WordPress continues to play a dominant function because the world’s hottest content material administration system (CMS), and as its use circumstances increase, it’s additionally discovering new enchantment with bigger organizations trying to reduce on internet prices and do extra with much less.
That’s as a result of WordPress is open supply, which suggests there aren’t any upfront licensing charges for utilizing its core software program, and it’s backed by an enormous group of world contributors who preserve bugs and safety vulnerabilities at bay.
WordPress can be famend for its flexibility and its ease of integrating with different platforms, making it a main candidate as companies look to exchange pricey and cumbersome content material administration programs with open supply content material agility.
WordPress certainly leads the pack right here, each as a standalone content material framework in addition to a headless CMS, through which WordPress is linked to a contemporary front-end framework like Vue.js or React.
As companies search for new methods to construct websites and leverage WordPress of their tasks, the next improvement developments will assist them unlock better flexibility, create lovely designs, and obtain higher efficiency throughout the web sites they create.
Prepared to leap in? Right here’s what we’ll cowl:
Block-Based mostly Modifying: From Gutenberg to Full Website Modifying
With the introduction of the block editor (Gutenberg) in 2018, WordPress signaled a brand new path for website builders, who till then had relied on the traditional editor expertise for the majority of their WordPress submit and web page wants.
Whereas the traditional editor had an unimaginable run, the brand new block editor was a big evolution for WordPress, increasing on its low-code/no-code method to content material creation with pre-formatted blocks of code that allow a drag-and-drop submit and page-building expertise.
Within the few quick years because it launched, the block editor has given rise to practically 100 (and counting) reusable content material blocks in WordPress core, to not point out a protracted record of customized blocks, which will be constructed for business consumption and particular person use.
However Gutenberg was solely the start with regards to block-based modifying in WordPress. With the rise of Full Website Modifying, which started to appear in 2020 (in Alpha), block-based performance has expanded past the editor to embody all the or “full” website modifying expertise.
Current variations of WordPress (5.9+) now embody the flexibility to increase block-based management throughout an internet site’s theme and design structure, offering builders with an intuitive, environment friendly solution to customise website parts—from headers and typography to columns and imagery.
Full Website Modifying additionally permits customers to make sitewide modifications with out having to navigate to particular person pages, providing anybody tasked with creating and managing many websites the flexibility to make sweeping edits with only a few easy clicks.
Although Full Website Modifying is just appropriate with block-based themes (which suggests you’ll doubtless need to discover a new theme to take full benefit of), it represents a brand new chapter for WordPress and an rising technique of alternative for website house owners and builders to implement their digital imaginative and prescient at scale.
As they proceed to advance, Full Website Modifying and block-based performance will signify much less of a ”pattern,” and extra of the longer term solution to construct web sites utilizing WordPress.
Yow will discover out extra about Full Website Modifying right here, or learn to begin utilizing it right here.
Headless WordPress: Bringing Content material Creators and Builders Collectively
Whereas builders and content material creators are discovering new benefits with the evolving editor expertise in WordPress, they’re additionally taking a look at methods to attach that most popular technique of content material creation and administration with their fashionable front-end frameworks of alternative.
Enter headless, and particularly, headless WordPress architectures like WP Engine Atlas, which brings collectively one of the best of WordPress and fashionable front-end frameworks like Vue.js and React.
WP Engine has been investing in the way forward for headless WordPress by means of Atlas, and for good cause. The need for headless options is predicted to proceed its rise—particularly for eCommerce and huge enterprise websites—and practically $1.6 billion was invested in headless innovation by main firms between 2020 and 2021.
At its core, headless decouples the entrance and back-end structure of an internet site, permitting customers with totally different roles to depend on the instruments they love most with out disrupting different workflows.
On the subject of headless WordPress, this implies content material creators and entrepreneurs who depend on WordPress for his or her day-to-day efforts proceed to make use of it as they see match, whereas builders tasked with constructing and sustaining front-end environments can achieve this utilizing their alternative of recent JavaScript frameworks.
Headless WordPress websites additionally supply huge safety enhancements for large-scale websites. With front-end and back-end parts working independently on separate servers, it turns into harder for unhealthy actors to hack websites by brute drive or DDoS assaults.
WP Engine has assembled a rising archive of headless WordPress developer assets, which yow will discover right here.
You too can begin experimenting with headless utilizing WP Engine Atlas at no cost! Simply join a Sandbox Account and discover the total characteristic set of Atlas in a risk-free, dev playground surroundings.
WordPress as an eCommerce Engine
eCommerce is hardly a pattern—promoting and buying on-line is clearly right here to remain, and there are quite a few obtainable options for powering eCommerce shops, from all-in-one platforms to particular person integrations, and all the pieces in between.
The function of WordPress as an eCommerce engine, nevertheless, is a rising pattern, particularly as companies search to capitalize on its streamlined content material capabilities and extensive flexibility for personalization and eCommerce integrations.
WooCommerce, which is the most well-liked solution to construct eCommerce websites on WordPress, is persistently rated among the many prime eCommerce options on this planet, and it’s at the moment the most-utilized platform by world market share.
That’s no coincidence. A rising variety of companies are realizing the advantages of utilizing WordPress for his or her digital shops as a result of it offers a wonderful canvas for constructing or reimagining their eCommerce presence round a wealthy consumer expertise.
WooCommerce, which integrates seamlessly with WordPress websites, takes care of the commerce points and permits web site house owners to create a web based retailer, add merchandise, subscriptions, safe funds, transport choices, and extra.
WooCommerce can be scalable, and it will possibly combine with a large record of providers. Constructed with a REST API, builders can design a fancy retailer from scratch, prolong a retailer for his or her purchasers, or add new merchandise to a WordPress website.
