- We all know WordPress is one of the most powerful platforms on the internet today. Not only is it a free CMS platform that powers more than 28% of the sites on the internet today, it’s also completely free to use and allows full customization, without the need to ever touch a line of code.
In short, WordPress has completely changed the way websites, blogs, and businesses are created on the internet today.
With all of that in mind, we wanted to reach out to some of the biggest names in the industry and get their thoughts on how WordPress will continue to dominate the online landscape in 2018, and what changes or updates we should all be on the lookout for.
WordPress in 2019: Expert Tips and Feedback You Need to See
I’m not sure of anything new that WordPress will do in 2018. It will continue to popularize website maintenance and updates.
Any business worth its salt will still need to outsource design elements. And if they are smart, they’ll outsource their content creation, too. But more and more small businesses will realize that they don’t need a “webmaster” to update their calendar, add a photo to a gallery or even tweak their page content. They’ll need a programmer only when something goes wrong.
This isn’t something new, but I believe it is increasing and will continue to do so for several years.
David Leonhardt – THGMWriters.com
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WordPress is simply the foundation of your website or blog and you can utilize this powerful platform to bring traffic to your site by creating content that reflects your business goals. With visual builders and the plethora of themes available to customize, you can now create landing pages and marketing websites in record time.
Jacob Cass – JustCreative.com
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Ninja Blog Master – Blogninja.com
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WordPress core team is working on a brand new editor called Gutenberg which will make it even easier for new users to get started and publish their content. It will allow plugins to build deeper integrations with the editor and offer a more pleasant overall user experience.
Syed Balkhi – WPBeginner.com
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WordPress really changed the way I look at websites when I first used it way back in 2006. Back then it was “Blogging software”, if you wanted a blog – you got WordPress, it was simple. Not even a year after we started putting up “Blogs” for people – we realized “Oh, wait, this can actually be an entire website!”. For years after that, you heard WordPress Website, even today most websites are just WordPress sites. However recently, and into 2018 and beyond I believe more and more installs of WordPress are going to be more than just websites, they are essentially web apps. You have forums powered by WordPress, specialty sites with lots of custom coding powered by WordPress, why not apps? Why not mobile apps? Why not use WordPress as a framework to power almost anything – that is where we are headed with WordPress. I know I’m not the only one that has felt that my sites, and content, were formed around the capabilities that WordPress had in the past, and in the future I believe we will start to mold WordPress around those ideas (now that we have a grasp on the technology), and not the other way around.
Andy Sowards – AndySowards.com
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Ivan Dimitrov – pCloud.com
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The Gutenberg project is the biggest change coming in early 2018 to WordPress. Gutenberg is the name for the new WordPress editor and the changes are significant. Some of the biggest changes that I’m excited for i text pasted from Word will get reformatted instantly and be more compatible. I’m also looking forward to the focus on “writing first” and is trying to provide a less distracting environment. Gutenberg feels more modern than the existing editor and is more contextual. Simple tables are much easier to add to your content. Gutenberg is presently in BETA but you can expect it to become part of the native core of WordPress within a year. If you are launching a new website, it might be a good idea to install the beta now to ensure compatibility with the future.
Rick Ramos – HealthJoy.com
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Even more multimedia integration. As content moves more towards social media, and less from search engine traffic, multimedia tools such as cinemagraphs are becoming an extremely great way to utilize video and imagery with a mobile focus. Unlike a traditional photograph, a cinemagraph has the added factor of motion, whilst a video might take a long time to load on a mobile phone and may not be as easily integrated. Keeping in tune with the 2017 minimalist approach to web design, 2018 might turn into the year of the cinemagraph!
Cody McLain – SupportNinja.com
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I think WordPress in 2018 will be dominated by one thing: Gutenberg. The new WordPress editor is due to drop in the first quarter of 2018, and it has gone through an extremely quick development cycle, it’s ready to go fairly soon. It’s designed to be something similar to how Wix and Squarespace handle content, and could see the end eventually of things like the customiser and widgets as WordPress moves to a content block layout.
Right now, it’s available to be played with in public beta, so I would recommend everybody to install it and try and break it. It’s coming, and there will be bugs or things that won’t work well. If you can look into it at this stage you may be able to get your changes implemented before release. This is a vital time for the future of WordPress, I strongly recommend you jump on board.
Rhys Wynne – Winwar Media
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WordPress is just an amazing platform. I am thankful that we can have an open source tool such as WordPress that allows everyone to create their own site online and spread the word to anyone in the whole world. The best way WordPress can continue to help people achieve their goals in 2018 is not by revolutionizing everything about itself but just to continue being focused on what makes it great. And that’s being the easy way to let people publish content online.
