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The Blessings of Technology for Health

Technology tends to get a bad rep when it comes to mental health issues. According to research, at-risk adolescents experience more conduct problems and higher ADHD symptoms when they exceed their normal use of technology. However, if technology is the problem, can it also be the solution?

Mental Health Technology: Then. Now. Future

Over the last few years, technology for assessing, monitoring, and managing mental health issues has swiftly taken. Many anticipate that if technology continues to advance quickly, it will offer creative answers to the myriad problems that mental health services currently confront.

The COVID-19 epidemic and the ensuing rise in public exposure to remote healthcare technologies have expedited the shift toward new contactless kinds of mental health support.

According to Deloitte, global spending on mental health technology has grown twofold since 2019 – from $203 million in 2019 to $491 million in 2022. Why? Let’s look at the health statistics.

Source: https://www2.deloitte.com/xe/en/insights/industry/technology/technology-media-and-telecom-predictions/2022/mental-health-app-market.html

Source: https://www2.deloitte.com/xe/en/insights/industry/technology/technology-media-and-telecom-predictions/2022/mental-health-app-market.html

Against the backdrop of global turbulence and economic crises, we, humans, are facing a looming global mental health crisis – the biggest we have ever had. In the US alone, almost 53 million adults live with a mental illness.

Mental health disorders in adolescents are at an all-time high as well. one in seven10-19-year-olds experiences a diagnosable mental disorder, which translates into 13% of the global burden of disease in this age group. The leading triggers of illnesses are reported to be depression, anxiety, and behavioral disorders.

It’s estimated the global cost of this crisis will reach USD 16 trillion by 2030, including both direct and indirect costs. And it’s now clear that the old ways of diagnosing and managing mental illnesses do no work.

Why traditional mental health treatment doesn’t suffice

Statistics demonstrate that 75% of people with mental illnesses in England may not get access to the treatment they need. In the US, this number is lower, yet still significant – a total of 27 million people do not receive the treatment. And there are some tangible reasons behind this downward tendency.

Stigma

Be it ignorance, misinformation, or personal issues, the stigma around mental illnesses is still strong. Moreover, individuals may experience self-stigma which includes internalized shame about having a condition. As a result, people are too afraid to get therapy and come out about a mental illness.

How technology can help: mobile applications can reduce stigma by providing easy-to-access information about mental illness that helps prevent discrimination and encourage more acceptance. Moreover, virtual treatment is more anonymous than physical appointments so clients can seek treatment options without involving other people.

Accessibility of healthcare services

Sufficient and high-quality healthcare helps individuals overcome their health challenges, especially when it comes to mental health. However, over 95%of individuals report at least one barrier to healthcare access. High costs account for over 13% of missed treatments.

How technology can help: although digital care isn’t enough to treat severe mental health conditions, it can still complement traditional psychological counseling (psychotherapy) to control symptoms. Moreover, telehealth can eliminate structural barriers to getting online psychiatry and therapy. Thus, digital healthcare solutions such as BetterHelp or Amwell have proven to be as effective as in-person therapy, and come at lower costs.

Scarcity of mental health services

In 2022, the healthcare industry is experiencing a growing psychiatrist shortage. Thus, the dearth of mental health professionals has affected over 150 millionpeople. According to analysts, between 14,280 and 31,109 psychiatrists will be needed in the nation within a few years. Geographical constraints also prevent people from seeking treatment.

How technology can help: digital health helps reach people that live in rural areas and provide access to a larger pool of professionals, bypassing geographic boundaries.

Emerging technologies in mental health

Now that we have reinforced the importance of technology in improving mental health services, let’s see what kind of technology can help bridge the gap. The range of digital health solutions is immense – from wearables and symptom checkers to IoT and virtual counseling. I’ll flesh out the basics of the most widespread tech pieces in the area.

Source: https://www.healthcareexecutive.in/blog/mental-healthcare-gap

Source: https://www.healthcareexecutive.in/blog/mental-healthcare-gap

Mobile apps

Even if individuals living with mental disorders around the globe lack access to mental health care, they’re most likely to have access to a mobile phone. The global mental health apps market size stood at $4.2 billionin 2021 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 16.5% from 2022 to 2030.

