full site editing

About a year ago, Vikas Singhal launched InstaWP, a serverless platform for spinning up WordPress sites instantly for demos and sandboxes, development and testing, or training and education. Along with WordPress, any combination of plugins and themes can be included. There’s GitHub integration, and InstaWP has the ability to push sites to a large number of hosts or pull them to a local development environment. (InstaWP generates Blueprints — .zip packages for WP Engine’s Local app.)

InstaWP is being embraced by WordPress product developers and agencies. It has significant product testing and marketing applications since customers can spin up any number of demo sites based on a custom template, and this activity is logged. Vikas has picked up seed funding from Automattic and looks forward to announcing many new partnerships with WordPress businesses that have found InstaWP and valuable and complementary tool.

Vikas sees InstaWP’s future as a marketplace for agencies, developers, and freelancers. Because of its powerful site templating and cloning capabilities, it could ultimately become a way to generate bespoke WordPress-based SaaS platforms at scale.

🙏 Sponsor: StellarWP

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🔗 Mentioned in the show:

• InstaWP – Instant WordPress Sites for Everyone

🐦 You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:

• Vikas Singhal (Founder, InstaWP)
• Dan Knauss (Editor, Post Status)
• Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status Draft podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis. 📝

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS. 🎧

Show Notes

• Anne McCarthy
• How to Test Full SIte Editing
• Museum of Block Art

Key Takeaways

• Anne started out as a Happiness Engineer at Automattic, which gives her a unique look at problems users were having and how people were using WordPress.
• At the root level, web development has gotten harder. There’s a bigger learning curve to getting started. BUT theme development, and creating without code, has gotten a lot easier as a result. 
• Part of Anne’s approach to testing Full Site Editing is thinking of “all the people I can’t see” and how it’s going to affect them. This keeps her grounded and driven to make sure the software is as good as possible before it gets merged into Core.
• Keeping an open mind definitely helps with this. Don’t get too attached to the work, and don’t take criticism personally. 
• As for testing with a wider audience, people in the WordPress space are going out into their communities and doing group testing. This gets people who may not be checking the WordPress Slack (and might not even know it exists!)
• Engaging and listening to users is SO important. “We need to listen to the core audience, the biggest supporters if we want the edge users to believe we’re listening,” says Anne. In other words: why would lesser-known users want to help when they think the biggest voices in the space are being ignored?
• As for how you can test better: work with Designers. They think about users and interactions different and can provide a different perspective. 
• Break things into smaller chunks, and as you see patterns, document them!
• Having several ways to test at varying degrees helps. 
• When it comes to getting feedback, have a structure to get good feedback, but don’t create too much friction. Having a way to get “bad” feedback makes way for a fruitful conversation. 
• You want people to feel heard, but guiding them towards the right channels is something you should actively pursue. 

$635.5 billion by the end of 2021?

In this episode of Post Status Excerpt, Cory Miller and David Bisset briefly touch on two more acquisitions this week — one involving Extendify and another by Automattic. Cory and David review some highlights from WP Engine's recent report on the WordPress economy. WP Engine estimates the WordPress market generated more than half a trillion dollars (USD) in 2020. They expect the market to grow to $635.5 billion by the end of 2021.

Also covered in this episode: A discussion of people who gave up on Gutenberg in its early phases release and how they might be convinced to give it another shot now. This topic came up thanks to an article written by Chris Lema and the conversation it provoked in Post Status Slack.

Every week Post Status Excerpt will brief you on important WordPress news — in about 15 minutes or less! Learn what's new in WordPress in a flash. ⚡

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS. 🎧

🔗 Mentioned in the show:

• David Bisset (Twitter)
• Cory Miller (Twitter)
• Post Status (Twitter)
• WP Engine: WordPress Economy Drives More Than Half a Trillion in Revenue, New Global Study Shows
• Chris Lema: Embracing Gutenberg Completely
• Eric Karovack comments in Post Status Slack.

🙏 Sponsor: Yoast SEO

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In this episode of Post Status Excerpt, David Bisset and Cory Miller talk about two acquisitions. One involves iThemes, and the other involves GravityView. Cory mentions his recent interview with Michelle Frechette about UnderrepresentedInTech.com, while David notes some news from Post Status Slack that might have missed broader notice.

Also covered: Cory wants 🎧. Sigh.

Every week Post Status Excerpt will brief you on important WordPress news — in about 15 minutes or less! Learn what's new in WordPress in a flash. ⚡

🔗 Mentioned in the Show:

• David Bisset (Twitter)
• Cory Miller (Twitter)
• Kadence WP is Joining the iThemes Family!
• Gravity Forms Entries in Excel, Brought to You By GravityView!
• UnderrepresentedInTech.com
• Testing Full Site Editing in WordPress
• Taylor Arndt

👍 Sponsor: Pagely

You need durable Managed WordPress Hosting for all your mission-critical sites. Pagely offers managed DevOps and a flexible stack with the same enterprise-level support to all its customers. Peace of mind starts with Pagely. Try it today!