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A Recap of Frontend Development in 2019

I noted Trey Huffine’s 2018 version of this article in The Great Divide.

To put a point on this divide a bit more, consider this article by Trey Huffine, "A Recap of Frontend Development in 2018." It's very well done! It points to big moments this year, shows interesting data, and makes predictions about what we might see next year. But it's entirely based around the JavaScript ecosystem.

My point was (and still is) that front-end development is more than the JavaScript ecosystem. However, I certainly admit the movings-and-shakings of the JavaScript world is a big deal and probably generally more interesting to watch for most devs.

What happened this year outside of JavaScript land? Well it's weird. Things move slower, so it's harder to pin things — even to years — quite as easily. For example, there was plenty of talk and usage of prefers-reduced-motion in CSS, but we kinda "got" that in 2017. Lots of people have gotten excited about variable fonts this year, but that's also been years in the making. Subgrid recently dropped in Firefox, so I guess that's a 2019 thing, but we'll see slow adoption of it for years to come. For more of this exciting (but not necessarily brand new) stuff, check out Adam Argyle and Una Kravets Chrome Dev Summit 2019 presentation.

HTML is evolving at an even slower pace. Occasionally, something will feel new. I got excited about <dialog> this year, even though it first appeared in 2014, but the experts are saying we probably shouldn't use it. Elements like <details> are getting more exciting as Edge-goes-Chromium because they'll be getting more cross-browser support, but it's no picnic. There's just not much exciting to talk about in HTML, at least to me, aside from sort of philosophical approaches to it, like JAMstack.

The two most exciting HTML things to me: native lazy loading and no-jank fluid image loading.

But back to Trey’s post, the highlights are:

  • React is huge. jQuery isn’t falling.
  • Hooks was a huge release and change for React, and React is generally pushing fast on lots of big stuff.
  • TypeScript continues to grow.
  • Vue 3 is a long time coming and a bit controversial.
  • Svelte 3 is a small player but has lots of interest.
  • Angular 9 is almost here and has a strong base.
  • JavaScript itself continues to have yearly releases. ES2019 has nice stuff and ES2020 is even better.
  • Flutter is challenging React Native for cross-platform development, an impressive feat since there are so many more React devs than Dart devs.
  • JAMstack, PWAs, GraphQL, and CSS-in-JS are all growing in usage and developer sentiment.
  • VS Code is dominant.

Trey also picked out some really great blog posts and presentations from the year at the end, so don’t miss those!

If you dig predictions, then you might be interested in Sean Goresht's big one for 2020.

Direct Link to Article — Permalink

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What We’re Reading, 2019

There are so, so, so (so) many things to read out there on the internet. So many, in fact, that it's difficult to keep up with everything.

But, hey, we've got your back! It's our job to surface the best of the best and share it with you right here. That's why it's a good idea to subscribe to this site and newsletter. Why subscribe to hundreds of sites when you can follow one, right?

Where do we find the links that we share? It truly runs the gamut, but we've decided to list our favorite sources.

Chris Coyier

  • Labnotes - Assaf Arkin's newsletter is great mishmash of timely, interesting, and funny tidbits with a developer twist.
  • Code with Veni is new just this year and consistently has great links from underrepresented coders
  • Codrops Collective always leaves me with like five open tabs
  • I get quite a few weekly newsletters entirely about front-end development, like Friday Frontend
  • WordPress Tavern does solid WordPress journalism.
  • Shoutout to Dave who had a strong year of bloggin'.
  • I love longtime classic blogs, like Waxy Waxy, Kottke, and Daring Fireball
  • DEV is blowing up and I end up reading many articles there each week. Meanwhile, it feels like Medium is slowing down significantly when it comes to developer-focused writing.
  • I obviously look at CodePen every day, which helps me keep an eye on what front-end developers are playing with.
  • I'd say the main value I get from Twitter is getting great links and thoughts that are a smidge beyond my regular reading. I'm in some community Slacks too, but find it far more conversational and less link-heavy.

Sarah Drasner

  • Scotch.io consistently has great stuff for pretty much every tech stack you can think of. They also do a great job of finding new authors.
  • Cassidy William's newsletter is short and sweet, and has coding puzzles in every issue.
  • I really love PonyFoo's quality and style. They mix it up and keep it interesting. The design is nice and unique as well!
  • I'm a Vue core team member and love to keep on top of what's going on in the community with the Vue Newsletter. It's curated by a team of really passionate educators and it shows — every newsletter is well curated.
  • I love Data Sketches so very much. It's a brilliant collaboration between Shirley Wu and Nadieh Bremer, and shows exceptional mastery of technical and illustrative skillsets to convey data. Worth a read for sure.
  • Like Chris, I love Codrops Collective. You can learn so much about UX animation there.
  • Speaking of animation, Val Head has a wonderful UI Animation Newsletter. She's kept it up for years, and it's rich with resources from the fanciful to the practical.
  • Rachel Andrew has been the editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine for the past year or so, and the content has been wonderful. Smashing is constantly a source of great articles and information about front-end development and design.
  • I just saw Jared Palmer's Blog a week ago and I really enjoy the writing there. It's informative, interesting and humorous.
  • Our own Robin Rendle has a great newsletter all about typography. I don't know that much about type, so the poetic deep dives are lovely and informative. It's great for die-hard fans and newbies alike!

Geoff Graham

  • W3C Cascading Style Sheets Feed - Getting news straight from the horse's mouth!
  • CSS {In Real Life} - Michelle Barker is has a pragmatic approach to CSS and does an excellent job explaining complex concepts in a way that's pretty easy to grok.
  • The History of the Web - This is probably the opposite of "late-breaking" news, but Jay Hoffman's newsletter tells yesteryear's stories of the web, which is great context for things we see evolving today.
  • CodePen Post Picks - CodePen is full of great minds sharing ideas and the team over there does an excellent job curating noteworthy posts.
  • RWD Weekly Newsletter - Justin Avery covers responsive design news (obviously) but also provides oodles of other front-end-related goodies.
  • The Work Behind the Work - This isn't front-end stuff but I like how this site documents the creative process behind famous works that we know and love.
  • Adactio - Jeremy Keith posts regularly and thoughtfully.
  • Bruce Lawson - He usually has a weekly link dump that I find useful for uncovering things that would otherwise slip under my radar.
  • Mozilla Hacks - I could just as easily link up to other browser news, but Mozilla seems to be innovating fast and I like seeing where they're headed.
  • Piccalilly Newsletter - Andy Bell collects awesome demos.

Robin Rendle

  • Ire Aredinokun’s blog Bits of Code is an endless treasure trove of information about front-end development best practices and each post makes me ooo and Alice with delight.
  • For type and design news I always keep an eye out for Typographica’s year in review, and this year’s edition is just as interesting as the others. They collect a ton of typeface reviews from the releases of the past 12 months and explore what makes each design tick.
  • Likewise, David Jonathan Ross’s Font of the Month Club is essential reading for designers. David gives provides a typeface that's a work in progress in each issue and then writes diligently about the process behind it. It’s always a wonder.
  • Tim Kadlec’s blog is a great source of info about accessibility, web performance and general front-end development news.
  • I’ve been reading a bunch of great newsletters lately and Chip Scanlan’s writing advice is one that certainly stands out from the crowd.
  • Adrian Roselli’s blog never fails to impress with a ton of deep-dives into some obscure front-end problem or issue I’ve never heard about before.

