In this month’s roundup, we take a look at a some upcoming events, a new platform where you can find more WordPress events, a vulnerability, the importance of messaging in your forms and a couple of new designs.
There is a lot to explore, so let’s get started.
Shall we?
Upcoming conferences
Let’s take a look at few of the upcoming conferences and events.
Email List Building School
Jan Koch of Virtual Mastery Summit is launching an email list building summit in just a few days.
The event is free to attend from August 8-12. The event will explore ways to make opt-in forms convert better, write better emails, leverage automation and much more.
Over 20 speakers in the industry will bring their expertise including Dennis Yu, Sarah Morgan, Oli Gardner, Kim Doyal, Jason Resnick, Samar Owais, and many others.
WordPress Accessibility Day
The WordPress Accessibility Day is November 2-3, 2022. the 24-hour virtual summit is a chance to sharpen your skills of working with those with various types of disabilities.
“WP Accessibility Day is a 24-hour event with presenters from around the world. There will be a single track of about 26-28 presentations. Attendees can register for free and watch live streams of talks here on our website.” Source
You can learn more on their website.
WordFest – November – taking apps for speakers
WordFest Live returns on November 18, 2022. The popular virtual WordPress summit is accepting applications to speak.
Nominations for The WP Weekly Awards are live
The WP Weekly Awards are returning in 2022. Publisher Davinder Singh Kainth has opened up a call for nominations.
In 2021 MainWP did very well at 2021 The WP Weekly Awards. Nominees include WordPress products or services. So get your nominations in soon!
Kainth has promised a bigger 2022 edition.
WP Events Calendar – a new place to find WordPress events
Speaking of events in WordPress, you can find all of those in a new website wp.events.
Launched by Michelle Frechette with the help of The Events Calendar. You can find various meetups, workshops and WordCamps.
The calendar already has dozens of events scheduled through the end of the year.
If you can’t remember when that WordCamp is that you want to attend, chances are it is already on WP.events.
Manually Installing WordPress, the Race Against Time – Jeff Chandler
What is the amount of time between when you install a WordPress website and can get it secured? WordPress is famous for its 5 minute install, but does that leave it vulnerable.
Jeff Chandler reports on a vulnerability that allows the “bad guys” to gain full access to a new site.
The vulnerability was recently reported by Czech Republic security researcher Vladimir Smitka.
This idea has been talked about before by WordFence back in 2017.
Smitka has created a plugin designed to prevent changes after installation. Seems like now, we have to be diligent in protecting a new install!
Messaging of your forms matters too
As you may know, I’m pretty big on paying attention to the message you are sending. Now, that isn’t just with words, but it in how you communicate visually, audibly and much more.
Michelle Frechette from WS Form spends time in this article talking about the message you send with your forms. We may rarely think about the message we send with how we use our forms, but we should.
Why? For one, your forms are areas of call to action.
As Frechette says in the article,
“Even the words on something as small as a button can affect whether or not someone clicks that button. Word choices can inspire or deter. Messaging is important.”
So, she raises several areas we should assess in the message we are sending within the workflow of our forms.
New Designs: Gmail and WordPress?
New homepage mockups for WordPress.org
WordPress.org is working on a new homepage. If you are interested in seeing the process, they have released an update.
Channing Ritter writes,
“As the WordPress brand evolves and changes, our goal is to create something that looks forward to the future of the project. There are still many sections of the site to be updated, but we’ve got a great start with these new designs for two of the most high-traffic pages.”
From what I can tell they are really focused on design and converting to blocks.
Anyway, you can look at their progress and see what the new homepage will likely look like.
Gmail has a new design
The other day I logged into my Gmail. Well, I do this every day, at least two Gmail accounts.
Perhaps you do as well.
Anyway, I came back a few minutes later and it reloaded. When it finishes, it looked different!
What?
I actually like the new design. It feels better (I can’t describe it). That being said, I had to spend a little bit of time to find some things, but once I figured it out, it was good to go.
Gizmodo summarized the changes,
“The revamped look will include immediate Meet, Chat, and Spaces integration without clogging up the page. Google even threw in a promise of enhancements specific for tablet users, along with numerous other improvements, though not until later this year.”
I had no idea that Chat still existed, so there is that.
You can learn more about the new layout from Google here.
Wrapping it up
It seems like the summer is a time for things to move fast in our industry. How are you keeping up?
Have you seen the new Gmail design? What do you think? Let us know know in the MainWP Users Facebook Group.
