Welcome Laterpay, Our New Technology Partner!

This notice relates to the following platforms: WordPress.com VIP, VIP Go

We are pleased to announce our latest technical integration, LaterPay which is now available as a WordPress plugin.

LaterPay offers publishers a frictionless deferred payment approach to monetization that saves users time and increases conversions. Instead of requiring upfront registration and payment – which derails over 98 percent of all intended purchases – LaterPay defers this process until customer purchases across websites reach a $5 threshold. With this approach, publishers can simultaneously expand existing subscription models, increase their paying customer base, and improve their user experience.

With LaterPay, you can choose from a number of monetization solutions that best suit your needs. For instance, you can prompt users to purchase a specific article, timed access to content, or a full subscription. Single purchases and time passes complement the full subscription model by pulling new potential subscribers into the publisher’s ecosystem while generating incremental revenues.

On the WordPress.com platform, you can access the LaterPay plugin via the shared plugins repository, using wpcom_vip_load_plugin() like this:

wpcom_vip_load_plugin( 'laterpay' );

For VIP Go, you can install LaterPay by adding the latest version to your plugins folder. The plugin can be downloaded from WordPress.org.

If you’re interested in exploring or implementing LaterPay as part of your monetization flow, reach out to the VIP team.

Introducing the Public Version of Gutenberg Ramp

The public version of our Gutenberg Ramp plugin is now available! For most of you, this is more an FYI than an actionable note. This version will only be useful for sites hosted somewhere other than VIP.

Ramp is a plugin we developed to help you test your customizations and workflows with Gutenberg sooner and get your teams and sites ready for a smooth transition to the new editor.

For all VIP sites hosted on Go, your procedure for loading Gutenberg will remain the same as we have previously shared and is described in this help doc. This new plugin is for anyone in the community with sites hosted elsewhere who want to take advantage of the simple functionality we developed. The primary difference between the two is that we added a UI for the public version, so that outside of the enterprise context users who manage their plugins directly via UI rather than code would be able to use it easily.

As a reminder, the Gutenberg project itself is still ongoing and still releasing fantastic new features regularly, so the Gutenberg plugin itself is likely to continue to change. This could break things in the short term. While we encourage taking advantage of everything Gutenberg has to offer as soon as you can, it’s also important to do so with open eyes and the ability to absorb unexpected changes.

Helpful Links:

Start your Gutenberg Testing Now with Ramp

This notice relates to the following platform: VIP Go

Introducing Gutenberg Ramp, a plugin to help you complete your testing plans ahead of time and transition smoothly to the new editor in WordPress 5.0 at your chosen pace. You can use Ramp to enable Gutenberg selectively by post ID (load only for specified posts) and post type (load only for specified post types.) And most importantly for planning a smooth transition, Ramp works on both the plugin version of Gutenberg, which you’ll be using today, and the version that will be merged in to core as part of WordPress 5.0. As a reminder, the new editor will be opt-in on VIP Go, so if you do nothing, you will continue to see the current editor when 5.0 rolls out.

Starting now, the Gutenberg plugin and Ramp are available to all VIP Go users as well as our agency partners. For the next week Ramp will still be in a testing phase, so we ask that you share your testing notes and any proposed contributions at Ramp’s now public GitHub repository.

To use Ramp to selectively load Gutenberg, we recommend the following next steps:

  1. Watch the videos available at VIPgutenberg.com and use TestGutenberg.com to take a closer look at Gutenberg if you haven’t already.
  2. Read this new documentation post describing how to use Ramp to load Gutenberg selectively.
  3. Load it up and try it out in your VIP Go development environment. You’re off to the races.

*If you don’t have a development environment on which to test, now’s a great time to get one set up. Just open up a ticket with our Support team and we can get a development site set up for you. Unless otherwise requested, we’ll sync the content from your live site so you can get a true sense of how Gutenberg will work for you. If you already have a development environment and would prefer not to disturb that, we can create an additional Gutenberg testing environment instead. Not to worry, in either case content changes here will not affect the content on your live site.

Also, please note that there are a couple of small differences between the version of Ramp on VIP and the version that will soon be released for community use: (1)the name of the loading function in the plugin on Go differs slightly from the public version, and (2)the UI is intentionally switched off on the VIP version so that developers maintain control, rather than wp-admin users.

We’ll share more details on the WordPress 5.0 deployment as it gets closer to release. Until then, as always you can find this and all of our previous Gutenberg news and updates at the Gutenberg at VIP doc.

