Intro
GeneratePress, Black Friday and Speeding Up Your Site
Blessed Thanksgiving! We've now reached issue 5 and readership has grown. Thank you for your support. Starting out on the curated newsletter journey felt like yesterday.
In this week's round up, we were surprised by the reappearance GeneratePress' lifetime license. Site speed mattered as we had two articles on it. The one on the fastest WooCommerce theme is a must-read, imho.
Personally, I spent the entire weekend and part of the weekdays to craft two in-depth articles on my top picks for Black Friday Cyber Monday deals. The first covered 10, while the 2nd covered only 9 due to time constraints.
Other than GridPane and Clearfy Pro, the other deals are still valid at the point of publishing this newsletter. Clearfy Pro will see an increase over their regular price though later today.
One deal which we recommend and is ending in 5 hours is the Stackable Premium deal. It is going up permanently. However, if you have the budget, grab the deal using the 50% discount coupon.
And yes, do check out the Offeo deal too. p/s: Sorry again for the delay. I got caught up with rewriting the articles and curating BFCM deals in the group. This week, we should be back to our regular day (Saturday)
WPStarters Weekly Digest
News
PHP 8: What WordPress Users Need to Know
PHP 8 has just been released on November 26th. What does this mean to WordPress users? Wordfence provides us with tips on what to expect with the new PHP version
wordfence.com
New Pricing Changes & Lifetime Licenses - GeneratePress
One of the best WordPress themes, GeneratePress, has recently relaunched their lifetime license. Read on to find out GeneratePress' plans moving forward and how the new pricing changes affects you.
generatepress.com
Recommended Articles
3 Tips to Better Integrate Instagram Into Your WordPress Site - WP Mayor
Your WordPress site does not have to stand alone and apart from your social media accounts. In this guide, WP Mayor shows us how to better connect Instagram with WordPress to expand your reach and audience beyond just SEO
wpmayor.com
How to Optimize Cumulative Layout Shift on WordPress (CLS)
As Google's Core Web Vitals becomes a major ranking signal in May 2021, you would want to improve your Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) metrics. (yes, it's a handful to pronounce).
In this article, Colin shows us practical tips on how to fix your CLS scores in a few easy steps.
wplift.com
A Freelancer’s Guide to Making a Difference and Making a Living | WP Elevation
If you are a freelancer or have freelanced before, it's hard work. That's why WP Elevation's guide to making a difference and a living as a freelancer is refreshing as it talks about purpose in this pandemic season.
wpelevation.com
Reviews & Comparisons
21 Fastest WooCommerce Themes in 2020 (Based on Thorough Testing)
Finding the fastest WordPress theme has always been an obsession for me and many others in the SEO industry. Faster site speed means Google can crawl more pages on the site, effectively helping the SEO results.
That's why we recommend Kinsta's in-depth review on the fastest WooCommerce themes for 2020. Their methodology and tools used, plus the final results, makes this a great read.
kinsta.com
Toolset vs ACF on WordPress: Which One Should You Use? - WP Mayor
ACF and Toolset are powerful developer tools for WordPress and often cited as the best in class for custom post types and custom fields. But which plugin should you use for your upcoming project and why one over the other? This article hopes to address the question.
Personally, I'm more of a Toolset guy, as I prefer working with custom post types for different types of content. However, I've always been intrigued with the idea if ACF will be enough for the next project. Definitely a good read.
wpmayor.com
Profitable Tools & Resources
Best Black Friday Cyber Monday WordPress Deals 2020
The current Black Friday Cyber Monday deal period is almost over, with most deals around for the next one to two days. If you have the budget or haven't made your purchases yet, I wrote an in-depth article on my top ten WordPress deals for 2020 that you absolutely should not miss.
The article is long (2.6k words), but there's definitely some gems within :)
wpstarters.com
Best Black Friday Cyber Monday Deals 2020 Part 2
Due to the response to the first post on our WPStarters Facebook Group a few days ago, I wrote a follow up list with my top 9 recommendations for Black Friday. This includes 8 plugins and 1 SaaS product, of which some are hidden gems.
Do check it out and drop your comments in the group :)
wpstarters.com