109 – What changed in 2018 and what is coming in 2019

In this episode:

Discussion – What changed in 2018 and what is coming in 2019

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Happy New Year 2019!

In this episode of the WP Builds WordPress podcast we take a bit of a look back at some of the things that we thought we important in 2018. Now I don’t mean to imply that David and myself have any special insight here, it’s just what occurred to us as important for 2018 and the way that we use WordPress.

Some of this might not seem all that important to you, and undoubtedly we’ve missed a whole bunch of stuff out, but hey, you never came here for expertise did you!

Broadly speaking the conversation is broken down into 6 main areas:

1. Gutenberg – what has the new WordPress editor done for you? Did you adopt it or stayed away from it completely? Whatever the case, you were not allowed to ignore it and you had do make a decision. It’s been the biggest WordPress news item this year and into 2019 I think that it’s going to uncover some, as yet, unknown possibilities.
2. Page Builder acceptance and higher expectations – we both think that a few years back there was a great deal of snobbery about the use of a Page Builder to build your WordPress websites. In 2018, that all seemed to change. They’ve become so widely accepted and are so amazingly powerful that dissent has been all but removed. What do they have in store for 2019? Who knows, but if it’s as good as this year, then I’m really looking forward to it!
3. The rise of WaaS – this is perhaps a product of the small communities that David and I hang out in, but it feels to us like WaaS (website as a service) became a bit of a thing this year. This is where you use WordPress (et al.) to create a business in which the creation of new sites can be automated and clients don’t necessarily need to get in touch with you to set them up. Think Squarespace and Wix. Plugins like WP Ultimo have made this easier than ever and we certainly know of a few people who appear to be making a good living from it.
4. GDPR and other legislation – this was such a huge thing at the start of 2018. Everyone (us included) were running around, worrying about what all the GDPR legislation would do to our WordPress businesses. Were we all going to be taken to court because we had a form that processed some data that we did not specifically explain to the users? Mmm… Not quite. The whole thing now feels like it never even happened. Perhaps in the coming year we will see the courts bring some of the internet giants to their knees, but something makes me doubt that. Nothing to see here… move along please!
5. Changes in hosting – this debate will never end will it? What’s the best hosting company for my WordPress website? This year there has been a lot of discussion about managed cloud hosting and the way that you can easily spin up a new website in a matter of minutes for very little cost. New players have entered the game, and 2019 might be their year.
6. Social media disenfranchisement – if you’re like me, some of the news revelations about what has been done with our data have got us thinking. Have they got too much data? Are they suitable custodians of that data? Am I spending too much of my life giving these companies my data, when I got a million other things that I ought to be getting on with? This is all knew, but it felt like 2018 was the year that many people realised that this had all gone too far and a correction was needed.

This was a fun and different episode. I hope that there is something that you can take from this!