WordPress Weekly News 024: WordCamp 2018, WordPress marketing research, Disqus 3.0 and much more.

It’s that time of the week again where I bring you all the latest WordPress news from the past week. In this edition of WordPress Weekly News, we will talk about WordCamp 2018, WordPress marketing research, Disqus 3.0 and much more.

WordPress Floats Research Surveys for Agencies, Clients and Enterprises

The marketing folks at WordPress have launched a survey in order to gather data and case studies from WordPress agencies, clients and enterprises. The aim is to provide more resources for anyone who wants to get a deeper insight into WordPress. The research is aimed at identifying factors that influence people’s decision to either use WordPress or not use it at all. The marketing team looks to use the data as case studies, testimonials and FAQs to facilitate marketing efforts.

Since thousands of dollars are being spent on marketing services against WordPress, it needs to counter these efforts in order keep WordPress on top. The research is the first step in that direction along with the WordPress Growth Council that Matt Mullenweg himself formed to bring together marketing professionals.

The need to educate people on WordPress is evident as some WordPress users still find it difficult to differentiate between WordPress.com and the self-hosted WordPress. This is one of the major problems that marketers face while marketing WordPress.

David Skarjune, a contributor to the WordPress marketing survey, has expressed his views on the problem that marketers face:

“Here we have the classic WordPress.com and WordPress.org duo that encompasses the nature of the WordPress free software system. This twosome drives the project and sometimes it drives us crazy—only because it instills wide-eyed confusion trying to explain these companion entities to the rest of the world. Simple enough: get a free blog at .com or get free software and help at .org. “

WordCamp Europe 2018

After the massive success of this year’s WordCamp Europe in Paris, the 6th edition of the event is set to take place in Belgrade, Serbia. The previous 5 editions took place in Leiden, Sofia, Seville, Vienna, and Paris. The WordPress community including the attendees and the 221-person volunteer crew was quick to approve as WordCamp returns to Eastern Europe next year.

WordPress community in Serbia has grown at a fast pace since the first WordPress meetup that was held there in 2013. After that, Serbia has been hosting a number of meetups with the number of attendees averaging over 100. The WP Serbija Facebook group is used to coordinate and organize these events. The group has grown from 600 members to more than 4700 members which shows the growing pace of the WordPress community in Serbia.

Disqus 3.0

Disqus 3.0 beta 1 has introduced a new and improved comment syncing that includes redesigning the settings screen. During an interview with WPTavern, Daniel Ha, CEO and co-founder of Disqus, explained why users were reporting issues concerning comment syncing between Disqus and WordPress.

“We may have taken some services offline to work on them which may have affected those who were trying to sync,” Ha said.

Disqus 3.0 was rewritten so that it can take advantage of newer APIs in WordPress so that it can make improvements. The comments will now be synced through a web hook method rather than a WP cron which makes the process more reliable. It also supports edited comments and comment state which lets you see if your comment is approved, pending or deleted.

The setting screen has also been updated which now includes a shortcut to the frequently visited sections of Disqus’s backend.

WooCommerce Discontinues 50% Discount – Customers Distraught

Customers will now have to pay the full price of the extensions that they bought from WooCommerce.com after WooCommerce drops the 50% discount offer. The surprising part was that there was no mention of this on the WooCommerce website or on the official social media accounts.

Users who are upset by this change, are contacting the WooCommerce help desk to enquire about the price change. The support representatives are stating the obvious by informing that customers would have to pay the full price for their purchases.

The change is also a part of WooCommerce transition to straight renewal process which is similar to all the SaaS products.

That’s all from this week’s WordPress Weekly News. If you have some exciting WordPress news, do share it in the comments below.