In right now’s extraordinarily aggressive and saturated digital setting, the tales you inform are the issues that set you aside.

At WP Engine, we’re within the enterprise of serving to our clients inform higher tales by unbelievable digital experiences. However to make sure we’re doing all the pieces we will to assist our clients develop, it’s additionally necessary for us to pause, replicate, and take inventory of our personal story, in addition to the core values that underpin it.

All Arms gives the chance to just do that, because the bi-annual, companywide occasion focuses on internalizing the place we’ve been over the previous six months, and the place we’ve our sights set for the long run.

At All Arms Winter 2022, which befell final week as an all-virtual occasion for workers world wide, the headline story was WP Engine’s continued progress because the unified self-serve platform of selection for WordPress builders, designers, manufacturers, and businesses of all sizes.

On this 12 months’s All Arms keynote, WP Engine CEO Heather Brunner delivered a message of innovation and continued progress to greater than 1,100 staff throughout the globe. 

To inform our story, a glance to the previous helped set the stage for the place we at the moment are: a multi-product WordPress firm that has optimized the WordPress expertise from begin to end.  

Our rising set of developer instruments contains Native, the #1 native WordPress improvement software; themes and frameworks similar to Genesis and Frost; and beloved plugins like Superior Customized Fields (ACF), WP Migrate, WP Offload Media, WP Offload SES, and Higher Search Change. 

We’re in a position to spend money on the way forward for these instruments for your entire WordPress neighborhood whereas making it simpler for our clients to benefit from these instruments to create highly-performant WordPress websites.

“Collectively, residing our core values, we’re delivering superb merchandise, superb improvements, and superb service to our clients day-after-day,” Brunner stated.

“Right this moment at WP Engine, we’ve such an unbelievable arsenal of merchandise that assist our clients design, construct, handle, and develop with us.”

By investing within the developer property WordPress customers already love, and persevering with so as to add to and optimize them, we will do our half to make sure the WordPress neighborhood retains thriving.

WP Engine is a long-time companion of the Webby Awards. We assist their efforts by sponsorship of the annual awards present, facilitating Crafted with Code (a mission that shares a behind-the-scenes take a look at the method of constructing Webby-nominated websites), and powering the Webby Talks tour, throughout which the Webby staff visits promoting, media, and know-how firms to share insights into the rising traits on-line.

This 12 months’s Webby Speak is titled By no means Area of interest Sufficient, and it’s a formidable deep dive into the methods wherein Gen Z is reshaping the methods we join on-line. The Webby Awards Managing Director Ciel VanderVeen joined us just about to share observations gleaned from a survey of greater than 3,000 Gen Z customers about their habits and pursuits on-line.

After three months of compiling knowledge, Webby consultants discovered that Gen Z is disrupting the web monoculture in favor of smaller, extra distinctive and genuine experiences. The place Millennials had been deemed the “me technology” on-line, utilizing social media to showcase private experiences and achievements, Gen Z is choosing a “we technology” mentality, creating connection and inclusive communities by shared pursuits and hobbies.

“We began seeing these actually attention-grabbing new communities popping up, and it appeared like Gen Z was main a few of that cost,” stated VanderVeen. “We seen they’re flocking to those on-line communities, however not simply any communities—they’re going area of interest. There are these on-line areas which can be hitting the candy spot between who [members of Gen Z] are and what they love.”

VanderVeen closed her discuss by reiterating that manufacturers and companies can lean into this new, area of interest way forward for the net by taking the time to be taught in regards to the viewers they hope to focus on earlier than advertising to them. Gaining a deeper understanding of your viewers and their motivations is important to attaining buy-in from youthful generations, and interesting to each their radical individualism and emphasis on inclusivity is the one strategy to stay related for the lengthy haul.

