One of the best ways to increase revenue or traffic to your website is to rebrand yourself. Not only can rebranding yourself and your website draw in more website visitors, but it can also help you stand out on various platforms.

Rebranding your style to better fit with the times starts with rebranding your website. Although the idea of revamping yourself may sound complicated, it doesn’t have to be.

If you use a site hosted by WordPress and want to try to revitalize your image, you’ve come to the right place. The steps outlined here can help you learn how to rebrand a WordPress website in a way that will best suit your business.

How to Rebrand a WordPress Website: Seven Essential Steps

In order to rebrand a website in WordPress seamlessly, there are seven steps you should follow. These steps will help you rebrand a WordPress theme, define your image, and create a website experience that makes your business stand out.

Develop Your Brand Voice

First and foremost, you have to know your brand voice. Your brand voice is the best way to convey your authority on your topic. Conveying your authority could come in the form of written content, physical products, or other delivery methods, such as podcasts.

For example, if you run a political website, using political jargon and confident verbiage will tell your target audience that you’re well-versed on your topic. Or, if you have a pop-culture podcast, there should be no question that you know the who’s who of the pop culture world.

If you’re looking to expand your voice, you could consider adding a blog. Many articles are available to get you started if you’ve never created a blog before, but it can be a great way to get noticed for something brand-specific, like witty one-liners or great storytelling.

This should be in line with your business industry, objectives, and the audience you are speaking to. If you need help with defining your brand voice, which is key to any rebrand or design project, you may want to seek out a consultation with a branding consultant. You can find plenty of great consultants on Clarity FM.

Define Your Style

The next step to learning how to rebrand a WordPress website is to figure out your style. This is the part of your website that conveys who you are. It should be apparent in your logo, theme, and writing.

Essentially, your style is the “you” part of your site. It’s how site visitors learn about your business and understand who you are. Perhaps your business style is an offshoot of your own personality, or it might be the complete opposite of who you are. The only thing that matters is that it’s clearcut.

For example, if you’re an author of romantic comedies, you may want to portray yourself as funny and personable using bright colors and witty text. Or, if you’re the owner of a clothing store, a style that conveys the casual vibe of your clothing would be more appropriate.

When defining your style, take time to look at competitors’ websites and examine the styles of the more successful ones to get some great insight into what consumers are looking for. Once you have an idea of what your target audience is used to, you’ll have a great starting point.

Align Your Brand Voice and Style with Your Offerings

This may seem obvious, but it is vital to create your new style, voice, and overall branding to resemble and reflect the industry your business is in and the products or services you offer.

You will not be recognizable or memorable (in a good way, at least) to your audience if you have a new branding and style that has zero characteristics of the market your business is in.

An example of this being done poorly would be a pediatric doctor’s office using a “car” in their logo or branding. Sure, kids usually like cars, or toy cars at least, and maybe the doctor is even a car geek. However, it’s obvious that a “car” doesn’t speak to what a pediatric doctor has to offer.

The better example of the pediatric doctor’s office having a good alignment of their brand and style with their offerings would be using a classic toy from their culture, the traditional baby blue and pink colors, or even a fun and energetic font for a wordmark logo.

Additionally, you will want to consider how the design will flow with the purpose and function of your website. If your website is intended to be a showcase of your creative work, you will want to have that creative touch with your branding too. If your site is more for information only purposes, then you will want to focus on presenting that information in a clear and distinguished way.

This step may seem easy, or again, obvious, but when working through new designs and branding, it can be easy to get “caught in the current” of making something new and exciting. Remember your objectives when rebranding, and stay focused on creating something that represents what you have to offer your audience.

Create Your Logo

Your logo is the most outward and immediate expression of your style and brand. It should appear on every page, on every platform, and on every piece of digital marketing material. That way, when someone visits your site, they’ll know they’ve come to the right place.

Creating a logo can take quite a bit of trial and error, especially if you’ve never done it before. You can create a logo yourself using a free service such as Canva, or, if you’re handy with Photoshop, you could also create a logo using that.

If you aren’t sure if you’ll be able to create a logo on your own that really stands out, it’s a simple enough process to hire someone to do it for you. Graphic designers are available to create logos, advertisements, and other digital promotional materials and have the experience to do it well.

Create a Favicon

Once you’ve created a great logo, your next step is to create a Favicon.

A Favicon is a small icon on the tab of a browser that tells you what site is on the browser without switching to that tab. For example, the Favicon on the WordPress website is the WordPress logo.

When designing your site, you should include your logo as your Favicon. Choosing something other than your logo can confuse site visitors.

WordPress makes it incredibly easy to use your logo to create a Favicon when customizing your theme. Or, if you prefer, you can convert your logo to a Favicon using an online conversion tool.

Choose a Theme With Suitable Branding Options

WordPress provides you the option of either using a pre-designed theme or creating your site from scratch. If your goal is to remain consistent and recognizable, choosing a theme is your best bet because it allows your style to carry seamlessly through each page on your site.

Whether you’re choosing to rebrand a pre-existing WordPress theme, choosing a new theme altogether, or using a page builder like Elementor* or Beaver Builder*, be sure you select a theme that has suitable branding options for your needs. Some themes are more customizable than others, which gives you more flexibility when creating your site.

You want to make sure the theme allows you enough customization options to be able to implement your branding options on the site without a lot of custom development. Also, to keep things consistent, make sure the color scheme you choose for your theme reflects your style and complements your logo.

When considering your theme options, you need to remember that you’ll have to keep your site up to date. WordPress makes changes now and then, and one core update or theme update could conflict and change the look of your entire site. Make sure you go with a highly rated and supported theme that is kept up to date and checked for compatibilities, like the X theme or any of our other recommended themes, or a commonly used page builder and theme combination.

But, no matter what theme you have or choose to go with, you can always have help with maintaining theme updates, on top of all your other updates and maintenance tasks, with a WordPress care plan if you’re concerned about managing a theme and the WordPress system.

Lastly, you don’t have to have a custom theme built to have a great custom design for your site. We really don’t recommend using a custom theme for most websites. Many of the best, well-known themes now have plenty of flexibility to implement your design ideas, so don’t feel pressured into an expensive custom-built theme.

Consider Your Cross-Platform Branding Options.

Once you’ve figured out your style, brand, logo, and voice, there’s one more step in the rebranding process. Having a website is excellent for business, but only if you get the word out that it’s there. The best way to spread the word is to implement cross-platform branding.

Cross-platform branding is one of the most common ways to spread the word about your business, which you’d mainly do through social media. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are a few of the big platforms that successful content-creators and business owners use.

One example of cross-platform branding can be seen on our own WP Buff’s Instagram and Twitter pages. The first thing you see is the bright colors of WP Buff’s logo and theme, highlighting one of the most critical aspects of this type of branding: consistency.

The biggest thing to remember about using social media for cross-platform branding is that not all platforms are created equal. For example, Instagram is more about visual content, whereas Twitter requires you to be witty and concise when drawing in your target audience.

When choosing which platforms to focus on, always look at demographics regarding user behavior. For example, based on this Pew research data, 71% of women aged 18-29 use Instagram, but only 48% of women aged 30-49 use that platform.

This data indicates if your target audience is in their forties, you may want to spend more time getting the word out on Facebook, which is used by 77% of women in their thirties and forties.

So now that we’ve laid the basic foundation of how to rebrand a WordPress website, let’s talk about our own journey for the WP Buffs website rebrand we went through!

The WP Buffs Rebrand

Rather listen than read? Tune into the podcast where Christie and I review this whole blog post, or the episode where we do a full walk through of the new site!

As you’re probably already aware reading this blog post, wpbuffs.com has gotten a major update. Not only have we brought WP Buffs into the present with fantastic new branding, but we launched a new website to boot.

While our name and domain have stayed the same, just about everything else about WP Buffs has gotten a significant facelift.

And most of the work was done while I was on parental leave! So huge kudos to our whole team who got this mammoth project completed (and especially to Nick for leading the charge).

I wanted to write this section of the blog post to describe everything about the rebrand and new website. Our thought process, the whys, the different stages of design and development, the costs involved and much more.

So let’s dive in.

The whys

There were a few reasons we decided to do this. I think many of the reasons for the rebrand and the new website are overlapping, but some factor more into one than the other so I’m going to talk about them both separately here.

The rebrand

• Our old logo was done on Fiverr when I started WP Buffs ~6 years ago. That doesn’t automatically make it bad, but WP Buffs has changed a lot since then. Our white, male character didn’t describe our remote and extremely diverse team well (it never did, honestly). So…time for something fresh!
• We’ve raised our pricing 4 times over the past 6 years. We don’t cater to folks who are looking for the cheapest WordPress support anymore. With this new look, we can continue to instill confidence in potential customers and keep our higher price point while impressing with a new site.
• Handing over the keys to your website (or your clients’ websites) is a huge deal. So when you land on our website, you HAVE to think, “I can see myself trusting this team.” The new site does a much better job of presenting that wow factor that people want to feel when they land on the website of a company they’re thinking about working with.

When I showed the team the new branding, they were beyond pumped! That’s something I think will help continue to motivate our team to do great work and really continue to live up to the expectations set by the new wpbuffs.com.

And in the same vein, I hope the new site will help us to recruit more great talent onto our team. As we grow, our challenges become more complex and we need to bring in driven folks who can get the job done. Psssst…we’re hiring!

The website

So I’ve talked about why the rebrand. Why the new website with it?

