This past week both Canada and the United States celebrated Independence Days.
Well, to be technical about it, Canada celebrated Canada Day on July 1st. The day is considered Canada’s birthday.
So, happy birthday Canada!
The United States celebrates Independence Day on Saturday, July 4th.
So, for the next two days (actually weeks) we will be shooting off fireworks.
But, I thought about it earlier this week. What does independence mean?
Is it just about the birth of a nation? Is it about being self-sustaining?
Is it separating yourself from something or someone that is holding you down?
I think it is essential for us independent workers to stop and remember the good things, remember the things to be grateful for.
We get caught up in hustling and moving forward that sometimes we just don’t think about what we have right now.
So I urge you to do that this weekend.
I echo the words of Rae “Sugarrae” Dolan:
Everyone always wants to advise you on how to hustle to get to the next level.
Might I suggest you take a moment today to identify three things you already have, and are grateful for.
Reaching the next level is an empty goal if you're not appreciative of what you already have.
— Rae (@sugarrae) July 2, 2020
Let’s kick off the weekend with a little WordPress roundup.
ManageWP.org website has shut down its aggregation site.
ManageWP.org, the news aggregation site ran by ManageWP in the past has decided to shut its doors down.
You may remember almost four years ago GoDaddy bought the company bringing it under its portfolio of businesses.
The news aggregation website was probably one of the most visited sites for news aggregation. Readers at the site could vote an article up and articles with more votes move to the front page and upward. At one time, one of our MainWP articles was submitted and made the front page.
With site shutting down, what will the future hold? Who will fill the gap?
In a statement on its homepage, the company says,
“After many years of serving the WordPress community, we’ve made the difficult decision to shut down ManageWP.org. Several factors led us here, but it ultimately came down to the team being unable to give ManageWP.org the attention it deserves.”
They go on to give links to find more community resources.
When I write roundups, I often look at these types of sites. However, I tend to end up at the source of the original article.
One website I have found that might be a site to fill the gap is WorldofWP.com.
They appropriately operate this kind of website, publishing about 100 words of the content with a link to the original article. The articles are submitted rather than automatically aggregated, similar to the old ManageWP.org site.
Take a look at the site and see what you think.
Where do you get your WordPress news?
The Pro Toolbox hits 13 issues.
If you are one who is regularly working on websites and need inspiration and ideas to do new innovative projects, The Pro Toolbox is an excellent site to bookmark.
Ran by Beaver Builder expert Davinder Singh Kainth, the site curates lists of some of the coolest tools you can find.
The toolbox is extensive with various types of website tools and much, much more.
Week 13 is full of various types of tools, including one for creating legal documents, a free stock photo site, and a colorizer to make black and white images color.
You can subscribe to the email newsletter to get the lists delivered to your inbox each week.
The site is an excellent resource for website designers and developers.
LearnDash adds membership a feature
LearnDash is one of the most popular Learning Management Software in the WordPress space. The platform was founded by Kloé and Justin Ferriman and is one of the most robust platforms in the WordPress space.
Previously, the platform did not have an option to hosts various memberships for courses. The wait is over.
What that means is that if you are using LearnDash, currently, you can only sell individual courses. With this new feature, you can bundle courses to sell to users.
“Instead of selling access to individual courses, you now can create various groups that contain access to multiple courses (course bundles). When someone purchases access to the group then they get enrolled into all the courses associated with that group.”
Source: LearnDash
Courses are often made one at a time, so the ability to sell a bundle with a productized rate version selling each one course-by-course is a nice change.
So, if you are starting a learning academy, you can release your courses and bundle them up to sell.
If you are looking to use an LMS, LearnDash is worth the look.
The companies using LearnDash to run their academies are impressive.
What do you use for an LMS?
Wrapping it up
While we are independent workers, we are not alone. We need help. We need colleagues and friends to give us motivation and spur us on. We need resources like the Pro Toolbox, LearnDash, and WorldofWP.com to help us be more successful.
So, go ahead and celebrate your independence. But if you do, pause to remember those things you are grateful for having. Remember your friends and your colleagues who rally to support you.
Like Rae said in the Tweet, “Reaching the next level is an empty goal if you’re not appreciative of what you already have.”
Let us not forget to appreciate and be grateful.