Marko Saric – HowToMakeMyBlog.com
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Joe Daley – Logomyway.com
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Be yourself through live broadcasts. Being yourself resonates strongest with like-minded viewers. This is the most powerful form of targeting because authenticity attracts like-minded viewers who appreciate your delivery. Live video is the wave of the present and the future. In a microwave culture where everybody wants their stuff yesterday, live broadcasts offer a glimpse into the now. Live videos on Facebook, Periscope, and YouTube also make viewers feel like they are part of the production, giving them a voice as they interact with producers in real time. Whether now or in 2018, authentic video producers using live broadcasts to spread the word will always resonate with individuals who appreciate their genuine nature.
Ryan Biddulph – BloggingFromParadise.com
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Itai Elizur – InboundJunction.com
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Corey Hammond – A2Hosting.com
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WordPress has become the “gold standard” of website platforms in 2017, and the trend only looks to continue in the coming years.
Many self-heralded experts declare, “If you create good content, people will find it,” and millions of WordPress blogs hit the internet every day as a result.
The problem is that if everyone is creating good content, what will Google use to differentiate the good from the truly great content pieces?
The answer to this question is why WordPress users will evolve their content creation to a more “Quality over Quantity” content model in 2018 and beyond.
If you want to get ahead of the curve, create one great piece of content and market it online! Get backlinks and shares with your piece of content, and it will outrank your competition.
WordPress users are generally naive to this truth today, but as time goes on, you’re going to hear “quality beats quantity when it comes to producing content.”
Just remember that you heard it here first!
Andrew Lowen – NextLevelWeb.com
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I personally started using WordPress back in 2007, and it’s completely changed the way I create websites and content on the internet today. After seeing firsthand how powerful it can actually be, it’s easy for me to preach and build online businesses and services around the same focus.
Zac Johnson – ZacJohnson.com
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WordPress now powers more than a 1/3rd of the Internet. For most people, that’s just a piece of trivia. But powering 1/3rd of the Internet means that WordPress is now so big that it shapes not only the way WordPress sites are created – but also how the other 70% of the Internet is created. In any market, if a product achieves a certain level of adoption, then it can use its strength to shape other competitors. Look at the iPhone for an example. In 2018 and beyond, anything that WordPress adopts or does not adopt will define decisions for users of other products. If WordPress makes AMP standard, then other products will either have to adopt AMP – or they will have to defend their reason to not adopt AMP. Same with editor UIs, site networks, security approaches, etc – site and content creators will have to choose features that are either “just like WordPress” or are “not like WordPress because [X]”. Site and content creators will need to carefully define what their actual needs & goals are – rather than choosing off a menu that is defined by WordPress.
Nathan Shivar – ShivarWeb.com
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WordPress has been one of the most preferred website development frameworks so far. It provides an unimaginable flexibility to the designers as well as the users too. Anyone with minimal technical knowledge can actually operate WordPress sites with enhanced ease for the flexibility that it offers.
The innumerable plugins and the astonishing themes that are part of WordPress is something that makes it the designer’s favorite. In fact, the truth is that there is no limiting WordPress with more and more people preferring it to build their E-commerce websites too.
In the year 2018, we can expect WordPress to provide further flexibility to development agencies and developers alike, with the interactive templates that they can embed with their WordPress platforms, which will further enable the clients to make or deploy changes without affecting the other parts of the design. Very soon, users will be able to build the sites that they have always dreamt of.
Vipin Nayar – Acodez
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For me, the biggest trend I see in WordPress as the moment is in drag and drop page builders. They are not only enabling people to create stunning looking websites but also empowering people with little to no web design skills.
Of course, where there is great power there is also responsibility and we need to make sure people are educated enough to produce the awesome website they had imagined :> Tools are only a means to an end. But the possibilities are now endless, and fast!
To try to help people with such tools as Thrive Architect, one of the better page builders around, I have been producing a lot of content on my youtube channel you can pop over and check out Madlemmings on Youtube.
Ashley Faulkes – Madlemmings.com
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WordPress is the most popular CMS and as such, the majority of content marketers are familiar with how to navigate its tools and functions. This makes it fast and easy for content teams to get up and running quickly so they can spend more time focusing on tactics and less on figuring out the tools.
