{"id":119085,"date":"2021-06-25T17:19:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-25T22:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpengine.com\/?p=119085"},"modified":"2025-02-27T14:52:02","modified_gmt":"2025-02-27T20:52:02","slug":"inspiring-digital-breakthroughs-with-the-power-of-wordpress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpengine.com\/resources\/inspiring-digital-breakthroughs-with-the-power-of-wordpress\/","title":{"rendered":"Inspiring Digital Breakthroughs With the Power of WordPress"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

From the current state of the WordPress Economy<\/a> to the exciting future of Headless WordPress<\/a>, innovation, ingenuity, and inspiration were on display at WP Engine\u2019s signature event, Summit\/2021, which took place on June 24.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With thousands of attendees from all over the world, it was WP Engine\u2019s most-attended event to date, and the agenda was chock-full of informative sessions covering everything from security and performance to agency growth and eCommerce integrations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All Summit\/2021 Sessions Are Now Available On-Demand<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The Power of WordPress<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

SVP and GM, Enterprise for WP Engine Lisa Box provided some opening remarks to welcome everyone to the fifth annual Summit. Then WP Engine Chairwoman and CEO Heather Brunner kicked things off with a look at the power of the WordPress Economy\u2014a driving force within the larger digital economy, comprised of the makers, builders, and entrepreneurs who are leading the way amid rapid digital acceleration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWe\u2019re all part of a thriving, dynamic, global community that is the power of WordPress. And WordPress is much more than technology and tools, it is really the power of the people. What\u2019s truly a force multiplier are the people of WordPress.\u201d <\/p>\nHeather Brunner<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

From the rapid growth of WordPress, which is now used by more than 40% of all websites, to the massive ecosystem of plugin, theme and hosting providers, to the hundreds of dedicated contributors to WordPress Core, Heather outlined WP Engine’s recently-released research on the global WordPress Economy, which is estimated to reach $636 billion by the end of 2021. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

View the full presentation here<\/a>, and get a closer look at the WordPress Economy research here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Customer-Inspired Roadmap<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Following Heather\u2019s presentation, WP Engine COO Jason Teichman, along with VP of SMB Growth, David Vogelpohl and VP of Enterprise Marketing Monica Cravotta, presented a product showcase<\/a> highlighting WP Engine\u2019s latest customer-inspired innovations.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jason took time to outline one of the largest challenges we face as a provider for WordPress innovation, and that\u2019s the vast array of organizations we serve. From large enterprises like Volvo<\/a> and FindLaw<\/a> to SMBs like Tacodeli<\/a> and the MS International Federation <\/a>to our agency partners large and small, we create powerful solutions and build relationships with our partners that allow us to continue innovating the WordPress platform in ways that meet their needs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For SMBs and smaller agencies, our Foundation and Flywheel product lines are making waves as the easy-to-use, intuitive web platforms growing organizations can use to thrive online. For enterprises and larger agencies, Premier<\/a> and our new Headless WordPress platform<\/a>, are the best tools to power larger sites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From there, Jason handed the mic to David and Monica who dove into the specifics of those product lines and how they\u2019re being used successfully all across the globe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

David spoke about recent updates to Foundation that help boost speed and user experience, including Smart Plugin Manager that\u2019s optimized for WooCommerce, a new caching dashboard that allows you to clear caches anywhere on your site from one convenient dashboard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Flywheel, the Growth Suite<\/a> dashboard provides an all-in-one platform that can create branded client reports, a branded client portal, automated recurring and one-time billing, and more. Plus, he was able to announce that WP Engine is releasing Local Pro<\/a>, previously a paid service, for free to all WordPress users! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monica then took the digital stage to talk about enterprise-focused product lines, and Premier was first on-deck. Scalable solutions are a requirement for larger organizations, and Premier is built for scalability, performance, security, and quality customer experiences. She covered new updates to Premier that help detect and disrupt DDOS attacks at the edge of the infrastructure network, keeping large sites better protected as well as the importance of our award-winning customer experience team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, Monica outlined our new Headless WordPress platform, which enables secure, scalable headless websites for enterprises. Headless is the future of the internet, and 90% of enterprises who are not currently using headless have stated they plan to look into it within the year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By decoupling the front and back ends of your site, you can give both developers and content creators access to the tools they love, create dramatic performance gains, and more easily publish your content across multiple channels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fit for the Future<\/strong>  <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Continuing the discussion around product innovation and Headless WordPress, WP Engine Founder and CTO Jason Cohen led the next session, which focused on the future of the web and the rapid changes to the digital ecosystem brands and agencies must navigate to stay ahead of the competition.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Detailing WP Engine\u2019s recent innovations built to address these challenges, Jason spoke about our suite of  Genesis Themes<\/a>, which have been used to create more than 1 million websites, and Local<\/a>, a local development platform that allows developers, designers, and marketers to collaboratively build sites faster.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWith relentless product innovation from WP Engine your company can embrace the complexity of change and even use it to grow and to thrive,\u201d Jason said.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using WordPress to manage content while tapping into the tools listed above is part of being fit for the future, but as speed, performance and a site\u2019s overall user experience become increasingly important (Core Web Vitals<\/a> are a testament to this), headless approaches are also soaring in popularity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more detail on all of the above, check out the entire session here<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Personal Breakthrough<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In a powerful and insightful final keynote address, author and activist Reshma Saujani presented a look into the future of the digital landscape by explaining how the desire for perfection is a hindrance, not a help, in the quest for personal and professional development. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Speaking from her experience as the Founder of Girls Who Code<\/a>, an author of a best-selling novel, and an activist for women\u2019s equality globally, she spoke about the importance of bravery before perfection and how fear is the greatest obstacle to innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s this idea of perfection or bust,\u201d Reshma said. \u201cSomewhere along the line, you learned how to delete the code of your life.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat I mean by that is somewhere along the line, you learned how to give up before you tried. So I wrote \u2018Brave Not Perfect\u2019 to understand is that true? Do we socialize our daughters to be perfect and our boys to be brave? And if it is true, how does it happen? When does it happen? And most importantly, can we unlearn that? And if we unlock ourselves for bravery, what could the world look like?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

She ended her discussion with Ramadass Prabhakar, SVP Global Engineering at WP Engine with a bravery challenge for everyone in attendance: What is a dream that you have, just one thing you really want for yourself? She then encouraged us, this weekend, to just take one step toward realizing that dream. Because sometimes, just going for it is the secret to success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

View all Sumit\/2021 sessions on-demand <\/strong>here<\/strong><\/a> and <\/strong>visit WP Engine<\/strong><\/a> to find out more about the ways we power the freedom to create with WordPress. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our Sponsors<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Thank you to all the sponsors who made Summit\/2021 our most attended event ever! We look forward to partnering with all of you again in the future as we continue to build the WordPress community together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AWS<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bold Commerce<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gatsby<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

New Relic<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cloudflare<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Americaneagle.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the current state of the WordPress Economy to the exciting future of Headless WordPress, innovation, ingenuity, and inspiration were on display at WP Engine\u2019s signature event, Summit\/2021, which took place on June 24. With thousands of attendees from all over the world, it was WP Engine\u2019s most-attended event to date, and the agenda was…<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":318,"featured_media":118877,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-event"],"yoast_head":"\nInspiring Digital Breakthroughs With the Power of WordPress<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Innovation, ingenuity, and inspiration were all on display at WP Engine Summit\/2021. 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