From your social media channels to your storefront, your YouTube channel to your website and everything in between, you have a lot of links you want your audience or your customers to be able to access easily. Social media can be a powerful driver of traffic to your blog or website. This works best when links are displayed on an easy-to-navigate list by creating a Social Links Page. While other companies offer a similar service, did you know you can use your WordPress.com site to create a Social Links Page as well? It is not only simple to create, but requires no additional cost or tools. For social media sites that only allow you to include one link in your bio, such as Instagram and Twitter, consider building a Social Links Page on your WordPress.com site.
The benefits of using your WordPress.com site to create a Social Links Page include customization, analytics tracking, and more. But the best part is that you can create this special page without having to change themes. There are a couple of options for how you might want to approach this, so let’s break each of them down.
Link in Bio Page
With our “Link in Bio” Page Layouts or Block Patterns, a Linktree alternative is as simple as a few clicks.
When you create a New Page with our Block editor, you’re given a variety of Page Layouts to choose from that are divided up into sections. When you click the section for Link in Bio, you’ll see six pre-designed layouts to choose from.
Click on one of these layouts and the blocks will be placed on the page for you. Once placed, you can edit the buttons as desired. You’ll also notice that there are a variety of options available in the settings sidebar on right, you can add additional buttons using the + sign, or duplicate existing buttons.
If you want to add a Link in Bio pattern of blocks to an existing page, you can insert a new block before the existing content and then add the block pattern you want to use with the options to edit the buttons as desired.
You could also start with a blank page and add buttons to stack vertically. You could even put them into a Column block, like the example below.
Cover Block Panels
The Cover Block is another option to consider to enhance your Social Links Page. When Cover Blocks are stacked on top of each other, they will be seamless on the live site, meaning there won’t be any white space between them (unless you add some by adding a Spacer Block between them). With the Cover Block, there are endless possibilities of what you can do with images and overlays, in addition to a wide array of settings. Watch the video below to see one example.
By building a custom Social Links Page in your WordPress.com site, you have full control over the layout and design; this includes the simplicity or complexity of the look and how many links you want on the page.
This is a great option for driving traffic directly to your website and to specific pages within your site when your linking options are limited in social media. It can also be created on any WordPress.com plan, including the free plan, without needing any special add-ons.
The Link in Bio page layouts/block patterns and the Cover Block Panel options are both effective in adding a Social Links Page, which will ultimately help the user experience when navigating between your different platforms. The ability to add customization to your Social Links Page will also help you to relay your brand and personality to your users, while the analytics will all be readily available in the back end of your WordPress.com site, at no additional cost to the user. WordPress.com is very extensible, and creating a Social Links Page is simple for all users with no additional tools needed! All of this is possible on WordPress.com, and we are proud to take you a step closer to organizing all of your unique platforms in a seamless and reliable way.
Despite the holiday season being around the corner, the WordPress project didn’t slow down. In a recent episode of WP Briefing, Executive Director Josepha Haden shares the first thing she wants people to notice about WordPress, which is also the heart of this open source project:
“Now, the first thing I want people to see on that site is that WordPress has not only 18 years of learned knowledge that every single new user benefits from, but that it also has thousands of really smart people making sure it works and gets better every day.”
As always, contributors across various teams are working hard to ensure the upcoming release of WordPress 5.9 doesn’t disappoint. With State of the Word 2021 coming up soon, there are many exciting things in the works. Read the November 2021 edition of the Month in WordPress to learn more about what’s happening.
WordPress 5.9: Expected to release on January 25, 2022
WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 was recently released and is available for testing. This version of the WordPress software is under development. Check out the release post to learn more about what’s new in version 5.9 and how you can help testing.
Check out “A Look at WordPress 5.9” for a first peek into the exciting features included in this major release.
WordPress 5.8.2, a security and maintenance release, was out on November 10, 2021. This release includes two bug fixes and one security fix.
Are you interested in contributing to WordPress core? Join the #core channel, follow the Core Team blog, and check out the team handbook. Also, don’t miss the Core Team’s weekly developer chat on Wednesdays at 8 PM UTC.
Gutenberg releases: 11.9 and 12.0 are out
Two new Gutenberg versions have been released!
Version 11.9.0 brings new Gutenberg blocks for working with post comments, a fullscreen pattern explorer modal, further iterations on the Navigation block, and many other improvements.
