*air horn noise*

*ahem*

Ladies and gentledevs, please put your hands up in the air and wave ’em like you don’t care. We’ve dropped 12 hot new hosting locations and this party just got more worldwide than ever before.

We already have hosting servers in 18 regions, including Seattle, Tokyo, Sydney, Amsterdam and Bangalore. By adding these 12 we now offer 30 different options, making it easier than ever to find a hosting server location close to your website visitors.

Read on to learn about our new regions, and why location matters to your site performance. 

First, Let’s Shout Out Our 12 New Regions

Here are the new locations we’re adding, spanning North and South America, Africa and the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Oceania:

• Mumbai
• Delhi NCR
• Osaka
• Johannesburg
• Madrid
• Manchester
• Melbourne
• Mexico City
• Santiago
• Stockholm
• Tel Aviv
• Warsaw

What’s Up With Server Location Anyway? Why Does It Matter?

When it comes to improving the performance of your website, choosing a server close to your customers definitely matters.

Here are some of the advantages of a strategically-located server:

Your Site Will Have Better Load Times

Want to decrease your risk of visitors getting frustrated and clicking the X because your site took forever to load?

When a user clicks on your website, the data gets transferred from the data center to their computer, via networks. The further the distance the data needs to travel, the longer it’ll take for the page to load. This data travel time is called latency.

The closer your viewers are to the web server, the quicker they’ll be able to access your site.

As well as lower latency, you’ll also have a shorter TTFB (time to the first byte), which is the time it takes for the web browser to receive the first byte of data after sending a request to the server.

This matters because, as Google likes to remind us, 53% of visitors will abandon your site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. We all know the pain of a high bounce rate, right?

You’ll Improve Your Viewer Experience

Have a website with multimedia or interactive elements? Server location could be the difference between your customers grumbling at your loading screen or falling in love with your clever design.

Not only will your site load faster for visitors near your server location, but they’ll also experience a buttery-smooth, uninterrupted online experience.

Large files such as videos will load faster and play without buffering, and other content such as images will instantly appear.

It’s Better for SEO

Since hosting server location impacts page loading times, it’ll also give your SEO a boost.

Search engines love speedy sites, of course. But also, faster page speed and better user experience mean lower bounce rate and increased dwell time. The more time people spend on your site, the more you’re favored by the SEO gods.

Faster pages will also get crawled, indexed, and ranked quicker. Plus, search engines often have a local bias. If your users are searching for content in Melbourne, they’ll be more likely to get results hosted at a Melbourne data center than one in Sydney.

At the end of last year we finally unveiled our Reseller platform to the world, and many of you are already using it to create amazing businesses.

However, since the initial release, one vital ingredient has been missing that you’ve been patiently waiting for…

So we’re thrilled to announce today that full domain reseller automation is finally here!

This means you can now automate reselling domains, hosting, and templates directly on your website, or through your white-label client portal.

But wait, there’s more!

To celebrate the completion of Reseller, we’re also doing a massive $1 million giveaway for those looking to kickstart their Reseller business, without having to put any money down.

Read on for a quick overview of Reseller’s new domain automation capabilities, and more details on how you can get your hands on a share of the $1 million!

Feel free to skip to what interests you most:

• Domain Reseller Overview
• The million-dollar giveaway! $$

Domain Reseller Overview

Resell all supported TLDs under your own brand

No more recommending third-party domain providers to clients, or buying on their behalf, we’ve made it super easy to set up profitable domains to sell to your clients, under your own brand.

You can choose from 250+ wholesale-priced top-level domain names (TLDs). Just apply your chosen % or $ markup, and voilá, the domains will be added as reseller products, ready for resale.

Add an easy search & buy widget on your site

Making your domains available for purchase on your website couldn’t be easier.

You can customize how domains will be shown on your site with our customizable widget, which allows you to change the background, label and button colors. Then easily embed the widget onto your site with shortcode or Gutenberg block.

Effortless and automated client self-checkout

Your reseller domains can be easily purchased directly from your website. No jumping away to a third-party payment processor – it’s all handled from start to finish on your site.

Purchased domains will then be accessed and managed inside your white label client portal, where clients can also pay for renewals and add new domains.

Right now, domain and hosting checkout are separate, but soon when your clients buy hosting they’ll be prompted to add a domain (or vice versa), and everything will be automatically connected and propagated for them, including DNS setup!

We’re also building a fully integrated ticketing system for the client portal that will streamline the way you communicate with your reseller clients and assist them.

That’s it, your clients can now search for and buy domains directly from you, all under your own brand, at the price you set, all automated from start to finish.

The million-dollar giveaway! $$

Been thinking about trying our Reseller platform? Or maybe you’ve always wanted to start a reseller business, but never had the time or resources…

This is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for. Because we’re literally GIVING you free credit to kickstart any business you dream up!

There’s also zero risk, because as well as funding you to get started with Reseller, you will receive top notch support for your business at every step from our 24/7 expert team.

To be eligible for a share of $1 million hosting credit, all you have to do is be an Agency member and use Reseller, as these credits can only be used exclusively through the platform, and put toward hosting sites only.

To claim your credit, simply reach out to our team via live chat or contact us directly here.

How much credit can you claim?

Well, that all depends on your business and what you’re planning!

When you get in touch, we’ll discuss how you plan to use Reseller and your rough business plan (we can help you with this if needed!), this will then help us determine a fair credit amount to help you get things off the ground.

Once done, we’ll add the free credit to your account, ready for you to use instantly – it’s that easy!

We’re also operating this credit giveaway on a ‘first in, first served’ basis, so if you’re interested be quick, you don’t want to miss out on securing a slice of the $1 million pie!

Become an Agency member to claim your share of the $1 million

Keen to join the celebration and get your hands on a share of the $1 million? As mentioned, signing up to our Agency plan gives you full access.

Plus, you get instant exclusives like $144 free yearly hosting credit, and access to VIP pricing, so your giveaway credit will go even further.

And of course, you get full access to our Reseller platform, including the brand new domain automation capabilities featured in this article.

Still unsure? We get it, and Agency comes with a full risk-free money-back guarantee. So if you’re not satisfied the platform is delivering what you wanted within the first 30 days, just cancel and we’ll refund you in full, no questions asked.

Today we welcome Phil, the owner of Capital Web Design, a Canadian web services agency based in Ottawa.

WPMU DEV: Congrats on your professional success, Phil. Please tell us straight away, how did you grow your business so fast?

Phil: I wouldn’t say the business itself grew that fast. I’ve been building websites in some way or another since the early 2000s. Either static sites coded by hand (HTML + CSS + Javascript), using frameworks (VueJS), or with WordPress.

I started my freelance web design company in 2014, after being approached to do a replacement build for what was a costly, difficult to maintain website – and that became my first client. From there I found small and medium businesses in my hometown that had old, unsupported and unmaintained websites, or who had no website at all.

As I continued my efforts, my business ethos emerged: help companies, nonprofits and individuals in my city build a web presence they can be proud of. I focused on creating bespoke WordPress web design based on well-supported multipurpose themes, WPMU DEV and other dependable plugins, and fully managed white-glove web hosting.

Since then, I’ve had the pleasure of working with 20+ clients, and have built 60 websites targeting a multitude of industries and commercial sectors.

WPMU DEV: That’s awesome. Did you know about WPMU DEV at that time?

Phil: I had known about WPMU DEV since around 2016-18, back when you offered dozens of plugins for all sorts of functionality. I couldn’t justify the cost of a membership then, but I popped in every so often to check and see what progress was being made.

In 2019, Hosting was added as a WPMU DEV service – and this really caught my attention. During the Black Friday promotion that November (lifetime reduced membership cost!), I joined as a member, and I can’t see myself ever leaving.

It was a perfect storm: high-quality plugins + managed hosting + 24/7 support + highly reduced cost.

WPMU DEV: So as you were building your clientele, you were putting together your professional tool box. Can you give us a peek inside?

Phil: The tools and services from WPMU DEV have been invaluable to me.

Plugins have provided me with consistency and reliability for all of the most important aspects of WordPress websites.