William Harris – Elumynt
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If you are reading this and don’t already know WordPress is, in fact, the defacto CMS (Content Management System) in the world and continues to become more widely used by the day. With every new update of WordPress, the CMS becomes more user-friendly. With the upcoming Gutenberg release on the horizon, the WordPress editor is undergoing a major overhaul.
Apart from the constant updates being made to the core WordPress system, third-party plugin developers continue to create amazing add-ons and enhancements which make building a website with WordPress a possibility for even the most technologically impaired amongst us. I’m now referring specifically to “Visual WordPress Editors” like Thrive Architect, Divi, Elementor, and the like.
Before about five or six years ago you really needed to employ a designer and developer if you wanted to have a professional looking and functioning website. Today with the advent of visual editors anyone and I really mean just about everyone can with a little practice create top of the line beautiful websites with advanced dynamic functionality.
I think the days of needing to hire a team of people to create advanced websites is coming to an end. Short of enterprise level sites just about anyone will be able to build a professional website on their own. I think the effects of this are being seen most profoundly within alternative news/journalism sites and with the combination of social media and blogs we sharing world events with millions of people almost instantaneously. I don’t think we truly understand the impact this is having on the power structures in the world but I think it’s accelerating a major shift in our evolution as a global society.
Mike Brown – The Blogging Buddha
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WordPress is making the process of connecting with sites owners, bloggers and online businesses a whole lot easier. Something that we are continuing to see is the developement of new services and businesses powered through WordPress plugins. Once a business has created such a plugin to power their business, they pretty much open the doors for being able to work with anyone. For site owners, this is also extremely easy, as they all know how simple it is to install a WordPress plugin and add in any specific account details or command codes. Expect to see more businesses adopting WordPress plugins into their business in 2018.
Tim Bourquin – Afteroffers.com
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I think the way WordPress could change is they could bring Google AMP into the core function this could impact the functionality of sites. That being said, I think it might be an add-on option.
It would also be good to see WordPress push more video content and potentially integrate platforms such as Canva into the core offering. This could be valuable for users who are looking for images for content quickly and or looking to create basic infographics for posts.
James Norquay – Prosperity Media
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WordPress is the number one platform for building websites for a reason it is built for change. With thousands of plugins and themes, WordPress is incredibly flexible and adapts to new players in the web development space. For example, Shopify’s popularity didn’t cause a mass exodus from WordPress because there
was a plugin that allowed people to maintain their WordPress sites and gain the functionality of Shopify. In the WordPress world we will say, “there is a plugin for that”.
Another advantage of WordPress has been its portability. Moving from one server to another or doing a complete redesign can be disastrous in other platforms whereas in WordPress it can be as simple as doing an export and import or updating the theme. It is for these reasons that WordPress is the industry leader and will remain so for far into the future, 2018 and beyond.
Allan Pollett – AllanPollett.com
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Brandon Johnston – BlogReign.com
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WordPress is wonderful because it offers everything that both a beginner and experienced webmaster could ask for – usability, security, features,
design, and so on. Even features that aren’t native to WordPress can be added through plugins, so it’s clear why more and more websites are utilizing all of the functionality that it offers.
One of the greatest things I’m excited about is the fact that WordPress is becoming even easier to set up and get going with – many web hosts these days even have WordPress installations that can be done in only a few clicks. This means that anybody can now get their site up and
running right away, without needing any technical, programming, or design knowledge.
I believe there are a lot of people out there with wonderful ideas, but hold those ideas back because they feel unable to create a platform
(such as a blog) to share everything on.
Just like the first true personal computers made computing available to the masses, WordPress is doing the same sort of thing for webmasters.
James McAllister – Starlight-Baby.com
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WordPress is constantly making changes and improvements to their platform. My prediction for the future is that they will strive to create plugins that are all-in-one (that can perform many functions), which will make websites more lightweight.
With the rise of video-making and video usage by consumers, this will incorporate changes to how media is handled by WordPress.
I also predict that more sites are going to be created with WordPress because of its ease of use. It’s not difficult to learn how to blog on WordPress, it’s easy to create a blog post, and it’s simple to know if a post is good and meets SEO standards (especially if you use the Yoast SEO plugin!).
All of my sites are created using WordPress, and I have to say that I love this platform very much!
What’s great is that WordPress also offers a free platform to bloggers who are just starting out and are unsure if they want to invest the money and the time into having their own hosted website.