See how the staff at Europe’s largest fintech firm, 11Onze, labored with WP Engine Company Associate WONDR to construct an genuine Webby Award-winning digital expertise—La Plaça. Constructed on the pillars of neighborhood, training, and belief, the non-public social community (PSN) and studying portal empowers youthful generations like Gen Z with monetary instruments and data.  

On this 12 months’s All Arms breakout session, WP Engine Supervisor of Developer Relations Kellen Mace spoke in regards to the evolution of WP Engine’s headless WordPress platform, Atlas. What started as a whole platform for headless WordPress has developed right into a complete assortment of headless WordPress instruments, lots of that are open supply and obtainable to anybody who needs to construct headless websites with WordPress.

The Atlas ecosystem reduces friction for headless builders, providing superb grain management over the event expertise as they navigate the ins and outs of headless structure. The complete listing of Atlas instruments and frameworks contains a number of items which, Mace defined, make headless WordPress improvement extra accessible proper out of the field for builders experimenting with this know-how.

Faust.js is the frontend javascript framework that’s tailored for headless WordPress. It contains authentication, publish previews, template hierarchy, and straightforward WordPress knowledge fetching—all baked in and prepared, proper out of the field.

WPGraphQL is the free, open supply plugin that turns any WordPress web site right into a GraphQL server, and the just lately launched WPGraphQL Good Cache plugin creates a brand new strategy to cache generally run queries to make sure customers have lightning quick experiences.

Whereas it may be used for conventional or headless WordPress websites, ACF is the most well-liked customized fields plugin for WordPress, and makes it simple for builders to implement any essential customized fields on their headless websites. Moreover, Native’s headless add-on (obtainable within the Add-ons library) makes native improvement for headless websites a snap. 

And eventually, the Atlas Search plugin offers superior search capabilities on all headless websites constructed with Atlas.

When mixed, these instruments make headless WordPress improvement quicker, simpler, and extra highly effective. A lot so, in actual fact, that Mace was in a position to spin up a demo web site in  the final 10 minutes of his presentation!

WordPress continues to evolve due to its vibrant neighborhood of devoted contributors. In his closing All Arms session, WP Engine Developer Advocate Nick Diego made this truth abundantly clear. 

“WordPress will decline or stagnate with out lively neighborhood contributors,” he stated. “WordPress is constructed and maintained by neighborhood members, and if we’ve a voice in these discussions, we may also help direct the way in which that WordPress is constructed.”

Diego started his session with an outline of how a lot WordPress core has modernized throughout the final 12 months alone. 2022 opened with the discharge of model 5.9 in January. This launch introduced the Website Editor to the fore, and it basically shifted the way in which builders and designers can create and edit their websites.

Model 6.0 got here round in Could, and introduced with it main enhancements to customers’ modifying capabilities, together with the power to handle web page and publish template sorts. Most significantly, new content material locking capabilities enable web site admins to maintain sure points beneath lock and key, stopping different web site editors from unintentionally breaking necessary web site options.

In November, model 6.1 got here to be, thanks in no small half to the contributions of WP Engine staff. Actually, two of the ten fashion variations obtainable for the default theme in model 6.1 (Twenty Twenty-Three) had been designed by WP Engine staff!

To meet the mission of WordPress and actually democratize publishing, WordPress core will proceed full velocity forward with block modifying, making it simpler than ever to construct stunning, highly effective websites on WordPress. And to that finish, WP Engine is dedicated to offering much more contributor hours in 2023, placing direct effort and time into bettering WordPress core for your entire neighborhood.

Trying ahead, WordPress will proceed to emphasise the significance of design—in any case, Design Issues!—and WP Engine is Dedicated to Give Again to the WordPress neighborhood that has fueled our success.

Winter All Arms 2022 informed the story of an organization that’s rapidly turning into the unified WordPress platform of selection for builders worldwide. With our core values high of thoughts and an incredible staff behind us, the following chapter seems to be vivid for WP Engine.

Be taught extra about WP Engine and our story right here, or turn out to be part of our story by trying to find an open place right here!