Category: Marketing

BuddyPress broke into the world of blocks last month with its 6.0 release. Group and Member blocks were the first blocks to make it into the core plugin and next up are block versions of the existing widgets. Contributors are also working on block requests based on community feedback.

Today, BuddyPress core developer Mathieu Viet shared a prototype of his early work on adding a block based Activity post form to BuddyPress. This is one of the most highly-requested features from the plugin’s community of developers, according to a recent poll.

Viet submitted a PR for a playground inside the WP Admin that allows posting to the activity stream via a custom bp/text block. It is an adaptation of the basic core/paragraph block with a modified block toolbar that removes unnecessary controls, such as alignments, text color, and strikethrough formatting. 

The custom activity posting block adds a new emoji picker control to the block toolbar, with a popover that includes categories of all the emoji WordPress supports. This is far more convenient for users than launching their operating system’s emoji picker.

Viet’s PR highlighted several major benefits to bringing the block editor to activity posting: formatting text and adding links is more intuitive, inserting emoji is easier, and users can easily schedule activities using the block editor’s DateTimePicker component.

One of the biggest benefits Viet identified is the opportunity to standardize the UI. In the same way the block editor is helping WordPress unify the UI for publishing and site design, a block-based activity form will help standardize the UI for BuddyPress plugin developers.

“Today, when BuddyPress Plugin developers extend this post form, they do not have a structured way to process, they simply use a hook: it can be a very different one from plugin to plugin,” Viet said. “Plugins are mostly using jQuery (some can tidy this a bit using Backbone), UI controls can look very different. This is really not ideal for BuddyPress users. By extending the WordPress Blocks API to make available a BP Activity Blocks API we will improve all this and we’ll benefit from the ‘WordPress Blocks’ developers interest to give our users great new BP Activity Blocks to share richer content like media, or more interactive content like Polls.”

BuddyPress’ activity component is a frontend feature, so the idea is to test the block-based activity posting form in the admin and then work through the hurdles for bringing it to the frontend.

“Bringing this block based Activity post form in this area is the goal and a huge challenge mainly due to the fact we have less control over the layout,” Viet said. “There’s one WordPress administration layout, but there are thousands of different front-end layouts.”

Viet proposed BuddyPress tackle this in small steps:

• Making the block based Activity Post form only available from a WP admin screen
• Making the block based Activity Post form only available into a new complete “BP Default” theme
• Making the block based Activity Post form available from a modal
• Making the block based Activity Post form available from a new template pack

BuddyPress only supports WordPress 4.8+. If a block-based activity form is ready for inclusion in version 7.0 of the plugin, BuddyPress will need to raise the required WordPress version to 4.9. Sites running on older versions would be able to fall back to the legacy activity posting form.

Viet credits his PR to WordPress’ developer documentation for building a custom block editor and Dave Smith’s  Standalone Gutenberg Block Editor repository.

On Tuesday, Automattic launched Jetpack Scan, an automated malware and vulnerability scanning service. It is a premium service offered to sites connected to a WordPress.com account and the third major add-on launched on top of the plugin in recent months.

Jetpack Scan is available for $7 per month or $70 for an annual subscription. Both options are 30% off the regular price of $10 and $100, respectively. Currently, the feature runs daily scans for security threats. However, the plan is to add a real-time scanning option, presumably at a higher price point.

“It’s like having a security guard monitoring your site,” said Paolo Belcastro, Head of Product for Jetpack. “You can rest easy knowing that someone’s watching out for you 24/7. And if we find any threats, you’ll receive an instant email alert so you can fix it right away and get back to running your business. We can even repair the majority of security threats for you with just one click.”

The service comes on the heels of two other big Jetpack launches in the last couple of months. In April, the Jetpack team re-launched Jetpack Search as a standalone service. The team then opened the Jetpack Backup service in May, which was the first step in selling what is essentially a two-part security solution for site owners — backups and security scanning go hand in hand. The backup service is $30 per year for daily backups and $200 per year for real-time backups. For a complete security solution, end-users will probably combine the Jetpack Scan service with Jetpack Backup, which will run at a minimum of $100 every year. These numbers are based on introductory rates, which are expected to increase in the future.

Backup and security scanning services are major moves. Jetpack is likely to gobble up a huge slice of the security pie in the coming months and years, which is a sector that is currently represented by several other big businesses in the industry. With over five million self-installed WordPress users and millions more at WordPress.com, it will be an easy choice for many to opt into Jetpack’s solution rather than look elsewhere.