Knowing that I can count on Hummingbird and Smush for performance optimization allowed me to stop using other freemium plugins such as W3 Total Cache, Autoptimize, WP Super Cache and EWWW Image Optimization. I found these plugins were all good at some things, but had a lot of paywalled features that Hummingbird and Smush offered out of the box, for free.

Defender has been a great peace-of-mind addition to my repertoire, as the one-click recommended fixes are super straightforward and quite effective.

Forminator forms may be difficult at times to style with CSS, but that’s more than made up for in functionality. The drag-and-drop UI makes it much easier to build forms compared to Contact Form 7, and the amount of extras that are baked in (calculation, email routing, etc) blow other (often paid) form builders out of the water.

WPMU DEV: Aside from plugins, you mentioned our services have made a huge impact as well. Can you expand on that?

Phil: When it comes to services, it’s hard to put into words just how much The Hub and the associated Hosting have helped me throughout the last few years.

I have worked with hosting providers like 1and1, DreamHost, Media Temple, Digital Ocean VPS, and Bluehost. Each had their advantages, but in the end it always became a chore to use their services. It was clear that the quality of their offerings reflected the low cost they positioned themselves at. They were in a perpetual fight to undercut their competitors on price, at the cost of quality of service and support.

WPMU DEV Hosting came in late in the game, but out of the gate addressed two of the major concerns I experienced at other hosts: lack of support, and lack of trust in the infrastructure.

By having dedicated resources (versus shared), the web servers were consistently fast, reliable, and offered premium features such as staging, backups and WAF.

WPMU DEV: Walk us through a typical work day; what you reach for the most, and your usual workflow.

Phil: I keep The Hub open in a tab at all times, refreshing it every once in a while to keep track of ongoing community discussions, website maintenance statuses, and plugin updates.

I subscribe to key email notifications to receive alerts of technical issues on my managed sites, as well as member discussions in the WPMU DEV member forums, blogs and newsletter.

When a technical issue occurs, I’m able to troubleshoot it quickly. If I’m unable to resolve it on my own, the LiveChat support is always there to help me right away.

WPMU DEV has allowed me to optimize my workflows across the board, in areas like:

• Faster site creation with one-click managed WordPress server provisioning from The Hub.
• Easier client invoicing using Client Billing.
• More efficient website monitoring and maintenance through The Hub.
• Lower maintenance effort required with WPMU DEV plugins.
• Faster technical troubleshooting with the LiveChat support.

WPMU DEV: Outside of your own talent and determination, what would you say has contributed most significantly to your growth?

Phil: WPMU DEV has reduced my server build-out time from 30 minutes to 3 minutes (90% reduction). Over the past few years I’ve stood up well over 75 servers, so this has saved me many hours of effort.

At the time of joining, The Hub allowed me to manage about a dozen sites from a central location as opposed to manually logging in to each separate site. This was a reduction of biweekly maintenance effort from approximately 60 minutes to 2 minutes.

Client billing and streamlined invoice creation allowed me to save approximately 20-30 minutes per invoice creation, which throughout the past few years I estimate has saved me over 30 hours of work.

All of these time and effort savings have allowed me to comfortably take on more projects and clients.

Since joining WPMU DEV, my completed projects count has grown approximately 416% – with each project being more efficient to produce than the last.

WPMU DEV: As a self-proclaimed diehard fan, you know we’re constantly upping our game and adding new features and services to our offerings. What’s a newer release that you’re really getting into?

Phil: Reseller focus. I look forward to adding WPMU DEV automated site provisioning via the reseller offerings, as well as domains and email reselling.

WPMU DEV: One last question; let’s close it out with a fun one. If you could talk to yourself at the start of your career, what would you say?

Phil: At the start of my career, I often looked up to senior staff who seemed wise beyond their years. I was afraid of making mistakes or breaking something, for fear that those-who-never-broke-anything would look down on me.

I would try to explain to a younger me that wisdom comes with experience, and experience comes from doing things, failing, and working through the failure.

The more things you work on, the more you get exposed to what works and what doesn’t. Failing or breaking something isn’t strictly negative, because every failure is a learning opportunity: troubleshoot what went wrong, understand how to fix it, and implement a solution.

Do this cycle enough times and you start to pre-emptively detect patterns, plan for success, and you get faster at fixing problems. Don’t be afraid of failure because the more you fail, the more you learn and the wiser you will become.

That wraps up this premiere episode of our Member Success Stories. Thanks to Phil for his candid, insightful answers in our interview.

Phil is one of WPMU DEV’s Agency Partners, and uses his 20 years of web design experience to achieve one goal: give back to his hometown by building modern websites for businesses and nonprofits in the Canadian capital.

You can reach Phil via his agency partner listing or visit Capital Web Design.

There are a lot of design and development trends floating around the internet. Researching this topic, I came across articles that listed upwards of 50. While many of these are legitimate topics of interest, most of them weren’t headline worthy.

So how did I land on a top 6? First and foremost, the topic had to be relevant and prevalent (after all, that is the definition of trendy). In addition, they had to strike me as important and valuable when it comes to web development specifically.

If these aren’t already on your radar, chances are they will be soon. Getting a good grasp on these noteworthy topics can really help you elevate your web development business.

Here’s a quick overview of what we’ll cover:

• A Primer on AI
• The Top 6 Trends in Web Development
  • AI Chatbots
  • Voice Assistant
  • Progressive Web Applications (PWA)
  • Single-page Applications (SPA)
  • Internet of Things (IoT)
  • Motion UI
• Trends or Tools of the Trade?

Since AI is a common denominator in all of the burgeoning tech we’ll look at in this article, it seemed a brief history on the topic would be in order.

A Primer on AI

The very first notions of AI came in the form of myths and rumors; artificial beings endowed with intelligence or consciousness by some master craftsmen. You know, your typical origins story.

Philosophers and thought leaders in other disciplines continued to discuss the essence of what would become AI, and in the 1940s the first programmable digital computer was created. However, with the ability only to execute commands (not store them), it lacked the prerequisite for intelligence: formal reasoning.

The ’50s saw mathematician Alan Turing’s Theory of Computation, suggesting it might be possible to construct an electronic brain. He postulated that machines could use information to solve problems and make decisions, much like humans, and in 1956, the field of artificial intelligence research was founded as an academic discipline.

Through the ’60s and ’70s, AI thrived, with computers able to store more information while simultaneously becoming faster, cheaper, and more accessible.

AI continued to pick up speed in the ’80s and ’90s. Learning techniques and expert systems were introduced and popularized, while governments and industries poured billions of dollars into revolutionizing AI. Alas, the loftiest goals didn’t come to fruition, and investors withdrew funding.

During the ’90s and 2000s, many of AI’s landmark achievements were met, despite government funding and public interest taking a backseat. In 1997, IBM’s chess playing computer program, Deep Blue, defeated the reigning world chess champion grandmaster. Later that same year, Windows implemented speech recognition software.

Since the turn of the century, AI has continued to prosper. By 2016, AI-related hardware and software surpassed the $8 billion mark, and the New York Times deemed the interest in AI “a frenzy”.

In today’s era of “Big Data” (characterized by volume, velocity, variety, value, and veracity), AI continues to propel forward, at times its capabilities not only reaching but surpassing computational power. (See Moore’s Law.)

With AI at the forefront of almost any tech you can think of, the possibilities seem endless, and the opportunities exciting.

So, without further ado…

The Top 6 Trends in Web Development

Let’s get straight to the heart of the matter. Here are the top 6 trends in web development for 2023, starting with…

AI Chatbots

AI Chatbots, or AI Assistants, are extremely prevalent in today’s world, and expected to grow substantially. In fact, SEMRush predicts a 33.2% year-on-year growth rate from 2020 to 2027.

AI chatbots help millions of people and businesses perform operations faster by using text or voice prompts. They also offer 24/7/365 availability, which is crucial to providing ready access to customers around the world in every time zone.

Considered to be one of the most influential technologies that will shape the future of web development, AI chatbots are smarter than regular chatbots. Due to use of natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) technologies, they better understand what the user wants, then tailor that experience to the individual.

AI chatbots can engage in complex conversations easily without the human intervention quotient. Because they analyze behavior and solve problems, their AI learning algorithms become smarter with every query they handle.