Smartphone apps can offer flexible 24/7 support, based on individuals’ lifestyles and needs. Some apps are designed to help manage specific symptoms such as anxiety or depression. They can also give users reminders so that individuals don’t forget to take medication or record how they’re feeling each day.


Our team had a chance to build a mental health application that helps patients connect with counselors and therapists based on their specialty and state. The TheCalmerry app also includes telehealth features that allow patients and therapists to communicate with each other. Around 88% of clients have found the app to be as effective as traditional therapy.

Source: The App Solutions

Source: The App Solutions

Predictive analytics

Experts tend to talk about artificial intelligence as a silver bullet for all problems. And there’s something to it. Its unprecedented capability to analyze mounds of data, discern hidden patterns, and generate predictions bodes well for mental health as well.


Enter digital phenotyping.


Digital phenotyping is the use of digital devices to measure and track an individual’s physiological and behavioral data. This data can be used to infer information about the individual’s health, well-being, and risk for certain diseases. Clinicians can also monitor treatment adherence and response in psychiatric patients.

Facebook was among the first to employ predictive analytics to identify users with severe depression.


Predictive analytics can also be used to make predictions about the likelihood of developing a mental health condition or possible clinical outcomes. Thus,Healthcare Financial Management Association developed a tool that identifies individuals likely to require crisis services such as A&E, community mental health crisis services, or inpatient care.

Immersive technologies

Immersive technologies are becoming increasingly popular, with a wide range of applications in gaming, entertainment, and education. But immersive technologies are also being used in more unexpected ways, such as in the treatment of mental health conditions.

Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/8vn4KvfU640?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditShareLink

Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/8vn4KvfU640?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditShareLink

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are being used to help people with anxiety, PTSD, and other conditions. These technologies can be used to create experiences that are calming or therapeutic, and studies have shown that they can be effective in treating mental health conditions.


The thegameChange study by Freeman had 346 participants, making it the biggest VR treatment trial for a mental health problem to date. The researchers discovered that their immersive strategy lessened the anxiety and discomfort brought on by commonplace circumstances and that automated VR therapy was especially helpful for people with severe agoraphobia.

Prescription video games

Excessive gaming is often associated with having a detrimental effect on mental health. However, ADHD video game treatment has proven to improve attention function in children 8‑12. Yet, it can only be used as a supplemental tool and cannot substitute for medication. As of today, there is only one therapeutic game approved by the FDA and that’s EndeavorRX.

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Most Software Bugs Are Not From Lack of Experience

What stuck in my memory, sitting beside rock faces that could very well be the scene for one of the stories, was that in certain cases we might make one of the same choices. That given a different time of day, or different weather, or different climbing partners, the same choice could have different levels of risk. Reading and discussing those stories made me a more aware adventurer and a safer climber.

The public analysis and discussion of the chain of decisions and events that led to accidents helps beginners build experience, experts grow wisdom and fosters a culture of safety. Other industries and sub-cultures, to a have their own ways to learn from accidents. For example: the US military has after action reviews, medicine has accident review boards and aviation has NTSB accident reviews.

I have read root cause analysis reports from outages at hyper scalar cloud hosting providers. Often they read like the plaster foot prints of a long dead animal, the legal and marketing departments sanitizing and scrubbing any element of life or learning from them. They are the cargo culting of accident investigation and reporting. All of the motions and affectation with none of the substance.

The prevailing culture in software to errors seems to be “if you just”. Where errors are blamed on lack of knowledge. If the operator had “just” known the impact of config change, if the developer had “just” understood the interaction of their code change. It is a culture of expert knowledge. It is based on the unexamined belief that bugs only exist from lack of knowledge or lack of care. Or taken to their offensive extremes: stupidity and laziness.

In the software industry, bugs or outages most often do not result in injury or death. However, as society becomes more dependent on the software systems we are building the severity and impact of problems only grows. As our software systems continue to grow in complexity and the reach of problems we write software to solve, we as a society must grapple with changing this culture.