• When was the last time you saw a company rebrand and not launch a new website? Never. It wasn’t an option to invest in brilliant new branding and then put lipstick on a pig when it came to our website. So we went gung ho and updated everything.
• A lot has changed here at WP Buffs over the past 6 years when it comes to the contents of the site. We’ve added things like webinars, case studies and customer stories since the site was originally built. Plus we started offering our most popular (and profitable) white-label support. While forcing all this into our old site was possible, it would have been like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. It was easier to build out a new site that could work around our offerings than the other way around. Navigation and UI/UX was a bit of a mess so starting from scratch was a good way fix this core challenge of our website visitors and potential customers & partners.
• We manage websites. So folks have to think we take care of our own website. That means having a site that people think is super dope immediately when people land on it. Our new website (and branding) definitely does this!
• Most of the elite companies you know about in the WordPress space have a fantastic website. Our old templated site just wasn’t doing us justice and it was time for a change.
• Our old site was pretty bloated and not as fast as I would have liked. At least 1x per month, someone would message us that it was stupid that we do speed optimization and our site on a random online optimizer loaded in 12 seconds. The new site is leaner, faster and much quicker to load (the video you see in the bottom right corner on desktop is causing an extra ~2 seconds of loading time but we’re trying something new so give us a break!).
• One final reason I’ll give is that I wanted our website to make WP Buffs somewhere our team was really proud to work. As someone who works remotely, I know the importance of sending people to the website of my company and wanting them to be impressed.

The journey of our new brand

Once we decided to go for it, we went in search of designers with very specific objectives:

• We obviously needed folks who could deliver on our vision. That meant a jaw-dropping portfolio and excellent referrals.
• We needed a team who could walk us through the discovery processes. We’re WordPress experts, but not necessarily design pros! This meant a team that could take a lot of information in a discovery call and distill that conversation into fantastic designs that met our needs.
• We wanted folks who could deliver on our timeframe. We didn’t want to rush this project but our goal was to finish the design phase in 4-6 weeks so we could get started on dev.

We ended up going with our first choice all along. I used to be in a little monthly mastermind with Brad Touesnard from Delicious Brains. They rebranded all their plugins and he mentioned the company he worked with on all of them. I loved the work (and the blog post Brad wrote about it – thanks for motivating this one, dude!).

So it ended up being an easy decision to go with Dose.

Honestly, these guys made the rebranding process so, so easy. After a comprehensive discovery call, 3 unique art directions and a little emailing, they delivered 2 fantastic rebrand options for us.

And what you see on the website is almost exactly what we chose in that presentation.

Cost: Keep reading for full branding and web design cost.

Getting our new website designed

I spoke with a few people in the WordPress space about designing a new website for us from the bufftastic rebrand material. I even cornered Bill Erikson at PressNomics and just about forced him to introduce me to the designers he works with.

After shopping around for about a month, we decided to give the project to Dose! They’d done such a great job with the new branding, we thought letting them design our new website was the best option since they’re already had so many touch points with (and were the brains behind) all the design work they’d already done for us.

Plus, I was getting analysis paralysis. So I just pulled the trigger!

After another thorough discovery call and ~3 weeks, they delivered a new website design that really knocked our socks off.

Cost: $20K for new branding (logo, patterns, fonts, complete brand guide) AND new website design delivered via Adobe XD and original designs for every team member.

Dose Media was the perfect option for us. If you are looking for a partner to help you with a rebrand, we highly recommend Dose! Or, you can also get some highly vetted options by visiting Get Credo* – an amazing resource for finding branding, marketing, and content partners.

Building the new site

We did all the dev of the new wpbuffs.com in-house! Shout out to Nick for leading the effort and Jason & Honey for all your hard dev work.

The dev did take a bit longer than expected since dedicating internal developer time to this project meant less time spend on customer work. But Nick found a good balance and we put 90% of the site together in ~2 months.

We built the site on Elementor*. The pace at which they’ve released new features impressed us. That’s a huge reason we felt like they were the right technical choice and will continue to be so in the future.

We went with a page builder because we wanted to build a site us non-technical folks could make updates to ourselves without asking for someone technical to help. For example, Elementor will allow our marketing team to throw up new landing pages in just a few minutes using a pre-built template and pre-defined blocks. Dope!

I thought about putting together a super-fast headless site after chatting with Scott Bolinger about it, but it would have taken away the advantage I talked about above. Plus, we manage WordPress sites and it felt like our website should be pure WordPress.

Cost: ~$4K of time spent to build out the new site (including buying some premium plugins, etc).

If you are looking for a development partner to do build a new site, again we would recommend using the partner network at Get Credo*, or a well-known WordPress player such as Themeco.

Preparing for launch

Just building the new site was one thing, but preparing for the launch was a real beast. And being mostly on parental leave made it even more of a challenge!

SEO

First and foremost, we had to make sure we had a solid plan to launch the new site from an SEO perspective. 80%+ of our traffic, new sales calls and new customers find us through Google searches, so I can’t stress enough how important it was that we make this transition cleanly.

We worked directly with my friend Lindsay over at webShine. They supported our SEO efforts during this transition and they made sure things like URL structure, 301 redirects, internal linking, etc remained solid.

But avoiding a disastrous drop in traffic was only the start for us. We want the new site to actually enhance our SEO efforts. That’s why we revamped our tags & categories, redirected a significant amount of dead pages, cleaned up our XML sitemap, etc.

Software

And of course there were all the little logo changes we had to make in all the software we use. Logo in Stripe for invoices, HubSpot for sales emails, email signatures in Gmail, Teamwork Desk for support emails, Zoom for sales call waiting rooms, and a ton more places.

Here’s just part of the list of all the updates we’ll make immediately after launch. Hopefully they’ll all be updated by the time you read this article!

Ongoing design

We knew with our newly designed website and new branding that we had to step up our overall design game moving forward. That’s why we partnered with ManyPixels. We had cool images created for all the folks on our team, got new featured images created for all of our blog posts (some may be updated post-launch), redid our eBooks & case studies and took care of all our design needs with one monthly subscription.

You may have seen some sneak peeks of our new branding if you’re a listener of our WPMRR WordPress podcast. We’ve been giving our new branding nods in featured images there for months now!

Email & social

We also prepped emails to all our different customer segments in ConvertKit. Direct customers, white-label partners, affiliates and general subscribers.

We also did a full run through of our sequences and added our new super dope fire emoji logo to the top of every email we send out. This will be a nice, minimalist nod to our new stuff for our email subscribers.

Of course we planned to update our social pages (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google My Business, etc). We also plan to share some of our new stuff over on Twitter so check us out there if you want to stay updated.

Affiliate program

We also made a major change to our affiliate program which we had to get ready. Instead of one-time payouts, all our affiliates (who get signed up on ShareASale) will now earn 10% forever recurring monthly commissions.

We also relaunched our entire affiliate on ShareASale. If you’re already a WP Buffs affiliate (or want to be one), please make sure you get signed up for our new, more lucrative program.

In our old model of one-time payouts, a referral of 1x Perform Plan awarded $100.

In our new model, a referral of 1x Perform Plan awards $571 ($19.70 x 29, the current lifetime value of WP Buffs customers in months based on user churn).

So, clearly this is more lucrative for our affiliates!

And it’s great for us because the model will mean affiliates do well financially when they refer customers to WP Buffs who stay with us for a long time.

Shout out to Brian Jackson who said switching over to the referral model from one-time payouts has had a big impact in growing affiliate referrals over at his former company Kinsta.

Acquisitions

Another big step WP Buffs is taking in 2020 is into the world of acquisitions and buying other WordPress businesses.

We’ve set up a nice landing page that details the unit and the kinds of businesses we’re interesting in bringing into the Buffs family.

If you’re running a care plan business or a WordPress blog and are at that point of still loving your business even though you’re running out of steam, let’s chat.

Swag

Yep. We just couldn’t help ourselves.

Check out store.wpbuffs.com to grab some swag from our new WP Buffs store.

All store revenue goes to WHO’s COVID-19 response fund.

Mistakes made along the way

This process obviously didn’t go flawlessly. When does anything ever. Here are a few areas we definitely could have done better on.

• I spent too much time deciding if Dose was worth their price tag. They weren’t cheap but i should have thought about this as a 10-year investment instead of eating into our 2019 revenue for $20K. Lesson learned: find the right folks for the job and pull the trigger.
• I handed over the website build to Nick without really going through all the development details with him. He’s technical enough to push a team to get it done, but I did a pretty terrible job helping to PM everything. We never had a real due date and the organization around the entire build was a bit haphazard. Lesson learned: help build structure around a project before fully handing it off and going on parental leave.
• When I came back from parental leave, I pushed forward on the website without regularly communicating regularly or clearly enough. Every minute of the ~150 hours of dev time it took to launch this site took away from time we could have been spending on customer and partner work. This fine balance requires great communication between project leads. While I tried to make sure this went smoothly, there were definitely times where I stretched the team and made us sacrifice some desk hours for website hours.

My expectations for the future

So…the new site is launched!

What now?

The true goal of the new site and branding from a business perspective is to help our marketing team (Paraic and I) hit our KPIs.

Here are the areas I’m hoping the new site and branding will push us forwards. I’ll update this area monthly so folks can see the effects we’ve seen from all the updates.