The impact of AI chatbots is substantial. Simply put: Chatbots enhance and streamline the customer experience. More specifically, they’ve been shown to lower customer complaints (i.e., improve satisfaction), improve lead capture and contact flow, and increase sales. And it goes with saying that the more customers enjoy an online experience, the more likely they are to purchase from the company providing it.

Web developers can benefit from AI-powered chatbots in a couple of ways, like replacing navigational elements on websites to make development easier, or integrating chatbots with messengers, so fewer applications need to be developed.

With customer engagement being a key indicator of business success, you really can’t afford to ignore the benefits of AI chatbots, especially as they become even more sophisticated in the near future.

Voice Assistant

We are currently in the midst of the voice search era. Every smartphone is equipped with digital voice assistants, while their home-bound counterparts (smart speakers) are skyrocketing in popularity.

The most common ways to interact with voice assistants is through smartphones, smart cars, and smart speakers – in that order. The four biggest providers of voice assistants are Apple’s Siri, the eponymous Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa, and Microsoft’s Cortana.

Though there are a vast number of reasons that people use voice assistants, top tasks include making calls (or sending texts), getting directions, playing music, and finding nearby businesses.

Recent data in The Global State of Digital 2022 reveals that 22.5% of users worldwide use voice assistants each week on the internet, spanning a vast range of ages (16-64 years).

Additionally, the voice assistant application market size is projected to grow from 2.8 billion in 2021 to 11.2 billion USD by 2026, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 32.4%.

How did voice assistants become so popular? Partly due to ease of use; basic communication skills are already present in humans, so both kids and seniors can adapt to voice interfaces with a minimal learning curve. Secondly, digital voice assistants are commonplace on smartphones, so the tech is within easy reach at no additional cost.

Voice Assistant technology is also being implemented to make sites more accessible for those who are hearing and sight-impaired.

Because of their massive use, voice search results will start to rank higher and more prominently on search engine result pages. Which means companies will place emphasis on optimizing their products and services with voice search at the forefront.

This provides a good deal of opportunity for web developers when it comes to voice assistant technology and incorporating it into the development process.

A good place to start taking advantage of this trend is by optimizing structured data for voice search in WordPress.

Progressive Web Applications (PWAs)

Progressive Web Applications (aka PWAs) are web applications that run independently of a browser and interact with the customer as a native app. Some prime examples are Google Maps, Starbucks, and Spotify.

PWAs are currently among the top trends in web development, and expected to fully replace traditional web apps in the near future.

Using a single codebase, developers can code Progressive Web Apps to work with modern APIs, delivering enhanced capabilities and reliability that can reach anyone – regardless of their location or what device they’re on.

PWAs improve the overall user experience because of these key benefits:

• fast
• relatively low cost
• quick to launch/distribute on the market
• install quickly and automatically update
• save on device power and storage
• work well offline (or with bad connections)
• boost website engagement/conversion
• maintenance and updating is seamless
• fully immersive experience

Another plus for PWAs is that Google prioritizes web apps that load quickly on mobile devices. Because they reduce page load time, PWAs dramatically improve search result rankings.

According to Statista, mobile sales in the global market are projected to reach $8.1 billion in 2026. That means people will likely choose their mobile devices over their non-mobile counterparts for most of their purchasing needs, leaning directly into what PWAs provide.

PWAs are responsive, secure, easy to install, scalable, and reliably connected, making them a perfect fit for many B2B and B2C uses.

Tip: Do you use the Avada theme on client sites? Then check out our article on how to speed up and optimize Avada using our Smush and Hummingbird plugins with Avada’s own PWA plugin.

Single-page Applications (SPA)

Single-page applications (or SPAs) are one of the most critical technology trends in web development today.

An SPA is a JavaScript-based web application. Instead of loading separate HTML pages from a server, it loads a single, specific page to visitors, dynamically updating its content without refreshing the page.

Social media sites (think Facebook and Twitter), as well as Gmail and Google Drive, are among the most well-known SPAs.

Since most devices support it, SPA technology is cross-platform in nature. They even perform well with a slow internet connection or when offline, loading cached content when users launch the site. SPAs are also better equipped to work without server-side codes infused with API technology.

All of this means that SPAs operate fast and keep users attention, leading to greater engagement and reduced bounce rates.

SPAs are easy to create, cost-effective, and consume less server space, making them practical for both end users and developers.

Tip: Feel like getting into SPA and reading some relaxing articles to get you in the mood? Then check out these bubbly tutorials:

• How To Create a Hybrid Single Page App in WordPress with VueJS
• When to Use the WordPress REST API – and When Not To
• JavaScript, WordPress and the REST API: Sorting Fact from Fiction

Internet of Things (IoT)

Long foreshadowed as the wave of the future, the Internet of Things (or IoT) is a movement where objects are given network connectivity that didn’t historically have it, in order to send and receive data.

IoT is one of the most rapidly emerging technologies in web development, with Statista indicating the number of IoT-connected devices will reach more than 29 billion by 2030.

IoT objects can range from home devices, to appliances, and wearable technology, as well as cameras, sensors, and signaling equipment – all helping to meet user needs more quickly.

Furthermore, IoT can make many otherwise non-connected devices accessible from your phone.

A popular example would be the Google Nest package of products, which provides users with features like media, alarms, lights, and more, simply by using their voice.

IoT-connected devices have constant data transfers, allowing companies to engage users with their services at incredible speeds, while creating a personalized experience.

IoT is scalable, as it distributes and collects data but isn’t dependent on the volume of data. It is also reliable, providing accurate results in an expedited fashion. Additionally, it employs powerful security tech to protect business and user data.

IoT’s smart ecosystem provides a wide range of benefits that can be incorporated into websites and mobile apps, analyzing customer behavior to improve the user experience while providing developers with insights.

Motion UI

Motion UI, under the umbrella of motion design, is expected to be a major web design trend in the coming year. The principle is minimalistic design coupled with sophisticated interactions that look amazing and draw the user’s attention.

Motion UI in its glory. Source: Taras Migulko for emote_agency on Dribbble.

Motion UI is a powerful front-end technology that can create customizable, animated UI elements and CSS transitions using SASS libraries.

Popular motions include background animations, animated charts, and modular scrolling, and transition actions like sliding, spinning, bouncing, etc. All of these can cater to individual styles, and aim to catch and keep users’ attention.

Motion UI is generally compatible with all web technologies, and allows flexibility in placement on websites. You can apply these transitions to overlays, off-canvas menus, modals, and more.

Humans are instinctively compelled to follow motion and look for visual clues. It’s also been proven that motion makes a greater impact than static images, meaning we’re much more likely to remember content displayed through movement.

Motion UI is best used to tell a story and invoke emotion, making it a powerful tool in driving user engagement.

Tip: Looking for Motion design in UI inspiration? Check out these websites with great examples. Also, see this moving article for a Motion UI plugin you can use to make your WordPress sites jump.

Trends or Tools of the Trade?

We’ve been following trends like AI chatbots, voice assistants, PWAs, SPAs, IoT, and Motion UI for years; see how they’ve picked up steam since 2018, 2019,  and 2020.

2023 will witness a lot of advancements in the field of web development, and will transform the way the world does business – including the way you interact with your clients.

Adopting the latest web dev trends will allow you to stay competitive, by offering the most popular and cutting-edge designs and services.

If you are looking to build your WordPress sites on the sturdiest foundation, sign up for our newsletter to hear about the latest and greatest developments in the world of WordPress, and consider membership and hosting with WPMU DEV. With our suite of pro plugins, 5-star support, and a money-back guarantee, you’re sure to stay ahead of the curve.

For a while now it’s been our mission here at WPMU DEV to be your ultimate web development partner.

We continue to do this by…

• Providing you with the tools and tech you need to run your business.
• Pricing our hosting, plugins, tools, and support in an affordable manner, so you can grow your business.

And today, I’m excited to announce another hotly requested feature you can use to immediately improve your own sites and offer to your clients as an amazing premium service.

Hourly hosting backups for you, or your reseller clients!

That’s right, enterprise grade, off-site, hourly backups, with 30 days of restore points for… wait for it…

Only $5 a month!

It should come as no surprise that hourly backups are hugely beneficial for big sites that are always changing.