As a step on this path of changing this culture I am talking about failures I have seen or participated in. My goal is to make it easier for others to share where they have failed. This will create a feedback loop that will let us learn faster.

Join me in sharing stories of failure. Here’s a talk about failure, and a couple related posts from myself and the Cyclic team:

  1. How to Fail at Serverless: Serverless is Stateless (blog post)
  2. Its Always Sunny in us-east-1: The gang does business continuity (blog post)
  3. AWS S3: Why sometimes you should press the $100k button (blog post)

We would love to hear your stories.

Write something up.

Let us know.

We got your back 🙂

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8 Google Chrome Extensions For Any Meeting

1. ScribeHow

Extension for screen recording that converts any procedure into a tutorial in seconds.

super handy for: entrepreneurs, educators, founders, and more.

93% less effort should be spent recording and sharing procedures.

2. Writesonic

AI-powered writing assistant lets you rephrase, expand or shorten any text in a click.

One tool for any type of writing.

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3. Tella

Bring your work to life with video.

Screen and camera recording for making an impression.

Fully customizable, instantly shareable, all in your browser.

tella.tv/chrome

image

4. Arcade

The easiest way to showcase your products.

Create interactive demos in minutes and embed them on:
• Websites
• Blog post
• Email
• Tweet

image

5. timeOS

The fastest meeting notes experience ever built.

Instantly take meeting notes and seamlessly sync them to Notion.

See your upcoming meetings and quickly join them.

Never miss a meeting, or have one run over.

image

6. Screenity

The most powerful screen recorder for Chrome. Capture, annotate, edit, and more.

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7. Summari

Summarize long text instantly.

Become a superhuman reader.

Capture the insights from virtually any text in seconds.

Comprehensive, high-quality summaries written by humans + AI.

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Presence on This Biggest Reunion of WordPress Community

WordCamp Europe 2022 has ended successfully with great remarks. After 2 years of online events, finally, we were able to go offline with Wordcamp Europe 2022. WordPress people come again face to face to share knowledge and revive both personal and professional connections.

This year WordCamp Europe took place at the Super Bock Arena- Pavilhão Rosa Mota in Porto, Portugal. Over 2,500 WordPress enthusiasts from different parts of the world joined this 3-day event.

Like pre-pandemic WordCamp, there was a huge gathering of all WordPress-related people including core contributors, organizers, sponsors, speakers, and a wide range of attendees. Actually, this was the biggest one in the history of WordCamps.

We proudly announce that weDevs was one of the core sponsors of WordCamp Europe 2022.

Here, you’ll get a quick recap of Word­Camp Europe 2022. Check what actually happened, and what are the outcomes of WCEU 2022. Let’s start!

Word­Camp Europe 2022 At A Glance

WordCamp Europe 2022
Image Source: Word­Camp Europe 2022 Official Website

Below you’ll find all the key information of the Word­Camp 2022 Europe:

  • Location: Super Bock Arena (Pavilhão Rosa Mota), Porto, Portugal
  • Duration: 2 to 4 June 2022
  • Participants: 2,500+
  • Events: 50+ (27 discussion sessions, and 18 workshops)
  • Speakers: 70
  • Organizers: 90
  • Volunteers: 164
  • Sponsors: 69
  • Media Partners: 11

Source: Word­Camp Europe 2022 Official Website.

Last two years, all the WordCamps were arranged online. This is why people were super excited for WordCamp Europe 2022 to meet everyone in person again.

It was the 10th edition of WCEU and people celebrated the event with great diligence and appreciation. And they left the premises with the determination to make WordPress an even better and more robust web management platform.

If you are a new WordPress enthusiastic, here is a quick overview of Word­Camp Europe: WordCamp Europe (WCEU) is an informal gathering of all WordPress-related personalities that takes place in different parts of Europe. There they discuss different topics related to the industry.

WordCamp gives you the opportunity to meet with the core developers, well-known marketers, CEOs, CTOs, and many people related to the WordPress industry. Here you can attend a lot of sessions and get a fun learning experience from experts. From casual users to core developers here everyone is free to share their views, suggestions, possible updates, and future enhancements, and create personal relationships.

