December WordPress meetup Recap:
During this month’s WordPress meetup we hit on several hot topics. Odds and ends tips, tricks, and WordPress News. I talked about how WordPress is going towards integrating the REST API by making the admin area with the REST API in future releases. Also how WordPress themes are now being built with REST API, and several areas already released. I also hinted at the ever growing importance of Accelerated Mobile Pages Project (AMP) pages and how recently we’ve hit the tipping point of how people search the internet. Now more people are searching for results using their mobile devices vs. desktops. With AMP these mobile friendly websites load almost instantly! I also talked about some older stuff that some of the newer members may not know about like Google Webmaster Tools and it’s importance and the multiple tools located there. Also, in general, how page load time is ever increasing for Google rankings. This was a discussion on hosting providers like Digital Ocean, but I also mentioned how Google is one of the backers with AMP. Also if you think tools.pingdom.com was an impressive way to check out your site’s loading speeds and how to improve them then check out testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com.
WordPress After Party:
We (Aaron Van Noy, Niki Soto, Nate Houstman, Mike Irvine, and Seth Adam) headed out to Tanners Bar and Grill
WordPress Meet-up Group Attendance update:
I’ve been happy with my decision to stop promoting “WordPress” and start promoting Learn Modern Website Design. The meeting’s attendance has gone up significantly with this change in branding. Our tagline is now “Modern Website Design & Blogging, learn WordPress: Cedar Rapids & Iowa City.“ Our previous month’s attendance was only 3 people (including me). Basically, it was only our diehard regulars who showed up that night. Since mainly only the professionals know what WordPress is, I changed our branding of the event. Any business owner or someone looking to get into modern web design may not have yet heard of the industry standard that WordPress really is. As a result of me facing this fact, I wrote another blog post comparing the “best drag and drop web page builders” and decided to throw WordPress in with the mix due to the ever increasing drag and drop options available. Needless to say, others may have better marketing, but WordPress hands down still has the better product!
