WordPress is open source software, maintained by a global network of contributors. There are many examples of how WordPress has changed people’s lives for the better. In this monthly series, we share some of the amazing stories.
This month to coincide with WordCamp Europe, we feature Tijana Andrejic from Belgrade, Serbia, about her journey from fitness trainer to the WordPress world, with the freelance and corporate opportunities it introduced.
As a professional manager with a college degree in Organizational Science and a certified fitness instructor, Tijana is nothing if not driven and goal-oriented.
Following her time as a fitness trainer, Tijana moved to work in IT around 2016. She first explored content creation and design before focusing on SEO and becoming an independent specialist.
Tijana was hired as a Customer Happiness Engineer for a hosting company, where she discovered the benefits of having a team. She realized that having close working relationships with colleagues is helpful for business success and accelerates personal growth.
Tijana hopes that by sharing her story, she can help others who are either starting their career or are moving roles. She describes the opportunities she discovered in the WordPress community as ‘a huge epiphany’, especially in the world of freelancing.
She highlights 5 things that helped her to start a new freelancing career. Let’s dive into them.
What motivates me?
“Why am I doing this?” is the first question that Tijana asks herself before starting anything new. This self-review and honesty, she feels, allows her to determine her priorities. She also benchmarks options around her motivations of wanting a flexible schedule and to grow professionally.
She lists the reasons to make a particular choice, like being a freelancer, to help her choose the right job, pathway, or identify alternatives.
She recommends that others can take a similar approach. If freelancing is still the best solution after examining all their goals and motivations, Tijana believes a good next step would be to learn WordPress-related skills.
Develop WordPress related skills
The next question you may ask: “Why WordPress?”
WordPress is used by more than 40% of websites in some form and offers various roles, many of which are not developer-specific. Tijana highlights a few:
web developer (coding websites, themes, and plugins)
web implementor (creating websites from existing themes without coding)
web designer (designing website mock-ups, editing images, or creating online infographics)
client support professional (helping people with their websites)
website maintenance (WordPress, themes, and plugins are maintained and backed up regularly)
WordPress trainer (helping clients with how to use the platform or teaching other web professionals)
content writer
accessibility specialist (making sure standards are met and suggesting solutions for accessibility barriers)
SEO consultant (improving search outcomes and understanding)
statistics consultant, especially for web shops
WordPress assistant (adding new content and editing existing posts)
website migration specialist (moving websites from one server to another)
web security specialist
Tijana emphasized: “Another reason why WordPress is great for freelancers is the strong community that exists around this content management system (CMS).” WordCamps and Meetups are a way to get useful information and meet people from a large and very diverse community and get answers to many questions straight away.
In the past year, these events have been primarily online. However, the contributors who run them continue to make an effort to provide an experience as close to in-person events as possible. The biggest advantage to online events is that we can attend events from across the world, even if sometimes during these difficult times, it is difficult to get enough time to deeply into this new experience. Since Tijana’s first Meetup, she has attended many WordPress community events and volunteered as a speaker.
Plan in advance
Becoming a freelancer takes time. For Tijana, success came with proper planning and following her plan to ‘acquire or improve relevant skills that will make you stand out in the freelance market.’ She strongly believes that learning and growing as a professional opens more business opportunities.
If you are considering a freelance career, she advises improving relevant skills or developing new skills related to your hobbies as ‘there is nothing better than doing what you love.’ In cases where no previous experience and knowledge can be used, she suggests choosing ‘a job that has a shorter learning curve and builds your knowledge around that.’
Tijana started as a content creator and learned to become an SEO expert. However, she highlights many alternative paths, including starting as a web implementer and moving to train as a developer.
She suggests to others: “It would be a good idea to analyze the market before you jump into the learning process.” She also recommends people check the latest trends and consider the future of the skills they are developing.
Visit the new Learn WordPress.org to see what topics are of interest to you. In this newly established resource, the WordPress community aggregates workshops to support those who want to start and improve their skills, provides lesson plans for professional WordPress trainers and helps you create personal learning to develop key skills. There is also material on helping you be part of and organize events for your local community.
Tijana highlights that there are many places for freelancers to find clients. For example, the WordPress Community has a place where companies and individual site owners publish their job advertisements – Jobs.WordPress.net.