Word­Camp Europe 2022: 3 Days of Exciting Events

Word­Camp Europe 2022 arranged more than 50 different types of events this time. Such as discussions, workshops, panel sessions, and open networking. Here we’ll discuss the core events of the conference-

  • The Contributor Day
  • Beginning of the Main Event
  • The Final Day of the Event
  • WP Café
  • Speaker, Sponsor, Volunteer Dinner

Find brief discussion along with relevant resources, like videos and docs to understand the outcome of WCEU 2022.

The Contributor Day

There are 20 teams working on different WordPress projects. Contributor day gives you the opportunity to know about these teams and start contributing to the teams.

Like previous years, this WordCamp also began with the “Contributor Day”. At the beginning of the day every team gave a quick overview of their working process and what they’d be doing on that day. After that attendees get divided into those teams according to their personal interests. It was a great chance to talk in person to the team members.

A group photo was taken during lunchtime and shared from the official Twitter page-

wordcamp europe contributor day

Since WordPress is an open-source platform and most of its resources are the contributions of the community. This is why WordCamp dedicated one day to contributors. This time also several hundred attendees made their contributions to the WordPress ecosystem – including the core, themes, and plugins.

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8 Effective Ways to Increase Your Average Order Value

You’re getting regular customers on your site, and the conversion rate is also high but still, you can’t crack the expected revenue. That means your average order value (AOV) is lower than normal.

The average order value (AOV) is the average amount of money people spend while purchasing products/services from your online store.

Average order value is an important metric for all data-driven businesses to evaluate marketing efforts and pricing strategies. It helps you identify the average money spent on each order placed across your business channels. So you can effectively update and optimize your business plan that will significantly impact your bottom line.

Do you ever think about increasing your average order value instead of increasing customer numbers? Then you have come to the right place.

Today, you’ll learn about the importance of knowing the average order value for your business, how to calculate it, and 8 effective tips to increase average order value.

[everest_form id=”3456″]

What is Average Order Value (AOV)

Average Order Value is a crucial eCommerce metric that measures how much money customers spend on your site over a defined period.

AOV is one of the most useful KPIs for online businesses. It helps you identify different customer groups according to their expenditure. Or you can determine the channels that are most powerful in terms of revenue.

By analyzing these metrics you can easily make effective decisions for your marketing strategies. Such as advertising spending, store layout, and product pricing.

Why is Average Order Value Important

Getting customers is one of the biggest challenges for online retailers. That’s the reason they craft their all strategies and pay key attention to bringing customers to their shop. But you can even increase your revenue by simply improving the AOV.

Suppose you need to spend $1 to get a visitor to your store (including website maintenance, paid ads, online support, etc). Now, would it be more beneficial for you if 5 customers buy 7 products for $100 or if 2 customers spend $100? No doubt the second approach will be more beneficial.

importance of average order value

This is proven that emphasizing more on the consumers ready to spend money on your site is more impactful rather than running after new customers.

You can take an example from super shops. They always keep similar types of products in one block. Such as tea bags, milk, and sugar. It helps them increase their AOV by tickling the interest of consumers. You can use the same tactic on your eCommerce store by offering subsidiary products when someone intends to order something. It’ll surely increase your AOV. And ends with a great hike in your profit margin.

Related Resource: 15+ Common Ecommerce Mistakes You Should Avoid in 2022.

How to Calculate Average Order Value

How to calculate average order value

In order to calculate your average order value, just take your total revenue and divide it by the total number of orders.

Average order value = Total Revenue / Total Number of Orders

For example, you have an online store that sells cosmetics. In December, people ordered 200 pieces of different products and you generated $2500 in total revenue.

Then, your average order value will be: $2500/200 = $12.5

This means a customer spends $12.5 on average for each purchase made from your eCommerce.

How to Check Your Average Order Value

Before planning on how to increase the average order value for your eCommerce, you need to know the current AOV. You can calculate the AOV as we’ve shown above. Alternatively, if you integrate your eCommerce shop with Google Analytics you can check the AOV from there as well.

If you don’t configure your Google Analytics yet check how to use the eCommerce tracker and generate more sales.

