Website Builders – What Lies Ahead For WordPress in 2019?

When the first version of WordPress was released in 2003, no one could have imagined the phenom this CMS would become.

Over the past 15 years, WordPress has grown to be the dominant CMS in the market. Without belaboring the point of the size and scope as well as the impact that WordPress has had on the Internet, it is difficult to truly grasp.

It is estimated that it took more than 112 years of manpower to create WordPress. WordPress has approximately 423,759 lines of code. Currently, WordPress occupies 58.55% percent of the CMS market share.

That is more than all of the other CMS’s combined. Twenty-seven percent of the websites on the Internet, or approximately 75 million websites, are using WordPress right now. Of the top websites in the world, 14.7 percent use WordPress.

We throw out all of these figures to make a point. WordPress has made and will continue to make a huge impact on businesses.

For this reason, businesses around the world should be keenly interested in what WordPress has in store for 2019 and how this will impact their ability to provide services to their customers.

Gutenberg

Gutenberg is a major shift in the code base of WordPress. It is based on blocks, and these blocks are written in JavaScript. This means that learning JavaScript, not PHP, is going to be an essential part of working with WordPress going forward.

This does not mean that theme developers need to ditch their PHP skills and focus on JavaScript. Well, at least not yet. But what it does mean is that they will likely need to update their themes, allowing them to style the block output by Gutenberg as opposed to the previous editor output.

It seems that blocks are not solely going to be used on page editing and post screens. The second phase of Gutenberg, which will be released in the near future, will implement blocks throughout the WordPress admin. This means that things like the customizer, menus, and widgets are going to use blocks. The goal is to migrate WordPress into a “What You See Is What You Get” builder type CMS. The only difference is that WordPress will be free of the code bloat that accompanies most page builders.

Gutenberg already has and is likely to continue to revolutionize WordPress for those who use the site as well as for developers. Users will be able to experience a streamlined interface that feels like it belongs in this century. Developers are going to need to dive deep into JavaScript.

Website Design

There are some interesting trends in WordPress website design that gained traction in 2018, and we believe will continue to be a force for business websites in 2019. For example, minimalism is a trend that is going to be around for a while. WordPress sites that focus on minimalism are simple, they use flat colors, and they have a lot of white space.

This will allow your business to focus on the content that they are offering. It also guarantees that your site is going to load fast and that your site is going to look good regardless of the device it is being used on. Although the minimalism trend has been around for a little while, we see no reason to believe that it is going to lose its popularity anytime soon.

If anything, it seems that in 2019, designers are going to lean in and really push the limits of minimalism by incorporating shadows, gradients, and images more than ever. This allows websites to maintain their minimalist appearance while at the same time adding depth to the page.

We expect to see more businesses incorporate more detailed photography and more video into their websites. This is due in part to the fact that faster Internet connections are becoming popular.

Using the minimalist design, where less means more, businesses in 2019 will be able to make their WordPress sites stand out. They’re going to be able to make their sites load faster and help their visitors find the information they need faster.

Micro Interactions and the Future of Your Site

Micro-interactions are going to impact business WordPress sites in 2019. Micro-interactions are those little details that you’ve seen become more popular in websites over the last few years.

These are the little ways that a website responds to interaction. For example, when you hover over an icon, you see a small animation in response to your movement.

Micro-interactions make your site feel alive. They make it feel like something tactile. They give your users the feeling that they are actually interacting with the page as opposed to looking at a flat wall of information. Micro-interactions don’t just work for images. You can also use them with text.

What to Expect in 2019

As with all predictions, the future will tell which ones were to be believed and which ones were a pile of junk.

We wholeheartedly believe that Gutenberg is going to play a larger role in how websites are designed on WordPress in 2019. Sure, there is some frustration right now and WordPress has responded to that frustration by releasing emergency updates. However, as more patches are released and as Gutenberg becomes more stable, users are going to like the system more and more.

The growing concern by consumer about the built-in lack of features in most website builders is becoming more widely know. If you take a quick look at this list of website builders commonly used by small businesses, it’s immediately apparent that few have kept pace with WordPress innovation in recent years. As such, many webmasters will migrate over to WordPress, meaning that there will be more WordPress sites than ever before.

PHP skills may eventually lose of its value despite what pundits may say. JavaScript will be king for WordPress designers. More themes will be introduced that focus on a minimalist design. WordPress sites will become more interactive, and video and imagery will play a larger role than ever in what it means to have an attractive and well-designed site.

What do you think? How will businesses be impacted by WordPress in 2019? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.