Gutenberg 12.0.0, released on November 29, improves the Block Styles preview and includes featured image block visual enhancements, a site Editor welcome guide, official JSON schema updates, and much more.
Host or join a State of the Word watch party to enjoy the event with your WordPress friends. Check Meetup to see if a watch party is scheduled to be held in your local community!
Add the event to your calendar so you don’t miss State of the Word 2021! Want to ask Matt a question during State of the Word? Please send your questions ahead of time to ask-matt@wordcamp.org or ask them live during the event via YouTube chat.
Team updates: Nominations for some team representatives are still underway
Requests 2.0.0 has been released. This release is fully compatible with PHP 8.0 and 8.1, indicating that a legacy codebase can be modernized, made more stable and secure without breaking backward-compatibility. The Requests project is a dependency of WordPress core, which was adopted into the WordPress organization earlier this year.
The Marketing Team welcomes any help to promote WordPress Meetups on a weekly basis and thus keep the community connected.
We want to hear from you! Suggest your 2022 goals for the Global Community Team by December 6, 2021.
Feedback/Testing requests: Test WordPress 5.9 Beta 1; Take the 2021 Annual WordPress Survey to share your experience
WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 is now available for testing and we’d like to hear from you! Testing is vital to ensure the release is as good as it can be—it’s also a great way to contribute. Read the comprehensive guide, “Help test WordPress 5.9 Features,” to learn how to test WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 and report any bugs.
Get excited for WordCamp Sevilla 2021, coming up on December 11-12! Sevilla is the first in-person WordCamp happening in over 18 months, since WordCamps moved online in March 2020 due to COVID-19.
WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 is now available for testing!
This version of the WordPress software is under development. You don’t want to run this version on a production site. Instead, it is recommended that you run this on a test site. This will allow you to test out the new version.
You can test the WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 in three ways:
Option 1: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
Option 3: Use WP-CLI to test: wp core update --version=5.9-beta1. Do not use this option if your filesystem is case-insensitive.
The current target for the final release is January 25, 2021, which is just eight weeks away. Your help testing this version is vital to make sure the release is as good as it can be.
Testing for bugs is a critical part of polishing the release in the beta stage. It is also a great way to contribute. If you’ve never tested a beta release before, this detailed guide will help walk you through what and how to test.
If you think you’ve found a bug, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac. That’s also where you can find a list of known bugs.
Want to know what’s new in version 5.9? Read on for some highlights.
Full Site Editing
The Styles Interface
Combine all the features that went live in 5.8 with those making their entrance in 5.9, and you get Full Site Editing.
Formerly known as Global Styles, the Styles Interface lets you interact directly with your blocks and elements right in the WordPress Admin. From typography to color palettes, this cohesive design interface means a design change—even a dramatic one—can happen without a theme switch. No code needed.
Theme.json
Introduced in WordPress 5.8, theme.json has been improved to enable features and default styles for your site and its blocks. With 5.9, theme.json can support child themes and the duotone treatment. Coordinate layers of style with theme.json, taking the weight off of your theme’s required CSS.
Other features supported by theme.json include:
Border: color, style, and width augment the border-radius property that landed in 5.8.
Flex layouts: Block Gap support, courtesy of spacing.blockGap.
Typography: font families, font style, font weight, text decoration, and text transform.
Images: Duotones.
A New Navigation Block
Welcome to the most intuitive way to build navigation: the Navigation Block.
Here are the features that need testing the most:
Responsive menu options you can turn off, have always on, or opt to use only for small screens.
Built-in keyboard accessibility. For accessibility, for speed, or both.
Add extra blocks like Search and Site Icon blocks (and customize them to your liking).
Submenu items with styling options.
Horizontal or vertical alignment.
Reusable navigation? Even across themes? Yes. Because the Navigation Block you build gets saved as a custom post type.
A Better Gallery Block
What if you could treat single images in your Gallery Block the same way you treat the Image Block? Now you can.
Make every image in your gallery different from the next, with inline cropping or a duotone and change layouts with the ease of drag and drop. With the improved gallery block, every image is its own Image block.
Building template parts can take a level of focus all its own because you’re making decisions for the entire site. So WordPress 5.9 adds a focus mode that shows you only the part you’re working on right now (and you can get back to the regular view with a keystroke).