After all, having them means you can rest easy knowing that if something goes terribly wrong, you are only ever 59 minutes at most away from a quick restore that fixes it.

They are mission critical for big eCommerce sites, communities, news sites and, of course, have always cost an accordingly large amount to maintain (especially because they also need to be offsite in case of a catastrophic data center failure).

That’s when we had a thought… What if we could make hourly hosting backups more accessible and affordable for our members?

Sky high margins for hosting resellers

Currently, hourly backups are only provided by a couple of other well-known hosts in our space, including the always excellent Kinsta.

However, their price point is much higher… currently sitting at: $100/m with 24 hours worth of data points.

Now, I’m never unhappy to recommend Kinsta, but that’s a hard sell to your clients and an even harder sell for you to markup on.

Whereas with our $5 backups, you can literally charge $25-50/m and then point to Kinsta (or any other enterprise grade hourly backup service… which will be far, far more) and be offering them a bargain.

Wait, how can we even afford such low pricing?

In short: Relentless, research-based, and innovative work.

Also, this is one of those things that simply wouldn’t have been possible 3-5 years ago, so we have a ‘later mover’ advantage.

And, we’re also making a bet here, we’re hoping that this will both not cost us as much as it could (I won’t go into too much detail as to how costs could overreach… bit of commercial secrecy there ;) and also that having this feature, at this price point, will persuade you to use our services and hosting for your white label reseller work.

We want to be the host of hosts, we want you to have a great business, this is a carrot, we hope it’s super tasty.

Affordable, reliable, and pretty much indestructible (really!)

As well as being great value for resellers, our new hourly backups also “walk-the-walk” leveraging the same “disaster-proof” tech as our regular daily backups.

Without going tooo much into the techy details (you can find more of those here on our hosting backups page)… As well as on-site storage, our redundant AWS/S3 backups are stored safely across multiple devices and facilities.

Basically this means that if our data centers are ever compromised (knock on wood!), your backups will still remain fully accessible.

To put the icing on this hosting backups cake, they also use an efficient file system that allows you to create space-saving incremental backups with no load or downtime.

Now available for all WPMU DEV Hosting plans

So you can literally have enterprise level backups on our entry level hosting plan and it won’t even damage your site’s performance.

WPMU DEV Hosting users, if you’re interested – just visit your Hub dashboard and navigate to Site > Hosting > Backups… Or, My Account > Add Ons.

From here you can easily purchase and activate hourly backups in a couple of clicks.

And yes, when we launch reseller automation your clients will be able to purchase and activate this feature at a price you set via The Hub Client (and the same will be true for hosting plans, CDN, backup space and more…).

So consider this the start of some even more amazing things to come to our hosting before the end of the year. We can’t wait for you to experience it all!

Not yet using our Hosting? Being late to the party is actually a good thing. Because our platform grows bigger and better everyday. You’ll just wish you jumped on board earlier!

Check out our affordable and powerful hosting plans here.

Or, just between us… The easiest way to take it for a no-risk spin is to try our Premium plan. This plan includes free hosting credit you can use to quickly whip up a WPMU DEV-hosted site.

Enjoy your new toy!

Just some of the features we’ve added, include:

• Integrated Web Application Firewall (WAF)
• Fee-free Clients & Billing platform
• Unlimited email forwarding and 10 free email accounts
• 5 new server locations (including Australia)
• 10GB Content Delivery Network (CDN) for our integrated plugins
• New Relic, Blackfire, Static Server Cache (and a host of other nerdy tools)
• Full plugin management and templating tools
• And many, many more extra features and improvements

Which has led to us becoming the best rated web host in the World according to TrustPilot (4.9/5 from 2,199 reviews as of writing this).

True story!

Sure, we’re not providing $1.99 hosting for your first 12 months or an $80 shared server where you can cram on 200 accounts… heck we don’t even have an affiliate program.

But that’s not what we’re about, we’re about providing you the absolute best hosting product that you can offer your clients, at the best possible price.

** Update: Our hosting now starts from just $4 p/month! **

Next Level Reseller Tools

Which is why we’re increasing that price slightly at the start of next month to allow us to invest further in our existing services and support, and also double down on new reseller features that we hope will make a world of difference to you as a web developer.

But two things first; what we’re actually doing and how we want to make sure that you – as an early adopter of our tools – don’t have to experience this price rise.

In short, this year we will roll out the reseller experience of your dreams, allowing you to automate white label sales, management and even critical support of your client sites.

This’ll include domain management and reselling, a further improved Hub Client portal, and the automated integration of our hosting provision (plus Templates) with our Clients & Billing system. It’s going to be wild.

And, in order to allow us to make this sustainable, from the 11th of April we will be changing our pricing from $10/m to $12/m for a bronze hosting plan and so on through our plans.

Essentially, it’s broadly a 20% increase.

But, as I mentioned, not for you! Because you are reading this!

Lock in Your Current Pricing, For Aaaages

By way of thanks for being on the journey at this point, we’d also like to give you the opportunity to lock in our powerful hosting at the current prices:

Current hosting prices:

Hosting prices from April 11th:

Here’s how prepay works…

For the next three months you will be able to prepay hosting at the old price (e.g. you buy Bronze at $10), and we will automatically credit your account with the new price (e.g. we give you Bronze at $12). Allowing you to offset the upcoming increase.

Just use this link or click below (on the ‘lock in my current hosting pricing’ big link at the end) and you will be able to purchase hosting credits (up to a maximum of $10k per member) to which we will then add 20%.

So, for example, if you pre-pay $100, we’ll give you $120 of hosting credit…

If you purchase $10,000 then we’ll give you $12,000…

Which you can use for all your future hosting needs.

Plus, you’ll benefit from every new feature and improvement we make to our hosting platform ongoing at NO EXTRA COST because you’ve locked in your current hosting price.

Using Hosting Credits? Consider Yourself Already Locked In!

If you’ve got a WPMU DEV membership plan that comes with hosting credits, then you’re already taken care of :)

We’ve added 20% to your current credits, so you shouldn’t see a price increase there at all.

This is to say ‘thank you’ for being a member at a higher tier and believing in what we do, and as long as you don’t cancel your membership, you’ll keep these credits ongoing with no extra increase in the cost of your membership… so you kinda just got a price decrease ;).

Available For The Next 3 Months Only

So, that’s available for the next 3 months (until mid June), and we reckon it’s one of the best deals you’ll see for a while in the hosting space.

But it can’t last forever, so take us up on the offer while it’s here.

And as with all of our products, we guarantee you won’t be disappointed and if – on the super rare chance you are – we’ll extend our money-back guarantee to this (so you don’t need to worry about us suddenly turning into EIG).

The most advanced, best rated and most actively developed WordPress hosting on the web, for a price that’s extremely retro.

>>Lock in my current hosting pricing now!<<

It’s crazy that we’re days away from 2022. Where did this year go? With the holiday season upon us, and the last page of the calendar showing, we knew we were due for a roundup.

A lot has happened in the back half of this year. Quite a few big and exciting features in our family of plugins and services were released, and we have even more in the pipeline being polished for the near future.

When all is quiet on the release front (because we’re hunkering down in the code lab), you can always check out our regularly updated product roadmap, to see what’s currently in the works.

Today, however, we’re bringing that info directly to you in one fell swoop―a compilation of all the plugin updates & service boosts we’ve had since this past March, as well as a sneak peak at what’s just around the corner.

It wouldn’t be a proper roundup if we didn’t get a lead-in from the man behind the curtain in Oz, our Farmer in armor―WPMU DEV’s CEO, James.

Busy Busy Busy

“What a year! Courtesy of The World’s Longest Lockdown (thanks Melbourne!) I don’t think I’ve ever done so much work, and it felt like everybody at WPMU DEV was pretty much doing the same, hitting product goal after product goal.

From a raft of timesaving new site management tools in The Hub, to a fully featured client billing system, to our managed hosting topping the TrustPilot reviews chart and – of course – some absolutely epic plugin development… it’s been a hoot.

But as my job is basically reading, email, and Slack… you’re much better off hearing from the people actually making this good stuff happen, so read on…”

Huzzah, James! If you’d like to hear James speak on the landscape of hosting and maintaining WordPress websites, check out his guest spot on Josh Hall’s podcast on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more.