• Increase website traffic: I’m hoping a faster site will help us rank better in search engines, plus the new, badass feel will improve things like time on page, pages per visit (and decrease bounce rate, pogo sticking, etc).
• Generate more leads: more traffic and higher trust factor in our site should translate directly to more people live chatting with us, joining our email list and scheduling calls.
• Schedule more sales calls: A professional website with high trust-factor will hopefully mean more folks will think, “hell yeah I want to work with them. Let’s get a call on the books.”

Will the new site help us improve in all of these areas?

Will it help us improve in any of these areas?

Honestly…I have nooooooo idea.

But I do know that all the feedback we’ve received up until now has been positive. Folks do seem to love what we’ve done and hopefully we can make it work for our team and business.

Our goal continues to be wanting to put ourselves in a position to be one of the leaders in the 24/7 WordPress support space. This big upgrade to WP Buffs has helped us take another big step in that direction and I’m confident it will keep helping us push forward for years to come.

Some actual results (10 days after launch)

Here are some of the positive results we’ve seen since the new website launched.

This is only ~10 days of data so the sample size is still small. Also this could just be the result of some excitement around launch. Who knows!

1. Monthly recurring revenue

In the 30 days of April, 2020, we brought on $3,628 of new monthly recurring revenue.

In the first 8 days of May, 2020, we brought on $4,662 of new monthly recurring revenue.

That’s a 482% increase in MRR we’re able to add to WP Buffs. Wow!

2. Sales calls

In the 30 days of April, 2020, we had 96 discovery calls scheduled with us.

In the first 8 days of May, 2020, we had 44 discovery calls booked with us.

That’s a 172% increase in discovery calls booked. Oh yeah!

3. Website traffic

We’ve also seen some great results for the folks coming to the site.

Let’s take a look at the most basic of Google Analytics dashboards.

• Overall traffic, users and sessions are slightly down. I’m not that worried about this since ~10 days is such a small sample size when it comes to general traffic. Over smaller time periods, it goes up and down so I’ll report back here when I can really look at initial month-over-month data.
• Pageviews are up 34% and pages / session are up 37%. That means with almost the same traffic as before launch, the same number of people are looking at more pages on wpbuffs.com. Score!
• Average session duration is up 31%. This could mean a lot of different things, but I know it means people are spending more time on the site and reading more. That’s a good thing.
• Bounce rate is down 30%. That probably means visitors are more attracted to the new site right when they land on their first page. Far fewer folks are thinking “this site isn’t for me” when they see it for the first time.

While this is only 10 days of post-launch data, it’s definitely an indicator that we’re moving in the right direction and the new wpbuffs.com is playing a significant role in that.

More actual results (30 days after launch)

Here are some results that are probably a little more indicative of how the new website is affecting sales, marketing and website traffic.

After 30 days, the sample size is significantly bigger than just 10 days post launch (when launch ferver could have been skewing results).

In the 30 days since launch…

• we brought on $7,171 of new monthly recurring revenue. That’s a 198% increase in MRR we’re able to add.
• we had 141 discovery calls. That’s a 147% increase in discovery calls booked.
• pages / session are up 17%.
• average session duration is up 13%.
• bounce rate is down 13%.

As expected, the increases were not as big as the 10-day post launch numbers. But they still show significant improvement and that our website is doing its job far better than the old one.

More work driving more traffic and improving conversion coming soon.

Onward and upward!

People Also Ask – FAQs

I’m hopeful that you’ll read this whole blog post. I put a good amount of time into making sure it gave you and the entire WordPress community full transparency and context into this decision, why we made it, and what the future holds for the company.

But if you just want the big news, here it is…

• I’m excited to announce today that Nick Adams, former COO of WP Buffs, will be transitioning into the role of CEO effective as of today.
• I’ll be transitioning into a new role at the company, CIO (Chief Innovation Officer).

Why I’m moving into a new role

This is a complicated question but I’ll try to keep it as simple as possible here haha.

There are a few factors that made this the right decision. They all seemed to crescendo at the same time too, which made it all the more logical to move forward.

1. I’m happy with 5 years

I was the solo founder of WP Buffs in 2016, ~5 years ago.

Check me out hustling at the WordCamp Lancaster Happiness Bar in 2017! Back when I had (some) hair haha.

5 years is the longest I’ve done anything professionally in my life. I always have been and always will be someone who wants to try something new.

And over the past year, I’ve been more drawn to working on my own projects (like WPMRR) and giving myself more creative space to grow out of.

2. I get to choose when to pass the baton

One of the biggest reasons I wanted to start a business was to be able to make any decision I wanted to.

I got the chance to dictate company culture.

I had the chance to decide what I wanted to work on every day.

And maybe most importantly, I get to make big decisions about the company.

There’s a lot about life that we don’t get a choice about. I’m exceedingly lucky that I have the opportunity to make this transition happen on my terms at a time that makes sense for me.

So…I’m passing the baton to the next in line because I can.

3. It’s the elegant solution

As the company has grown into a bigger team and a more mature company, we’ve had to reinvent a lot about how we work.

This is simply another big step in that journey.

As a mathematics major in college, studying proofs was something I did often. And the best proofs were those that were the most elegant.

What makes a proof elegant? It’s hard to define, but when it clicks and starts making sense in your head, you have a sense of awe at how perfectly the solution completes the proof.

This is no different. Transitioning to CIO and making Nick our CEO is the most elegant solution. So we’re going for it.

Maybe it’s an elegant solution because it makes sense and benefits everybody involved…

• Nick will be a better CEO than me for the current and future size of the company. He’s led operations almost flawlessly for years and is more systems-centric, team-focused and detail-oriented than me. These are all things we need from the day-to-day manager of the company moving forward.
• The CIO position is a much better fit for my strengths and what I draw joy and inspiration from. I’ll be spending my time cultivating things over at WPMRR (virtual summit, online Circle community and WordPress podcast), advancing our acquisition unit at WP Buffs and helping with high-level strategy alongside the leadership team.
• This is the right move for the team at WP Buffs. I’m not a bad manager when it comes to caring about my team and giving them the resources they need to be successful. But the team deserves a leader who’s exceptionally strong when it comes to people and operational management.
• This is the right decision for our clients, white-label partners and everyone who depends on us to manage their website(s). The CEO spends their days making big decisions about the direction of the company and Nick is more than equipped to handle that with ease.

4. It was easy to pick the next CEO

If you’ve ever met Nick at a WordCamp, you already know why he’s getting this opportunity.

Here are a few specific reasons:

• Everything operations has scaled beautifully at WP Buffs under his purview. This makes him a great fit to do the same across the company, including with our sales, marketing and community teams.
• He’s dedicated to our values, mission and the team. Our whole team is like this, yet Nick still manages to live and breathe Buffs day in and day out.
• He’s made many, many good decisions in his tenure here. This is core to the success of a CEO at any company so his track record suggests he’ll be a successful leader.
• He deserves this opportunity. Nick was hired as a Happiness Engineer years ago and has continued to prove himself through the years as somebody I could entrust with more and more responsibility. Now he’s ready for the next chapter of his professional development and that’s to lead a company as a whole and have full autonomy over short- and long-term strategy and direction.
• I trust him. Nick has been the guy I could rely on at WP Buffs since he started here and I consider him family. I trust him 100% to do his very best in this new role, which is all I can really ask for.

What this means for me

I already mapped out my future responsibilities above.

But when it comes to my day-to-day involvement in WP Buffs, my time commitment will be significantly less.

I’ll still work alongside the leadership team to help them make big decisions, troubleshoot challenges, etc.

And for the time being, I’ll still be pretty involved in the WordPress community. Anybody who wants to join us in the WPMRR Community is welcome. I’ve been more active on Twitter. I didn’t expect to be working so much on the upcoming WPMRR Virtual Summit, but I’m having fun with it.

I am and always will be a Buff

Other notes that didn’t fit anywhere else

• At some point, I’ll do an AMA here soon for anybody who has questions. But for now, feel free to message me here if you have questions and I’ll be happy to chat.
• My wife Sterling and I sold our home in Washington, DC and plan to travel, work remotely and just be a bit nomadic for the next couple years with our 18-month-old son Morrison. I’m excited to have more time to spend with my family, reading and thinking big thoughts.

Thank you

There are just too many people to thank everybody. I’m not sure who you are reading this, but if we’ve interacted even once, you have my complete gratitude.

WP Buffs has and will continue to be powered by the good will and positive energy of the WordPress community. I’ll continue to do everything in my power to give that back and pay it forward to the next generation of WordPress professionals, contributors and community members.

Onward and upward!

Today, WordPress has outgrown the limitations of those rudimentary blogging platforms and has played a huge part in changing the face of the web. That’s because WordPress is now — and has been for a long time — the most popular content management system in the world.

 Today, we’re going to explore some eye-opening WordPress market share facts and statistics. For instance: 

• How much of the CMS market share does WordPress own? 
• What kinds of websites are being built with WordPress? 
• How does WordPress maintain its position even with the slew of no-code editors, drag-and-drop builders, and other open source platforms out there? 

And then we’ll take a look at what the future holds for the CMS. 

There are always exciting developments happening in the WordPress ecosystem. So if you want to stay in the loop on all things WordPress, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter [link] for more posts like these. 

WordPress Market Share: Just How Popular Is WordPress? 

WordPress is a content management system that enables everyone — from business owners and freelancers to web designers and developers — to create a custom website. 

There are two types of WordPress websites. 