Lorraine Reguly – WordingWell.com
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I think we’ll see more Artificial Intelligence or machine learning moving into the content creation space in 2018. It’s been poised to really jump off in the last year or so. That doesn’t mean I think that machines will be writing all content by the end of the year. But I do think that we’ll see a lot more AI based tools, designs, and plugins out there that can help people with specific tasks. That might mean making content more SEO friendly in a way that also keeps it reader friendly. And we can see more plugins or tools devoted to things like easily creating user generated content, better organizing content, and tracking the content that users respond to. There’s of potential out there for this stuff and I know there are already plugins gaining traction now. I expect that we’ll see a lot more of these in 2018 that everyone will be talking about.
Sean Ogle – LocationRebel.com
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When it comes to creating a website, there are many guides and tutorials to get it up and running. But creating content for that website, and your social media and other marketing campaigns is an entirely different beast.
Of the more than 40,000 different plugins for WordPress, there are a few that standout as clear winners for the content creation process in 2018 and beyond:
- CoSchedule – This comprehensive editorial calendar allows you to not only plan and organize your WordPress and social media content, it also allows you to post, schedule, track, and analyze your content.
- WP Keyword Suggest – SEO is a key component of any content marketing strategy, and this plugin makes keyword research a lot easier. It suggests up to 250 keywords ideas based on data from the major search engines.
- Easy Content Templates – Once you have planned your content, and researched keywords, all that’s left to do is create and publish, right? But if you ever find yourself in need of a little extra help, these content templates can make your writing process a lot faster and easier.
Shane Barker – ShaneBarker.com
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The real benefit here is when you start to use the power of WordPress SEO for not just creating content for your site, but also relevant articles and focus points that can help rank your products and sales pages as well. I think this is one area that will continue to grow and gain interest in 2018.
Kristel Staci – MarketingInfographics.org
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WordPress is easy to use and I’ve been using it since I started blogging. Yes, self-hosted WordPress platform costs you some money (from buying domain to hosting it on other hosting services) but it’s worth every penny.
The best part about using WordPress is that, you can get access to a ton of plugins that can range from content to selling products to SEO. That’s what the fun is all about. Even if you’re a beginner, you’ll find it easy to create content in a better way, thanks to WordPress!
Anil Agarwal – BloggersPassion.com
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WordPress is exactly what we used to build our website and it continues to be one of the easiest platforms to develop your “store front” for businesses across the globe. They are already working in this direction but the more automation and tools that businesses need are made available and easy to implement, the better businesses can grow whether via content SEO and conversion optimization, cleaning up the backend code that tends to get messy over the lifetime of a business and website as many different people are involved as a company restructures and grows. I think WordPress will get better with getting the best content shared easily while also enabling seamless integration with payment gateways, especially in light of cryptocurrencies as a hot emerging form of digital currency and payment methods.
Andrea Loubier – GetMailBird.com
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There will be a lot more room for personalization. Social media integration and sharing plugins will become huge. I do also think that many video embedding and sharing plugins for WordPress will become much more popular soon. WordPress might also be seeing more and more plugins which analyze content and rates it on its cohesiveness and readability.
Rafi Chowdhury – Chowdhurysdigital.com
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I love WordPress. Great question. The cool thing about WordPress is that its Post / Page system acts as a great offline publishing system in and of itself. Meaning, you can take your good old time drafting 1, 2, 10, or 100 posts across multiple users at your leisure. Since its all technically “cloud” based (hosted on your domain actually) you can draft your content, text, images etc switch devices and pick up where you left off. Really, there is no need to even use word-processing software etc just use WP!
Second, WP as a framework is getting more and more capable. WP itself is fast and efficient, its the themes and plugins that make it slow. Projects like “AMP” is enabling WP to position itself to be a leader in the community. As an agency owner I’ll continue to look to WordPress and the community for sites we build for clients and for ourselves. One of my favorite features of WordPress has nothing to do with the framework itself, its the community. I know if something is broke, there are 100’s or 1000’s of other people out there that went through the same thing and can weigh in on multiple different solutions. Thanks for reading everyone! Hit me up on Twitter @pmkoom if you want to connect!
Patrick Coombe – Elite-strategies.com
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The obvious answer here is that it will get easier. If we look at tools like WIX that have an artificial intelligence site builder we can already get an idea of what the future looks like. My take is that for many smaller businesses the more technical elements of website design will go away to some degree. It will just get easier and easier to create sites using tools like the cloud based WordPress.com. Elements like technical SEO will to a large degree be taken care of without much thinking on the part of the webmaster. And, we will see the focus being more on traditional marketing of the business rather than the technical elements of web design and digital marketing. So in a nutshell, they will make it easier for smaller businesses who need a customisable off-the-shelf solution.
