WordPress.com Growth Summit

I will give a speech at the official WordPress.com growth summit to be held in August. As they say, “Learn how to build and grow your website from start to expand”. The guest speaker lineup is a strong range of areas, which is exciting. This is slightly different from my usual field, which makes me look forward to even more. Selena Jackson said:

The purpose of this event is to inspire, give you the tools you need, and help you build your community. The seminar will cover three topics: blogging, business and creativity. You can attend workshops on any or all topics.

If you are interested, tickets are $79, and you can enjoy a 20% discount with the coupon code ChrisCoyier20 .

My speech topic is:

CSS-Tricks: Take advantage of WordPress Chris Coyier's CSS-Tricks is a popular publication for web designers and developers. It is also a successful business project powered by WordPress. Chris will take us deeper into the background of CSS-Tricks and share how it can take advantage of WordPress’s capabilities both technically and commercially.

Selena also asked some interesting questions:

What made you stick with WordPress for years? What is the important role of your website in your growth or success?

CSS-Tricks has been a WordPress website since the beginning. I have never changed the platform and have never made any major architectural adjustments. But it's not because I've never been exposed to other website building methods. I've been lucky enough to get in touch with and experience a variety of different ways of website building, from JAMstack using static website generators and cloud functions, to various CMSs, to websites based on Ruby on Rails and Python... all kinds of technologies. Each technology has its application.

One of the reasons is that I am primarily an independent developer in CSS-Tricks. I'm the only one. I don't have enough budget to form a luxurious development team. But I still want to feel powerful and efficient. This is one of the things WordPress brings to me. I feel like I can build almost anything on WordPress and it doesn't feel like a mountain of technical debt that makes it hard for me to maintain.

Despite some custom content, the reality is probably much simpler than it seems. Most of the work I do is relatively standard WordPress development. I use popular and well maintained plugins. I use standard filters. I use the template system as designed. I try to do things "the way I do in WordPress" which means year after year it's easy for me to maintain a website and build what I want to build. I never worry about whether I was breaking the rules or whether I did anything that might have caused me to be unable to upgrade.

What is the most important thing you want our growth summit attendees to take away from your keynote/symposium?

I think my main point will be to share how powerful WordPress is as a platform to run the publishing business.

What have you done to make your website stand out in a crowded and noisy network environment? What is unique about your story or business?

What I want us to stand out is the content of the website itself. We strive to be consistent, trustworthy, friendly and helpful. In a world full of misinformation, zero-ethical advertising and user-experience-information-inspired interfaces trying to squeeze everything out of you, a website that is just trying to help you understand the network and run your normal business from it, I hope it will be as good as me for others.

Has COVID-19 changed the way you use your website—or your approach to online presence?

Not much change. I find that some advertisers are reducing spending and paying more closely to their sponsored investments. While I don't like seeing these funds drop, I don't blame them. It is wise for any business to ensure that funds are effectively utilized.

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