Hosted WordPress sites (usually smaller in scale) are built with WordPress.com. Self-hosted WordPress sites (which allow for total flexibility in development and customization) are built with WordPress.org:

Now, it’s one thing to tell you that WordPress is the most popular content management system. It’s another thing to show you how impressive the WordPress market share really is. 

So, let’s have a look: 

W3Techs tracks which CMS are used by websites. Because it’s unable to detect the CMS for 36.4% of websites, the information on WordPress market share depends on how you look at it. 

For instance, the percentage of websites using WordPress on the Internet is 41.2%. That said, if we only look at the websites using a known content management system, then WordPress powers 64.8% of the Internet. 

Even if we focus on the smaller of the two percentages, WordPress blows every other CMS out of the water. Shopify is the second most popular platform and it only owns 3.5% of websites online today.

Here are some other interesting facts about WordPress market share, provided by BuiltWith: 

• 97% of all blogs are built with WordPress.
• Roughly 1/3 of the top 1 million sites in the world use WordPress.

Considering WordPress is going to turn 20 in just a couple of years, it’s insanely impressive that it puts up these kinds of statistics after all this time. 

Who Uses WordPress?

Now that you know what a large percentage of websites use WordPress, I bet you’re a little curious about where all those websites are. 

Obviously, this site is one of them. But what about big companies that use WordPress? Are there websites you frequently visit that run on the world’s most popular content management system? 

Thanks to data from W3Techs and BuiltWith, we know what some of these sites are: 

• bloomberg.com
• creativecommons.org
• etsy.com
• freepik.com
• grammarly.com

• microsoft.com
• nginx.com
• nypost.com
• outbrain.com
• soundcloud.com

• surveymonkey.com
• udemy.com
• vimeo.com
• zillow.com
• zoom.us

Famous brands also use WordPress to run their blogs. For instance: 

• blog.samsung.com
• blogs.independent.co.uk
• blogs.constantcontact.com 

Salesforce.com recently started using WordPress, too. 

What About WooCommerce Market Share?

WooCommerce is the most popular ecommerce plugin for WordPress. According to WordPress.org, over 5 million websites have it activated: 

According to W3Techs, WooCommerce is the most commonly used plugin in WordPress, with 19.4% of all WordPress sites using it:

Although WooCommerce is technically dependent on WordPress, we do have data on how much of the total ecommerce market share it owns. 

More specifically, we have data on how prevalent WooCommerce is within the top 1 million ecommerce-enabled sites on the web, thanks to data from BuiltWith: 

Now, we know what percentage of the internet uses WordPress compared to Shopify (41.2% to 3.5%). So it’s no surprise to see WooCommerce dominate ecommerce market share considering the sheer volume of WordPress websites. 

Why is WordPress The Most Popular CMS?

There are many reasons for WordPress’s popularity. 

1. Control

This is a big one and it’s not always something people realize they’re giving up when they use trendy website builders. At least, not until it’s too late. 

With WordPress, you control as little or as much as you want. 

Design. Code. Features. Technology. SEO. WordPress is an open source platform that enables users to build their websites exactly as they envision them, without any restrictions. 

Heck, even the self-hosted model gives WordPress users more control. By selecting the right web hosting plan, users can ensure that their websites are well optimized for performance, security, uptime, and resource utilization.

Of course, with more control comes a tradeoff of more to do to manage your site. 

But that’s okay since companies like WP Buffs can help. Whether your agency wants help optimizing clients’ sites or editing content, we’ve got your backs. 

2. Flexibility

If you look back at the CMS market share list, you’ll see that a lot of these platforms are meant for specific purposes. 

Shopify, Magento, OpenCart, and PrestaShop, for example, are all ecommerce CMS. 

Blogger, of course, is just for blogging. 

And you could make the argument that platforms like Wix and Weebly are ideal for small to medium-sized businesses. 

WordPress, however, can be used to build any type of website, big or small, with any feature you need. 

You also have flexibility in how you design a site — from-scratch, using a pre-designed theme or template, or letting one of the drag-and-drop builders like Elementor or Beaver Builder help you. 

What’s more, WordPress integrates with nearly any software you can imagine, so it’s capable of bringing much needed automation, control, and precision to companies that need it.

3. Adaptability

It’s not just the WordPress development team that’s responsible for making sure the platform stays on top of consumers’ needs. Though progress made on the Gutenberg editor is definitely proof of their ability to do that. 

Because WordPress is an open source software, plugin developers are always contributing new and exciting solutions to the CMS. 

Which means that new and highly vetted plugins are being added to the 58,000+ plugins all the time that enable WordPress websites to always stay ahead of the curve in terms of trends.

4. Community

WordPress’s long-standing dominance of the CMS market share is a huge win for its users. Because, as WordPress grows, so too does the community around it. 

While WordPress.org has a dedicated forum, it’s the feedback, support, and contributions from its community that make a huge difference in the lives of its users. And this is something that no other CMS can claim. 

WordPress.org’s aggregation of free plugins and themes, for instance, is well-supported by the developers of these tools as well as the users:

There’s really no surprise what you’re getting when you install a plugin or theme because of the robust information and feedback WordPress users find here. 

You also have a multitude of companies that sell WordPress products and services. If you can’t find what you’re looking for from WordPress.org, you can get it from marketplaces like ThemeForest, independent developers like WPMU DEV, or WordPress agencies like DevriX.

And don’t forget about the massive amount of blogs, vlogs, and podcasts that produce content specifically about WordPress on a regular basis. 

Christie Chirinos, for instance, who’s been a major player in the WordPress content space for years, is launching a new podcast on all things open source and WordPress: 

So, whatever it is you want to learn about WordPress, someone’s built a source for it on the web. 

What Does The Future Look Like For WordPress?

If you’re wondering if WordPress is still relevant in 2021, the answer is a resounding “Yes!”.

Although the events of 2020 certainly slowed down a lot of companies’ upward momentum, WordPress continues to do very well for itself. 

As people lost stability in their jobs or their jobs entirely, they launched side hustles or new businesses in order to adapt. As a result, we saw a huge leap in entrepreneurship starting in 2020.

Here’s some info from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Financial Times that shows what happened in response to the pandemic’s upheaval of pretty much everything in our lives: 

Because of COVID-19’s restrictions, these entrepreneurs and millions of new freelancers needed to utilize the Internet to launch their new gigs. And WordPress was there for them when they needed it. 

BuiltWith shows the never-ending growth of WordPress, even in the face of a global pandemic and civil unrest: 

As for what this means for the future, WordPress will remain the king of content management systems. 

Even when the competition tries to tear it down — as we discussed on the WPMRR podcast recently — there’s not much that can slow down the growth or popularity of WordPress at this point. It continues to prove to us year after year that it knows what its users need and can provide the platform and tools needed to get the job done. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Wrap-Up

As you can see, the matter of WordPress market share is about much more than usage statistics. 

There are so many reasons why WordPress has long been the leader in content management systems and why it’ll continue to dominate the CMS market share for decades to come. 

As you move forward with your journey with WordPress — whether you own a WordPress site or you’re a WordPress designer or developer — let us tag along for the ride. With our WordPress ebooks, you’ll have all the tips, tricks, and tools you need to make the most of this awesome CMS.

Download the eBooks Now

Joe here. I wanted to personally give you a quick update on the status of WP Buffs and our team during this global epidemic.

We realize this is a difficult time for many people around the world and downtime, errors and any other WordPress issues are the very last things you want to deal with right now.​

That’s why our team remains fully dedicated to continuing to provide ridiculously effective 24/7 support to our customers and white-label partners.

We’re actively taking the following precautions to make sure this remains the case.

• We’ve cancelled our team trip to Portugal for WordCamp Europe.
• All the Buffs have been instructed to avoid travel and large gatherings unless absolutely necessary. This includes WordCamps, WordPress Meetups, etc.
• Furthermore, our entire team has been advised to work from home (and not public areas like co-working spaces, coffee shops, etc) so as to do their best to self-contain.
• #⃣ A internal #covid19 Slack channel has been created so our team of 20+ can share information and stay up-to-date on both global and local changes.
• We have an unlimited vacation policy that allows full-time members of our team to take time off if they feel sick, whether they’ve tested positive for COVID-19 or just feel crummy. This has and will continue to ensure that our folks continue to do great work for customers and white-label partners in the long-term even if they have to take some time away from the computer over the next few months.

Our leadership team remains vigilant and are reviewing global updates daily to ensure our policies stay in-line with the best practices to keep our team and their families safe and healthy. ​We will continue to follow all of the directives and updates outlined by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC).

I’m confident taking these steps will ensure our team will be able to continue to do what’s most important: serve our customers and white-label clients as best as humanly possible during this difficult time.

Thanks for your time. St​ay safe.

P.S. If you’re not yet a WP Buffs customer or white-label partner, feel free to book a quick call with us. Whether you’re thinking about investing in a care plan for your own website(s) or partnering with our team to offer 24/7 white-label support to your agency or freelance clients, we’re happy to chat anytime.

But WordPress 5.0… This hotly anticipated update has had people talking for over a year.

As we explore the WordPress 5.0 update today, we’re going to look at:

• Everything that will change in 5.0.
• Gutenberg – the good, the bad, and the “we’re-working-on-it”.
• Ways to prepare your business and your clients for the WordPress 5.0 update.

What Is Changing in the WordPress 5.0 Update?