Where do you look to stay updated? Share your list of favorites with us!

The post What We’re Reading, 2019 appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

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Reflecting on 2019: The Year in Review

Blue and purple fireworks exploding in the night sky.

Another year is in the bag. With a project as large and far-reaching as WordPress, there was no shortage of news and controversy. We covered a lot of stories in 2019 and are gearing up for another exciting year.

I always like to take a moment at the end of the year to look over everything that happened. Despite how well a website or project performs, it is good to take stock of each success. It is a time of reflection. Even in bad years, you should be able to find positive things to remember. This helps shape how you view your websites, projects, or even life. Ending the year remembering those positive things can help propel you into the new year.

It is equally important to find areas for improvement. However, you cannot understand what the next steps are until you have taken a look at where you have been.

With that in mind, let’s take a moment to reflect on the past year’s journey for WP Tavern and WordPress.

WP Tavern Stats

In 2019, WP Tavern published 382 posts. That is an increase of 52 posts over 2018.

Average words per post are the highest in WP Tavern’s history, coming in at 587 words. I am certain my long-windedness played a small role in that. We also had fewer quick posts on the whole. That is a format we should experiment with more.

Total and average comments are down. Admittedly, we have been a bit heavy-handed with deleting comments that break our comment policy this year. Average Jetpack-powered “likes” per post are at an all-time high (6.9 likes per post). Total likes are the second-highest for a year (2,614 likes). We are also seeing a lot of engagement on Twitter. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in 2020 with social media having such a stronghold on how people engage with one another online.

We need to continue improving both the frequency and the quality of comments.

The Year in WordPress

WordPress turned 16 years old this year. It’s old enough to drive now.

The community enjoyed three major updates throughout the year:

Most of the year was focused on the Gutenberg plugin and porting its features and improvements into WordPress. WP Tavern covered nearly everything you ever wanted to know about Gutenberg.

Matt Mullenweg’s 2019 State of the Word primarily focused on the work that went into the block editor in the past 12 months. He also outlined the next phases of the project, which include full-site customization, collaboration between post authors, and multilingual sites.

Alex Mills (Viper007Bond) Passed Away

In February, the WordPress community lost one of its greatest members, Alex Mills, as his battle with leukemia ended. Alex was a mentor and hero to many of us. As a developer, I learned more from his work than I may ever be able to pay forward. We never met in person, but he was one of my early teachers by simply leading the way for people like me.

His Regenerate Thumbnails plugin also saved me countless hours over the years. I cannot imagine building or testing WordPress themes without it. Automattic adopted the plugins Alex built during his WordPress journey.

Alex, thank you for everything you contributed to the WordPress community.

Favorites From 2019

The following are various WordPress and Tavern-related things that I found most interesting throughout 2019.

Posts From Tavern Writers

We have had numerous well-written stories from everyone who has contributed in 2019. The following are personal favorites from contributors other than myself that I wanted to highlight before we close the year out.

These are my favorites for various reasons and presented in no particular order. Sometimes, I liked the content of the article. At other times, I appreciated them for how well-written they were. If you missed them, now is a good time to hop back and check out some stories our team has written this year.

My Articles

I am closing in on 70 posts since becoming a fulltime contributor to WP Tavern. This job has allowed me to explore a variety of topics in a few months, and I look forward to continuing this into 2020. I enjoyed writing many stories, but there were two that I was particularly happy to have the opportunity to cover.

The first was my coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court’s denial of Domino’s appeal to determine whether its website must be accessible to all of its customers. This story helped me jump far outside my comfort zone of strictly writing about WordPress and development topics. It was also a stark reminder that we, as a community, need to become better at making the web accessible for all people.

The post I enjoyed working on the most was El Soberano’s launch on Newspack. The interesting thing about covering this story was not the actual re-launch of the publication. It was getting to chat with other journalists, particularly those who were down in the trenches and fighting for justice. It reminded me that, at the end of the day, journalism is always about people.

Favorite Theme

This was an easy pick. Twenty Twenty takes the top spot on my list. There were themes released this year with designs better-suited to my tastes. There were certainly other themes pushing more limits in terms of functionality.

What I like most about Twenty Twenty is that it seems unafraid to be bold. It showcases how a theme can have personality while being designed around the block editor. I am not sure if I would ever use it for my sites simply because it’s not my preferred style. However, I appreciate its artistic merit.

Favorite Plugin

While it was not released in 2019, GiveWP is the most interesting plugin I have used this year. It is a fundraising plugin that allows WordPress users to accept donations directly from their website.

I worked with the plugin in two capacities this year. The first was as a plugin developer who was building an integration between it and another plugin. As a developer, I appreciated how well-written and well-documented the code was. The team behind the plugin includes top-notch programmers.

I also helped push a couple of friends to set it up for their projects. Both were pleased with their experiences.

Top 10 Posts From 2019

The following posts are the most-commented posts of the year. Loads of comments typically mean controversy around here, so this list may contain, more or less, the most controversial topics of the year. Either way, there are some great discussions in some of the comment threads.

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Top 10 API Articles of 2019 Based on Twitter Traffic

Twitter is a great place to see what's trending with developers. We rounded up the following tweets based on the articles that received the most clicks, retweets, and love by Twitter users. Topics varied during 2019, and popular tweets include articles about developer portals, top APIs in open data, AI, and machine learning, development tools and open banking, and more.

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A Use Case for a Parent Selector

Having a "parent selector" in CSS is mentioned regularly as something CSS could really use. I feel like I've had that thought plenty of times myself, but then when I ask my brain for a use case, I find it hard to think of one. Well, I just had one so I thought I'd document it here.

A classic parent/child:

<div class="parent">
  <div class="child"></div>
</div>

Say it makes a lot of sense for this parent to have hidden overflow and also for the child to use absolute positioning.

.parent {
   overflow: hidden;
   position: relative;
}

.child {
   position: absolute; 
}

Now let's say there's one special circumstance where the child needs to be positioned outside the parent and still be visible. Hidden overflow is still a good default for the vast majority of situations, so it's best to leave that rule in place, but in this very specific situation, we need to override that overflow.

.special-child {
   position: absolute; 
   bottom: -20px; /* needs to be slightly outside parent */
}

/* Not real, but just to make a point */
.special-child:parent(.parent) {
   overflow: visible;
}

That selector above is fake but it's saying, "Select the parent of .special-child," which would allow that override as needed. Maybe it's like this:

.parent < .special-child {

}

...which is selecting the element on the left rather than the right. Who knows? Probably both of those are problematic somehow and the final syntax would be something else. Or maybe we'll never get it. I have no idea. Just documenting a real use case I had.

You might be thinking, "Why not just use another special class on the parent?" I would have, but the parent was being injected by a third-party library through an API that did not offer to add a class of my choosing on it. Ultimately, I did have to add the class to the parent by writing some custom JavaScript that queried the DOM to find the .special-child, find the parent, then add the class there.

Do y'all have some other use-cases for a parent selector?

The post A Use Case for a Parent Selector appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

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Wufoo + Zapier

Wufoo has always been great with integrations. They have integrations with specific apps, like Campaign Monitor, Mailchimp, and Typekit, but they also integrate with Zapier, which is sort of like an integration inside an integration.

