Are you ready to close Chapter 2020 and embrace 2021?
Not without taking a moment to pause and reflect on the year behind, because it helps us gain clarity and reset for the year ahead.
It’s been a very unpredictable year!
So many changes in all fields, that turned around our normal lives.
There is not a single person that will forget this 2020!
In this recap for Webpigment, we are going to focus only on the good stuff.
The biggest change that happened to us was transforming the company into fully remote back in March. At first, this decision was temporary due to the COVID-19 lockdown in our country, but as time passed, and the whole team proved to work flawlessly the transformation was imposed spontaneously.
We must admit that this was not an easy decision. We have given up things that are of great value to us. Office work, joint lunches, coffee breaks, birthday celebrations, and all other socializing.
But one can always find a way and adapt to the new reality. We are using all the tools that allow us smooth daily communication. The projects are going with the flow, and we are continuously delivering results for our clients.
Being a remote company has opened the “doors” to expand the team from all across the globe. We are proud to have new colleagues joined our team from Serbia and Israel.
The main thing we miss in this new reality is traveling on WordCamps…. Of course.
That was our way of team buildings, and we look forward to travel, visit, and hopefully organizing them again.
The only person from our team who took part in the unofficial meeting that was supposed to be a WordCamp Asia for 2020 is David. Back in February not afraid of Covid and with a great desire to visit Thailand he was part of a group of enthusiasts, which none of them certainly did not expect this conference to be the last one in person.
Throughout the year all major WordCamps were organized online. We, as WordCamp fans, didn’t miss these conferences and followed them from the comfort of our own homes.
Like always, the biggest and our favorite was the WordCamp Europe. The European WordPress Community met for 3 days of learning, sharing, and fun online.
In our country, we are a group of small but growing WordPress community. Since the lockdown, the community decided all the regular meetups to be organized online. That was the only way to keep the community engaged and share all the WordPress news, updates, and knowledge.
Our team was part of many other online conferences and events. We will mention these as more significant. First, the two-day virtual conference for WooCommerce store builders where our founder was one of the speakers. And the second one is the online panel discussion organized by GoDaddy where our founder was sharing his journey “From a Freelancer to Starting Your Agency”.
This pandemic didn’t stop us from doing what we are best at!
We’ve launched a new product called Express Checkout, which was featured on WooCommerce official store. Express Checkout is a WooCommerce plugin that creates a smooth checkout experience for customers and boosts checkout conversion.
Days before the end of 2020, our new plugin – Payment Gateway for Cpay with WooCommerce was published on wordpress.org.
This plugin Implements the Cpay payment gateway for the WooCommerce shop.
We are so proud!
The first major update was WordPress 5.4 “Adderley”. What did we get with this update? Let’s start with website health improvements, Accessibility improvements in the WP 5.4 admin, Development improvements in WordPress 5.4, and Big improvements to the Gutenberg editor which include: a welcome guide popup, the new social icons blocks, new buttons block, the TikTok embed block, enhanced color options, improved image handling, and the fullscreen mode is now the default.
The second big update WordPress 5.5 Eckstine happened in August. We’ve got Improved Block Editor, Auto Update Your WordPress Theme and Plugins, Updating Plugins by Uploading a New Version, Lazy Loading for Images, The Default XML Sitemaps in WordPress.
And, the third WordPress update is called Simone, which was released in December. The five awesome features are New default theme: Twenty Twenty-one, Automatic updates, Application passwords, Loads of Gutenberg updates, and beta support for PHP8 in WordPress 5.6.
We would like to end this recap of 2020 with one of our biggest acts of kindness just to inspire others. The quote that leads us through this project says “We can’t help everyone, but everyone can help someone”
Knowing that this global chaos will affect so many business and their ability to maintain through the lockdowns, we’ve helped 5 small business owners to easily transform their business from offline to online. Our team created e-commerce websites for their products and services and this allowed them to continue working without delay.
This is an unprecedented time and it’s time for unprecedented kindness, and we were happy to be able to help.
Dear clients, associates, friends
The year behind us has brought us many challenges both in business and in private life. However, despite all its unpredictability, this year confirmed the values that we respect and nurture in daily cooperation with our clients and friends. In the spirit of unity, support, and mutual understanding, let us send this year in peace and welcome an easier and happier new one.
We wish you to spend the holidays before us in good health with your loved ones and to enter the new 2021 with new energy and a desire for success!