When news of a new editor hit the WordPress airwaves, it caused a massive uproar. Along with standard monitoring of site speed and security, WordPress developers everywhere wanted to get their hands on Gutenberg and reviews at the time were less than stellar. Even just weeks before the scheduled rollout of WordPress 5.0 and Gutenberg continues to elicit mixed reactions from the WordPress community.

WordPress has had over a year to iron out the kinks, and more and more WordPress users have had a chance to really dig into the editor. At this point, many in the community have jumped on the Gutenberg bandwagon and are clamoring to get it into core.

That said, WordPress 5.0 is no ordinary update. The shift from one editor to another is going to have a major impact on everyone’s workflow--and maybe even some users’ feeling toward WordPress altogether. #WordPress
Click To Tweet

It is your job to facilitate this transition for your clients and for your own business. It’s also your job to understand everything else coming in this update.

When Should We Expect the WordPress 5.0 Update?

The WordPress core development team has changed the delivery date on WordPress 5.0 and Gutenberg multiple times since they were first announced. Even just weeks from launch, the team has once again pushed out delivery to November 27. Justification of it makes sense though, considering what thin ice they’re on with WordPress users:

After listening to a lot of feedback — as well as looking at current issues, ongoing pull requests, and general progress — we’re going to take an extra week to make sure everything is fully dialed in and the release date is now targeted for Tuesday, November 27th.

Even so, a lot of people don’t seem too confident that it will roll out then. If the development team misses that date, we won’t see WordPress 5.0 until January 22, 2019, at the earliest.

Although this is frustrating, think about what a monumental shift from this:

To this:

is going to do to the entire WordPress ecosystem, from user response (especially new or casual WordPress users who haven’t followed the news) to developers who contribute plugins and themes to it? It’s a huge change, so we need them to get it right.

Besides Gutenberg, What Else Do We Get in the WordPress 5.0 Update?

While Gutenberg is the main focus on the WordPress 5.0 update, you can expect a few other changes to come along with it.

Twenty Nineteen Theme

WordPress is releasing a new default WordPress theme for 2019.

Here is the example they’ve provided for the home page:

And here is an example of a blog post in Twenty Nineteen:

A Custom Editor Upgrade

As WP Superstars explains, WordPress will “[o]ffer a custom upgrade experience to give users the option of sticking with the Classic editor plugin”.

PHP 7.3 Support

PHP 7.3 is scheduled to go out shortly after the WordPress 5.0 update. As such the WordPress core development team is working to ensure there are no compatibility issues between the two upon its release.

WooCommerce Dashboard Update

The next update for WooCommerce is not part of the WordPress 5.0 update, but will closely align with it. Specifically, the WooCommerce dashboard will undergo a Gutenberg-like transformation to make it a more user-friendly experience.

Aside from that, Gutenberg is what everyone has their eyes on, so let’s dig into what you need to know to prepare for the switch.

The Gutenberg Plugin and Editor: What You Need to Know

When the beta Gutenberg plugin hit the WordPress repository and the development team started suggesting we download it and give it a shot, people primarily asked, “Why?”

Now that 5.0 is upon us and the switch to a new editor is imminent, we have a better understanding of the “why.” That said, we can’t accept the new editor for all of its benefits and completely disregard its weaknesses — because those do still exist.

So, let’s do a quick survey of its strengths and be mindful of where it still falls short:

Gutenberg: The Good

If you haven’t seen Gutenberg or spent significant time in it yet, read all about the Gutenberg WordPress Editor first.

When you’re ready, let’s talk about why Gutenberg had to happen and what sort of advancements you can expect to come about in a post-Gutenberg plugin world:

No Coding

For users who don’t know how to code, they’ve typically had two choices:

1. They create content based on known restrictions in the editor.
2. They install additional WordPress plugins to open up the possibility of doing more, but subsequently, have to deal with slower loading times (which is never good).

The classic editor experience can be quite limiting. In order to make the most of it, users have to know — at the very least — some HTML in order to develop a more fantastic reading experience.

Gutenberg requires no coding skills at all. (Though there are blocks and settings that enable developers to do so if they so choose.)

Instead, the blocks alone present a great deal of variety in the types of content that can be added to a page, which will help you create more versatile-looking websites.

Universally User-Friendly

The classic editor includes a tab for visual content creation and text coding. While this caters to the two buckets of WordPress users, it still wasn’t always the most user-friendly.

Gutenberg will have a short learning curve since the usage of blocks may be new to many users, but it’s an easy curve to get over.

Once that’s been mastered, this will become a tool that’s easy for anyone to adopt and use, what with how similar the interface is to applications we already use (e.g. Google Docs, page builder plugins, other website builder tools).

True WYSIWYG

The classic editor was labeled as a “WYSIWYG”. This stands for “what you see is what you get”. But that wasn’t entirely true. Sure, if you created content in the Visual tab, you would get a sense for the layout and styling of content on the page, but it never looked exactly like the front end.

Gutenberg is a true WYSIWYG. With the exception of varying page widths, what you create with the new editor’s system of blocks is how it will look on your WordPress site. #WordPress
Click To Tweet

Competitive Edge

As a WordPress developer or maintenance provider, you may have pitched your services to a prospect who had absolutely no interest in building their website with WordPress. They had heard it was too difficult to use or they had a negative experience with it first-hand.

Because the new editor is meant to bring WordPress more in line with the increasingly popular drag-and-drop editors and website builder tools, objections to the CMS’s difficulty can easily be swept aside. This means more sales for you and much happier customers as they no longer have to compromise with something like Wix or Weebly.

Gutenberg: The Bad

As I already mentioned, the WordPress core development team is still working out the kinks with Gutenberg. In all likelihood, they’ll continue to have issues that need sorting out even once it becomes the default editor in WordPress.

That said, there are a couple of serious issues you need to be aware of right now. While it’s fine to get excited about all the good Gutenberg is going to do for WordPress, you need to be prepared for the negative effect it could possibly have on your websites.

Reception

There are still a whole lot of users who aren’t happy with Gutenberg and either don’t want to or are unwilling to make the move. As such, the WordPress development team has had to concede and allow the Classic Editor to be included in the WordPress 5.0 update. (More on what that means for you in the next section.)

Backward Compatibility

When the update goes into effect and Gutenberg becomes the default editor, the content you have created on your website will have to migrate over to the new editor somehow. Here is how Gutenberg will handle it:

It takes all of the content in the classic editor and places it all inside a “Classic” block. It’s essentially the same editor as what we used before. It now just resides inside of a block.

While that’s all well and good, what happens when you start to create new content and pages with the blocks? You’ll have some pages that use the older system of content creating and some that use the new system. This type of inconsistency from page to page might slow you down as you work inside a client’s site.

Also, don’t forget to consider what happens in terms of backward compatibility.

Here is that same post we’ve been looking at, only this has been built with blocks:

Let’s say your client decides they can’t use Gutenberg at this time and want to switch back. You can install the classic editor and give them that choice. While your content will smoothly transition back into the editor (nothing will be lost and it will appear the same), this is what happens to the Text Editor:

It might not be a big deal if the Gutenberg markup doesn’t change the way the page looks, but it may make working with the code less productive.

Accessibility

WP Tavern has been closely documenting the troubles WordPress has had with making Gutenberg accessible.

First, they noted how the WordPress Accessibility Team lead, Rian Rietvald, quit over accessibility issues with Gutenberg (among other things):

Rietveld said team members experienced frustration when they tested and improved functionality but saw it changed at a later stage, breaking accessibility requirements again. She also cites a lack of commitment to keyboard testing new features before implementation.

Andrea Fercia backed her up with this statement:

While the Gutenberg team has worked hard to implement some fundamental accessibility features (e.g. focus management, navigate landmark regions), the overall user experience is terribly complicated for users with accessibility needs at the point the new editor is barely usable for them.

With a new lead, Matthew MacPherson in place, you would think these issues had been sorted out. But it appears that the development team has chosen not to take the accessibility issues seriously. As WP Tavern recently reported:

Matthew MacPherson’s proposal for an independent accessibility audit, which had broad support from the community, was shut down… MacPherson was named WordPress 5.0’s accessibility lead but didn’t seem to be fully vested with the power to lead that aspect of the release in the community’s best interests. I asked MacPherson if he could further clarify how the decision to forego the audit was reached, as it seemed even a surprise to him…

As such, if accessibility is a critical part of any WordPress website you develop or manage, you won’t be able to use the new editor now or for the foreseeable future. This will be most problematic for higher education websites but also applies to any websites that are considered a place of public accommodation.

Plugin and Theme Updates

While we have known that Gutenberg was coming for a while, there are some plugin and theme developers that have not brought their software in line with it yet. There are a couple of problems with this.

First, this could mean that the WordPress 5.0 update could end up breaking something on your website.

Second, this could mean that the process you’ve established for creating content in the classic editor no longer works as an editor-compatible plugin or theme function won’t hook into Gutenberg.

This is why it will be critical to test Gutenberg with your WordPress website before 5.0 kicks in. If you can avoid having to put out these fires in the heat of the moment, that would be best.

How to Prepare Your Business for the WordPress 5.0 Update

Business2Community recently published a list of things to do to get your WordPress site ready for Gutenberg. It’s a good start, but there are more considerations you make when you’re responsible for caring for other people’s websites and not just your own.

Here is how you should prepare your business for the WordPress 5.0 update and the shift to Gutenberg:

1. Review the Gutenberg Handbook

Before you step inside the Gutenberg plugin, familiarize yourself with the Gutenberg Handbook. This is a developer’s guide to understanding how to use Gutenberg backward and forwards.