Here are the jump links for this Roundup:

• Hosting
• The Hub
• The Hub Client
• Smush
• Hummingbird
• Defender
• Forminator
• SmartCrawl
• Snapshot
• Dashboard
• Comics
• Blog XChange
• Final Round

Now let’s get this juicy cocktail blended and poured.

Hosting

It seems befitting to kick things off with Hosting, as it’s had a banner sophomore year.

Recent Releases

Product Manager Neel came prepped and ready to dish the dirt on hosting.

“It’s been two years since we launched hosting, and I’m pleased to say that ours is one of the fastest-growing, managed WordPress hosting services out there.”

“We have added a few significant tools in the past few months, like the Reset WP, Blackfire profiling, and NewRelic monitoring. We also added advanced options in our Static Site Cache feature, which strives to improve site speed & performance.”

“Another big change is the addition of Pro Plugins, now automatically included in our Hosting packages. That’s over $500 worth of premium WP plugin value yearly―free with every hosting account! And they come pre-installed, accessible via the WPMU DEV dashboard plugin.”

“Site Templates (my favorite feature), along with fresh WPMU DEV Templates, were also released. This feature will speed up the design and site development processes for our members.”

“Last but not least… New, Bigger Hosting plans! Five more have been added, providing multiple options to members who need more powerful droplets than Platinum.”

Here’s a closer look at the hearty list of features Hosting rolled out this year:

• White Label Temporary Hosting Domains – Now instead of an automatically given temporary domain name of insertnamehere.wpmudev.host, new sites you set up will be named insertnamehere.tempurl.host, which aligns much better to a full white label experience.
• Bruteforce Protection – All WPMU DEV hosted sites have measures enabled at the server level to help prevent your site ever going down due to a bot attack. Enabled by default, you can add specific IP addresses or ranges for exemption, or disable it completely.
• Semi-automated adding of DNS records & some basic text improvements in DNS/Domains tab with “How to Go Live” documentation
• Reset WordPress Feature – Allows members to reset their site back to the default / new WP installation. It works for Production or Staging sites.
• NewRelic and Blackfire tools – One-click connect NewRelic or Blackfire to debug performance issues.
• PHP 8 released – keeping you up to date with WP recommended versions.
• Pro Plugins included – 7 of them now come included with our managed WP hosting.
• User Templates – Added the ability to create and sell your own site templates (up to 25) for free with our hosting.
• HUB Manual migration form & some minor tweaks in the FTP migration tool – A new feature where users can directly submit a ticket for manual migration in The Hub.
• Advanced options in Static Site Cache feature – several advanced options for FastCGI added.
• New WPMU DEV Templates – Added 20 new DEV templates, consisting of various themes or builders, along with a search & filter option to simplify finding what you want.
• New Hosting Plans – Five different tiers have been added, scaling our world of hosting to fit larger needs.

Coming Soon

Neel had some cool bits to tell us about in this area.

“We’ll be refining some existing features, while adding some new ones. And as always, we’re constantly working to improve our hosting in terms of speed, security, user experience, and all the essential hosting tools that provide faster site creation, to give you the best overall hosting experience.”

Here’s a quick recap of what’s in the pipeline for Hosting:

• PHP 8.1 – initial testing began earlier this month.
• Hourly Backups – big upgrade from our current daily backups.  This is critical for ecommerce & membership sites.
• UI Options for redirect – smoothly direct traffic from one URL to another; great for accurate SEO following changes, avoiding errors like 404, and general rerouting within your site.
• Other server performance tweaks/optimization and UX/IX improvements – we continually work on these, and 2022 will be no different.

The Hub

What do you get when you cross The Hub with a recap? A Hubcap!
Oh, what a shiny, functional beauty this one is.

The Hub is our snappy, sophisticated site manager, for all of your hosted sites (ours, or third party) in a single, well organized place.

Recent Releases

Product Manager Mukul was pumped about all the recent and upcoming features for The Hub and The Hub Client.

“Leading with the headline… Client Billing!”, Mukul enthused.

“This was one of our biggest features released in the back half of this year. It’s been high on our most requested list since we launched Hosting, so we’re thrilled to have put it into motion.”

Client Billing is feature packed. Here are just a few topline items:

• Add plans & subscriptions
• View & edit contact details
• Automate recurring invoices
• Collect offline payments

Q3 & Q4 brought big updates for Plugins Integration. Mukul continued, “Members can now install WPMU DEV Pro plugins, WP.org plugins, upload plugin ZIP files, or use the URL method to install plugins from publicly accessible repositories (e.g., GDrive, Dropbox, etc.). Additionally, all existing plugins can be managed from The Hub 2.0.”

Moving on, he added, “Since the last roundup in March, we have added configs for other plugins and services as well.”

These New Configs are for the following:

• Uptime
• Hummingbird
• Smush
• Smartcrawl
• Snapshot

The Hub’s robust list of releases from earlier this year follow:

• Ignore Updates – Plugin and theme updates can now be ignored until members decide to update them.
• Site Template Manager – After releasing the Hosting Templates, a dedicated area under Sites > Site Templates was also added to view and manage them. Also, a recent Templates Manager update allows members to upload a thumbnail image to their custom site templates.
• New Hosting Templates – The new default templates library has been growing. There are currently 23 default templates, and we’ll continue to add more.
• Manual Migration for Hosting – Members can now request a free manual migration to WPMU DEV hosting for their sites hosted elsewhere.
• Create New Sites On Any Plans – Until recently, all member sites were first created on the Bronze plan then upgraded to a higher plan afterwards. Now creating new hosting sites can be done on any plan.
• SmartCrawl’s Lighthouse Integration – The SEO service tab on the Hub was adjusted to add support for the SmartCrawl integration with Lighthouse for SEO scans.
• Support Page Migration – from Hub 1.0 to Hub 2.0. UX was improved as well.
• Improved Help Bubble – The UX was updated, and its styling matched with Hub 2.0.
• UI Preferences – Members now have the ability to hide/show certain site services as preferred.
• Multiple UI/UX changes were made across different parts of the Hub, to improve the UX.

Coming Soon

Mukul also shared a handful of goodies that are currently in the works, the most notable being…

“Domain Reselling!! Members and their clients will now be able to search and buy new domains… directly from the Hub!”

Check out the other upcoming Hub features below:

• Global IP List (Security) – Members will be able to create a global IP Allow/Block list that will be synced to all of their websites.
• Accounts Page Migration – from Hub 1.0 to Hub 2.0
• DNS Improvements – Specifically, the UX setup will be improved.

The Hub Client

The Hub Client has seen a bit of newness as well…

Recent Releases

From Mukul: “Earlier this year, we integrated LiveChat and tawk.to, which members can use to provide real-time chat support to their clients”.

Coming Soon

As for what’s in the pipeline, Mukul shared, “The Hub Client will be tying into the Reseller Platform and Automations. The Hub & Hub Client teams will be working in tandem to ensure a seamless reselling experience for our members and their clients.”

Smush

Time to get mushy over Smush-y. We’re just so proud of our blazing fast, compression crushing, highly rated image optimizer.

Recent Releases

Lead Developer Anton says, “We’ve been hard at work to improve Local WebP Compatibility with as many hosts and servers as we could find!”

“We’ve also added what are probably the two most consistently requested features: Optimizing Uploaded Images (from originals), and the option to Disable Scaled Images.”

Coming Soon

Next up, Anton says, “Making sure CDN continues to provide the best in class performance and stability is the object of our focus right now.”.

No doubt we’ll continue to see new records Smushed.

Hummingbird

Our fast flying, feat of engineering, full speed optimizer. If those wings could talk, here’s what they’d say…

Recent Releases

Lead Developer Anton shared, “Hummingbird has had some amazing features added to its arsenal this year.”

Among them: Asynchronous Loading, Preloading & Preconnect for Assets, Cloudflare APO Integration, a Browser Caching Wizard, and Font Optimization.

Anton continued, “We added a new Performance Report for Database Cleanup, so now you can schedule and send reports for regular cleanups of your DB. We also added Performance Reports for Subsites, so they’re now available in every subsite in multisite installs.”