Marcus Miller – Bowlerhat.co.uk
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Aside from the continual development Automatic are making to WordPress, some of the best developments for content creators come from third parties, developing for WordPress’s open source platform. Here are two:
Drag and drop themes – A growing number of ‘drag and drop’ theme builders will make blog customisation simpler and put control into the hands of content creators.
Plugins – Development of plugins like Wordable.io will continue to allow creators to write in the applications they love (example Google Docs) and easily push their content to WordPress.
James Reynolds – SEOSherpa.com
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Google and Facebook control the distribution of traffic, whether we like it or not. While you may “own” your website, you are still dependent upon the algorithms to drive traffic to your site, whether you pay or rank for it. That said, both networks have said that site speed is critical to showing up in the search results or feed. And that means in 2018, we have to adopt Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) and Facebook Instant Articles.
For those that don’t know, this is native caching, where Google or Facebook are pre-caching your website content, so it can load instantly when users click on your stuff in the SERPS or feed. Many foolishly argue we’re losing “control” of our websites by handing our content to Google and Facebook. In fact, the opposite is true. They’re still referencing your website url as the canonical (the source of record) and you get to keep your tracking tags.
I used to run analytics at Yahoo!, so we can go on and on about what people misunderstand about search engine operations. Guess what, when they present the user with the search results page, it’s cached results from the last time they crawled that url on your site, anyway. So you might as well do whatever you can to play by their rules, make it easy for your content to be discovered/loaded, and give the user a fast experience.
Dennis Yu – BlitzMetrics.com
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Content is being democratised. Tools like Canva let us create great images, YouTube lets us publish our video all for free and WordPress is helping everyone to create content on par with professional publications. If you’ve got the talent and the ideas the tools don’t really matter anymore.
I can see WordPress making our lives a lot easier over the next 12 months. Even going back a year ago I found people still hitting pain points with the editor and media gallery but a lot of these problems have been addressed and its easier than ever to create great content.
Jon Tromans – Jtid.co.uk
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If you haven’t heard WordPress is preparing to release a new post building experience called Gutenberg. The new Gutenberg editor will allow you to drag and drop blocks and create a post with images, block quotes, tweets, galleries, etc with ease and require no technical knowledge.
This is just the first step of what will eventually be a complete page builder for WordPress. Soon you will be able to build pages and posts in WordPress similar to how you would build a website with Wix and SquareSpace.
The new Gutenberg project would make it super easy to create a new website in WordPress which is kinda of difficult for someone with no WordPress experience at the moment. It will also, in my opinion, far exceed the current website building experiences in the previously mentioned services.
If you are looking for the best page builder for WordPress right now, I suggest Beaver Builder. There is currently a huge community for this 3rd party page builder and lots of “blocks” you can use to build pages. But the future of WordPress is Gutenberg.
John Turner – SeedProd.com
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I’ve been on WordPress for more than a decade, so I believe in 2018, we’ll see continuations of the same trends that have been driving the platform for years. I expect we’ll see new and better plugins that facilitate all aspects of content marketing, along with integrations between other apps and services to make the system as seamless as possible for webmasters.
Some of that will happen through third-party WordPress developers; other changes will come through new integrations built into tools like Zapier, IFTTT and Autopilot. I don’t think we’re that far off from a future where managing content marketing and other digital campaigns will happen within a single dashboard, rather than requiring marketers to track siloed data across multiple tools.
Aaron Agius – Louder.Online
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With a great community of expert developers behind the project, I am sure that WordPress will continue to change and evolve to face the new challenges that the near future is bringing very soon now.
Google is betting heavily on Artificial Intelligence, Semantic Web and Mobile and Voice Search which will definitely change the search engine landscape in 2018 and how people consume content every day.
This is where the guys behind WordPress will make it easier for us bloggers and website owners to adapt to these upcoming changes and keep creating quality content that meets the requirements of future technological advances and our users’ and visitors’ (increasingly demanding) expectations.
Mike Martyns – SoccerGearHQ.com
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Video will continue to trend in 2018 and beyond.
This is for many reasons:
- People no longer have to be in their own videos. The self-conscious and tongue-tied can enter the Video Age (which we are now in) without concern.
- Google likes a variety of media on blog posts. Video adds to the variety. Posts don’t just consist of text when a video is included.
- Including a video helps our bounce rates. The longer the video, the longer people stay on the blog.
- Videos help the visual learners understand information that no longer consists of just text.