Hurray, it’s time to get a first freelancing job
As a pragmatic person, Tijana recommends: “Save money before quitting your job to become a full-time freelancer. Alternatively, try freelancing for a few hours per week to see if you like it. Although some people do benefit when taking a risk, think twice before you take any irreversible actions.”
She shared some possible next steps:
use a freelancing platform
triple-check your resume
professionally present yourself
fill up your portfolio with examples
use video material
“By using video material, your clients will not see you like a list of skills and previous experiences, but as a real person that has these skills and experiences and that provides a certain service for them.”
She adds: “Have a detailed strategy when choosing your first employer. Choose your first employer wisely, very wisely. I can’t emphasize enough how important this is”.
When Tijana took her first freelancing job, she considered the following:
how was the employer rated by other freelancers who worked for him previously
how does the employer rate other freelancers
how much money had they already spent on the platform
the number of open positions for a specific job and the number of freelancers that have already applied
“The first job is not all about the money. Don’t get greedy on your first job. If you get good recommendations, your second job can pay two to three times more. And your third job can go up to five times more. That was my experience.”
Take responsibility as a freelancer
Tijana reminds us: “Freedom often comes with responsibility; individual responsibility is key when it comes to freelancing.”
She advises others not to take a job if you can not make a deadline and have someone reliable who can help you.
Missing deadlines will cost your client money and affect the review the client will be willing to leave about your job, and this can have a big impact on your future opportunities or freelance jobs.
She adds: “This can start a downward spiral for your career. However, we are all humans, and unpredictable things can happen. If for some reason you are not able to complete your work in a timely manner, let your client know immediately so they can have enough time to hire someone else”.
Tijana emphasizes the importance of making expectations clear before accepting a job, both what the client is expecting and what you can expect from the client.
Lastly, she points out that if you are working from home, your friends and family should treat you the way they would if you were in an office. She advises: “Let them know about your working schedule.”
She hopes that these basic guidelines will be useful in launching freelance careers, as they did her, even though there is no universal recipe for all.
Tijana highlights: “It’s just important to stay focused on your goals and to be open to new opportunities.” Freelancing wasn’t the only way she could have fulfilled her goals, but it was an important part of her path, and it helped her be confident in her abilities to make the next big step in her life.
As a freelancer, she was missing close relationships with colleagues and teamwork, which she has now found in her current firm. Her colleagues describe her as a: “walking-talking bundle of superpowers: sports medicine and fitness professional, SEO expert, blogger, designer and a kitty foster mum”.
If you are considering starting your career as a freelancer, take the courses offered at learn.wordpress.org, reach out to companies that you would be interested in working with, and remember that there are a whole host of opportunities in the WordPress project.
Thanks to Olga Gleckler (@oglekler), Abha Thakor (@webcommsat), Chloé Bringmann (@cbringmann), Surendra Thakor (@sthakor), and Meher Bala (@meher) for working on this story. Josepha Haden (@chanthaboune) and also to Topher DeRosia (@topher1kenobe) who created HeroPress. Thank you to Tijana Andrejic (@andtijana) for sharing her #ContributorStory
This post is based on an article originally published on HeroPress.com. It highlights people in the WordPress community who have overcome barriers and whose stories would otherwise go unheard.
After many years of a tidy, white-space filled design on WordPress.org/news it’s time to bring new life to the way we present our content. So much has changed since this site was first created: the people who read it, the type and variety of what is published, even the way WordPress works has changed.
Which means it makes sense to change our theme.
Earlier this year, Matt requested a new design from Beatriz Fialho (who also created the State of the Word slides for 2020). The design keeps a clean, white-space friendly format while incorporating a more jazzy, playful feeling with a refreshed color palette.
More detail on this modern exploration have been posted on make.wordpress.org/design. I encourage you to stop by and read more about the thoughts behind the coming updates; and keep an eye out for the new look here and across WordPress.org!
It’s really fun to contribute to something larger than yourself.
Matt Mullenweg’s words in “The Commons of Images” episode of the WP Briefing podcast exemplify the core philosophy of the WordPress project, especially as we inch closer to the next major release (version 5.8). This post covers exciting updates from the month of May.
WordPress turns 18
WordPress celebrated the 18th anniversary of its launch on May 27, 2021. To celebrate 40+ releases and WordPress’ support of 40% of the web, the team released 40 milestones to celebrate the anniversary of the software. Here’s to the next 18 and beyond!