“We also created a brand new, unified section in the dashboard UI for Notifications, eliminating the need to visit each one individually.”

“A Browser Caching wizard was added as well. It automatically configures your settings if you host with WMPU DEV, and offers options and information for setup if you host elsewhere.”

“Page Cache Integration with WP Ultimo is another new automated feature, helpful for those who use this popular tool.”

Rounding out the list, Anton indicated upgrades in Asset Optimization.  “We now have Asset Optimization in multisite, which allows you to choose where Hummingbird should store your modified assets. And, the Asset Optimization Engine is more robust and error-free.”

Great strides for Hummingbird. What’s on the projected flight plan?

Coming Soon

“Our next big goal is to automate and simplify the Asset Optimization (AO) Engine”, says Anton. “We want every user to be able to set up their sites without the fear of breaking them.”

“We’re testing out a New Safe Mode feature, as well as enhanced automated configurations, and presets, which will include: adding font optimization to automatic mode in AO, an improved UI for manual mode in AO, and a new onboarding wizard.”

If it wasn’t already clear, Anton drove it home with, “2022 is going to be a big one for Hummingbird!”

Defender

Who likes their security like their coffee? Strong, bold, and sets you up for a great day. Here’s the tea on our most able protector, Defender.

Recent Releases

Product Manager Nastia had plenty of intel on Defender.

“This was a big year for the Defender plugin team. I’m really proud of everyone for working together and making great steps forward.”

“During the second quarter of 2021, we focused on the user by protecting passwords. Passwords are the weakest link when it comes to security; we’re all guilty of re-using our passwords on multiple sites. Unfortunately, data breaches happen all too often, exposing billions of records. That’s why we’ve added Pwned Password Check, and in the event of a data breach, the option to force all users to reset their passwords.”

“Alongside this, we’ve made improvements to Malware Scanning, and will continue doing so.”

Nastia continued, “Our third quarter was all about providing anti-spam solutions. Here came support for Google reCAPTCHA, a widely known bot mitigation service. We’ve made this flexible enough to work with all default WordPress forms, including logins, registration, and comments, but most importantly, it has been Integrated with the WooCommerce Plugin.”

“For even better protection against malicious bots, we’ve introduced User-Agent Banning, with a list of known bad bots already blocked by the Defender plugin. It protects not only against spambots, but also DDoS, XSS, and SQL injections.”

Coming Soon

Nastia gave us a peek into Defender’s pipeline…

“We’re hardening security against vulnerabilities, implementing New Ux Improvements for Malware Scanning & Scheduling, and integrating with The Hub 2.0’s new Global Ip Allowlist/Blocklist feature.”

Stay tuned!

Forminator

Do you wanna build a snowman? Take a poll to find out. Or a quiz to see who knows the source of that quote. It’s all possible with Forminator.

Recent Releases

Product Manager, Mohammad had lots to share about Forminator.

“In Q3 & Q4, we’ve released a lot of features and improvements. Topping the list is Bulk Import/Edit Options for the Select/Radio/Checkbox fields. In addition, we now have Image Support in Radio and Checkbox fields, as well as Polls.”

“We didn’t forget our quiz lovers out there. In the last quarter, we added Pagination Options, and a Question Description Html Field, which supports any type of media content―even videos!”.

“We’re also excited to mention improvements to Registration Forms. You can now conditionally assign user roles during the registration based on registrar selections. And, we’ve added the option to Bulk Approve Registrars, in addition to other improvements.”

“Also, we’re pleased to announce that we’ve added two more conditional features. The first one allows users to Assign Submissions to any Integration conditionally based on the submitter’s selections. The second allows users to Change After-Submission Behavior, based on the submitter’s selections―which is very handy for  redirecting submitters to different pages (post-submission), based on their selections and other scenarios.”

Mohammad closed out this section saying, “Let’s talk about our recent awesome Payment improvements. Forminator Pro now has Stripe Subscriptions for Recurring Payments, and you can create multiple recurring pricing plans (fixed or dynamic). Oh, I almost forgot to mention, you can now conditionally use Stripe or PayPal payments on the same form, so your users can select their preferred payment method.”

If you haven’t tried Forminator yet, you’re really missing out on an eye-catching, multi-functional customer interactive plugin.

Coming Soon

Mohammad had this to say about what we can expect soon from Forminator…

“We’re going to be adding a great timesaver, Global Appearance Presets. This will allow users with multiple forms added to their sites to set their appearance settings (once applied) to all their forms, and avoid wasting time styling each one individually.”

“And finally, by the end of this year, we’ll be rolling out TWO of the top requested features: Grouping Fields, and the Repeater option. Grouping fields will allow grouping a number of fields to apply the same rules once, instead of adding to each field individually (such as visibility conditions, required or optional, and custom Appearance settings). Then you can enable the Repeater option on the frontend, so users can repeat a field or group of fields manually or conditionally.”

Sounds awesome! Can’t wait to try all of these out.

SmartCrawl

The CEO of SEO, the diva of schemas, taking you on a brilliant run through Google’s Rich Results Test tool… it’s SmartCrawl.

Recent Releases

“We’ve been cranking things out this year!”, said SmartCrawl’s Project Manager, Mohammad.

“Most recently, Schema Builder got a big upgrade. Local Business support has been added, along with the option to add Multiple locations. And SmartCrawl now has 60+ subtypes to cover most types of businesses.”

In addition to local business, the following types have been added, as requested from WPMU DEV users:

• Recipe schema
• Job Posting schema
• Movie schema
• Course schema
• Book schema
• Software Application schema

Mohammad continued, “In addition to the WooCommerce custom schemas presets we added, we’ve improved the default WooCommerce schema, which now supports open graph product tags (price and currency), and added Recommended Rules to Robots.txt and No-index Hidden Products.”

“Another feature we released over the summer, which we’ve gotten great feedback on, is the Lighthouse SEO Scan in SmartCrawl. We added a new and more reliable SEO audit tool, the Lighthouse SEO Checkup. It’s designed to ensure that pages are optimized for search engine results ranking, and is built with contextual help for each audit. Also, we improved our SEO Audits reporting system to support conditional reports.” For example: If score is less than 70%, send a report.

Rounding out the features released earlier this year are:

• SmartCrawl Configs – Configs can be set to apply automatically on newly created sites.
• Multisite Sitewide Permission – with the new permission module, Super Admin can decide who has permission to access SC settings on subsites―Super Admins or Site Admins―and which modules should be activated on Subsites.
• Google News Sitemap – has been added, to list news articles and posts published in the last 48 hours so that they show up in Google News.

Coming Soon

Mohammad filled us in regarding what’s on the horizon for SmartCrawl.

“Redirection Module Improvements is coming. This will add bulk import and search functionality to the Redirection module, as well as supporting regex redirections and more.”

Hold tight…

Snapshot

Snapshot’s got you when it comes to safe and efficient WordPress backups. Access, manage, and restore in a snap.

Recent Releases

Product Manager Nastia shared the Snapshot team’s accomplishments this year…

“In the second quarter of 2021, the main issue raised by our members was that they had insufficient WPMU DEV storage. We listened, and doubled the storage space for all new members―at no additional cost. Alongside this, our team worked hard to resolve issues with backups taking too much storage space. We’ve also added an option to limit the number of backups and improve the rotation process.”

“Another member request was the ability to restore a site through the Snapshot UI when the site was inaccessible. As a result, we came up with the FTP Restoration Method, where a site can be restored directly to a server by simply providing FTP credentials.”

“Additionally, in the third quarter, we developed our most requested destination: Dropbox. We also added Configs, and integration with The Hub 2.0.”

“Lastly, you can now upload your backups to an FTP/SFTP destination, and back up password-protected sites.”

Coming Soon

Nastia had this to say about Snapshot’s future…

“Currently in the works are some some big design improvements, and a super secret feature we can’t share yet, but know this―it’s BIG.”

Two snaps up!

Dashboard

It’s your WP Dashboard, but on steroids. Link your sites to our super servers for added features, more control, and one-click access to our 24/7 support, all while making your site more secure.

Recent Releases

Lead Developer Joel gave us the rundown on Dashboard.