2. Install and Test the Gutenberg Plugin Now

If you haven’t yet installed the Gutenberg plugin on your website or any of your clients’ sites, now is the time to start testing it out. To do so in a safe manner, go to your development or staging area, duplicate the site in its current state, and install the plugin.

Coy Wolf provided a step-by-step of how they conducted its own Gutenberg test. When an issue was detected after installation, Coy Wolf deactivated all plugins to try to detect the conflict that was causing the error. (It’s a similar process to the one you use when testing for plugin conflicts that cause the white screen of death.)

3. Update Your WordPress Workflow

You’re going to have to get used to a completely new style of working with Gutenberg, so make sure you have it down pat before the WordPress 5.0 update comes through. Spending time inside Gutenberg on your staging site will help. If you can safely install the Gutenberg plugin on your clients’ sites ahead of time and do all live work in the new editor, that would be great, too.

As you figure out how you’re going to translate your old style of content development into the new Gutenberg workflow, document it. Take screenshots. Record videos. Write it all down. Do what you have to do to ensure that little time is lost in the transition for you, your employees, as well as your clients.

4. Decide Who Is Ready for Gutenberg

Gutenberg may soon become the default editor, but it doesn’t mean we have to use it. At least not right away.

Before you do anything else, decide which of your websites is ready for Gutenberg:

• Is your own WordPress website ready for the switch?
• Which of your clients’ websites can safely move over? (Don’t forget about the accessibility issue.)

Another thing you’re going to have to consider is WordPress Multisite.

Your clients use WordPress Multisite to aggregate related websites into a singular WordPress installation. This makes it easier for you to manage the network’s websites while also providing visitors on the frontend a better experience of jumping from subsite to subsite in the parent network.

But that WordPress 5.0 update is only going to be issued once across the entire network. Do you know if those websites are ready for it?

Again, be sure to replicate your network structure on a staging server. Then, install the Gutenberg plugin, enable it for all subsites, and observe its effect.

5. Notify Clients

When Gutenberg pops up in the WordPress editor after 5.0 hits, it’s going to be a jarring change for anyone who wasn’t aware it was coming. So don’t let that happen to your clients.

Put together an email now. You want to let them know that a change is coming to the editor and make sure the overall tone of the message is positive.

When they inevitably ask:

Will my site break?

Now that you understand how Gutenberg works and what sort of flaws we’re still dealing with in the new editor, provide clients with a confident, but safe answer. Something to the extent of:

I have done everything I can to prepare your website. We will test the update in a safe environment and confirm that no errors occur before we implement on your website.

Then, give them a few options for the transition:

1. Schedule one-on-one training to review the new editor.
2. Request that Gutenberg not be implemented at this time.
3. Request that both editors be available until their team has decided what they want to do.

If your clients are nervous about this transition, you can do one of two things. You can install the Classic Editor plugin which will be supported until 2021. Or, as WP Engine suggests, install the Gutenberg Ramp plugin. This enables your WordPress users to selectively choose whether they want to use Gutenberg or the classic editor as they work.

6. Train Your Employees and Clients

As soon as you have developed an ideal way to work with Gutenberg, and you have documentation created around it, schedule one-on-one training. This is essential for your employees. It may feel like pulling teeth with clients, but you will eventually need to do it since the classic editor won’t be around forever.

Get them inside one of your staging areas and allow them to take the reins. Show them how to use the blocks, demonstrate what the most popular ones do, and give them a chance to create a new post or page in real time. They need to get a sense for how the new editor works before the update automatically puts it in front of them.

7. Develop a Plan for Implementation of the Update

There are a number of ways in which WordPress users handle WordPress updates. You may need to deviate from your traditional workflow if you’re not feeling confident about the WordPress 5.0 update being handled smoothly.

As such, put your plan together now. Here is what you will need to include:

1. Test the Gutenberg plugin on a staging server first.
2. Disable WordPress auto-updates, if they’re currently enabled.
3. Backup the WordPress website.
4. If incompatibilities were present during the Gutenberg test, deactivate those plugins now.
5. Locate and install the WordPress 5.0 update in the dashboard (or download a copy from WordPress.org).
6. After implementation, review the frontend of the website. Walk through every page and confirm that no errors were left in the update’s wake.
7. Return to the dashboard and check for any plugin or theme updates. Issue them now.
8. Review the WordPress website for errors once more.

Obviously, if you or your clients are unprepared for Gutenberg and not quite ready to make the shift, now is the time to install the classic editor plugin of your choosing. The WordPress 5.0 update must be made regardless so you can reap the benefits of PHP 3.7 compatibility, but you don’t have to hop into Gutenberg right away if you’re not ready for it.

Wrapping Up

One other thing to consider as you make a plan for the WordPress 5.0 update is whether or not you want to outsource the task to someone else. It might not be a cumbersome job, but there is a lot at stake which means you can’t rely on automation or one-click updates to handle this for you.

WP Buffs handles WordPress updates, ensuring that updates are done safely and swiftly on every website. While performance and security are top priorities for WP Buffs, none of that is worth worrying about if your website has stopped working correctly because of a faulty or conflicting update. So, reach out to us today if you’re concerned about the transition to WordPress 5.0 going smoothly.

Want to give your feedback or join the conversation? Add your comments  on Twitter.

But WordPress 5.0… This hotly anticipated update has had people talking for over a year.

As we explore the WordPress 5.0 update today, we’re going to look at:

• Everything that will change in 5.0.
• Gutenberg – the good, the bad, and the “we’re-working-on-it”.
• Ways to prepare your business and your clients for the WordPress 5.0 update.

What Is Changing in the WordPress 5.0 Update?

When news of a new editor hit the WordPress airwaves, it caused a massive uproar. Along with standard monitoring of site speed and security, WordPress developers everywhere wanted to get their hands on Gutenberg and reviews at the time were less than stellar. Even just weeks before the scheduled rollout of WordPress 5.0 and Gutenberg continues to elicit mixed reactions from the WordPress community.

WordPress has had over a year to iron out the kinks, and more and more WordPress users have had a chance to really dig into the editor. At this point, many in the community have jumped on the Gutenberg bandwagon and are clamoring to get it into core.

WordPress 5.0 is no ordinary update. The shift from one editor to another is going to have a major impact on everyone’s workflow-and maybe even some users’ feelings toward WordPress altogether. #WordPress
Click To Tweet

It is your job to facilitate this transition for your clients and for your own business. It’s also your job to understand everything else coming in this update.

When Should We Expect the WordPress 5.0 Update?

The WordPress core development team has changed the delivery date on WordPress 5.0 and Gutenberg multiple times since they were first announced. Even just weeks from launch, the team has once again pushed out delivery to November 27. Justification of it makes sense though, considering what thin ice they’re on with WordPress users:

After listening to a lot of feedback — as well as looking at current issues, ongoing pull requests, and general progress — we’re going to take an extra week to make sure everything is fully dialed in and the release date is now targeted for Tuesday, November 27th.

Even so, a lot of people don’t seem too confident that it will roll out then. If the development team misses that date, we won’t see WordPress 5.0 until January 22, 2019, at the earliest.

Although this is frustrating, think about what a monumental shift from this:

To this:

is going to do to the entire WordPress ecosystem, from user response (especially new or casual WordPress users who haven’t followed the news) to developers who contribute plugins and themes to it? It’s a huge change, so we need them to get it right.

Besides Gutenberg, What Else Do We Get in the WordPress 5.0 Update?

While Gutenberg is the main focus on the WordPress 5.0 update, you can expect a few other changes to come along with it.

Twenty Nineteen Theme

WordPress is releasing a new default WordPress theme for 2019.

Here is the example they’ve provided for the home page:

And here is an example of a blog post in Twenty Nineteen:

A Custom Editor Upgrade

As WP Superstars explains, WordPress will “[o]ffer a custom upgrade experience to give users the option of sticking with the Classic editor plugin”.

PHP 7.3 Support

PHP 7.3 is scheduled to go out shortly after the WordPress 5.0 update. As such the WordPress core development team is working to ensure there are no compatibility issues between the two upon its release.

WooCommerce Dashboard Update

The next update for WooCommerce is not part of the WordPress 5.0 update, but will closely align with it. Specifically, the WooCommerce dashboard will undergo a Gutenberg-like transformation to make it a more user-friendly experience.

Aside from that, Gutenberg is what everyone has their eyes on, so let’s dig into what you need to know to prepare for the switch.

The Gutenberg Plugin and Editor: What You Need to Know

When the beta Gutenberg plugin hit the WordPress repository and the development team started suggesting we download it and give it a shot, people primarily asked, “Why?”

Now that 5.0 is upon us and the switch to a new editor is imminent, we have a better understanding of the “why.” That said, we can’t accept the new editor for all of its benefits and completely disregard its weaknesses — because those do still exist.

So, let’s do a quick survey of its strengths and be mindful of where it still falls short:

Gutenberg: The Good

If you haven’t seen Gutenberg or spent significant time in it yet, read all about the Gutenberg WordPress Editor first.

When you’re ready, let’s talk about why Gutenberg had to happen and what sort of advancements you can expect to come about in a post-Gutenberg plugin world:

No Coding

For users who don’t know how to code, they’ve typically had two choices:

1. They create content based on known restrictions in the editor.
2. They install additional WordPress plugins to open up the possibility of doing more, but subsequently, have to deal with slower loading times (which is never good).