That's kinda meta, but the idea is actually pretty straightforward: Wufoo integrates with Zapier, which integrates with a gazillion (yes, I did the math) other apps. That opens up a whole world of possibilities for what you can do with a Wufoo form.

Some interesting ones:

  • Trigger an email to send to someone from Campaign Monitor or Mailchimp when they've submitted the form.
  • Collect submissions in a Google Sheet to build you own database of entries.
  • Automatically create a card in Trello once the form has been submitted.
  • Add the person who is submitting the form to a contact list in Salesforce.
  • Push notifications to Slack once someone completes the form.

Wufoo shared their own list of ideas. Let's sum them up here:

  • Wufoo + your customer relationship management (CRM) tool
  • Wufoo + your email tool
  • Wufoo + your file storage tool
  • Wufoo + your website-building tool
  • Wufoo + your project management tool
  • Wufoo + your calendar tool
  • Wufoo + your spreadsheet tool

That one about website-building tools is pretty sweet. This lets Wufoo hook up to something, say WordPress, so that you can do something like publish a new page for every submission. Think about that. You have one integration to send an email to the user when they submit the form and perhaps it contains a link to a personalized page. Voltron powers, unite!

The post Wufoo + Zapier appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

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A Look Back at 2019: Roundup of Codrops Resources

What a year 2019 was! 

During the past months we had the pleasure and honor to work with incredibly talented front-end developers and designers. Their master classes gave us invaluable insight into their genius and process, something that we want to carry on in 2020. 

We also started collecting many of our favorite websites and demos in regular roundups which is also something we want to explore more in the next year. With so much information out there, we figured that offering a truly hand-picked collection of quality resources is the number one way to get the best inspiration out there.

2020 will be a year of energetic change for us. With an upcoming redesign and many new things planned, we are ready to jump into this coming decade with lots of motivation and excitement!

Like every year, we’ve prepared a little roundup for you where we share an overview of all our publications.

We hope you enjoy it and continue to share this journey with us!

Thank you to all our readers, supporters and sponsors. Have a vibrant 2020 and make every second count!

Your Codrops team

A Look Back at 2019: Roundup of Codrops Resources was written by Team Codrops and published on Codrops.

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Best of Best WordPress Tutorials of 2019 on WPBeginner

Another year is about to end and it is time to take a look back at 2019 to gain some perspective and reflect upon the progress.

It was a particularly fantastic year for WPBeginner, WordPress community, and many of our new users who started new websites and businesses this year.

We want to thank all of you for your continued support that keeps us motivated and energized.

To keep up with our tradition, in this article we will share our staff-pick of the best of best WordPress tutorials on WPBeginner. We’ll also share an overview of 2019 from our CEO.

Best WordPress tutorials of 2019 on WPBeginner

WPBeginner Recap 2019 by Syed Balkhi

Like every year, 2019 has been the best year ever for me both personally and professionally.

This year, WPBeginner turned 10 years old. It still feels quite unreal to say that.

I’m truly grateful for all the support from WPBeginner readers and the larger WordPress community, and I’m more motivated than ever to continue our mission to help small businesses grow and compete with the big guys.

WPBeginner Turns 10 Years Old

After a lot of requests from the community, we finally launched a free Facebook group called WPBeginner Engage that’s focused on helping beginners and non-techy users do more with WordPress. In less than 6 months, we have over 22,000+ members, and I’m really proud of the discussions and knowledge-sharing that’s happening there.

I have been doing exclusive Facebook Lives, recording training videos, our teams of WordPress experts have been answering user questions, and the best part is that it’s 100% free. Go ahead and join now!

WPBeginner Facebook Group

Our community on YouTube has also been growing stronger. WPBeginner YouTube channel passed over 150,000 subscribers (currently at 157k subscribers). This was one of my goals for 2019, and I’m very glad that we met it.

We have been creating original YouTube content series to help you get more traffic, grow your email list, and make money blogging. Check out our playlists.

We invested in Rymera Web, parent company of Wholesale Suite, Advanced Coupons, and Inventoroo through our WPBeginner Growth Fund.

We are in the final stages of wrapping up few more growth fund investments that will be announced in the new year.

2019 was a great year for WPBeginner’s family of products.

WPForms

WPForms passed over 3 million active installs, and it’s now one of the top 15 most popular WordPress plugins of all time. Considering that we only launched it in 2016, it’s amazing to see how far we have come.

We added a lot of powerful features in WPForms including: form landing pages, conversational forms, Google AMP support, smart phone and email fields, complete language translations in popular languages, and a whole lot more.

WPForms is the most beginner friendly WordPress form plugin, and that’s why it has continued to maintain a 4.9 out of 5 star rating average with over 5000+ five star ratings (read WPForms user reviews).

Not using WPForms yet? You can try the free version and then upgrade to Pro when you’re ready.

RafflePress

We launched a brand new WordPress giveaway plugin called RafflePress. This is a tool that I have been wanting to build for the last 5 years, and I’m so glad that we did. It is by far the best contest plugin for WordPress in the market.

I successfully used it on many of our websites and blogs to grow our traffic, sales, and subscribers. I’m really excited to do more giveaways in 2020 because they just work!

If you’re serious about growing your website in 2020, then definitely give RafflePress a try.

WP Mail SMTP

We also launched a pro version of our popular free WP Mail SMTP plugin. After our acquisition, the plugin grew from 600k to over 1 million active installs. In the pro version, we added a lot of highly requested features such as Amazon SES integration, Email Logs for WordPress, and more.

This is a plugin that I recommend installing on all website because it helps fix WordPress not sending email issue.

MonsterInsights

As I promised in last year’s update, our WordPress analytics plugin, MonsterInsights saw major improvements.

We completely redesigned the plugin, added a brand new setup wizard, improved affiliate tracking, enabled automatic scroll tracking, added front-end page insights, and launched integrations with MemberPress, LifterLMS, and other popular plugins.

MonsterInsights is my most favorite plugins because it helps me grow our business with confidence. I sincerely believe that it’s easy to double your traffic and sales when you know exactly how people find and use your website. You can start with free version here.

OptinMonster & TrustPulse

Last but not least, our flagship product, OptinMonster, continued to push the limits in 2019. OptinMonster helps you get more subscribers and sales from your existing website traffic. Simply put, it’s the #1 conversion optimization software in the market.

In 2019, we added gamified spin a wheel optins, chatbot integrations for Facebook Messenger, tons of new personalization and targeting rules, mobile-specific templates, improved WooCommerce integration, attention activation feature, improved native analytics, brand new dashboard, and integrations with tons of third-party services like Zapier, Jilt, Bronto, etc.

OptinMonster team also launched a powerful social-proof plugin called TrustPulse that helps you boost site conversions with real-time social proof notifications.

As for personal life, 2019 was a great year for my family. My son, Solomon, turned 3 years old. He now tries to imitate my work habits on his mini computer. It’s quite funny to watch that.

We traveled to 8 countries this year. Solomon attended 1 WordCamp in 2019 (WordCamp US) and he went to few other conferences with me as well.

Below is a picture of our family, since I know many of you often ask for it.

Balkhi Family Collage 2019

If you want to see more of my personal journey, then please visit my personal blog and subscribe. I will be doing a detailed writeup there in the next few days. It will contain everything that happened to me in 2019 both personally & professionally along with lessons that I learned, and my goals for 2020.