Block Pattern Directory
The Pattern Directory offers a range of prebuilt block patterns, from a couple of blocks that show an image and text, to an entire page layout with columns and sections. Since the 5.8 release, the directory has become a hub for exploratory UI and patterns, taking submissions and offering them to the community. So now, your creation can help other people build out their perfect site.
Twenty Twenty-Two Default Theme
A whole new way of building WordPress themes.
WordPress 5.9 introduces features that make Full Site Editing possible, including the first default block theme.
Using minimal CSS, theme styles reside in theme.json so that you can configure them in the Styles interface of the WordPress Admin. Make this theme take on its own personality site-wide, with a wide array of color schemes, type combinations, page templates, premade components (forms), and image treatments to choose from.
More Improvements and Updates
Do you love to blog? New tweaks to the publishing flow let you add new posts just seconds after hitting Publish on your latest post.
List View lets you drag and drop content as easily as you could always cruise through it – and collapse entire sections – so you can concentrate on a task or get the bigger picture.
In this series, we share some of the inspiring stories of how WordPress and its global network of contributors can change people’s lives for the better. This month we feature a translator and campaigner who uses WordPress to highlight good causes and helps people in her area benefit from the open source platform.
Going to a WordCamp can be a life-changing experience, as Devin Maeztri discovered. Every event she attends is a further step on a journey of discovering the WordPress community and its many opportunities.
“It is not that hard to fall for WordPress if you have a chance to experience WordPress. For me, it took a WordCamp.”
Devin Maeztri
Devin’s first experience with camps came when she volunteered impromptu at an Indonesian event, WordCamp Denpasar, Bali in 2016.
Here, she made a profound discovery: “WordCamps can bring people who will give back to the community, even if they don’t get anything from WordPress directly.”
With every WordCamp after that first experience, she became more interested in WordPress and the community.
Over time, Devin found she wanted to be part of WordPress events more often. She became a regular at Meetups in Ubud and Jakarta, joining as a co-organizer at WordCamp Jakarta in 2017 and 2019. Later, she took on the role of co-organizer for Meetups in Jakarta and Ubud.
Smitten by what WordCamps can offer and how they can bring people together across national borders, she joined the organizing team for WordCamp Asia 2020. Sadly, this event was to become the first major WordPress event to be cancelled in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Naturally, Devin hopes WordCamp Asia will happen someday very soon. Beyond the expected WordPress learning and sharing that event will promote, she believes its very scale will showcase how WordCamps add international tourism and cultural understanding everywhere they take place.
WordCamp Asia 2020 Organizers at WordCamp Europe 2019. Devin is pictured in the front row, second from left. Photo Credit: Abha Thakor
Showing how WordPress can be used locally
After experiencing several events, Devin had questions: “At WordCamps and Meetups, you hear stories about how WordPress powers the web. How it changes the lives of so many people, how it helps dreams come true. It made me think, considering WordPress is that powerful, why are there not even more people in Indonesia using websites, and more using WordPress? Why aren’t more talented Indonesian WordPress users, developers, designers, and business owners taking part in WordPress.org projects? Language, for me, was the main answer.”
The solution Devin felt was to make WordPress available in the main local language. She said: “I believe, the more content translated into Indonesian, the more Indonesian WordPress users see WordPress as more than just a blogging platform or a content management system. They will realize it’s a huge open source community that works together to make the web a better place. The more plugins and themes translated the easier the work of the developer and designer will be. The more people see how WordPress can enhance their life, the better the ecosystem for business owners becomes.”
Encouraging others to translate WordPress
After talking with others about how WordPress could be even more useful in Indonesia, Devin felt she had to make a personal commitment to reviving the polyglot project in Indonesia. With another volunteer contributor and through promotion, the local polyglot team got bigger and the interest in translation grew. She also took on the responsibility of a General Translation Editor for the language.
Through the efforts of Devin and the other translation editors, Indonesia took part in WordPress Translation Day in 2020, and in 2021 held sprints and learning sessions spanning the whole 30 days of the event.
Her enthusiasm and dedication to helping others translate WordPress locally and promoting the global community were recognized in the Polyglot Appreciation Nominations for 2021.