CC Search joins WordPress and is renamed to Openverse
WordPress version 5.7.2, a short-cycle security release, came out on May 13. Get the latest version directly from your WordPress dashboard or by downloading it from WordPress.org.
Today marks the 18th anniversary of WordPress’ launch, a day that I fondly refer to as WordPress’ birthday, which means WordPress is 6,575 days old. To celebrate another turn around the sun, the community has had parties, we have shared data, and we have told our story.
Since our last birthday we developed our 40th release and now also support over 40% of the web. So it seems fitting that this year’s celebration should be a list of 40 milestones that have helped us get there.
Beginning with WordPress 5.8, you can colorize your image and cover blocks with duotone filters! Duotone can add a pop of color to your designs and style your images to integrate well with your themes.
Filters? Like on Instagram?
Duotone doesn’t work in quite the same way as Instagram filters. Whereas Instagram filters do color adjustments (color levels/curves and sometimes a vignette for the photo editors among us), the new duotone filters entirely replace the colors of your images.
You can think of the duotone effect as a black and white filter, but instead of the shadows being black and the highlights being white, you pick your own colors for the shadows and highlights.
For example, a grayscale filter can be created by selecting black and white as shadow/highlight colors, and a sepia filter by choosing brown and tan.
Analogous colors can add a subtle effect and work well for cover backgrounds where the overlaid text still needs to stand out.
Much more vibrant and interesting effects can be made with complementary colors.
How Do I Add Duotone Filter?
The duotone effect works best on high-contrast images, so start with an image with a lot of large dark and light areas. From the block toolbar, use the filter button and choose a preset:
You can also choose colors from your theme’s palette, or a custom color of your choice.
In addition to the image block, duotone can be applied to both images and video in the cover block.
Will This Overwrite Images in My Media Library?
Images and videos in your media library will remain unchanged. The duotone effect works using SVG filters and the CSS filter property, so the image or video is never modified in your library. On the one hand, this means that you can apply a filter to an image that you link to that doesn’t exist in your media library. On the other hand, this means that the filter won’t show up in RSS feeds or places that use the image URL directly.
Can I Add Duotone Colors to Blocks or Themes That I Develop?
The API for adding duotone colors to blocks is experimental in Gutenberg v10.6. Still, the documentation for using it in your own blocks can be found and will be updated under Supports Color in the Block Editor Handbook. Themes can add duotone presets with theme.json. More information can be found under Global Settings & Styles Presets in the Block Editor Handbook.
Try it Out Now Using the Gutenberg plugin
The duotone feature was released in version 10.6 of the Gutenberg plugin, so you can try it out now prior to the WordPress 5.8 release in July.
Thanks to @joen and @mkazfor assistance writing and reviewing this post.
In this episode, Josepha Haden Chomphosy provides a map of how to navigate WordPress teams and communication channels, along with her small list of big things.
Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.
Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) was released over 7 years ago and is currently used by less than 1% of all users on the Internet with usage rapidly declining. A large majority of popular websites have already stopped supporting IE11 (including Microsoft Teams in 2020), and even the Microsoft 365 apps and services will be dropping support later this year.
When WordPress 5.8 is released in July of this year, Internet Explorer 11 will no longer be supported.
If you are currently using IE11, it is strongly recommended that you switch to a more modern browser, such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, or Microsoft Edge. IE11 users have been shown a warning that IE11 is considered outdated in the WordPress dashboard for the last 17+ months.
If you are already using one of the more modern browsers above, you will only be positively impacted by this change, as there are performance benefits to dropping IE11 support. However, if any other users of your site are still using IE11, it’s possible they will be affected.
What does “dropping support” mean?
When support for a browser is removed from WordPress, new features are no longer tested on those browsers and are not guaranteed to function optimally.
Automated tools that generate parts of the WordPress Core source code are also updated to exclude unsupported browsers. This means that any feature relying on these generated files will likely have bugs or stop working for users of those browsers.
The block editor will be the area of WordPress most heavily impacted by this change because almost all of the files related to the block editor are compiled using these automated tools. Other areas of the WordPress dashboard also use CSS built with these tools and their appearance will potentially be impacted when using IE11.