With that said, let’s take a look at the best of WPBeginner in 2019.

January

Gutenberg vs page builders – What’s the real difference – 2018 ended with the release of WordPress 5.0. So we spent early months of 2019 helping our users learn and adapt to the new WordPress editor called Gutenberg. In this article, we explained the difference between the new WordPress editor and page builder plugins.

How to create a free business email address in 5 minutes (step by step) – Having a business email address makes your business look more trustworthy and legit. In this guide, we showed you how to get a free business email address with step by step instructions.

Cover Image vs. Featured Image in WordPress Block Editor (Beginner’s Guide) – The new WordPress block editor introduced a new feature called cover image. In this article, we explained how to use the cover image feature and how it is different than the featured image in WordPress.

How to Choose the Best Products to Sell Online (Beginner’s Guide) – A lot of our users want to start their online store using WooCommerce and WordPress. In this article, we tried to answer one of their most frequently asked question which is how to choose the best products to sell online.

Common Gutenberg questions answers (WordPress 5.0. FAQs) – In this article, we answered the most frequently asked questions about Gutenberg editor in WordPress 5.0.

February

How to setup a professional email address with Gmail and G Suite – In this article, we showed you how to setup a professional business email address with G Suite. It is Google’s productivity suite for businesses and professionals that allows you to use the same Google apps (Gmail, Docs, Calendar, and more) with your own domain name.

How to build an Amazon affiliate store using WordPress – In this guide, we showed you how to easily make an Amazon affiliate store using WordPress. Basically, you promote products on Amazon’s website to earn an affiliate commission on each sale.

How to easily create a quiz in WordPress – Quizzes are fun and can help you build an engaged audience on your website. In this guide, we showed you how to easily create a quiz in WordPress.

March

How to create a custom WordPress theme (without any code) – Do you want to create a completely custom WordPress theme of your own but don’t want to learn coding? In this guide, we showed you how to easily create a custom WordPress theme without writing any code.

How to create an online marketplace using WordPress – An online marketplace website allows users to buy and sell items by setting up their own mini-stores within your eCommerce platform. In this guide, we showed you how to easily create your own online marketplace using WordPress to make money on the side.

How to create conversational forms in WordPress (Typeform Alternative) – Conversational forms make your forms interactive and a fun experience for your users. In this article, we showed you how to easily create conversational forms in WordPress without using a third-party service.

What is a blog and how is it different from a website? (Explained) – Many users asked us about the difference between a blog and a website and which one they should start. In this beginner’s guide, we explained the difference between a blog and a website.

April

How to add Google Maps store locator in WordPress – In this guide, we showed you how to easily add a Google Maps store locator to your WordPress website and provide your customers directions to your store location.

Beginner’s guide to image SEO – Optimize images for search engines – In this guide, we walked you through the image SEO and how to properly optimize your images to get more traffic from search engines.

How to easily create a staging site for WordPress (step by step) – A WordPress staging site is a test site that you can use to “safely” make plugin updates and other changes before going live. In this guide, we showed you how to easily set up a WordPress staging site with just a few clicks.

How to do basic image editing in WordPress (Crop, rotate, scale, flip) – In this guide, we showed you how to do some basic image editing in WordPress without leaving the admin area.

May

How to create a web directory in WordPress – In this step by step guide, we showed how to easily create a web directory in WordPress.

BigCommerce vs WooCommerce – Which one is better? – We compared WooCommerce and BigCommerce side by side to weigh the pros and cons of both platforms and find out which one is better.

Beginner’s guide to WordPress template hierarchy (cheat sheet) – In this guide, we broke down the WordPress template hierarchy and what each template does in WordPress themes. Must read for any users getting started in WordPress theme development.

How to create an email newsletter (step by step) – In this step by step tutorial we showed you how to easily create an email newsletter and start building an email list.

85+ most useful time-saving WordPress keyboard shortcuts – In this beginner’s guide, we compiled an ultimate cheat sheet of all the useful WordPress keyboard shortcuts that would allow you to work faster on your websites.

June

How to add nofollow links in WordPress (Beginner’s guide) – Adding nofollow to external links is important for SEO. In this guide, we showed you how to easily add nofollow links in WordPress.

how to add scroll depth tracking in WordPress with Google Analytics – Want to learn how much users scroll on your website? In this guide, we showed you how to easily track users’ scroll depth activity on your WordPress site with Google Analytics.

Tips for mastering the WordPress content editor – We updated our ultimate guide on using the WordPress content editor with new tips and techniques.

How to host a website (Simple guide for beginners) – We have been often asked by beginners about how they can host a website. In this beginner’s guide, we showed how to easily host a website.

Best Beaver Builder themes and templates – We compiled our expert pick of the best Beaver Builder compatible themes and templates that you can use.

July

How to choose the best business VoIP provider (Compared) – In this guide, we explained how to choose the best business VoIP service provider and listed our pick of the best business phone companies.

Dropshipping made simple – A step by step guide for WordPress – We prepared a complete dropshipping guide for WordPress users who want to start their own dropshipping business.

Best SMTP service providers with high deliverability – We compared the top SMTP service providers to help users pick the best email delivery service for their WordPress websites.

How to create an online course with WordPress (The right way) – Our complete step by step guide on how to easily create an online course with WordPress.

Best WooCommerce dropshipping plugins (Compared) – We compared all the top dropshipping plugins for WooCommerce to help users pick the best option to start their dropshipping business.

August

How to use FOMO on your WordPress site to increase conversions – FOMO or fear of missing out is a psychological phenomenon used by marketers to encourage sales. In this article, we showed you how to easily use FOMO on your WordPress site to increase conversions.

Best Mailchimp alternatives (Better features and fair pricing) – We were asked by users to suggest Mailchimp alternatives. In this article, we picked the best Mailchimp alternatives with much better features and reasonable pricing.

How to add a click-to-call button in WordPress – In this tutorial, we showed you how to easily add a click-to-call button to your WordPress website or WooCommerce store.

How to run a giveaway / contest in WordPress with RafflePress – In this guide, we showed you how to easily run a viral giveaway /contest in WordPress with RafflePress.

How to add infinite scroll to your WordPress site – Speed is a dominant factor in improving time users spend on a website. In this guide, we showed how to easily add infinite scroll to your WordPress website and improve performance.

September

Wordfence vs Sucuri – Which one is better? (Compared) – Wordfence and Sucuri are the most popular WordPress security and firewall plugins. In this guide, we compared Sucuri vs Wordfence side by side in terms of features, pricing, and ease of use.

WooCommerce made simple: A step-by-step tutorial [+ Resources] We made a complete beginner’s guide to WooCommerce with step by step instructions to setup an online store. We also added resources to help you grow your business like a total pro.

Best WordPress giveaway and contest plugins compared – In this article, we compared the top WordPress giveaway and contest plugins. We analyzed them for features, ease of use, and which one of them is more suitable to grow your business with viral contests and giveaway.

How much do eCommerce websites cost (real numbers) – In this beginner’s guide we compared how much it costs to start eCommerce websites with real numbers. We analyzed the costs of plaforms like WooCommerce, Shopify, and BigCommerce with additional costs of addons and online payments.

