With the beta of WordPress, 6.6 releasing and seeing the advancements being made with site building features like overrides for sink patterns. I can't help, but be excited for where WordPress is headed. And I know you might have your druthers with it all, but I'm hoping you invest now. Because the future is bright for our favorite platform. Uh, building websites with AI. Isn't convincing me all that much.
Even if our pillar sponsor blue host promises me a robot friend to help me build whatever I want with WordPress. Seriously though. Check it out. I like to be in control of the process, tune the things I need craft a layout that hits the right marks for my brand. Give me a bunch of patterns blocks and some ready-made templates. And I'll adjust the 10% that's leftover. The rock based theme does a great job at this.
I recently used it on a new project, our beloved medium, a six part audio documentary highlighting the impact of radio throughout history coming soon. Blocks patterns, templates. All jiving together in your new web development canvas, the browser. It's the no code process users have been longing for since visual composer left your site with a bunch of unhinged shortcodes this is an exciting time and it's something we should be sharing with others. We need to keep WordPress thriving.
Even if you're using some other tool to build your pages. WordPress remains your foundation. Roseo Valdivia highlighted that even with the number of in-person events on the rise, new attendees to WordPress events have declined. In the post. She prompts us with these four questions. Number one. What motivated you to attend your first WordPress event? What were you hoping to gain or experience? Number two.
If you've organized an event in the past couple of years, what relevant feedback have you heard from new to WordPress attendees? Number three. What unique value or benefit do you find at other non-word press events that you think could bring value to our WordPress events and number four? What type of new event or content do you think would be great for attracting and keeping new WordPress users of any level to WordPress events?
If you look at the graph, which is linked up in the blog or the newsletter, which starts to decline in 2017 and putting aside COVID though a massive contributor. I feel this follows the same dip of WordPress burnout or exhaustion of I've, as I've explained it before in the past that we felt when Gutenberg was first announced. Once again, I've talked about this in the past, but the rollout of Gutenberg came with a perfect storm. In tech years, WordPress was already ancient.
There was a rise in proprietary tools like Shopify and Wix that satisfied the lizard brain. A lot of us early adopters in tech are looking for. The communication of it all was highly criticized, including by yours. Truly. But looking back, I couldn't use the classic editor to build pages or write blog posts ever again. Then you thrust the whole industry into warp speed with COVID and lockdowns and yeah, I'm still trying to gather my brain cells to.
Take a step back and ask yourself, are you not excited for this software? Are you just fighting the current because you don't like change. I'm not talking about the politics of it all. I think it's something you can abstract from WordPress. The software. But to deeply evaluate the enjoyment of building a site with WordPress. When WordPress events were at the height. WordPress was fresh and exciting. But most importantly, we needed a place to learn more about it.
The advancements of the site editing experience can be that revival moment for WordPress events. Get people excited about building and publishing with WordPress again. A place to incorporate the real essence of the open source project, where we can stake our claim at the table to provide the necessary feedback to improve the tool. Maybe loosen up the stuffiness of local meetups, encouraging and promoting education and awareness at a local level.
Linux opened my eyes to open source Drupal showed me how to feel more powerful as a non-developer. And then WordPress gave me all of that plus an amazing community on top. For years, the builder audience and WordPress was passed over for the advanced developers, but that's all catching up to us now. It's time. We revisit sharing with others. What they can achieve with WordPress. Keep WordPress. thriving. And by the way, I've launched a new thriving. t-shirts at the WP minute.com/shop.
Or you go to the WWII minute.com. It's right on the homepage. It's a thriving branded. T-shirt. Uh, with some fun abstraction of Gutenberg Esq stuff in there, it's kind of fun. Check it out. The WP minute.com/shop. Uh, 20% of the profits will go to the WordPress foundation of all sales happening. In the month of June, it also helps support the WP minutes. So if you like content like this and want to rock some new WordPress swag, Once again, the WP minute.com/shop.