All other areas of the code base that are IE11 specific will need to be identified, evaluated, and removed on a case-by-case basis as the rest are manually maintained. This process will begin in the WordPress 5.9 release, and will likely happen gradually over several major releases. Additionally, any bugs which are reported for IE11 will not be fixed.
How will this affect themes?
No changes will be made to any of the default bundled themes as a result of this plan. No code related to IE11 support (or any other browser that may have been supported when each theme was released) will be removed from default themes. However, any new features added going forward will not be tested in IE11.
If you are not using a default theme, it’s still unlikely that your theme will be affected by this change. Themes typically have their own browser support policies, and changes in WordPress Core do not affect those. It’s possible that your theme author may have removed support for IE11 already.
If IE11 support is important to you and you are unsure whether your theme supports IE11, it is recommended that you reach out to your theme’s developer to confirm.
This security release features one security fix. Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately. All versions since WordPress 3.7 have also been updated.
WordPress 5.7.2 is a short-cycle security release. The next major release will be version 5.8.
You can update to WordPress 5.7.2 by downloading from WordPress.org, or visit your Dashboard → Updates and click Update Now.
If you have sites that support automatic background updates, they’ve already started the update process.
Security Updates
One security issue affecting WordPress versions between 3.7 and 5.7. If you haven’t yet updated to 5.7, all WordPress versions since 3.7 have also been updated to fix the following security issue:
Following the recent statement by WordPress’s co-founder Matt Mullenweg and the Creative Commons CEO, Catherine Stihler’s post, I’m happy to formally announce that CC Search (with the new name Openverse) is now part of the WordPress open source project. Both Matt and I are long-time supporters of Creative Commons. I hope that this will provide a long-term, sustainable challenger to closed source photo libraries and further enhance the WordPress ecosystem.
How Does This Affect Current Users?
Current CC Search users will continue searching and using openly licensed images from around the internet. WordPress plans to continue the great work started by the Creative Commons project and expand search capabilities and features.
What’s Next?
We look forward to indexing and searching additional media, such as audio and video. As we expand our capabilities and grow the project, we look forward to integrating directly into WordPress and the media library. We hope to not only allow search and embeds of openly licensed media but pay it forward by additionally licensing and sharing your media back.
How Can You Contribute?
Stop by the Slack channel, #openverse, and take a look at the code repositories moved under the WordPress organization here on GitHub. You can also follow along with the project on its own make page at: https://make.wordpress.org/openverse. We are working on setting up the new team, process, and procedures.
Join us in welcoming the team and community. As a treat, check out the most recent WP Briefing episode, The Commons of Images, in which Matt and I discuss CC Search and our hopes for it as part of the WordPress community.
WordPress is open source software, maintained by a global network of contributors. There are many examples of how WordPress has changed people’s lives for the better. In this monthly series, we share some of the amazing stories that are not as well known.
Creating content with WordPress and blogging helped Fike Komala, from Indonesia, build a career where she can work remotely from different locations in the world.
In 2020, Fike joined a US-based company that specializes in form building to work as a content marketer. Using her experience as a freelancer and later a full time employee, she encourages others, particularly women in Asia, to consider remote work as a career option. She is so impressed by remote working benefits, that she is now considering writing about it for a thesis for her Master’s Degree, which she started this year in Europe.
As a keen blogger, WordPress immediately impressed Fike. Her dad is a programmer, and he helped her create the first of many blogs starting when she was 10 years old. She had private and public blogs, and even an English language one to help her practice and improve her skills.
“I got satisfaction and happiness from pouring my thoughts in writing and publishing them in my blog. Writing my thoughts and feelings often helped me process them, and does even now.”
Fike Komala
With a natural talent and love for languages, Fike pursued an Information Systems degree after graduating from high school. Her course covered business learning Java, HTML, CSS, Javascript, and Android programming. She also took courses to learn Bootstrap and Ruby on Rails.
Earning Through Building With WordPress
Fike’s parents had a business building websites. She was drawn to this work and would help proofread and format the articles. This is how she first encountered WordPress, which was to play a pivotal role in her future career.
“I saw WordPress as something more advanced than other platforms, with more themes and plugins to choose from. The default WordPress websites already looked more professional than others.”
Fike Komala
Throughout school, Fike’s experience with WordPress and blogging helped her earn extra money safely online, including translating texts from English to Indonesia, online surveys, and writing articles in English.
