context of your content to create translations that are “perfect or near-perfect.” They claim that their upcoming AI assistant feature Maiya will perform “Better Than Human” translation in German, Spanish, French and Portuguese for your WordPress site.
But we’re skeptical. While AI translation can be impressive, it can miss nuances and cultural context and is entirely capable of misunderstanding your site’s content. It’s always worth using a Human translator to proofread your AI-translated site to avoid mortifying mistakes.
Make Sure The Translation Plays Nicely With Yoast
As Xevi Baena Ortigosa points out in this forum post, automatic translation with DeepL has the potential to cause serious problems with the Yoast plugin.
It can cause the XML sitemap to not refresh correctly for the translated URLs, resulting in 404s everywhere and a messed up site. “Hallo Welt” indeed!
Be aware of this and test accordingly to make sure translation doesn’t break everything. Google suggests using a URL structure that makes it easy to geotarget your site, with a country-specific domain for each language.
Consider Using hreflang Tags
Hreflang tags are a way of marking up the translated pages of your website that are similar in meaning, but are aimed at different languages.
They are great for SEO because they make it easier for users who speak another language to find the right version of the page for them, and they also solve the problem of duplicate content.
Here’s Yoast’s helpful guide to implementing hreflang on your site.
Good luck and Bonne Chance!
Blogs & Resources You Shouldn’t Miss
Does WordPress need to CHILL OUT with developing new features and instead focus on a unified dashboard instead? Paul Charlton of WPTuts thinks so.
It’s the end of an era for the WPwatercooler podcast after a 12 year run. Check out their last episode and say goodbye.
Did you know that Usain Bolt’s website was made with WordPress? It stands to reason that it should load very fast.
On the WPTavern Jukebox, Katie Keith & Matt Crowell reveal the secrets of a successful WordPress product. Spoiler alert: It’s listening to your customers and making it easy to use. Who knew?
David Bushell concludes that AI is all “just so disappointingly shite.” Go on, David, tell us what you really think!
Coffee Break Distractions
Quiz yourself: Can you tell which images are AI and which are real?
Mix things together and see what happens, without risking blowing yourself up in the process.
Need a laugh? There’s a payphone in Washington, D.C. giving out free jokes to anyone who picks up.
The (spurious) correlation between per capita margarine consumption and the divorce rate in Maine.
If the Moon were only one pixel. Aka. a tediously accurate map of the solar system.
Wikipedia article titles that can be sung to the tune of the TMNT theme song.