Helping to give access to more diverse audiences
Through her involvement in translation, Devin noticed there were not many women involved in the WordPress community in Indonesia. Often, she found herself the only woman at an event.
So, along with a couple of community members, she started Perempuan WordPress, a local initiative. This group is open for everyone to join, but prioritizes women as event speakers.
Devin has gone on to support the work of the Diversity Speaker Training group in the Community Team, translating materials and promoting initiatives in Indonesia. She is keen to encourage others to get involved with this initiative which helps increase the diversity of presenters at Meetups and WordCamps.
Organizing at WordCamp Jakarta 2019
In her professional roles, Devin is an advocate for WordPress as a tool for people with a wide variety of skill sets. She does not code, but uses the platform extensively for her projects. In 2014, she signed up for a free account on WordPress.com to keep and share notes about what she saw or was thinking about as she commuted on public transport to work. This site did not turn into a blog, but instead introduced her to other opportunities and the vast capabilities of the platform.
WordPress can support your skills and passions
With a background in environmental activism, Devin has worked for international development organizations on everything from policymaking to campaigning.
Behind the desk, she worked with policymakers and organized conferences and meetings. That meant doing a lot of writing and translating and working with people on the ground who were impacted by the policies. “My work on the ground usually involved researching, movement building and community empowerment,” she noted.
Her work with events inspired Devin to get involved in WordCamps and Meetups and share her energy for making things happen. As in her professional work, she felt WordPress was an opportunity to work and share with people about something that can make a positive impact on someone else’s life.
“For me, everything comes from the heart. I do things that I feel so strongly about. Things that call me, and things that I am good at but still giving me room to learn and become better at. WordPress can be the perfect place for this.”
While she was between jobs, Devin was encouraged to volunteer at WordCamp Denpasar 2016. With some help, she created an online CV. She also learned to manage a WordPress site, navigate the wp-admin, and make the content appeal to potential employers.
She eventually got a job as a campaigner to build a movement online and offline. The brainchild of many university friends in America, who used digital campaigns to go global, the campaign used WordPress.
Devin worked alongside a digital campaigner and helped shape the content, the call to action, and the user experience. She also had to use the wp-admin to make some amendments. As a global movement, it developed its resources in English, so she also reviewed the work of the translators she worked with.
Devin’s cat became a regular on social media posts about #WPTranslationDay 2021
She left her job as a campaigner at the end of 2018 to concentrate on freelancing – and to spend more of her free time contributing to the WordPress community. She also took up the initiative to help street cats in Jakarta.
Devin said: “So, I am busy helping these cats but also learning how to fundraise using a website. I’m learning to use online forms, set up a payment service provider, work on SEO, and do other new things I need to learn to grow my initiative. I do have the privilege to learn directly from a personal guru. The same person who convinced me to volunteer at WordCamp Denpasar, and who I married in 2018.”
WordPress gives everyone a chance to learn
Devin was so enthused by being a contributor for WordPress, she took part in the video shorts following the Translation Day events.
Devin talks about translating in this short video (opens in a new tab on YouTube)
She is also active in other Contributor Teams and decided to become a Community Team Deputy to support meetups in new cities across Indonesia and perhaps future WordCamps.
She said: “One of the things that I like about WordPress is that it is very welcoming and open to people like me, who don’t code at all. At the same time, it shows me a different way of looking at the world.”
Devin believes in the power of WordPress to give ‘everyone a chance to learn new things’ and allows her to contribute and share her knowledge and experience. “By contributing, I hope to make a difference in someone’s life. I hope they feel the benefit of using WordPress and want to give back to create a healthier WordPress community.”
Contributors
Thank you to Abha Thakor (@webcommsat) and Mary Baum (@marybaum) for the interviews and writing this feature, and to Devin Maeztri (@devinmaeztri) for sharing her story. Thanks to Meher Bala (@meher) for work on the images, and to Chloé Bringmann (@cbringmann) and Collieth Clarke (@callye) for proofing.
Thanks to Josepha Haden Chomphosy (@chanthaboune) and Topher DeRosia (@topher1kenobe) for their support for the series.
This People of WordPress feature is inspired by an essay originally published on HeroPress.com, a community initiative created by Topher DeRosia. It highlights people in the WordPress community who have overcome barriers and whose stories might otherwise go unheard. #HeroPress #ContributorStory