Loading Gutenberg Ramp on VIP Go
Gutenberg Ramp GitHub Repository
Gutenberg at VIP documentation

Gutenberg Updates: TestGutenberg and Educational Videos

As a follow-up to last week’s overview of next steps with Gutenberg (#), we have two exciting updates to share that you can get started with right away:

  1. Educational videos, available now! VIP has partnered with two well-known WordPress educators to bring you a series of videos on the Gutenberg project. There are separate courses for users and developers on how to work with the new editor. A first set is available now and includes topics like how to build blocks and converting live test sites. Another set that focuses on converting short codes and using business permissions is coming soon. To access the videos, all you have to do is go to vipgutenberg.com and register with your work email address to receive your unique password.
  2. Front-end testing site Testgutenberg.com, available now!  Use our new Testgutenberg.com site to experiment with the latest version of the Gutenberg editor right in a browser window. It’s a great playground for developers, editors, and content creators who want to see what working with the plugin is like and who may not have access to a local test environment. We’ve also included a set of links in the sidebar from both the WordPress core project and our own resources. And don’t miss the share feedback link in the top right for a short survey to share your impressions and experiences.

More to come soon, including additional videos and updates on the Gutenberg transition tool.

VIP Workshop Ticket Sales End April 13

With ticket sales ending on April 13th, you’ll want to register soon for VIP Workshop, our annual enterprise WordPress gathering taking place May 14-17th. This marks the seventh year for a very special event that gets the whole extended VIP family together, including clients, partners, and community.

The speaker lineup is nearly complete, and it is shaping up to be a phenomenal three days in Napa, California. Topics run the gamut from big picture thoughts on organizational change, fostering diversity, and the future of digital, to the latest advanced topics with the Gutenberg project, to retrospectives, case studies, and best practices.

Throughout the week we’ll hear from VIP clients like TechCrunch, Nielsen, and FiveThirtyEight, agency partners Dekode, Alley Interactive, 10up, rtCamp, and XWP, and Automatticians Simon Wheatley, Miguel Fonseca, Tammie Lister, and Matt Perry.

And kicking us off will be WordPress.com President and veteran of The New York Times and National Public Radio Kinsey Wilson, and celebrated technology author and lecturer Howard Rheingold.

The schedule is split in to business and developer tracks, and includes ample opportunities for informal networking and conversations among the whole group. Session formats include joint-track full conference discussions, individual track case studies and featured topics, and flash talks.  Get the full details on speakers, formats, and topics, and all of the logistics on the Workshop site.

We keep the attendance deliberately small to make sure there are lots of opportunities for chance conversations and informal breakout discussions. Get your tickets soon!

Next Steps with Gutenberg

As of the State of the Word in December(#), WordPress version 5.0 was targeted to ship some time around April 2018. It will have the new Gutenberg editor as one of its leading and most anticipated features. While we have no additional information as to when it will be ready, and April is just around the corner, now is the time to start preparing if you haven’t already.  As we have mentioned previously(#), VIP will be deploying 5.0 per our usual procedures, but we will make sure that the Gutenberg editor is defaulted to off initially unless you take further action.

We have been working on a number of fronts to equip you for a smooth transition to WordPress 5.0 and the new Gutenberg editor, and have lots of exciting updates to share! Read on for news about the transition itself and how it will work, tools for experimentation and testing, and VIP-exclusive Gutenberg learning materials on the way.

1. Gutenberg transition tool

Everyone’s transition plan will look a little different. We’re readying a plugin that will allow you to decide when the new editor surfaces in your workflow, on the Post and Page type level, from not at all to all-in and anything in between. You’ll be able to do this well ahead of time (soon in fact!) and make changes to it as your transition plans come together. Whatever those settings are when 5.0 deploys will determine how Gutenberg surfaces. Once this plugin is ready to go, we will be enabling it for all VIP’s set to “classic editor only” as default.

This will put you in control of the details, and if you choose to do nothing, the new editor will stay defaulted to “off” for all content types. It will give you the runway to test all of your customizations and integrations ahead of time, and plan a thoughtful and granular transition if that’s what suits you best. If you are ready to rock with Gutenberg throughout your post types and pages right out of the gate, it will be easy to do that too.

Next step for VIPs: Start talking to your teams about how you want to surface the new editor interface, and work on your test plan. We’re here to help if you’d like some guidance.

2. Call for testers

We’d love your help in testing this transition tool. We’re looking for a few clients who are willing to participate in a final beta test before we roll it out to all clients. If you’re interested, send a note to Allison at allison.blanda@automattic.com.

3. Prepare your teams

WordPress VIP is partnering with WordPress pros Joe Casabona and Zac Gordon to help prepare your teams for working with Gutenberg. We will be offering free video education courses to all clients. These will focus on teaching your editorial, product and development teams about the ins-and-outs of the new editor.

4. Press check time

We will be sharing a new testing site shortly that allows you to experiment with Gutenberg as a front-end experience. This will be particularly useful for editors and content creators who want to see what working with blocks is like and who may not have access to a local test environment. More on that very soon!

We also have a new documentation page dedicated to tracking all things related to Gutenberg at VIP. We’ll continue to share updates here as well, but will maintain that page as an ongoing one-stop shop.