October

Best affiliate marketing tools and plugins for WordPress – In this article, we shared our pick of the top affiliate marketing tools and plugins for WordPress that will help boost your affiliate earnings.

Best podcast hosting compared (most are free) – In this guide, we compared all the best podcast hosting options with both free and paid plans. You may also want to see our complete guide on how to start a podcast with WordPress.

How to get a free email domain (5 quick and easy methods) – Looking for a domain to use for your professional email address? In this guide, we showed 5 quick and easy methods to get a free email domain.

How to stop and prevent a DDoS attack on WordPress – DDoS attacks can take any website down or disrupt its performance. In this tutorial, we showed how you to stop and prevent DDoS attacks on your WordPress website.

November

How to properly install and set up WP Rocket in WordPress – WP Rocket is the best WordPress caching plugin on the market. In this article, we showed you how to easily install and setup WP Rocket in WordPress to instantly boost your website speed and performance.

How to setup email logs in WordPress and WooCommerce – A typical WordPress website or WooCommerce store sends emails for various functions like password reset, customer orders, new user registrations, etc. In this guide, we showed you how to easily keep email logs on your WordPress site or WooCommerce store to keep an eye on all email activity.

how to add a Facebook giveaway in WordPress to boost engagement – Facebook has a massive userbase but it limits your reach based on how users engage with your posts. In this guide, we showed you how to boost user engagement by running a Facebook giveaway in WordPress.

Ways to get a 800 toll-free number for your business – A lot of our users wanted to get a toll-free number for their business. In this article, we showed you all the best ways to get an 800 toll-free number for your business.

How to create a photo contest in WordPress – Another great way to build user engagement and loyalty is by running a photo contest. In this tutorial, we showed you how to easily run a photo contest in WordPress to boost user engagement and gain new users.

December

How much does a domain name really cost? – In this article, we answered your questions about how much does a domain name really cost. We explained different scenarios and ways to get free, cheap, premium, and exclusive domain names.

How to add your WordPress site to Google Search Console – We wrote step by step instructions on how to easily add your WordPress site to Google Search Console. Don’t forget to check out our companion article on tips on using Google Search Console to grow your traffic.

How to create a WooCommerce contest – One of the quickest ways to get users to spend time and bring new users to your site is by running a contest. In this guide, we showed you how to easily create a WooCommerce contest to boost loyalty and engagement.

How to track link and button clicks in WordPress – Users interact with your website by clicking on links and buttons but how do you measure where they are clicking and how often? In this guide, we showed you how to easily track link and button clicks in WordPress.

These were some of the best WordPress tutorials on WPBeginner in 2019. We hope that you found them helpful.

We want to thank all WPBeginner users, who visited our website, offered feedback, left comments, and shared it with others. We truly appreciate you.

We look forward to adding even more useful WordPress tutorials in 2020. Have a Happy New Year.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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2019: A Smashing Year In Review

2019: A Smashing Year In Review

2019: A Smashing Year In Review

Rachel Andrew

2019 has been quite a productive (sometimes challenging, but ultimately very successful) year for the Smashing team. In this annual round-up, I’d like to share some of my thoughts and those of some of the Smashing team, as we look back on the past year as well as look forward to 2020.

Travel And Friendships

As always, my 2019 has involved a lot of travel. In addition to my conference speaking engagements and travel to W3C meetings, I attended all four of our Smashing conferences; I ran CSS Layout workshops in Toronto, New York and San Francisco. The conferences are a time when most of the team is together in person.

An illustration of Topple the Smashing Mascot cat networking while sitting in a comfortable couch with its laptop placed on its lap holding a cup of coffee or tea, who knowsThe home of Smashing is in Freiburg, Germany, and before SmashingConf Freiburg, we held a big team meeting, with almost everyone who is involved with Smashing able to take part. There have been many changes in the Smashing Team this year, and that meeting in Freiburg was a chance for us all to come together; I believe that it was one of the most valuable things we have done this year.

There are many challenges in doing all of the things we do as a small (mainly part-time and remote) team. However, if we keep talking and keep the Smashing community at the heart of everything we do, the past year demonstrates that we can achieve amazing things!

The Conferences

The SmashingConf team of Amanda Annandale, Charis Rooda and Mariona Jones are a force of nature. They seem to achieve the impossible and (as Charis told me) still have time to enjoy the surroundings of the places they visit.

The team in front of the Toronto sign
The SmashingConf team in Toronto

I’m always blown away when I walk into the venue and see what has been achieved — even before the event starts. Artwork created by the very talented Ricardo Gimenes is everywhere — such as the movie posters from Toronto, and the artwork in the theater we use as a venue in New York.

Movie posters features Topple the Smashing cat
Our movie posters in Toronto (Photo credit Marc Thiele)
A large theatre sign featuring Topple the cat
The signage in the theater in New York (Photo credit Drew McLellan)

One of my favorite things to do at the conferences is to lead the Smashing Run which we normally manage to do on both conference days. This is becoming quite a fixture, with several attendees and speakers running and chatting for half an hour before breakfast. I’m already looking forward to our inaugural run in Austin in 2020, although it may be a bit of a warm one!

I sometimes help the conference team out when words need writing or editing, and sometimes when the legality of balloons is called into question. As Amanda Annandale (Senior Event Manager) remembers:

“September marked my third year at Smashing, and while it provided a whole new set of challenges, it also provided a huge sense of accomplishments. The conference team sat down at the end of 2018 and was able to make some big plans for the future.

“It’s been amazing to see these plans (from organization to side-events to new locations), and our team, come together. But, new tasks can bring about some hilarious roadblocks. Smashing is on a long and necessary quest to reduce our carbon footprint. BUT, Vitaly is rather partial to balloons.

“For those who may not know (because Rachel Andrew and I were shocked to learn), foil balloons are heavily regulated in the state of California. This (we discovered while spending a disproportionate time researching eco-balloons over plastic balloons) is obviously bad for the environment. We’ve never been so happy to find a company making fully eco-friendly balloons, that are fully biodegradable in a very short amount of time! This experience definitely strengthened our resolve.

“We are now working with a company out of Austin to improve our printing processes to be more eco-friendly, and working with each of our caterers to reduce our waste. We still have a way to go, but we’re aiming for a Smashing impact in 2020!”
Conference attendees standing up throwing balloons
The (eco-friendly) balloons are deployed in San Francisco (Photo credit Marc Thiele)

Conferences are expensive to produce and we are fortunate to have some wonderful partners who help us to create these events. They are looked after by our partnerships manager, Mariona Jones, who has been joined this year by Esther Fernández. Between them, they are working to bring together all of the Smashing properties in order to create new partnership opportunities. Mariona told me,

“The most exciting moment this year has been to be able to create together with the whole team the Smashing Media platform bringing together events, magazine, publishing house, membership and Smashing TV. The highlight of the year is undoubtedly the birth of the partnerships and data office and the addition to the Smashing Family of my dear colleague Esther.”

Esther adds,

“Joining the Smashing team has been one of the highlights of the year. It’s been a pleasure to enter this community and to make the Smashing conferences happen.”

I’m looking forward to working together with Mariona and Esther this year as we open up new opportunities for partnerships that cross the boundaries of the different parts of the platform!