The classic editor experience can be quite limiting. In order to make the most of it, users have to know — at the very least — some HTML in order to develop a more fantastic reading experience.

Gutenberg requires no coding skills at all. (Though there are blocks and settings that enable developers to do so if they so choose.)

Instead, the blocks alone present a great deal of variety in the types of content that can be added to a page, which will help you create more versatile-looking websites.

Universally User-Friendly

The classic editor includes a tab for visual content creation and text coding. While this caters to the two buckets of WordPress users, it still wasn’t always the most user-friendly.

Gutenberg will have a short learning curve since the usage of blocks may be new to many users, but it’s an easy curve to get over.

Once that’s been mastered, this will become a tool that’s easy for anyone to adopt and use, what with how similar the interface is to applications we already use (e.g. Google Docs, page builder plugins, other website builder tools).

True WYSIWYG

The classic editor was labeled as a “WYSIWYG”. This stands for “what you see is what you get”. But that wasn’t entirely true. Sure, if you created content in the Visual tab, you would get a sense for the layout and styling of content on the page, but it never looked exactly like the front end.

Gutenberg is a true WYSIWYG. With the exception of varying page widths, what you create with the new editor’s system of blocks is how it will look on your WordPress site. #WordPress
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Competitive Edge

As a WordPress developer or maintenance provider, you may have pitched your services to a prospect who had absolutely no interest in building their website with WordPress. They had heard it was too difficult to use or they had a negative experience with it first-hand.

Because the new editor is meant to bring WordPress more in line with the increasingly popular drag-and-drop editors and website builder tools, objections to the CMS’s difficulty can easily be swept aside. This means more sales for you and much happier customers as they no longer have to compromise with something like Wix or Weebly.

Gutenberg: The Bad

As I already mentioned, the WordPress core development team is still working out the kinks with Gutenberg. In all likelihood, they’ll continue to have issues that need sorting out even once it becomes the default editor in WordPress.

That said, there are a couple of serious issues you need to be aware of right now. While it’s fine to get excited about all the good Gutenberg is going to do for WordPress, you need to be prepared for the negative effect it could possibly have on your websites.

Reception

There are still a whole lot of users who aren’t happy with Gutenberg and either don’t want to or are unwilling to make the move. As such, the WordPress development team has had to concede and allow the Classic Editor to be included in the WordPress 5.0 update. (More on what that means for you in the next section.)

Backward Compatibility

When the update goes into effect and Gutenberg becomes the default editor, the content you have created on your website will have to migrate over to the new editor somehow. Here is how Gutenberg will handle it:

It takes all of the content in the classic editor and places it all inside a “Classic” block. It’s essentially the same editor as what we used before. It now just resides inside of a block.

While that’s all well and good, what happens when you start to create new content and pages with the blocks? You’ll have some pages that use the older system of content creating and some that use the new system. This type of inconsistency from page to page might slow you down as you work inside a client’s site.

Also, don’t forget to consider what happens in terms of backward compatibility.

Here is that same post we’ve been looking at, only this has been built with blocks:

Let’s say your client decides they can’t use Gutenberg at this time and want to switch back. You can install the classic editor and give them that choice. While your content will smoothly transition back into the editor (nothing will be lost and it will appear the same), this is what happens to the Text Editor:

It might not be a big deal if the Gutenberg markup doesn’t change the way the page looks, but it may make working with the code less productive.

Accessibility

WP Tavern has been closely documenting the troubles WordPress has had with making Gutenberg accessible.

First, they noted how the WordPress Accessibility Team lead, Rian Rietvald, quit over accessibility issues with Gutenberg (among other things):

Rietveld said team members experienced frustration when they tested and improved functionality but saw it changed at a later stage, breaking accessibility requirements again. She also cites a lack of commitment to keyboard testing new features before implementation.

Andrea Fercia backed her up with this statement:

While the Gutenberg team has worked hard to implement some fundamental accessibility features (e.g. focus management, navigate landmark regions), the overall user experience is terribly complicated for users with accessibility needs at the point the new editor is barely usable for them.

With a new lead, Matthew MacPherson in place, you would think these issues had been sorted out. But it appears that the development team has chosen not to take the accessibility issues seriously. As WP Tavern recently reported:

Matthew MacPherson’s proposal for an independent accessibility audit, which had broad support from the community, was shut down… MacPherson was named WordPress 5.0’s accessibility lead but didn’t seem to be fully vested with the power to lead that aspect of the release in the community’s best interests. I asked MacPherson if he could further clarify how the decision to forego the audit was reached, as it seemed even a surprise to him…

As such, if accessibility is a critical part of any WordPress website you develop or manage, you won’t be able to use the new editor now or for the foreseeable future. This will be most problematic for higher education websites but also applies to any websites that are considered a place of public accommodation.

Plugin and Theme Updates

While we have known that Gutenberg was coming for a while, there are some plugin and theme developers that have not brought their software in line with it yet. There are a couple of problems with this.

First, this could mean that the WordPress 5.0 update could end up breaking something on your website.

Second, this could mean that the process you’ve established for creating content in the classic editor no longer works as an editor-compatible plugin or theme function won’t hook into Gutenberg.

This is why it will be critical to test Gutenberg with your WordPress website before 5.0 kicks in. If you can avoid having to put out these fires in the heat of the moment, that would be best.

How to Prepare Your Business for the WordPress 5.0 Update

Business2Community recently published a list of things to do to get your WordPress site ready for Gutenberg. It’s a good start, but there are more considerations you make when you’re responsible for caring for other people’s websites and not just your own.

Here is how you should prepare your business for the WordPress 5.0 update and the shift to Gutenberg:

1. Review the Gutenberg Handbook

Before you step inside the Gutenberg plugin, familiarize yourself with the Gutenberg Handbook. This is a developer’s guide to understanding how to use Gutenberg backward and forwards.

2. Install and Test the Gutenberg Plugin Now

If you haven’t yet installed the Gutenberg plugin on your website or any of your clients’ sites, now is the time to start testing it out. To do so in a safe manner, go to your development or staging area, duplicate the site in its current state, and install the plugin.

Coy Wolf provided a step-by-step of how they conducted its own Gutenberg test. When an issue was detected after installation, Coy Wolf deactivated all plugins to try to detect the conflict that was causing the error. (It’s a similar process to the one you use when testing for plugin conflicts that cause the white screen of death.)

3. Update Your WordPress Workflow

You’re going to have to get used to a completely new style of working with Gutenberg, so make sure you have it down pat before the WordPress 5.0 update comes through. Spending time inside Gutenberg on your staging site will help. If you can safely install the Gutenberg plugin on your clients’ sites ahead of time and do all live work in the new editor, that would be great, too.

As you figure out how you’re going to translate your old style of content development into the new Gutenberg workflow, document it. Take screenshots. Record videos. Write it all down. Do what you have to do to ensure that little time is lost in the transition for you, your employees, as well as your clients.

4. Decide Who Is Ready for Gutenberg

Gutenberg may soon become the default editor, but it doesn’t mean we have to use it. At least not right away.

Before you do anything else, decide which of your websites is ready for Gutenberg:

• Is your own WordPress website ready for the switch?
• Which of your clients’ websites can safely move over? (Don’t forget about the accessibility issue.)

Another thing you’re going to have to consider is WordPress Multisite.

Your clients use WordPress Multisite to aggregate related websites into a singular WordPress installation. This makes it easier for you to manage the network’s websites while also providing visitors on the frontend a better experience of jumping from subsite to subsite in the parent network.

But that WordPress 5.0 update is only going to be issued once across the entire network. Do you know if those websites are ready for it?

Again, be sure to replicate your network structure on a staging server. Then, install the Gutenberg plugin, enable it for all subsites, and observe its effect.

5. Notify Clients

When Gutenberg pops up in the WordPress editor after 5.0 hits, it’s going to be a jarring change for anyone who wasn’t aware it was coming. So don’t let that happen to your clients.

Put together an email now. You want to let them know that a change is coming to the editor and make sure the overall tone of the message is positive.

When they inevitably ask:

Will my site break?

Now that you understand how Gutenberg works and what sort of flaws we’re still dealing with in the new editor, provide clients with a confident, but safe answer. Something to the extent of:

I have done everything I can to prepare your website. We will test the update in a safe environment and confirm that no errors occur before we implement on your website.

Then, give them a few options for the transition:

1. Schedule one-on-one training to review the new editor.
2. Request that Gutenberg not be implemented at this time.
3. Request that both editors be available until their team has decided what they want to do.

If your clients are nervous about this transition, you can do one of two things. You can install the Classic Editor plugin which will be supported until 2021. Or, as WP Engine suggests, install the Gutenberg Ramp plugin. This enables your WordPress users to selectively choose whether they want to use Gutenberg or the classic editor as they work.

6. Train Your Employees and Clients

As soon as you have developed an ideal way to work with Gutenberg, and you have documentation created around it, schedule one-on-one training. This is essential for your employees. It may feel like pulling teeth with clients, but you will eventually need to do it since the classic editor won’t be around forever.

Get them inside one of your staging areas and allow them to take the reins. Show them how to use the blocks, demonstrate what the most popular ones do, and give them a chance to create a new post or page in real time. They need to get a sense for how the new editor works before the update automatically puts it in front of them.