Discovering Work You Enjoy
The last year at University required a year-long full-time internship. Fike worked as an intern at a big general insurance company within the IT quality control staff. She enjoyed working with the people she met and learned a lot through this opportunity, but she declined the offer of a full-time position.
Fike is a good student who loves learning and did well in her education. Through her traditional internship experience, she found that programming in an office job did not fulfill her. It strengthened her belief in a finding a career where she could have the freedom and creativity of working remotely.
“I was a good student, I love learning algorithms, but I didn’t love programming. I’m not that person who can stay calm finding errors in their codes, and then finding out that it’s only missing a character,” said Fike. She added: “I don’t really like the fact that I have to wake up at 6 AM and be back home at 7 PM, and do it all over again the next day.”
Adventure Into Remote Work
Fike spent time improving her freelance profile, revising it, and applying to jobs as a virtual assistant. She was willing to do any small website jobs such as formatting WordPress posts, designing social media posts, and processing orders for online shops. Through a freelance job submission site, she was able to work with people from across the globe, including Singapore, Australia, Europe, and America. Through the site, Fike was able to gain experience with remote working tools like Slack, Asana, Trello, and Google Suites, and the work gave her practice writing in English.
It was through this site that Fike saw a job opportunity with a WordPress plugin company. She sent in her profile and blog.
“This was my first time being interviewed via a video call. I was ecstatic but panicked. On the day, I woke up at 4 AM, got dressed, and opened my laptop. Weirdly, my wi-fi died that morning. So I went to the nearest cafe to get the interview done, and it went great!”
She was hired to deliver consistency on the company’s blog.
Through her job, Fike first began to contribute within the WordPress community and was able to attend her first WordCamp, WordCamp Jakarta 2018, sponsored by her firm. Through WordPress, Fike has met many generous, trusting, and helpful people.
She said: “Because I’ve experienced the generosity of the WordPress people, I wanted to give back to the community.”
Swag from WordCamp Jakarta 2018, that’s Wapuu ondel-ondel!
“I got to know the amazing community behind WordPress. How people voluntarily contribute their time, energy, and skills to the community, from development, marketing to translating.It was really inspiring.”
Fike Komala
You Can Inspire Others Through Contributing
Fike has been an inspiration to people in her local community and globally within the WordPress community through her enthusiasm and energy.
So determined to encourage others to become translators of WordPress, she joined the Global Translation Day event with the Indonesian Community last year and took part in wider marketing of the event. She is pictured below with some of the Indonesian polyglots team.
She continues to support the polyglots and is a General Translation Editor for the Indonesian language. Last year, she also voiced an Indonesian translation of the onboarding video for new contributors joining WordPress.org. She has been a regular contributor to the PerempuanWP, an initiative for Indonesian women working in the WordPress world. Working with a firm which uses the WordPress platform has strengthened her familiarity with projects in the community and encourages her interest in contributing.
To learn more about contributing to WordPress, visit make.wordpress.org/ and follow the “get involved” link. You can join any of the weekly team meetings to get started, and there is a lot of help available.
Fike says, “I want to represent Asian women. In the future, I hope I can inspire more women, especially Asians, to work remotely.” She is now studying in Europe for a Master’s in Digital Communication Leadership. She hopes to use her learning to help other women, particularly back in her home country of Indonesia.
She continues to share her energy for learning and remote working.
“Just learn things. As much as you can. From anywhere, about anything. Keep an open mind. Read books, listen to podcasts, and learn new skills.”
She added: “If you’re working in the WordPress world, join the WordPress community. It’s a great place to learn from and connect with great people.”
Contributors
Thanks to Abha Thakor (@webcommsat) and Meg Phillips (@megphillips91) for writing this feature, to Surendra Thakor (@sthakor), Meher Bala (@meher), Larissa Murillo (@lmurillom), Josepha Haden (@chanthaboune), Chloé Bringmann (@cbringmann) for additional support and graphics, and to Topher DeRosia (@topher1kenobe) who created HeroPress. Thank you to Fike Komala (@fikekomala) for sharing her #ContributorStory.
This post is based on an article originally published on HeroPress.com. It highlights people in the WordPress community who have overcome barriers and whose stories would otherwise go unheard.