Smashing Magazine

Topple the Cat wearing its Thinking HatThe heart of what I do at Smashing is the online magazine; as Editor in Chief, my role here is to try to bring you web design and development content that will inform you, help with your day-to-day work, and also make you think. We publish almost every weekday, so always have a large list of articles moving through the writing, editing and publishing process.

Looking through our analytics, I pulled up a list of the most popular articles published in the last year. The range of topics making it to the top may surprise you, and demonstrate the wide range of subjects we cover here. We have the Front-End Performance Checklist, an article comparing Sketch, Figma, and Adobe XD, and two articles about designing tables: Table Design Patterns On The Web and How To Architect A Complex Web Table. HTML and CSS are always popular with How To Align Things In CSS, How To Learn CSS and HTML5 Input Types: Where Are They Now? —all getting a top spot. They are joined by Styling An Angular Application With Bootstrap and Using Vue.js To Create An Interactive Weather Dashboard. That’s quite the range of subject matter!

Covering such a broad spectrum of web design and development is certainly a challenge and one I couldn’t do alone. My subject editors Alma Hoffmann, Chui Chui Tan, Drew McLellan and Michel Bozgounov bring their expertise to the topics they help curate. Copy editors Andrew Lobo and Owen Gregory help preserve the tone of voice of our authors while ensuring the content is easy to understand for an international audience. Cosima Mielke ensures that the newsletter is well researched along with many other roles (including eBook production), and Yana Kirilenko does a great job of getting articles from Google Docs, Dropbox Paper and various Markdown apps into the CMS. Senior editor Iris Lješnjanin does an amazing job of keeping everything on track, fielding the email, hitting publish on most of the pieces, and making sure that we are all using smashingly correct punctuation! I am very grateful for all of their work.

Vitaly and I are well-known faces in the web community, however, there is a whole cast of folk working behind the scenes to keep the magazine running successfully. I don’t say thank you enough, but I sincerely appreciate all the work that goes into the magazine across the team.

Smashing Magazine turned 13 this year to which I shared personal stories from the team — you can read more about the people behind the Smashing scenes over here.

This year, I’ve tried to bring the various facets of the business into the magazine. For example, each conference results in a set of high-quality videos of the presentations which was hidden away on Vimeo. This year, I’ve published a write-up of each event, listing all of the videos. I hope that this means more people can benefit from the wisdom of our speakers and also shows the brilliant work the conference team does in curating and putting on these events.

Something that I really enjoy is to publish articles by folks who have never written for a large publication before and to help their articles go through the process. Earlier this year, I wrote an article on Pitching Your Writing To Publications. If your 2020 goals include writing for Smashing Magazine, drop us a line with an outline of your idea. We would love to work with you!

Smashing Books And Our First Print Magazine

In 2019, we published two printed books, plus our very first print magazine. Art Direction For The Web was published in the spring, and at the end of the year, we began shipping Inclusive Components.

In the middle of the launch of Inclusive Components, we welcomed a new team member, Ari Stiles. She told me,

“It was challenging and fun to start working on the Smashing Library right after Heydon’s book was released, when promotion was already in full swing. A bit like stepping in front of a firehose — but in a good way! It helps that Inclusive Components is a well-written, timely book. I love helping people discover new and helpful resources like this one, and I’m excited about all of our new books for 2020.”
Topple the Cat presenting the Smashing Print coverSelecting a topic for our first print magazine was tricky. We wanted these magazines to be a snapshot of the industry at a certain time, but also to have a longer shelf life than tutorials on topics that will be out of date in a few months. Ultimately, for issue one, we chose a subject that was at the forefront of many minds in 2019 — that of ethics and privacy. The collection of essays I commissioned is designed to make you think, and we still have a few print copies and the digital version, if you would like to read them.

🎉 We’re currently in the planning stage for issue 2 — watch this space!

All of our books come with an eBook version, and one of Cosima Mielke’s many roles is to produce this version from the final manuscript. Memories of working on these projects were her response when I asked her about her 2019:

“As an eBook Producer, the moment when you’re being handed over the proofread manuscript to get started with eBook production is always a special moment. So many people — reviewers, proofreaders, and most importantly, the authors themselves, have already invested so much time and efforts into the manuscript, and now it’s your turn to put it into its final shape: the eBook that people are going to download and read.

“My personal highlight (and biggest challenge) this year was to turn the monumental opus that Andy provided with “Art Direction for the Web” into an eBook. The assets included almost 600 images — most of the designs created by Andy from scratch — and turning these into an eBook that does justice to the author’s meticulous work, provides a pleasant reading experience (given the rather limited possibilities that eBook reading devices usually offer), and has a reasonable file size at the same time, was quite a balancing act. Looking back, it was the most challenging eBook I have worked on to date — and, naturally, these kinds of projects make you feel proudest once you’ve accomplished them. I’m already curious to find out what 2020 will bring.”

The Smashing Podcast

Smashing Podcast moderated by Drew McLellanFor the first time this year, Smashing Magazine has a podcast. Hosted by Drew McLellan, this bi-weekly show interviews someone from the world of web design and development. We hope to bring you some well-known names, but also speak to folks doing interesting things across the industry.

In addition to having a very broad base of subject matter, Smashing has a global audience; we’d like to reflect that and bring you interviews from people all over the world. I asked Drew for his thoughts on these first few episodes:

“I was really pleased to be able to launch the Smashing Podcast this year. We spent quite a bit of time in development with it, trying to work out what the best format and tone to take would be. We tried to make it sound like Smashing and embody the same values; a good place to learn and stay informed, but with a sense of fun.

Our early guests have included experts such as Jina Ann, Liz Elcoate, and Jason Pamental. And we’ve spoken to authors of Smashing books Andy Clarke and Heydon Pickering.

The reception so far has been great, and you can always let us know what you think via the contact page. I’m looking forward to releasing episodes with the guests we have lined up for 2020!”

If you haven’t listened to an episode yet, you can catch up by subscribing here, or check out the individual episodes and full transcripts.

Smashing Membership

Topple the Cat showing off its ice skating skillsWe love our Smashing Members! This year you have continued to sign up and support the publication of independent content. We’ve been running webinars (with the help of Scott Whitehead and Bethany Andrew where members get to chat with one another in our Membership Slack, while enjoying free copies of our eBooks, plus a copy of the print magazine! We’re really keen to build on and evolve membership over the next years, and we sincerely thank our members for their support.

We have been running a membership table at our event, where members and prospective members can chat with the team. Our partnership manager, Mariona Jones remembers,

“While running the membership table at SmashingConf, I met a group of attendees who shared their passion for many things, among them open-source, stickers, code, and caffeine while browsing together through the first-ever Smashing print magazine on ethics and privacy and conversing about the relevance of this important topic.”

That’s enough from me! Still, we can’t wrap up 2019 without some thoughts from Vitaly, without who Smashing would not exist at all.

Vitaly on stage in front of a slide saying Welcome
Vitaly opens a SmashingConf (Photo credit Marc Thiele)
“It’s common to think that it’s all about the achievements or goals that make a year special, but for me, this year was full of meeting wonderful people. So, so many people. I’ve had a chance to speak with hundreds of people all around the globe, learning from their experiences and sharing mine. I was lucky to travel to over 40 places this year, from Albania, Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina to Kyiv, Sweden and Budapest. I vividly remember some of the stories and experiences I shared over a fire in the evening, in cars on the way somewhere, and in buses talking to strangers I’ll never see again. These were extremely rewarding, valuable and precious moments for me. They are the ones that I’ll be looking back to years from now. In essence, it’s all about people in the end.