Now, go to the official Google Analytics website and log into your Analytics account. Then, navigate to Conversions  eCommerce  Overview. Here, you can select the Avg. Order Value from the drop-down menu and see the AOV along with many other metrics.

ecommerce overview

After getting the current AOV, now it’s time to optimize your marketing strategies for better results.

8 Ways to Increase Average Order Value

A small increase in your average order value will have a big impact on your bottom line. But it largely depends on how you develop your marketing strategies and treat your buyers.

Below are the tips to optimize your eCommerce shop so you can encourage customers to enlarge their cart sizes and, therefore, increase your shop’s overall AOV-

  1. Offer a Free Shipping Threshold
  2. Leverage Your Audience with Limited-Time Offers
  3. Make Your User Journey Special & Effective
  4. Display Cross-sell And Up-sell Items
  5. Provide Bundle Deals and Bulk Options
  6. Arrange a Customer Loyalty Program
  7. Offer a Free Gift or Gift Card with a Purchase
  8. Include a Flexible Return Policy

1. Offer a Free Shipping Threshold

offer free shipping threshold

Free shipping has become one of the strongest marketing tools for eCommerce brands. You can use this tool to boost your average order value as well.

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13 Best WordPress Plugins for Blogs in 2022

If you have chosen WordPress then you are on the right track as a blogger. WordPress is the best CMS (Content Management System) and rules over 42% of the website on the entire internet. 

All this can happen due to its super user-friendliness and super-easy installation. You can customize your website without being a tech geek. Moreover, you don’t need to know a single line of code. 

Another unbeatable thing about WordPress is, that there are plenty of plugins in this community. Most of them are free and paid ones are not much pricy.

This article is specially organized for bloggers who are searching- for the best WordPress plugins for blogs!

So, try to read till the end, you won’t regret it. 

Best WordPress Plugins for Blogs at a Glance

best wordpress plugins for blogs

You will get a huge number of plugins in WordPress.org but the question is which one is the best for your blog? Which one will make it easy for your audience to check your content and navigate through your site? Well, here we have listed some plugins for you.

  1. Yoast SEO
  2. Akismet
  3. Elementor Page Builder
  4. Google Analytics Dashboard
  5. Really Simple SSL
  6. WP User Frontend
  7. weForms
  8. Smush Image Compression
  9. Add To Any
  10. Revive Old Post
  11. weMail
  12. WP Project Manager
  13. Disable Comments

Let’s check the details.

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WordPress Birthday: Expert Opinions on Recent Gossip and weDevs Special Deals!

oday (May 27) is WordPress’s birthday. It’s been 19 years since American developer Matt Mullenweg and English developer Mike Little launched the initial version of WordPress in 2003. To mark this occasion, let’s show you some of the biggest milestones in WordPress history.

According to W3Techs, WordPress empowers 43% of all websites on the internet- such a big achievement!

However, it’s time for celebration 🎉. Be a part of this amazing journey to know how WordPress comes to its today’s position:

How It All Starts with Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little

WordPress history

It’s a long 19 years story of two extremely talented people- Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. They launched the first version of WordPress on May 27, 2003. This open-source platform wasn’t just a copy of its predecessor. Rather the partners started this program with a bigger vision of making website building easier for all.

The WordPress software is written in PHP language. Besides, it uses MySQL for maintaining the database. Christine Selleck Tremoulet suggested the name WordPress. He is a prolific blogger and a friend of Mullenweg. Later he became the co-founder of WordPress.

At first, WordPress strengthen its position as the world’s most popular blogging platform.

But gradually, it became the top choice for business websites as well.

The Revolution WordPress Brings to The CMS Industry

revolution-in-web-development

Since launched in 2003, WordPress breaks the conventional trend of web development.

The best part about WordPress is that it’s free, incredibly flexible, and gives you complete design freedom. Now anyone can build different types of websites regardless of technical skill.

On top of that, new additions and continuous improvements make WordPress history more incredible. WordPress supports a rich library of interactive themes and plugins hence it enlarges the customization arena to infinity. WordPress diminishes the concept- Only programmers can build a website.