- Video helps marketers. People trust people they can see and are more likely to buy from the people who do include themselves in their videos. There are other videos where you can just include an audio (again, for the self-conscious types).
What does all this have to do with WordPress?
WordPress has the capacity to include media. Click “Add Media.” Click “Insert from URL” and paste the link to your video.
Janice Wald – MostlyBlogging.com
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One of the primary advantages of using WordPress is the vast developer community that supports the CMS with a constant stream of new plugins and templates, which makes it so easy to customize and streamline and improve your WordPress-run site, particularly from an SEO content marketing perspective. I’m a big fan of the old standbys like Yoast and WP Rocket, and each time Google dials up the importance of ranking signal, like mobile responsiveness and page speed for instance, someone creates a new plugin to help make your content SEO friendly. So it’s that active development that really continues to help WordPress and the content published on WordPress platforms evolve and keep pace with Google’s ever-changing algorithms and best practices.
Ken Lyons – Measured SEM
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The WordPress team and community is working on a huge update for version 5 of WordPress, introducing a completely overhauled editor for posts and pages. It is supposed to simplify creating great-looking blog articles, without touching any code or working with complicated shortcodes.
I also see page builders like Beaver Builder or Thrive Architect evolve drastically. They make building landing pages, blog layouts, and any other layout quite straightforward – especially for people with no coding experience. While developers usually prefer to not work with page builders, they’re a great option for the majority of WordPress users.
Next year, we will see a lot more engagement in the WordPress community towards making WordPress more accessible to people. The community and companies are aware of the need to enhance the usability of their WordPress themes and plugins – and thus using WordPress will become easier than ever.
I hope that besides content creation, security will also become more of a focus for WordPress users. Since it is so widely used, it’s a very attractive target for automated scripts. Having an outdated version of WordPress, a theme, or a plugin is a security risk that – from my experience – gets ignored all too often.
Having automated updates and backups is essential for most sites that are not heavily customized, and luckily WordPress also has an indicator to measure password strength for user accounts. If WordPress users can get the fundamentals right and keep their site up-to-date, they’ll have a powerful and expandable platform for their content.
Jan Koch – WP Mastery
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It’s hard to see why WordPress would change standards much anymore. There are so many WP users that it seems much more likely that it’s some new CMS-system or another website platform that makes the industry take the next steps.
WordPress will still be a comparison point for any new system. So, if WP gets faster, other systems need to follow. If it offers some new feature, others will follow. But those changes will almost certainly be small, incremental steps. Any massive changes are much more likely to come from smaller players—not the behemoth of the industry.
Peter Sandeen – PeterSandeen.com
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In the coming years, WordPress will continue its dominance as the preferred CMS on the internet, thanks to ongoing focus on quality content creation.
It’s clear that WordPress is looking to make it easier to create high-quality content, with better writing tools, image tools, and multi-media capabilities to keep up with the visual-heavy consumption of modern web users.
Search engines have given us tools to allow them to better understand our content, and WordPress will place items like schema and other structured markups into the platform. This will allow Google and others to better serve up our content when it’s relevant to searchers.
Low quality doesn’t cut it anymore. If you want to be seen on the web, it has to be awesome and visually appealing. With each new release, WordPress makes it easier to create the great content people want to consume. The future looks great for those of us on the WordPress platform.
Ben Brausen – BenBrausen.com
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WordPress is still king when it comes to web development. With video and virtual reality becoming more and more popular, moving forward, I expect to see WordPress continue to add new themes and plugins that make it easy for businesses and brands to include these features in their websites. Already there are WordPress themes like Balzac and Inspiro that feature fully responsive video headers, which are great for showcasing video portfolios. There are also plugins like 360-degree Panoramic Viewer that allow you to present artwork and products with full 360-degree responsiveness for that virtual reality experience.
Today’s consumers are tech-savvy and expect more interactivity from their online experiences. At the same time, it is becoming more and more difficult to make your content stand out from the crowd. Video and VR are great ways to make your business website pop, and WordPress will continue to be at the forefront of this growing trend.
Brett Langlois – PureSEO.co.nz
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Year after year, WordPress sites are being enhanced according to page load speed, ease of use, design, mobile responsiveness, and functionality. Parallel to this, the standard for better websites is also raising its bar.
WordPress has been one of the easiest platform/CMS to learn by budding web designers and developers. This opens to a lot of doors for starters to develop unique, beautiful and more user-friendly websites and present content in a creative way through their custom web pages. I personally think this is where we are heading.