Jetpack Scan Features and Interface

Jetpack Scan automatically scans connected websites each day. Once a user sets up the feature, they no longer need to perform any actions for routine security maintenance. The feature offloads the actual scanning to Automattic’s servers instead of running checks directly on the user’s site. This also has the benefit of making scan results accessible even if the user’s site is down for some reason.

If the scanning system finds an issue, it sends an email directly to the user. The system comes with a one-click fix feature. “Just press a button and Jetpack will fix the majority of known malware problems so you can get your site back up and running,” wrote Rob Pugh, Director of Product Marketing at Automattic, in the announcement post.

Jetpack Scan also integrates with the Jetpack Backup service, which will allow end-users to completely restore their site to a previous point in time in the case of site hacks.

For new Scan and Backup customers, they will be able to enjoy a new all-in-one interface on the Jetpack website. The team will bring the upgraded experience to existing customers soon.

“Even the best security tools can become useless if they require advanced skills to configure complicated settings,” said Filipe Varela, of Jetpack Design. “That’s why it was so important for us to build an accessible and streamlined service. We’re proud to announce a fresh, dedicated interface for Jetpack Scan on Jetpack.com. It will be the central hub for managing all your Jetpack Security products. You can scan your website, check the results, respond to issues, and, when combined with Jetpack Backup, quickly restore your site to working order all in one place.”

Yoast, the company behind the popular Yoast SEO plugin, launched its free block editor training course today. The course is available to anyone by signing up for Yoast Academy, which also includes multiple other free and paid courses. Users can learn everything from SEO and copy writing to basic WordPress skills. The Academy team’s latest course promises to get first-time users up to speed on using the block editor.

“At Yoast, we are huge fans of the block editor,” wrote Marieke van de Rakt, CEO of Yoast in the training course announcement. “Admittedly -not right from the start-, but we’re now block-editor fanboys and fangirls. That’s why we created an awesome free block editor course! We hope it will help everybody to use the block editor to the fullest!”

Currently, the course on block editor training has at least two or three hours of content to work through, depending on how quickly users digest the content. The course offers three major sections:

• What is the block editor?
• Using the block editor
• Extras

Each of these is further broken down between one and three sub-sections. At the moment, there are seven lessons in total, which range between 7 and 49 minutes based on Yoast’s estimated time.

The courses are similar to taking a school class. The Academy team provides short videos that cover individual topics around the block editor. The team also provides a PDF version of the lesson for those who prefer text over video format. At the end of the lesson, users take a quiz and move on to the next lesson. A score of 80% or more is considered a passing grade.

The team keeps each lesson digestible enough to complete in a short bout. Even if watching the videos, the PDF version of the lessons, which are high quality and have loads of useful information with links to third-party resources, are recommended reading.

The team has provided a preview of the block editor course via YouTube:

Moving to the Block Editor and Building Training Courses

Joost de Valk, founder and CPO of Yoast, said the team would continue building on the training course over time as new features are added to the block editor. There are no plans to update it on a strict schedule, but the team wants to keep it current.

Yoast, as a company, focuses on SEO. Therefore, some of the advice offered through the course puts focus on creating content that is useful for people and friendly for search engines. One of the primary topics the course touches on is publishing “resources” and how this is made better by the block editor. “Resources are larger articles, evergreen content or in our SEO terminology ‘cornerstone content’: the stuff you want to rank within the search results,” said de Valk. “You can’t just throw some words on a page and expect to rank anymore. You’ll have to try a bit harder. Gutenberg makes that extremely easy.”

The Yoast team has been moving its massive site to the block editor over time. “The post types I deal with regularly are all written with the block editor, but we might have some areas of the site that aren’t there yet,” said de Valk. “It’s a rather large site, with e-commerce, training, jobs, etc. all built into one giant WordPress multi-site install, so that was a bit of an undertaking. We always try to dog-food stuff though, so we moved everything over quite quickly.”

Getting the 11 million users who are using Yoast’s products to make the switch is not quite as easy. Not everyone has embraced the block editor. “The usage of the block editor is definitely improving, but it’s not going as fast as we’d like to see,” said de Valk. “We honestly think a lot of people don’t understand the chances the block editor brings yet, one of the reasons for releasing this course and trying to help more people to start using it.”

The team’s latest SEO course had over 10,000 signups within a week. While that number is a drop in the bucket in comparison to their full user count, it is promising. With a similar turnout for the block editor training course, it may convert more users from the older classic editor.

Putting together full training courses is a large undertaking, but these are the types of resources the WordPress community needs moving forward. “It’s a lot of work,” said de Valk. “We have four people in our Academy team, a crew that records our videos, and our design team designs all the PDFs and slides within the videos. It’s a non-trivial investment, but we’re happy to make that if it helps make more people enthusiastic for the block editor.”