Today, on July 4th, WPBeginner reaches a significant milestone as we proudly celebrate our 14th anniversary. It has been an incredible journey!
As we commemorate this occasion, I would like to take a moment to provide a brief overview of the noteworthy developments in our business and my personal life over the past year.
Additionally, in honor of this momentous occasion, we are thrilled to announce a massive birthday giveaway. Participants will have the chance to win their favorite premium WordPress plugins, collectively valued at $50,000. Moreover, one lucky winner will be selected for an exclusive 1-on-1 mentorship call with me, lasting for one hour.
Stay tuned for more exciting updates and details on how to enter the giveaway. Join us as we celebrate 14 years of WPBeginner’s success!
The WPBeginner Journey
My fascination with WordPress began at the age of 16, and I quickly became enamored with its vibrant community. This passion eventually led me to establish WPBeginner at the age of 19, driven by a singular mission: to simplify WordPress for beginners.
Over time, WPBeginner has grown to become the largest free WordPress resource site tailored specifically for beginners.
For those who are new to WPBeginner, our comprehensive story can be found on the about page, while the Start Here page offers a valuable guide to maximizing your experience on the platform.
Personal Updates
My son, Solomon, has now reached the age of 6.5, and it brings me great joy to witness his budding interest in WordPress. Earlier this year, he accompanied me to WordCamp Asia in Bangkok, and he has taken on the exciting task of generating mascot ideas for our new plugins at Awesome Motive.
As a family, we continue to embark on our global travels, relishing the opportunity to meet WPBeginner users from various regions. Recent destinations have included Istanbul, Karachi, Alaska, Dubai, California, Mexico, St. Thomas, Maldives, Thailand, Canada, and many more.
One of the remarkable aspects of operating a fully remote online company is the freedom to work from any corner of the world. With team members spanning across 50 countries, I am planning to visit several additional countries throughout this year.
If you haven’t had the chance to peruse my 2022 recap, I highly recommend exploring it on my personal blog, where I share valuable insights gleaned from the previous year.
By the way, I would like to offer a sneak peek at one of the mascots that Solomon helped create for our new plugin, Duplicator. Allow me to introduce Willie the Walrus.
WPBeginner Updates
Thanks to our incredible community, WPBeginner has experienced continuous growth year after year. In addition to the wealth of WordPress tutorials available on our blog, I would like to highlight some notable updates from the past year.
However, before delving into those updates, I am thrilled to share a major milestone that fills me with immense pride. We were featured on the NASDAQ billboard in Times Square for surpassing 25 million active installs of our products. This achievement was cause for celebration for our entire team – going from a humble blog to being showcased in the heart of New York City!
These milestones serve as a testament to the rewards of hard work.
Speaking of hard work, here are some significant WPBeginner updates from the past 12 months:
- Launch of Five New Free Business Tools
Over the past year, we have introduced five new free business tools designed to enhance your WordPress experience.
Keyword Generator Tool: Streamlines keyword research by generating over 300 keyword ideas with a single click. Blog Post Idea Generator: Provides a year’s worth of content ideas within seconds. Smart Headline Analyzer: Empowers you to craft irresistible headlines that drive user engagement and clicks. Website SEO Analyzer: Identifies critical errors on your website and generates a free SEO report to guide you in resolving them. Keyword Density Checker: Enables you to identify primary keywords within any content piece, aiding in the optimization process and competitor research.
- Expanding Community and Enhanced Content
Our community continues to grow across various social media networks. The WPBeginner Engage Facebook group now boasts over 94,000 members, and our WPBeginner YouTube channel has surpassed 291,000 subscribers.
We have also revamped our WPBeginner video site, granting you access to a vast collection of step-by-step videos, eliminating the need for hiring a developer. All these resources are available to you free of charge.
You can stay connected with us on multiple social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter.
- Contributions to WordPress and Open Source
We have consistently been strong advocates of open source. In the past year, we completely revamped our free Insert Headers and Footers plugin and relaunched it under a new brand, WPCode.
Originally created to facilitate the addition of code snippets in WordPress without editing the functions.php file or installing additional plugins, the revamped version offers an enhanced snippet library. Users can easily find and add snippets to their sites with just one click. Additionally, you can create a personalized WPCode profile to save snippets, create private snippets, and more.
For further details on WPCode, I encourage you to read the full WPCode announcement. It is an underrated yet indispensable plugin for all websites, currently trusted by over 2 million websites.