Fervil Von Tripoli – FervilVon.com
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I’m not a coder or developer so I can only talk about WordPress from a niche website publisher’s perspective. No doubt WordPress will continue to be the most popular CMS and website platform. However, I believe that more and more website publishers will look into and use alternative platforms for specific website features. I started doing this in 2016. I now use 4 cloud-based platforms that provide their own interface and provide very specific functionality on some of my sites. Examples include:
- Survey and polling software
- Question and Answer software
- Business directory software
- Landing page software
While I can use WordPress plugins to do all of the above, and I did test many plugins to achieve the various features, I found subscribing to third-party cloud platforms to be much easier and provides a better result. Plugins are great, but they are often not as good as dedicated third-party platforms that specialize in specific functionality. Were WordPress is so great is that all of the above integrates into my WordPress websites so I get the best of both worlds.
Jon Dykstra – FatStacksBlog.com
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With the launch of AMP Pages and Google continuous push towards adopting a mobile-first strategy, it would come as no surprise that in 2018 WordPress would likely focus more on developing themes and plugins that meet this criteria.
User experience is of utmost importance and as such, WordPress would also continue towards improving its performance ensuring that websites that are powered by WordPress enjoy superior speed and loading time.
Plus, as far as Content is concerned, with the rise of video marketing and virtual reality, WordPress will move on to providing easy-to-use plugins that will help website owners integrate videos and other animated elements seamlessly into their existing WordPress framework.
Nirav Dave – Capsicum Mediaworks
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I expect WordPress to continue its trailblazing lead in the way we create, publish and distribute contents in 2018. I expect to see close integration of the WordPress platform with video platform and technology, given that video is one of the most popular form of contents these days. WordPress developers are remarkable at responding to, and adapt to changing users demand. I think they will continue to lead in this area in 2018 and beyond.
Only recently I discovered Divi template and now most of my WordPress site are powered by this theme, for example Violins.info. As you may see the design is quite modern and what is the main important it is very easy to create different versions for desktop and mobile instead of using manual coding.
As you may see WP leads with a large margin. I want to see deeper integration with the most powerful other tools like email marketing, form builders etc.
Evgeniy Garkaviy – HopeSpring.org.uk
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I think that WordPress will continue to power the majority of websites across the world and make starting WordPress blog even easier than ever. I see developers continuing to seek to improve the user experience, build on new and advanced design concepts, and yet continue to serve a very basic need, which is giving people a solid, secure, and easy to use platform for sharing ideas and building businesses.
I also believe that new features will continue to be added in the form of themes and plugins. Specifically, I see more access to multi-lingual website building and improved services and tools for aiding website owners with membership and eCommerce websites. Plus, I think that on a development level there will be an easier separation between the front and backends of websites for a more seamless site creation process, as well as new features being added to the native WordPress editor for a new improved content creation experience.
Lindsay Liedke – WPKube.com
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WordPress. WordPress is love. It is already shaping lives of hundred thousand of people around the world. Being a developer and marketer myself, WordPress is everything to me.
WordPress has already covered an extra mile in providing the best tools to developers and content marketers. Anyone can easily start their business online using WordPress. It reminds me about my first website back in 2007 when installing WordPress alone was a big task but now everything is changed. You can easily install WordPress and run your business with less than 10 plugins and within 10 minutes.
WordPress is no more just a CMS – it is turned into a beast that can do anything. People are using WordPress in more creative ways than ever.
Hamza Sheikh – TheDigitalNerds.com
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WordPress is probably the simplest way to publish content and make a good looking website, and I don’t think that will change anytime soon. I do think there needs to be more oversight when it comes to plugins and security, possibly a better review process for the plugin directory. I do think overall links from comments and pingbacks won’t be worth anything, since they’re largely spam.
Harris Schachter – OptimizePri.me
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WordPress has progressed to allow the end user to easily create and maintain their own site. With the plan of Gutenberg to be implemented into WordPress, this will make content creation a lot easier.
Additionally, plugin and theme developers have made it a lot easier to build websites. For example, plugins like Beaver Builder, and themes like Divi, have allowed basic WordPress users to build themes around their content. People can live edit and live design their website!
I’ve been using WordPress since it began, and it has come really far. I remember when you could only have posts, and the trend, back then, was to build php “skin” or theme, and put the blog area in an iframe. Of course, that’s ancient stuff, and technology has made it possible for WordPress websites to be responsive to most device widths, and even addresses accessibility. All of these things are just going to improve in the future.