As builders look to make use of WooCommerce for his or her eCommerce websites, there are additionally choices for pairing these websites with extra options and integrations that amplify necessary parts like search and web page load velocity.
At WP Engine, we’ve honed our eCommerce internet hosting to just do that, with high-performance internet hosting, proprietary caching for WooCommerce, and Prompt Retailer Search that delivers extra related search outcomes as much as 10 instances quicker.
Current optimizations to our proprietary cache, EverCache, have resulted in extra enhancements to web page load instances, with content material loading as much as two instances quicker when utilizing EverCache.
Need to discover out extra about establishing or optimizing a WooCommerce retailer? Take a look at the on-demand classes under or click on right here for extra data on migrating your current WooCommerce retailer to WP Engine’s eCommerce platform in minutes.
The Final Information to Optimizing Your WooCommerce Web site
Develop Your WooCommerce Retailer With out Code
Standardizing on WordPress
One other macro pattern that‘s tied to bigger organizations pivoting away from legacy CMS options is a newfound appreciation for WordPress as a standardization device for a enterprise’ sprawling digital properties.
For enterprise organizations like B&G Meals, shifting greater than 50 of its disparate model web sites below the umbrella of a WordPress Multisite community helped streamline inner groups’ content material manufacturing and alignment whereas rushing up time to market.
For different massive companies, standardizing websites on WordPress reduces overhead prices, mitigates safety dangers, hurries up time-to-market, and achieves model consistency. All whereas lowering the variety of suppliers required to efficiently construct a strong digital presence.
For builders at these organizations, standardizing the expertise they use may help streamline workflows and simplify coaching for future workers with out stifling creativity. Plus, standardization throughout platforms may also ease safety complications, assist enhance the omnichannel expertise, and higher reinforce a model message at each touchpoint.
As extra organizations look to consolidate efforts and do extra with much less, keep watch over WordPress because the CMS of alternative for standardizing current digital content material on a single, unified system.
VR/AR integrations Acquire Steam
It typically feels just like the “rise of VR/AR” has been rising for years now, which might be as a result of, properly, it has (Google Glass premiered its prototype in 2013).
Whereas Digital and Augmented Actuality have made spectacular strides over the previous decade, we nonetheless have but to reach at widespread adoption. That mentioned, VR/AR expertise is slowly trickling outward and discovering its method right into a rising variety of integrations for WordPress.
High quality VR/AR integrations assist bridge the hole between what customers see on-line and what they expertise in actual life. Product displays, coaching programs, and different instructional content material utilizing VR and AR are extra immersive and permit customers to create a stronger reference to the product or subject in query.
For WordPress website builders, which may appear like brushing up on the talents required to create a 3D map or combine these immersive VR/AR-compatible experiences with an current WordPress website. If these integrations usually are not doable, it’d require re-theming utilizing a VR/AR-specific WordPress theme.
Participating customers by means of VR and AR can profit extra than simply retailers who need to put a highlight on their merchandise, nevertheless. From tourism and gaming to structure, automotive care, and healthcare, VR and AR have gotten the usual for the way customers attain high quality training on a subject.
Need to discover out extra? Take a look at this episode of Torque’s Social Hour, which takes a more in-depth have a look at 3OV, a 3D WordPress plugin that turns your website right into a VR/AR expertise:
Design Should-Haves: Minimalist and Cellular Pleasant
Whereas most of the above developments contact on web site design, it actually is a constantly-evolving ecosystem in its personal proper, particularly as new performance and capabilities change into obtainable and rising developments take maintain.
Put merely, Design Issues, and as website builders create their subsequent digital tasks utilizing WordPress, there are just a few no-brainers in addition to some new developments that could be of curiosity.
Cellular-friendly designs, for instance, are not a mere profit and have change into vital. Greater than 60% of the net’s world site visitors now comes from cellular searches, so a clunky show or poor consumer interface has the potential to alienate greater than half of your viewers.
Consistent with newer developments, minimalist and “neo-brutalist” designs are an more and more standard method to make sure website content material appears nice on a smaller display screen whereas conserving guests engaged for longer durations and giving them extra time to work together together with your model and merchandise.
Different developments to look out for embody new methods of utilizing scrolling and telling tales with visuals—experimental areas the place issues liek Full Website Modifying can and can play a bigger function.
The Ongoing Push for Efficiency
Whereas the above is a mixture of rising developments and increasingly-familiar ideas, we’ll shut the record out with one pattern that by no means goes away: web site efficiency, and the necessity to frequently optimize your website to make sure you’re maintaining with trade requirements (to not point out your rivals).
Whereas this is applicable to all web sites, it’s clearly prime of thoughts for contributors to WordPress core, who proceed to roll out updates and enhancements to key options that instantly have an effect on website efficiency.
For example, WordPress lately added native help for WebP, a contemporary picture format that gives lossless and lossy compression for photographs on the internet. This offers a wonderful choice for displaying high-quality photographs on-line utilizing a small picture format (so efficiency isn’t sacrificed).
Extra lately, the discharge of WordPress 6.0 included a variety of extra performance-focused enhancements, overlaying a spread of efficiency areas akin to enhancing the web page and post-load velocity, lowering the execution time of assorted question sorts, caching, navigation menus, and rather more. Discover out extra about WordPress 6.0 right here.
Gas the Freedom to Create With WP Engine
WP Engine powers the liberty to create on WordPress. From managed WordPress internet hosting to enterprise WordPress, headless WordPress, Flywheel, Native, and Genesis. WP Engine’s tech innovation and award-winning WordPress consultants assist to energy greater than 1.5 million websites throughout 150 nations.