7. Develop a Plan for Implementation of the Update

There are a number of ways in which WordPress users handle WordPress updates. You may need to deviate from your traditional workflow if you’re not feeling confident about the WordPress 5.0 update being handled smoothly.

As such, put your plan together now. Here is what you will need to include:

1. Test the Gutenberg plugin on a staging server first.
2. Disable WordPress auto-updates, if they’re currently enabled.
3. Backup the WordPress website.
4. If incompatibilities were present during the Gutenberg test, deactivate those plugins now.
5. Locate and install the WordPress 5.0 update in the dashboard (or download a copy from WordPress.org).
6. After implementation, review the frontend of the website. Walk through every page and confirm that no errors were left in the update’s wake.
7. Return to the dashboard and check for any plugin or theme updates. Issue them now.
8. Review the WordPress website for errors once more.

Obviously, if you or your clients are unprepared for Gutenberg and not quite ready to make the shift, now is the time to install the classic editor plugin of your choosing. The WordPress 5.0 update must be made regardless so you can reap the benefits of PHP 7.3 compatibility, but you don’t have to hop into Gutenberg right away if you’re not ready for it.

Wrapping Up

One other thing to consider as you make a plan for the WordPress 5.0 update is whether or not you want to outsource the task to someone else. It might not be a cumbersome job, but there is a lot at stake which means you can’t rely on automation or one-click updates to handle this for you.

WP Buffs handles WordPress updates, ensuring that updates are done safely and swiftly on every website. While performance and security are top priorities for WP Buffs, none of that is worth worrying about if your website has stopped working correctly because of a faulty or conflicting update. So, reach out to us today if you’re concerned about the transition to WordPress 5.0 going smoothly.

Want to give your feedback or join the conversation? Add your comments  on Twitter.

As of July 29, 2017, WP Buffs will no longer offer free trials for our monthly plans. All monthly plans will be 50% off the first month of service and full price thereafter. We will, however, still offer free trials for our annual plans.

Since I started WP Buffs about a year ago, we’ve offered a free trial for all of our ongoing support plans. A lot of companies offer free trials. There were a lot of advantages.

• More people signed up. Because it costed nothing to try out our support plans, we found that more people were willing to give us a shot.
• Accelerated learning. With a larger pool of customers taking us for a test drive, our team learned a lot about what we can do to convert people from free trials to paid customers.
• We were motivated. A free trial put the impetus on our team to go above and beyond when it came to delivering value to customers to try to convert them into paying partners.

But there were also disadvantages. And there’s one that stood above all others in pushing us towards moving away from offering free trials for our monthly plans.

Free Trials Attract the Wrong Customers

Like I’ve mentioned before: our free trial to paid customer conversion rate was pretty solid. But a significant number of people who signed up for a free trial wanted to take advantage of the unlimited edits we provide. They weren’t interested in the website speed, WordPress security and ongoing maintenance we offer.

That means we often saw people end their trial on day 6 of 7 after we made the changes they needed to their website.

And you guessed it. This in turn meant we spent a lot of time and money helping customers who don’t end up paying us a dime.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for helping people in need. That’s why we offer livechat support to help people with any issues they may be having with their website.

But I’m a strong proponent of paying for value. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and we want customers signing up who understand the value they’ll be receiving in the long-term, not simply what they can get done in the next week.

Plus, we didn’t do away with our free trials entirely. We still offer them for our annual plans. Because people will be paying a significantly larger sum up front, I think the free trial here makes sense. If people are willing to put more money down, they should be able to see what we’ve got before committing.

And I’m hoping the large price tags there will scare away those who want to get away with some free work.

What I Expect To Happen

One thing that will most definitely happen is we’ll see fewer new customers sign up for plans. Without the free trial, the opportunity to try our services risk free is gone.

But I think that’s a good thing. We may be seeing less customers come through the door, but all of those new customers will be people who:

• Want to pay us for our services. There’s no free trial anymore, so I’ll know they want to put their money where their mouth is.
• Our customer lifetime value will increase. I’m hoping our customer base will become populated with people who are interested in finding a true technical WordPress partner, not simply someone who can help out with an edit or two.
• Understand the tradeoff of cash for time. The best kind of customer is one who wants to pay us for a Perform Plan Pro and understand the value they’re getting from it. I think payment up front will start to flush out those who don’t measure up.

WP Buffs has matured to the point where we now understand our customer base a bit better, and we know the difference between a good customer and a bad one. We want to attract the kind of customer who wants to pay us for service and unlock the ultimate value of letting both parties play to their strengths.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

The wasted time our team spends on new customers who don’t become paid customers has been a thorn in my side for some time and something I’ve been trying to tackle for months now. Turns out the best thing I could do was ask my team about it.

Our Support Buff Becky came up with this idea originally. She manages our help desk day in and day out, so when she has recommendations, I listen carefully. At this point, she interacts with customers and our help desk more than I do, so I really value her opinion.

I crunched the numbers and came to the conclusion that it made sense. It seems that surrounding myself with good people is paying off.

Onward and upward!

The update was named after Sarah Lois Vaughan, an renowned American jazz singer. Music criti scott Yanow once described her as having, “one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century.”

A lot has gone into this WordPress modernization effort, so let’s see what improvements have been made.

A New Core Theme: Twenty Seventeen

The new default WordPress theme for 2017 was built with business websites in mind. It features a fully customizable front page that contains multiple sections to personalize. The theme allows you to use navigation, widgets, logos, social menus, custom colors and much more. The theme works across many languages, on all devices and for users on any browser.

Video Headers

The big addition to the new Twenty Seventeen default theme is the ability to use immersive video headers to bring your website to life. Sometimes a video background in the form of a moving header image is exactly what you need to showcase your business. With Twenty Seventeen, go ahead and give it a try.

REST API Content Endpoints

As has been popularized, WordPress 4.7 has officially been released with REST API endpoints for posts, comments, terms, users, meta, and settings.

Content endpoints provide machine-readable external access to your WordPress site with a clear, standards-driven interface, paving the way for new and innovative methods of interacting with sites through plugins, themes, apps, and beyond.

Want to get started with development? Here’s the REST API reference.

Maximum Customizability

WordPress 4.7 gives some brand new features to the customizer that will provide on-site support while you’re working through the initial setup of a theme. As always, you’ll have access to non-destructive live previews of any changes you make in your workflow.

Theme Starter Content

In order to provide a rock-hard foundation to build from, individual themes have the ability to provide starter content. It appears when you begin to customize your new website.

Whether you’re adding a business information widget in the optimal location or including a sample menu with social icon links to a static front page, you’ll be able to see what a more polished website looks like even if you don’t have all your content ready.

And no need to worry – nothing new will appear on the live site until you’re ready to save and publish your initial theme setup.

Edit Shortcuts

In order to show you which parts of your website can be customized, visible icons will appear while you’re live previewing. Now you can click on a shortcut and transition seamlessly into editing. Pairing this feature with starter content means getting started with customization is faster and easier than ever.

Smoother Menu Building

In the past, WordPress menus contained links to published pages of your site. But what happens when you don’t have any real pages created yet?

Now you can add new pages while building menus instead of leaving the customizer and abandoning your changes. Once you’ve published your customizations, you’ll have new pages ready for you to fill with content.

Custom CSS

Sometimes you only need a few, little visual tweaks to make your site perfect. WordPress 4.7.2 lets you add custom CSS and see how those changes affect your site in real-time. The live preview lets you work quickly without page refreshes slowing you down. No more editing source code!

PDF Thumbnail Previews

With WordPress 4.7, managing document collection is even easier. Upload PDFs to generate new thumbnail images so it’s easier to distinguish between all your documents.

Dashboard In Your Language

Just because your site is in one language doesn’t mean that everybody helping manage it prefers that language for their admin. Add more languages to your site and a user language option will show up in your user’s profiles.

Bottom of the Update

Post Type Templates

By opening up the page template functionality to all post types, theme developers have even more flexibility with the WordPress template hierarchy.

More Theme API Goodies

WordPress 4.7 includes new functions, hooks, and behavior for theme developers.

Custom Bulk Actions

List tables, now with more than bulk edit and delete.

WP_Hook

The code that lies beneath actions and filters has been overhauled and modernized, fixing bugs along the way.

Settings Registration API

register_setting() has been enhanced to include type, description, and REST API visibility.

Customize Changesets

Customize changesets make changes in the customizer persistent, like autosave drafts. They also make exciting new features like starter content possible.

4.7 to 4.7.1

This minor update on Wednesday, January 11 2017 addressed some security issues and fixed 62 bugs.

4.7.2

WordPress 4.7.2 addressed some security issues. Here are the release notes!

4.7.3

WordPress 4.7.3 patched 6 security issues. Here are the release notes!

4.7.4

WordPress 4.7.4 saw 47 maintenance fixes and enhancements. Here are the release notes!

4.7.5

WordPress 4.7.5 saw 6 security patches. Here are the release notes!

Upgrade to WordPress 4.7.5 today to make sure your website stays secure and to take advantage of all that comes with the new core code!

WordPress 4.6.1 has arrived! This is a security release for all previous versions, so we strongly encouraged you to update your site immediately.

WordPress versions 4.6 and earlier are affected by two security issues:

• a cross-site scripting vulnerability via image filename.
• a path traversal vulnerability in the upgrade package uploader.

In addition to the major security issues above, 4.6.1 fixes 15 bugs (see the release notes for more details).

Users who encounter any issues with or updating to WordPress 4.6.1 are encouraged to report them in the WordPress support forums.