“One-Click Bulk Install & Activate options for Plugins was a big deal this year. Users have long been clamoring for this one, and we’re getting a lot of positive feedback on it.”

“Another major update was upping Support for PHP to 8.0. We also presented a new UI for user permissions management.”

Here’s the full list of releases from earlier this year:

• One-click Bulk Install & Activate
• PHP support upgraded to 8.0
• Link custom logo using a URL for White label
• Supports premium plugins and themes updates (Hub and Automate)
• White label WPMUDEV plugin menus and icons from Dashboard plugin
• Ability to reset plugin settings to default
• Optional data and settings cleanup on uninstallation
• Force sync from Hub
• Ability to hide support tickets in Dash plugin from Hub
• Improved Analytics Widget UX

Coming Soon

Joel hints that 2022 is shaping up nicely.

“We’re planning improvements in premium plugins and themes updates support, as well as for Analytics. Also coming is the ability to install plugins from the Hub using zip, plus various improvements in white label support.”

Dash-ing through the snow, more goodies comin’ your way…

Comics

Because smiling is contagious, and laughter is good for the soul, we added a new category to WPMU DEV’s portfolio this year: the funnies.

Lead comic artist (and fellow blog writer) Nate was eager to chat about it.

“Back in early September, we released The DEV’s Pixels. It’s a new feature that includes original comics created in-house, then shared on our site and available to download.“

“Covering a variety of tech topics, from development, computing, internet, and client relations, to other relatable material for agencies and freelancers, we publish one new comic a week, and add it to our inventory.”

When asked what spawned the idea, Nate replied: “Comics can benefit your agency in many ways. They are great marketing tools for your email, social media, blog, etc., and ours can be used and shared freely.”

Nate didn’t stop there… “In addition to the regular comics, we also launched our own Caption Contest! Anyone can submit an entry (or multiple entries) for a chance to win. It’s already rather popular, with submissions rolling in as soon as we publish. In fact, due to participation growing so rapidly, we just added reaction emojis so everyone can get in on the fun.”

Sign-ups are available through email, if you want to get notified when a new one drops and add your quip to the queue.

Click here to see what a winning caption looks like.

Blog XChange

Another fresh component we introduced this year was a crossover between our member forums and our company blog.

Here to tell us about it is Lead Editor, Martin.

“Earlier this year we launched The Blog XChange, a collaborative forum where members can post original and useful content ideas for new articles and tutorials from their personal knowledge and experience of WordPress. If selected, WPMU DEV gives the contributor a shoutout, and links promoting their business in the published post, plus generous hero points ―which can be used to earn free hosting credits…or even a lifetime membership!”

Martin continued, “Since launching The Blog XChange, we’ve received 80+ submissions from over 20 members, and published several new articles and tutorials as a result. We’ve also got a number of new post ideas in the pipeline for next year, so we’re pretty excited.”

“The Blog XChange is a win-win initiative for members and WPMU DEV. I encourage all members to read our guidelines for posting, and submit their content ideas.”

If you’re not already a regular reader of our blog, you’re missing out on a lot of great content. We publish new articles multiple times a week. Come check it out!

Final Round

Cheers! We hope you enjoyed this literary libation as much as we enjoyed serving it to you.

As hard as we work and as much as we accomplish, we also know that tech is constantly evolving, which means our products and services are never done and dusted. There are always new goals in front of us, and we’re ever in motion to clear that next hurdle.

This is what we love to do… but it would mean nothing without our WPMU DEV-ers.

So a quick note of appreciation to you, our devoted members, for continuing to provide valuable input and feedback. We take your comments and suggestions to heart, giving them all due consideration in the boardroom and developers room.

Keep ’em coming!

Introducing The DEV’s Pixels: A fully dedicated comic section for WordPress developers, designers, and tech-geeks in general. In a nutshell — comics made for you! And also designed to help your agency or freelance business (more on that later in this article).

Along with our award-winning plugins, hosting, The Hub, and other goodies that we offer, we figured that we might as well throw some comics in the mix, too. And, like a lot of our plugins, we allow them to be used on your WordPress sites (or social media, apps, etc…) for free!

Comics will be regularly updated on our site, emails, and social media.

So, do you want a peek at what we have in store? 

There’ll be gems like this…

…familiar characters such as this…

…and some nutty ones.

Some will make you burst out laughing like an emoticon; others will make you cringe like you do when encountering a console error. At the end of your long working remotely day, we’ll be sure to have some that you’ll enjoy.

A Quick Look Around

The DEV’s Pixels is still in development, but here’s a glance at what we have so far and what you can do with the comics. You’ll also see how they can be beneficial for you, beyond just a laugh.

Access the Comics

Quickly access The DEV’s Pixels from wpmudev.com’s homepage. What’s nice is you don’t even need to be logged in to view! This makes it especially easy to access when on your mobile or when you have no reason to log in.

The DEV’s Pixels is located towards the bottom of our Resources area.

This takes you to The DEV’s Pixels Homepage. Here, the latest comics will be featured on top and updated regularly.

The homepage features thumbnails of each cartoon, the tag(s) of each comic, an option to download, opt-in for a subscription to The DEV’s Pixels, and a link for each one to share. However, for a better look at each one, you’ll want to…

View Individual Comics

Thumbnails are nice, but to check out each comic up close and personal, click on the comic thumbnail that you’d like to check out.

This will enlarge it, giving you a better view.

Is this one…bad?

Download or Share Comics (and how you can capitalize on them)

As I touched on, you can download or share any comic you see! It’s entirely free and they’re all up for grabs. All we ask is that you link back to WPMU DEV when doing so (e.g. source: wpmudev.com).

Sharing these comics on your website, social media, emails, ebooks, and newsletters provides added engagement and enjoyment for your users! Content that includes cartoons gets a lot of attention.

As stated by Bob Mankoff, former cartoon editor of The New Yorker:

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, a cartoon is worth 500,000.

“Cartoons are funny that way — no other art form can communicate an idea quicker or more effectively. Humor disarms, connects, and then communicates in a fraction of a second. In a world where every eye is bombarded daily by thousands of messages, cartoons command attention and convey your message instantly.”

To use the comics, you’ll see the option to Share or Download below the thumbnails.

Clicking the download button will immediately download the comic to your computer. If you tap share, it will link you to the particular comic you want to share.

Additionally, you can access the download button or link from the enlarged comic.

They’re free, easy to use, and can benefit your site more than you can imagine with email opens, shares, likes, and engagement! Consider them yours.

Search Comics

There are two ways to search for comics: Tags and the Search Bar.

Searching comics can be done from our Search Bar at the top of the homepage. From here, type a category of interest, and all results will appear.

Type any category that you’d like to search.

Tags are located below each comic’s URL. They’re also below each thumbnail on the homepage.

If you like that category, click on the Tag, and it will bring up all the other comics tagged under that category.

Can’t find what you want? Please keep checking back as we update regularly, or shoot us a request! We will actively produce comics that are in demand.

Engage

We have several ways of engaging with the comics. One will be our Caption Contest (which I’ll get to discussing next), and another way is to leave your comments!

Each comic has a comment area, so you can let us know what you think, provide feedback, add a funny gag — anything!

Plus, you’ll find these on our social media accounts (Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter), where you can engage, share, and like them as you wish.

Caption This! The DEV’s Pixels Caption Contests

Along with the regular comics, soon you can join in on the fun! We’re going to be having Caption Contests, where your participation will earn you Hero Points and a shot at victory by having the best, funniest caption.

Oh, and we’ll be dishing out some amazing prizes (free hosting, anyone?).

Your caption goes here!

To get an idea of what a caption contest looks like, check out The New Yorker’s or CartoonStock. Ours will be similar, just a bit techier.

It’s coming soon, so get those creative juices flowing.

Subscribe!

Be sure to never miss a comic and Subscribe! When on the main page or below each individual comic, you’ll see an area where you can signup to get The DEV’s Pixels delivered right to your inbox.

It’s free, and you’ll never miss a comic.

Who the Heck Are We?

There are other WordPress/Dev comics, but we hope to bring WordPress comics more into the mainstream. After all, with WordPress being so prominent, there’s no reason why humor revolved around it shouldn’t be either, right?

