WordPress 5.0 Meetup Recap

Yesterday we held our big WordPress 5.0 meetup at Liip, which was probably our last one for this year. Besides some general announcements and a recap of recent happenings in the WordPress universe we also focused on search engine optimization.

As for the next meetup, we’ll try to organize another one in January, after the holidays. If you have any topic suggestions for the new year, please let us know.

Announcements

We kicked things off by looking at what has been going on in the last few months, as well as some announcements about new and exciting things. Some key takeaways:

• We now have a brand new website, which you’re reading this post on!
• The WordPress Zurich Meetup is now on Twitter: @wpzurich
• Everyone is encouraged to attend WordCamp Europe 2019 in Berlin
• Everyone is welcome to join our group and help organize meetups.

And now the biggest announcement of them all: plans are being discussed to organize a an official WordCamp Zurich at the end of 2019! If you want to learn more about it or help make it happen, please get in touch with us either via the comments, the contact form or on Slack.

SEO Tips

In our first talk of the evening, Michael shared some practical on-page SEO tips for website owners. On top of that he even gave away a book to one of the attendees, which was very well received from what I’ve heard 😀

For anyone who missed it, Michael has shared the slides on his website. There’s also another book recommendation in his post, so go check it out!

The new WordPress editor

WordPress 5.0, due out on November 19, comes with a new block-based editor (code name Gutenberg), which drastically changes the way we write content with WordPress. Naturally, this leads to lots of open questions and some uncertainty.

In a live demo / Q&A we tried to answer any questions people might have about this new development. Of course we used the new WP Zurich website as an example, because why not!

What you need to know:

• WordPress 5.0 is planned to be released on November 27, with January as a fallback.
• The new release features a new default theme called Twenty Nineteen, which you can see in action on this website right now.
• Your existing content is safe. You don’t have to worry about the new editor breaking your site or similar. Many themes don’t yet support all its features, but it’s just a matter of time.
• If you don’t want to use the new editor just yet, you can install the Classic Editor plugin. That plugin will be officially supported until December 31, 2021.
• Want to learn more about extending and working with Gutenberg? There’s an extensive handbook, with more content to come.
• Popular plugins like ACF, Yoast SEO and Elementor already work very well with the new editor. Some other plugins are still working on that.

Other

Jane Schindler mentioned that Stillhart Konzept are looking for a developer. If you’re interested, let them know!

In other news, a camera team from Radiotelevisiun Svizra Rumantscha (RTR) were at the meetup yesterday to interview a few people about more modern working methods like working remote. I’m very much looking forward to seeing that on TV.

Fun Fact: WordPress can be used in Rumantsch as well! If you speak the language and want to help translate the software, please let me know in the comments.