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How to Update PHP to the Recommended Version for WordPress
Using an outdated version of WordPress core, plugins or themes isn’t ideal. PHP is no different. While WordPress technically works with PHP 5.6 and above, you’re sacrificing performance and compatibility, plus you’re open to security vulnerabilities...
read more30 Essential WordPress Plugins You Should Install If You Haven’t Already
While WordPress offers a ton of features and flexibility, there is still a lot of functionality missing from the core software. The best way to fill in the missing pieces, of course, is to get yourself the right plugins. WordPress plugins offer all kinds of...
read more10 Best Image Optimization Plugins for Speeding Up WordPress
There are all kinds of WordPress Image optimizer plugins available in the WordPress plugin repository. They can help you compress images for the web or handle things like resizing images or lazy loading. In this post, we’re going to look at the features of the...
read moreHow to Improve Google Pagespeed User Interaction Metrics in WordPress
User Interaction is one of the critical aspects you need to concentrate on if you want to deliver a welcoming user experience. Unfortunately, you can’t sit down in their place and see your site from your visitors’ point-of-view, so you need a way to figure...
read moreWhy You Should Optimize WordPress by Fixing Your Images First
In 2019, the size of the average mobile webpage is 1.6 MB. Images usually account for about half of the average webpage because they’re so resource-intensive to serve up. If you’ve never taken image optimization seriously and your WordPress site is slow,...
read morePoppin’ Conference Swag and Giveaways People Want
In just a few short weeks over 3000 WordPress fans like ourselves will descend on Berlin, Germany for WCEU to network, connect, celebrate, learn, and of course, collect bags and bags of swag! We’re proud sponsors of this mega WordCamp and as such our super design team...
read moreRefer Your Way to a WPMU DEV Lifetime Membership
We’ve heralded our disdain for affiliate programs for years, swearing them off for good. And yet, here I am, with a bold announcement… WPMU DEV affiliates are back and better than ever. It’s been a dream to reimagine our rewards system in a way that...
read moreThe Ultimate Guide to Image Optimization
Images are one of the most important elements on your site and getting them right can be the difference between a popular site that provides an awesome user experience and one that doesn’t get any traffic or conversions. But images are, well, complicated....
read moreBest Free Form Builder Plugins WordPress 2019
There’s no shortage of free amazing form plugins to make data collection in WordPress a breeze. I noticed that a lot of form plugins in the WordPress plugin repository appear feature-rich, but once you install them, most features aren’t available unless...
read moreA free WordPress Form Builder with Calculations and Payments?!
Forminator 1.7 is here including calculations and Stripe payments. A new bar has been set for what you can expect for free from your WordPress form builder plugin! Not familiar? It’s time for a change. Name a lead generating, money making, revenue growing...
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Synthesizing usability test results
This week we got another usability study in the books by testing the most recent iteration of our signup and onboarding flow. Thanks to some help from our design operations team I was able to pull it off without a hitch. All I had to do was fill in a request, slightly...
Offline Principles
Cowritten with Megs Fulton Many of us design and build apps in air-conditioned offices in major cities, using the latest devices with perfect internet connections. We don’t often think about how apps should work without a strong internet connection. ...
What is a Creative Technologist?
Within Automattic Design, we have two communities of practice: “creative technology” and “product experience”. Every designer falls into one of these two communities. Having this distinction helps us to create balanced teams, as well as sharpen...
🌶 Spicy topics
Recently, the design team I lead was going through a period of low morale. I noticed this through conversations in 1-1s, our team Slack channel, and most notably in our team meetings. The designers were all working on some very big product problems and while the work...
Design Collaboration Meetup
Last week we held our first “Design Collaboration Meetup” connecting across product, dev, support, marketing, and human resources. And of course … design! At the gathering we were able to distribute our new playbooks and connect IRL in super...
Product Experience and Creative Technology Design Playbooks
You can visit our two new design playbooks up online over at: productexperienceplaybook.org Product experience design is the practice of creating products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users. This practice begins with a deep understanding of user...
On sharing mistakes
At the end of every week, my boss asks us to write down a lesson we learned. Mine are usually due to a slip up I made. Here’s how it goes: I make a mistake, apologize to the person, and end up saying something along the lines of: “I should have done x,...
Accessibility Standards: Defining What Success Means
Announcing the first pass at Team 51 accessibility standards.
You got this.
I’M LEARNING new tech and it’s hard. Maybe you’re in the same boat. Through the rosy lens of memory, learning HTML and Photoshop back in the day was a breeze. It wasn’t, really. And CSS, when it came along in 1996, was even tougher to grasp—in part because it was...
Figma for Sketch users
You may have heard of Figma recently. It’s a web-app (with a hybrid-native version) that aims to solve the same problem Sketch solves: make it easy and fast to design and prototype software. When two apps solve the same problem, why would you want to learn to...