“It was wonderful to connect with some of our readers at New Adventures in Nottingham, InfoShare in Gdansk, Poland, BTConf in Dusseldorf, FrontEndUnited in Utrecht, Netherlands, YGLF in Vilnius, Lithuania, perf.now in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and so many others! That said, travel is not without drama. When I was on a short vacation in Albania, I ended up getting lost in the woods in the middle of nowhere at midnight. That was quite scary, but thanks to 6% on my phone and a hardly visible, remote McDonalds sign, I was able to get out in a few hours, returning to the hotel around 5 AM.

“I think that this year at Smashing we’ve learned what it really means to be a team. We had tough and difficult situations, but we pulled together in a respectful, kind and very supportive way, and we kept strong and we made it. It was a year full of challenges and adventures, but in the end, we’ve grown even closer together, and I’m very proud of our team for getting there. I’m also very proud of the fact that we have been exploring topics that are often not seen as particularly interesting nor trendy — accessibility, ethical design, privacy. At our conferences, for example, we’ve looked into common problems and issues that developers and designers struggle with, and tried to find solutions and common techniques to tackle them. It’s something that I strongly believe is important for the health of our industry, and I’m happy to see more discussions around these topics this year.

“My sincere hope is that we’ll establish an even stronger team filling in the gaps we currently have, and we’ll manage to create a very strong alignment within the company. I hope we’ll be able to reach out to more people — especially the new generation of designers and developers — and connect with them. I can’t wait for the books that we’ll be releasing next year as well! I have a number of ideas in mind of things I think we could do, but before jumping there, I want to make sure we are stable, healthy and strong. No rush — I’ve been patient my entire life.”

Onwards To 2020!

The whole team is looking forward to seeing what 2020 brings, and to sharing that with the Smashing Community — wherever you are in the world. Thank you for being part of our journey!

A lineup on stage in front of a screen saying Thank you
The Smashing team on stage in New York (Photo credit: Drew McLellan)
Smashing Editorial (il)
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New Adventures Ahead! (January 2020 Wallpapers)

New Adventures Ahead! (January 2020 Wallpapers)

New Adventures Ahead! (January 2020 Wallpapers)

Cosima Mielke

Let’s welcome 2020 with a new wallpaper! After all, the new year is the perfect occasion to tidy up your desktop and start on a fresh, blank slate — no clutter, just the things you really need and space for what’s about to come. And some inspiration, of course.

As every month since more than nine years already, artists and designers from across the globe once again took out their favorite tools to create wallpapers to inspire you, make you smile, think, or just to cater for a blob of color on a dark winter day. The wallpapers are available in versions with and without a calendar for January 2020 and can be downloaded for free. And since this little challenge has brought forth so many unique artworks over the past few years, we also assembled a selection of older January favorites at the end of this post. We wish you a wonderful start into the new year and a lot of exciting adventures to cross your way in 2020!

Please note that:

  • All images can be clicked on and lead to the preview of the wallpaper,
  • We respect and carefully consider the ideas and motivation behind each and every artist’s work. This is why we give all artists the full freedom to explore their creativity and express emotions and experience through their works. This is also why the themes of the wallpapers weren’t anyhow influenced by us but rather designed from scratch by the artists themselves.

Submit your wallpaper

Do you have an idea for a February wallpaper design? We are always looking for creative talent to be featured in our wallpapers posts. Don’t be shy, join in! →

New Year, New Beginnings

— Designed by MasterBundles from USA

New Year, New Beginnings

National Popcorn Day

“In this epic Netflix and Chill era, nothing has gotten more important than popcorn during the newest blockbuster! Time to gain awareness about celebrating our delicious guilty pleasure during the movies!

A little story around the wallpaper: Mr Popcorn and Mrs Popcorn are enjoying a great movie with… You guessed it right, popcorn!! But Mr Popcorn is somewhat annoyed as his Mrs eats Popcorn from his head instead of eating from the bucket right in between the loved ones.”

— Designed by Nicolas van der Straten Ponthoz from Belgium

National Popcorn Day

It’s Snowing!

“It is January, it’s cold and snowy… In the house, the fireplace is on and it’s hot. Only penguins are enjoying time out there.”

— Designed by Veronica Valenzuela from Spain

It’s Snowing!

Month of the Garnet Birthstone

“I wanted to approach the monthly challenge from a more unique perspective. Instead of chosing a cliché subject that has been done way too many times before, I chose a less known, special subject. The birthstone. Enjoy.”

— Designed by Bram Copermans from Belgium

Month of the Garnet Birthstone

Rubber Ducky Day

“Winter can be such a gloomy time of the year. The sun sets earlier, the wind feels colder and our heating bills skyrocket. I hope to brighten up your month with my wallpaper for Rubber Ducky Day!”

— Designed by Ilya Plyusnin from Belgium

Rubber Ducky Day

Good Intentions

— Designed by Jonathan Verhaegen from Belgium

Good intentions

The King Of Rock And Roll

“On January 8th 1935, the creator of the rock ‘n’ roll genre was born and he’s back for his final debut on this wallpaper!”

— Designed by Bailey Lievens from Belgium

The King Of Rock And Roll

Aquaman

“Aquaman relaxing in the ‘nice’ January weather.”

— Designed by Ricardo Gimenes from Sweden

Aquaman

Laughter Is An Instant Vacation

“These are polarized times we’re living through. It seems like there is division all around. So sometimes you just have to find the time to remember that the one thing that connects us all is a good laugh. And there is no better laugh than the belly laugh! So on the 24th of January, let’s celebrate one of life’s truly great joys and let it all hang out!”

— Designed by Ever Increasing Circles from the United Kingdom

Laughter Is An Instant Vacation

Chocolate Cake Day

“I really love chocolate cake, so when I found out about “Chocolate Cake Day” I had to make a wallpaper about it!”

— Designed by Aaron Claes from Belgium

Chocolate Cake Day

Earth’s Rotation Day

— Designed by Bob Storms from Belgium

Earth’s Rotation Day

Go Green & Save The Earth

“Taking care of the Earth is not just a responsibility, it’s a necessity. So I designed a wallpaper to remind everyone what we can do to help save the planet.”

— Designed by Farhat Asif from India

Go Green & Save The Earth

Stickers from the 70’s

“I didn’t want to make a typical New Year themed wallpaper for January so I started looking for fun ideas. Apparently January 13th is day of the stickers and so I made something original with this. I wanted to add an extra challenge that was totally out of my comfort zone. So I designed everything in seventies style. Grooovy baby!”

— Designed by Bastien Corens from Belgium

Stickers from the 70's

The Wolf’s Month

“I love wolves!”

— Designed by Morgane Van Achter from Belgium

Wolfs month

Oldies But Goodies

The beginning of something new, the colors of winter, local New Year’s traditions — these are just a few of the things that inspired people to create a January wallpaper over the years. Below you’ll find a selection of designs from our archives that are just too good to be forgotten. Enjoy! (Please note that these wallpapers don’t come with a calendar.)

Start Somewhere

“If we wait until we’re ready, we’ll be waiting for the rest of our lives. Start today — somewhere, anywhere.”