Timeline of Major Features and Events from WordPress History

It’s really difficult to describe the entire journey in this short time. Here, we picked some major events from WordPress history.

2003Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little released WordPress
2005Introduced the Theme system, a modified user role system, and a new backend UI. New releases: Version 1.5 (Strayhorn), Version 2.0 (Duke)
2008Introduced the WordPress Theme Directory and today’s admin dashboard through the releases of Version 2.5(Brecker), Version 2.6 (Tyner), and Version 2.7 (Coltrane)
2009Streamlined web development workflows. New releases: Version 2.8 (Baker), Version 2.9 (Carmen)
2012Introduced theme customizer & previews as well as a new media manager. New releases: Version 3.4 (Green) & Version 3.5 (Elvin)
2015Focused on mobile experience and improved responsive images and embeds. New releases: Version 4.2 (Powell), Version 4.3 (Billie) & Version 4.4 (Clifford)
2017Refined theme customizer, new gallery widget, modified text, and video widgets. New releases: Version 4.8 (Evans) & Version 4.9 (Tipton)
2018Introduced new block-based editor Gutenberg with a new default theme “Twenty Nineteen”. New releases: Version 5.0 (Bebo)
2020Focused on speed and security improvements to WordPress. New releases: Version 5.4 (Adderley), Version 5.5 (Eckstine), & Version 5.6 (Simone)
2021Simpler layout to make web development easier. New release: Version 5.7 (Esperanza). Improvement in the block system.
2022Introducing a new default theme “Twenty Twenty-Two” including many advanced admin facilities. Gutenberg’s writing improvements.

WordPress Timeline at a glance

WordPress Birthday: Let’s Learn What Experts Thinking about WordPress Growth, Gutenberg, Full Site Editing, SEO, and More

Happy Birthday WordPress

Recently, we’ve talked to many developers, marketers, entrepreneurs, and influencers about WordPress. We had a set of questions for them on the occasion of WordPress’s 19th birthday.

  • What are they thinking about WordPress’s overall growth and market share
  • How will ‘Full Site Editing’ (and Gutenberg Editor) affect the industry?
  • How effective are the recent updates of WordPress with Content Management and SEO?
  • And finally- the future of WordPress!

Let’s find out what the experts think. We believe you will enjoy our initiative and this will help you be more optimistic about WordPress in the upcoming days.

Recent Drop in WordPress Market Share

“Honestly, I don’t think that the “sudden drop” in market share is unexpected or significant.
Businesses close. People are retiring. How many people have died from COVID?
How are we measuring our market share?
If businesses want to be on Squarespace, that is fine. When they need scale, WordPress will be here with open arms.
I think it is also notable that many hosting companies have imposed sanctions against Russian and Belorussian websites. How many of them were in WordPress? Can the drop be accounted for because of sanctions?
Every market has a rise and fall.
What WordPress end users want is predictability. I would love to see major changes slow down after the release of Full Site Editing (FSE).
Backward compatibility was always one of the UVPs of WordPress. We need to get you a happy compromise with our new editor and attrition.” –Bridget Willard

Bridget Willard is a marketing consultant, especially well known for her brand building for Riggins Construction, GiveWP, and the Make WordPress Marketing Team.

WordPress Full Site Editing

“CMS like WordPress have come a long way. I remember when I was using b2/cafelog and the beginning of WordPress, when you had just a blogging platform, and manually created pages in PHP, and then created an iframe focused theme so the blog and the pages could all be under one uniform design. Years later, developers started making page builders to help code less, and design more.
This being said, even outside of WordPress, with other types of CMS, offering a page builder experience that the user can see how their site is coming together live before their eyes, has become a thing of today. There’s still a lot of accessibility issues and education for the users wanting to learn CMS, but these are solvable solutions. I encourage local WordPress meetups and WordCamps to do more workshops based on different page builders, and even the Gutenberg editor.”-Nile flores

Nile flores is an expert web designer, public speaker, and WordPress developer from Centralia, Illinois. She also has expertise in graphic design.