That being said, we feel eligible to step up to the challenge of creating the best WordPress comedy around.

All the comics are created in-house, specifically for WPMU DEV. They’re currently produced by syndicated cartoonist Nate Fakes (hey, that’s me) and illustrator Natasha Borg.

Nate has produced comics for MAD Magazine, Red Bull, 21st Century Fox, and numerous other companies and publications. Plus, he has a syndicated series, Break of Day, that’s been published in print and online for over a decade.

Natasha just graduated from University and has worked as our WPMU DEV illustrator for close to two years now. She’s responsible for the most excellent banners, graphics, and illustrations found throughout the WPMU DEV blog and social media.

Plus, we have a talented team of writers and developers behind the scenes to help clue us in on what’s funny and contribute (when they’re not slacking on Slack).

We Hope You’re Drawn to The DEV’s Pixels!

The DEV’s Pixels is an exciting new feature that we know you’ll enjoy. We also hope you take advantage of sharing the comics wherever you feel fit, even if that includes printing one out and hanging it on your MacBook.

As you can see, along with just enjoying them for fun — they can be valuable for your business! Hopefully, you’ll see for yourself the attention-grabbing superpowers of comics.

Be sure to check out The DEV’s Pixels homepage here and subscribe! And we’ll be announcing the caption contests soon. Get in the loop by following us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Stay tooned for more!

65 million+ downloads…

3 million+ active installs…

One back-to-back Plugin Madness award winner…

Our suite of pro WordPress plugins have proven themselves to be world class and cover all your site-building and optimization needs.

And 7 of them now come freely included with our next generation managed WordPress hosting.

As mentioned, that’s hundreds of dollars of value added to your hosting plan, not to mention you’re getting 7 of the best and most reliable WP plugins around.

Premium plugins you can use to supercharge your client sites, and better yet, add more value to your own web design and development packages.

Read on to find out which plugins you can now get 100% free with our hosting and why we decided to package them this way.

Skip ahead:

• Why include free plugins with our hosting?
• The 7 pro plugins you can now get free with our hosting
• Get started with our hosting and included plugins for free

Why include free plugins with our hosting?

A few reasons…

First and foremost, we want to set our members up for success and give them the best tools and plugins possible.

And in this case, 7 premium plugins that optimize performance, security, SEO, and more, seemed like a no-brainer to package with our hosting.

Our suite of plugins is also something unique to WPMU DEV and not something a lot of other hosts offer.

Finally, the nature of our all-in-one WP platform means that many of our tools and plugins intertwine with one another.

For example, our premium plugins are fully-integrated into our site management tool, The Hub, which is also home to our dedicated hosting tab/interface.

We built it like this so users could easily manage and optimize sites, while also having direct access to our suite of technical hosting tools and features.

So overall it made sense to enable features that are already designed to work together, rather than hide them from hosting users.

*Drum roll* here are the 7 pro plugins you can now get 100% free with our hosting:

1.Smush Pro

Optimize unlimited images on your sites with our most popular WordPress plugin – sitting pretty with over 1.3 million active installs.

Check out our most popular Smush articles:

• How to Get the Most Out of Smush Image Optimization
• Ace Google’s Image PageSpeed Recommendations With Smush
• How To Bulk Optimize Images With Smush
• Optimize Elementor for Free Using Smush and Hummingbird

2.Hummingbird Pro

Give your hosting a nice spike in the performance department. Build faster websites and ace PageSpeed Insights with Hummingbird Pro.

Check out our most popular Hummingbird articles:

• How To Optimize WordPress For Speed With Hummingbird
• How to Optimize Divi for Free Using Smush and Hummingbird
• Optimizing Your WordPress Site Performance with Smush, Hummingbird, and The Hub

3.Defender Pro

Your hosting just got a whole lot safer. Protect all your sites from hackers with robust WordPress security and regular malware scans.

Check out our most popular Defender articles:

• How to Get the Most Out of Defender Security
• Stop Hackers in Their Tracks with Defender
• How to Create a Powerful and Secure Customized Firewall with Defender
• DDoS Protection Guide – How to Help Protect Your WordPress Site From Attacks

4.SmartCrawl Pro

Improve and optimize the SEO of your hosted sites. Climb higher in search with powerful on-page and sitewide SEO.

Check out our most popular SmartCrawl articles:

• Easily Configure Your WordPress SEO with SmartCrawl and The Hub
• Google XML Sitemaps vs SmartCrawl Sitemaps – Which is Best for SEO?
• SmartCrawl Now Integrates Lighthouse SEO Scan Feature
• New Schema Markup For SmartCrawl: Recipe, Job Posting, Movie, Course, Books & Software Application

5.Forminator Pro

Every site needs engaging forms. Forminator makes it easy with a drag-and-drop form builder, and allows you to create quizzes, surveys, polls – and accept payments.

Check out our most popular Forminator articles:

• How to Get the Most Out of Using Forminator
• Creating the Perfect Contact Form with Forminator
• Forminator Pro Now has Stripe Subscriptions for Recurring Payments, Pricing Plans, and Much More!
• A Forminator Quiz Is the Answer to Collecting Emails and Generating Leads

6.Branda Pro

It’s Branda’s job to make your hosted sites bold, beautiful, and uniquely yours. Use it to white label your WP sites from front to back-end.

Check out our most popular Branda articles:

• How to Get the Most Out of Using Branda
• How To Completely Customize The WordPress Admin Area With Branda
• Customize Your WordPress Multisite Admin Areas With Branda
• Impress Clients Before They Even Log In With a Custom Login Page From Branda

7.Shipper Pro

Our hosting already comes with an easy and automated migration tool, but Shipper can take the wheel and move your WP sites in a few clicks if you’d prefer the plugin route.

Check out our most popular Shipper articles:

• Migrate Your Website with Shipper WordPress Migration Plugin
• How To Migrate A WordPress Site From Localhost To Server Using Plugins
• How to Migrate a WordPress Multisite Subsite to a Single WordPress Site

Get started with our hosting and the above plugins for free

Adding hundreds of extra $$$ value to our hosting is amazing and all, but we think you’ll be even more impressed by everything else our hosting has to offer.

You can check out our flexible hosting plans and all the included features.

Read on for more info on why you should participate (basically me demonstrating to you that we really do listen and act), or skip to the bottom for the prizes and to get started.

So to give you an idea of how your feedback can impact what we do, here are just a few things that were driven by our survey last year:

• Full and free email integration with hosting
• Integrated web-based file management with hosting
• Free wildcard SSL for multisite subdomains… also with hosting
• 50% more SSD storage with our starter plan
• We gave you an additional Australian data center
• A much faster Hub with beauuuutifully redesigned tabs
• Local WebP conversion for Smush (and a tonne of other Smushy stuff)
• Vastly enhanced our white label options, including entirely white labelling The Hub itself and making it easier to completely white label our hosting
• Refined and improved all of our plugins load, making them faster and more nimble
• Introduced our first few bulk configs (Defender and Uptime, the rest are on the way)
• Generally improved how you can bulk, sort, and manage multiple sites
• In the next few weeks you are going to get client billing.
• And by the end of this year, a fully integrated and automated domain and hosting reseller solution.

Phew… so you get the point… basically we really do listen to what you tell us and we really will then act on it, so now is your best chance to get the features you want from us and drive WPMU DEV in your direction.

Up for grabs – 5 free annual memberships + 1 free LIFETIME membership

And, like last year, everyone who participates has a chance to win one of 5 free annual memberships at an Agency level (each worth $1,188) and 1 free lifetime membership (also at Agency level and worth, well, it’s priceless).

Winners will be notified by email and if they are happy with it, will be announced in the comments here and on our social channels.

Double the prizes if we get over 1,000 responses

And, like I said at the start, if we get over 1,000 responses, that’ll *double* to 10 free annual accounts and 2 lifetimes!

Remember though, I’ll read them all (took me 1 week of reading and 1 week of analysis last year), as will our entire analytical team (3-5 people) so they need to all be legitimate ;)

So, please go for it, the more information the better, we cannot wait to hear from you (and this closes in 1 week, so do it noooow):

The survey is now closed. Thank you for participating and good luck in the draw everyone!