— Designed by Shawna Armstrong from the United States

Start Somewhere

Facts

“I was reminded of a simple fact while I was browsing for inspiration for this wallpaper. I’ve read on Wikipedia that January is the coldest month on most of the northern hemisphere and the hottest one on most of the southern hemisphere. I found it fascinating that someone in Australia is enjoying a surf while I am watching the first snowflakes of the winter. I was hoping to create a wallpaper that will serve as a reminder of the fact that we live in a fascinating world full of varieties and contrasts. The old-worn-out-encyclopedia style hopefully emphasizes the educational theme of the wallpaper.”

Designed by Danijel Gajan from Serbia

Smashing Desktop Wallpapers - January 2012

Hidden Gem

“Kingfishers are called ‘ijsvogels’ (ice-birds) in Dutch. Not because they like the winter cold, but because of the intense blue and teal colors…”

— Designed by Franke Margrete from the Netherlands

Hidden Gem

Freedom

“It is great to take shots of birds and think about the freedom they have. Then I start dreaming of becoming one and flying around the world with their beautiful wings.”

— Designed by Marija Zaric from Belgrade, Serbia

Freedom

January Is The Month For Dreaming

“It can be very hot in Australia and very cold in Europe so I think that it is a good month for dreaming and making plans.”

— Designed by Tazi from Australia

January Is The Month For Dreaming

Travel And Explore

“For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return. (Leonardo da Vinci)”

— Designed by Dipanjan Karmakar from India

Travel & Explore

A New Beginning

“I wanted to do a lettering-based wallpaper because I love lettering. I chose January because for a lot of people the new year is perceived as a new beginning and I wish to make them feel as positive about it as possible! The idea is to make them feel like the new year is (just) the start of something really great.”

— Designed by Carolina Sequeira from Portugal

A New Beginning

Open The Doors Of The New Year

“January is the first month of the year and usually the coldest winter month in the Northern hemisphere. The name of the month of January comes from ‘ianua’, the Latin word for door, so this month denotes the door to the new year and a new beginning. Let’s open the doors of the new year together and hope it will be the best so far!”

— Designed by PopArt Studio from Serbia

Open the Doors of the New Year

“I wanted to try my hand at creating a low poly illustration and thought a champagne glass would be fun.”

— Designed by Denise Johnson from Chicago

Pop, Fizz, Clink

Oaken January

“In our country, Christmas is celebrated in January when oak branches and leaves are burnt to symbolize the beginning of the New Year and new life. It’s the time when we gather with our families and celebrate the arrival of the new year in a warm and cuddly atmosphere.”

— Designed by PopArt Studio from Serbia

Oaken January

Snowy Octopus

— Designed by Karolina Palka from Poland

Snowy Octopus

Soft Wishes

“Let yourself be carried away by the delicate desires of your heart…”

Designed by Katia Piccinni from Italy

Smashing Desktop Wallpapers - January 2012

Boom!

— Designed by Elise Vanoorbeek from Belgium

Boom.

The Early January Bird

“January is the month of a new beginning, hope and inspiration. That’s why it reminds me of an early bird.”

— Designed by Zlatina Petrova from Bulgaria

The Early January Bird

Winter Leaves

— Designed by Nathalie Ouederni from France

Winter Leaves

Caucasian Mountains

“From Caucasus with love!”

Designed by Ilona from Russia

Smashing Desktop Wallpapers - January 2012

Wolf-Month

“Wolf-month (in Dutch “wolfsmaand”) is another name for January.”

— Designed by Chiara Faes from Belgium

Wolf-Month

Be Awesome Today

“A little daily motivation to keep your cool during the month of January.”

— Designed by Amalia Van Bloom from the United States

be awesome today

Blue Neon Sign

— Designed by Jong S. Kim from the United States

Smashing Desktop Wallpaper — January 2013

Join In Next Month!

Thank you to all designers for their participation. Join in next month!

Smashing Editorial (cm, il)
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WordPress Theme Review Team Announces Alpha Color Picker for the Customizer

Screenshot of the alpha color picker in the customizer.
Using the color picker in the customizer.

The WordPress Theme Review Team announced its color picker control today. The project is a single package that allows theme authors to include an advanced color control in the customizer. The control allows users to select a hex color with an optional alpha channel to handle transparency.

The color control is the fourth feature package released by the team in 2019. The idea for feature packages took off in June. Feature packages are repositories for single features that theme authors may use in their themes. Their purpose is to standardize common features so that developers do not have to recreate the wheel, so to speak.

Arguably, the color control is the most complex package the team has built. The bulk of the work was handled by feature packages lead, Ari Stathopoulos. The project is available via its GitHub repository and Packagist.

Officially, the team launched version 1.0 in October, but the project has undergone some changes since its release. Initially, the project utilized the Iris color picker script included with WordPress. However, the team ran into trouble making it work as they wanted with RGBA colors. The team refactored the project to use React Color instead.

“The main issue with this project was the thing that WordPress is most famous for — backward-compatibility,” said Stathopoulos. “Compatibility is one of WP’s greatest assets, but at the same time, a pain for developers. Things don’t get updated because they need to work for plugin A/B/C that hasn’t been updated in 6 years. So scripts like the Iris picker, things that were great half a decade ago, have been abandoned and are just dead weight. RGBA support could easily have been in WP core’s picker. There was always a demand for it. But it never happened.”

The team decided to move forward without relying on past solutions. Stathopoulos said the biggest hurdle with building the control to use React Color was making it look native to WordPress. He described the project as an example for others to see that it was possible to use React in the customizer.

Setting up the control with the basics is relatively easy. Theme authors should be able to quickly integrate it into their themes by following the usage instructions. Color data is stored as a hex value (e.g., #000000) if there is no transparency or as a RGBA value (e.g., rgba(0,0,0,0)) if there is.

The control does come with more advanced features. For example, it is possible to store color data as an array, which includes a slew of information, such as:

  • RGB (red, green, blue)
  • HSL (hue, saturation, lightness)
  • Alpha transparency
  • Hex
  • CSS value
  • Accessibility properties

The accessibility properties are interesting and may allow theme authors to help to ensure users choose colors that meet accessibility standards. Some of the included data is the color’s luminance, contrast with white and black, max contrast color, and more.

The Future of Feature Packages

Currently, the TRT’s feature packages are not widely adopted by theme authors. The overall project is still in its infancy. In the wake of the news that WordPress will be moving toward full-site editing, the team is not sure what that will mean for the project going forward.

Stathopoulos said that some theme authors are hesitant to do big things at the moment. It’s a tough sell to get developers on board when the future of theme development is in a holding pattern, waiting for the other Gutenberg shoe to drop.

“We’ve been discussing and thinking of what packages we should build,” said Stathopoulos. “The problem is that the editor is the centerpiece of WordPress. Everything else just surrounds the editor. Gutenberg is expanding, and it looks like it’s taking over everything else in WordPress. So we think the next packages should be around the editor too.”

He said some of the initial package ideas like a standardized hook system, more customizer controls, and accessible menus may not be the best route. Those ideas may not make sense in the context of a block-editing world. The team could see the launch of such packages dead on arrival.

“It’s a tricky, transitional period for themes and theme developers,” said Stathopoulos. “We all need to learn how to better leverage the editor.”