“Full Site Editing and WordPress leaves a lot to be desired when you’ve been using WordPress for as long as I have transitioning from using template files and template parts and still trying to use tools like ACF require a whole new way of approaching a problem. I really wish FSE would look at the existing solutions and borrow from them. Beaver Builder and Divi have been doing full site editing for a while now and works quite well.” -Jason Tucker

Jason Tucker is a professional WordPress website developer. Also, he has over 10 years of experience in podcasting.

WordPress Content Management

“I have been in the WordPress space since 2006. Of course, a lot has changed since then, and competition is fierce. But the one thing I know, with certainty, is that the industry is wide open, and the opportunity to succeed and make good money has never been greater.” -Brian Gardner

Brian Gardner is the founder of Authentik and the first person who started selling premium themes.

“WordPress has come a long way over the years but as each year passes it seems to become easier and easier for non developers to see their website vision come to life without touching a single line of code. As new technology emerges and integrates with WordPress can you imagine the ease of use in the future? I’m looking forward to building with WordPress by just thinking about it.” -Brian Messenlehner

Brian Messenlehner put himself to utilizing WordPress for more than a blogging system. Also, he is the co-founder of WebDevStudios.com.

“Happy Birthday, WordPress and to everyone that has been a part of the community that has been instrumental in bringing it to this 19th anniversary. It’s because of them I have been able to make a 15-year career in a diverse, open-source community. The flexibility of the CMS rides on the back of what has brought me success in the space. And lastly, cheers to WordPress for making it possible for me to meet, work with and become friends with some of the coolest and most talented people in the world.” -Bob Dunn

Bob Dunn works as a blogger and Podcaster at Bobwp. Also, he has expertise in different areas of web development including WordPress, eCommerce, and monetization.

WordPress SEO

“Over the past decade, I’ve enjoyed writing thousands of blog posts and helped grow sites organically from zero to 1+ million visitors per month. And there is one thing these projects all had in common; WordPress was always at the foundation.
Here are just a few reason why I think WordPress is an excellent choice for anyone doing SEO.

First, you have a wide range of different SEO plugins you can use. This gives you flexibility regarding features you might need for a specific project, such as structure data, redirects, sitemaps, rich snippets, etc. Lately, I’ve been a fan of The SEO Framework plugin.
Second, being open source and written in a popular programming language (PHP), there are plenty of ways to manipulate WordPress to do exactly what you need it to. This enables you to stay on top of any changes Google makes regarding SERPs. Try customizing Shopify or Wix; you only have so many options.
Third, WordPress was originally created as a blogging platform. And to this day, that’s why I still love it. It makes blogging and content creation a breeze! ” -Brian Jackson

Brian Jackson is the Co-founder at forgemedia. He was the Chief Marketing Officer at Kinsta. Brian is a blogger/author obsessed with SEO and webperf.

“WordPress plugins offer an incredible range when it comes to SEO. A couple of native additions stand out the most for me. This is, of course, responsiveness and WebP image support. An automatically mobile-friendly layout makes engaging those users much less of a hassle, and optimized imagery always makes Google happy. Of course, Google has been pushing WebP since 2010. Still, it’s nice to use those images without having to force mime types in WordPress.” -Anna Gargioni

Anna Gargioni is an experienced marketing and branding professional. She is very active in the WordPress community.

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Lorem Ipsum

What is Lorem Ipsum?

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

Why do we use it?

It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).

Where does it come from?

Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source. Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book is a treatise on the theory of ethics, very popular during the Renaissance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum, “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..”, comes from a line in section 1.10.32.

The standard chunk of Lorem Ipsum used since the 1500s is reproduced below for those interested. Sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 from “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” by Cicero are also reproduced in their exact original form, accompanied by English versions from the 1914 translation by H. Rackam.

Where can I get some?

There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don’t look even slightly believable. If you are going to use a passage of Lorem Ipsum, you need to be sure there isn’t anything embarrassing hidden in the middle of text. All the Lorem Ipsum generators on the Internet tend to repeat predefined chunks as necessary, making this the first true generator on the Internet. It uses a dictionary of over 200 Latin words, combined with a handful of model sentence structures, to generate Lorem Ipsum which looks reasonable. The generated Lorem Ipsum is therefore always free from repetition, injected humour, or non-characteristic words etc.