Nile Flores – Blondish.net
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WordPress is eventually growing and with the Gutenberg update in beta content creation will include a fun ride it seems. The update will add a WYSIWYG editor which can make formatting better while giving you a preview of how that looks on the frontend, right when you are creating the content.
While this will be no match for the already popular visual builders like thrive architect, they still will give a bare minimum of the same experience to millions of users who wouldn’t want a visual builder yet.
Swadhin Agrawal – DigitalGYD.com
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WordPress is like the god-father is websites these days. A vast majority of websites are built on WordPress, whether it’s personal blogs or major magazine. 100% of my websites are built it with too. Do a simple search, and you’ll find over 20% of website on the internet is built on WordPress.
I don’t think there will be many changes in 2018, I would say it’s safe to say it will increase further. Expect more companies to build their site with it and expect more e-commerce store to build their store with it as well. It’s just too easy and most importantly affordable! No longer will companies need to pay so much and wait several weeks for their website to be completed. Today it takes less than 5 minutes for a basic site to be up and a week for a decent site to be up.
You can, however, expect more themes and plugins to take your WordPress website even further. That’s guaranteed.
Aaron Lee – Short of Height
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Considering that WordPress powers something like 20% of the top websites and owns about 50% of the CMS market share, WP is clearly here to stay. A few years back, they changed their WordPress.com backend with a brand new UI and introduction of REST API.
With all the built-in core WordPress features, such as image manipulation and user registration, the REST API becomes very powerful. New sites can now be created using other frameworks, such as Vue or React and hook into the API to create dynamic and asynchronous content. PHP is no longer required to run a site with a WP backend.
As for content, I know WordPress looking to roll out the Gutenberg Editor, which will change the way content is created and edited. It will introduce more power features to manipulate blocks of content. It will be exciting to see the updates to WordPress in 2018 and beyond!
Dario Zadro – ZadroWeb.com
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Web design tools, such as WordPress, have given people equal opportunity to share their thoughts, advice, and promotions with the world. Entrepreneurs aren’t forced to spend a fortune on ads to spread their message anymore; the DIY-nature of WordPress makes it accessible to anyone, and the SEO-friendly features make it possible to rank your site in search engines even if you aren’t an SEO whiz.
Because of this increasingly equal footing, more and more individuals will be able to leave the traditional 9-5 workplace, start their own venture, and scale their business. And with these new businesses comes more opportunity for collaboration. Guest blogging, interviews, expert roundups, and other collaborative content will become more popular in 2018 and beyond, allowing entrepreneurs to help each other grow and produce higher quality content for their audiences – a win-win.
Mandy McEwen – Mod Girl Marketing
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Ever since the start of WordPress, the way webmasters handled their site’s content was revolutionized for the better through this Content Management System platform for websites. Although WordPress started out as a blogging platform, it has become the world’s leading CMS.
Some of the reasons why WordPress became the leading CMS for webmasters are:
- It’s Free
- It’s Easy to Use
- It’s Versatile because of it’s theme and plugin offerings
- It’s Search Engine Friendly
- It’s Safe and Secure
I can see WordPress steadily developing in the years to come through the number of volunteers that make it a point to manage, fix, and develop the already outstanding performance WordPress offers to its users. So, when 2018 comes, WordPress will be bigger than it is now. With the steady releases of themes and plugins, there’s no stopping the CMS giant that is WordPress.
Additionally, with the points I just mentioned, I can also see WordPress increasing the number of its massive user index. It is true that their user index is already massive today, but who’s to say that it won’t become bigger in the following year? We can immediately think about how so many influential websites, people, and brands use WordPress as their primary CMS. So, it’s actually only a matter of time before other webmasters, bloggers, and brands switch to WordPress as their CMS. Don’t you agree?
Sean Si – SEO Hacker
How to Get the Most Use Out of WordPress
Now that you’ve had the opportunity to read through some of the best ways to start building an online brand or business with WordPress, it’s time for you to start implementing these methods as well. As great as WordPress is, it can still be quite a time-consuming process. With all of the different WordPress plugins and themes options available, it can be tough to decide on which is best for your site and audience. At the same time, if you are trying to create something custom, you will likely need to start playing around with custom graphics and coding on your site.
If this sounds like something you would like to accomplish, but don’t want to mess around with on your own, we are here for you! Discover the many hidden treasures and benefits that WordPress has to offer, simply by contacting Web Design Team today! We can analyze your existing business model and online presence, while also letting you know how we can help improve your reach and engagement with your audience in the process.