Fast WordPress Themes

Year in Review: What We Achieved in 2018 & Our Plans for 2019

What a "Yeah"! With this pun we jump right in and say: Another exciting year has come to an end! 2018 was full of interesting challenges like WordPress 5.0 and the Gutenberg-editor, the GDPR as well as the first co-organization of a WordCamp for 2019. To close 2018 in a fitting way, we have our product developments and personal highlights of the last year as well as our plans for 2019 in store.

Thank you for your great motivation

You have once again given us a great deal of support in a variety of ways over the past year. For your honest feedback, ideas, criticism, praise and the warm attentions that have reached us in the form of pizza and drink deliveries, parcels, postcards and letters, our entire team says: THANK YOU!

Raidboxes - The WordPress Hosting Specialist No. 1

Since 2014 in a small small coworking space in the middle of Münster's city centre and with only three people (Marcel, Johannes and me) the first prototype of Raidboxes-Dashboard automatically created and delivered a WordPress installation for the first time, a lot has happened.

Raidboxes has developed with the help of the round of financing from HTGF in the amount of half a million euros. from 2016 to the WordPress hosting specialist in Germany, Austria and Switzerland!

More freedom for over 9,500 customers

With over 8,000 customers across Europe, we are proud to primarily support Internet professionals such as agencies, freelancers, (influencer) blogs and WooCommerce shops in their daily work. more freedom in their daily work and to support them.

We are looking for you to join our growing team

Our team has grown to the present day to eleven people and our office dog "Elea". grown and also in 2019 we are planning to add more positions in the system administrationsupport and sales/consulting.

WordPress 5.0 and the new Gutenberg editor

Everyone who works professionally with WordPress comes to the discussions and the introduction of the WordPress Gutenberg editor. Comments range from sky-high endorsements of the new WordPress editor and its modular blocks to scathing feedback. Critics criticize for example the project management of the Gutenberg developer team, the lack of usability and accessibility as well as the hasty release as standard editor in the still quite new WordPress -version 5.0 End of December 2018.

Raidboxes has already dealt with Gutenberg at an early stageAs a WordPress hosting specialist, we always use the latest WordPress version for all existing Boxes(websites) as well as newly created WordPress installations, and thus also the new Gutenberg-editor editor for all existing and newly created WordPress installations.

Automatic update to WordPress 5.0 planned for end of February 2019

In the meantime, the general update of all our websites to the then current WordPress version 5.0.X is planned for February 2019. is planned for February 2019provided that all known Plugin and Theme manufacturers have finalized their Gutenberg compatibility.

When creating a new WordPress instance at Raidboxes, you as a user can now choose whether your Box should run on the latest WP version with the classic editor or on the most current WordPress version 5.0.X.

E-Book Special: The Gutenberg-Editor E-Book with a lot of help

With the major update to WordPress 5.0, on 06.12.2018, the classic TinyMCE editor was replaced. To help you decide for or against the Gutenberg editor, we have published an e-book (to download the Gutenberg e-book here). In six chapters we show you what the new editor means for WordPress and your business and how to get along with it.

Help for WordPress 5.0 and the Gutenberg editor

We have extensive help articles and postsin our WP magazine in order to support all customers and users as best as possible during the changeover. From fixing the current WP version in Raidboxes-Dashboard to various methods to avoid the Gutenberg-editoryou will find the most important Gutenberg info in this article. this article.

OUT OF THE BOX - The WordPress Magazine

With our entry into the hosting market in Austria and Switzerland, we also laid the foundation for our German-language WordPress magazine "wp unboxed", whose high-quality content is primarily aimed at the professional WordPress users in the DACH countries.

In the meantime, our magazine has grown to over 1,500 subscribers of our free WordPress news and more than 2,000 Push Notification subscribers, our magazine has become an established source of information. Topics around WordPress but also online marketing and web design as well as the optimization of your online business have their fixed place in OUT OF THE Box.

The 10 most popular OUT OF THE BOX articles in 2018

In order, our OOTB readers' top ten favorite articles of 2018:

  1. GDPR & WordPress: Technical Measures You Should Implement Now
  2. The 5 Most Popular GDPR Plugins for WordPress in Comparison
  3. Optimize Images for WordPress: 5 Popular Plugins to Compress Your Images
  4. WordPress 5.0 vs. 4.9 - The Performance Test
  5. WordPress Analytics Without Tracking Cookie – Statify in Focus
  6. WordPress 5 and the Gutenberg Editor: The Things You Should Pay Attention To
  7. Web Design Trends 2018 and how we Successfully Implemented Them
  8. 4 Factors To Consider When Choosing Hosting for Your WooCommerce Website
  9. WordPress Hosting-comparison with 250+ website speed test results
  10. Why the New York Times Has a PageSpeed Insights Score of Only 52

The GDPR and our learnings from implementation

Particularly challenging, but also instructive, for us was the cross-departmental preparation and implementation of the GDPR until its entry into force on May 25, 2018. The transnational General Data Protection Regulation (EU-GDPR ) had strict procedures in place to protect your privacy on the Internet even better.

Interestingly, only a quarter (24 percent) of companies in Germany have fully implemented GDPR to date. Another 40 percent have implemented the rules for the most part, and three out of ten (30 percent) have only partially implemented them. In total, since May 2018, Germany has received more than 70,000 inquiries and complaints have been received by the data protection authority.

GDPR -Guide for WP agencies, freelancers and website owners

Our accumulated experience during the implementation of the GDPR , including the technical measures for you as a website operator, have been summarized in a comprehensible way in an e-book of more than 30 sites , which you can download download it here here.

WordCamp sponsorship and co-organization

Other highlights in 2018 were certainly the participations in WordCamps - be it as a sponsor, speaker or co-organizer. A personal highlight was definitely the WordCamp Retreat in Soltau, which brought a completely new WordCamp concept to life. You can find out why the WordCamp Retreat was so special in our Recap recap.

In addition to the WordCamp Retreat, we were also a silver sponsor at the WordCamp Zaragoza earlier this year. WordCamp Zaragoza earlier this year. As a gold sponsor and with two workshops held by Matthias, our senior web developer, we were also able to organise the WordCamp Cologne 2018 in record time. WordCamp Cologne 2018 in record time. As at the WordCamp Retreat, we were of course accompanied by our Raidboxes slush machine with not quite "youth-free" mixed drinks. 😉

Further WordCamps are also planned for 2019. One of them is the first WordCamp Osnabrück in March, which Johannes and Leefke from the Raidboxes team are involved in organising. We are looking forward to a WordCamp for all WordPress friends from the region of Münster, Osnabrück, Emsland and all over Germany and the world.

In 2019, we would also like to focus on our mission of "giving you more freedom" as well as our corporate vision, to enable boundless opportunities, in a now regularly recurring workshop with the entire team. You can find a summary of our first workshops with initial support for your own implementation here.

Fun Facts Infographic of Our Year 2018

To give you a comprehensive overview of 2018 at Raidboxes, we have compiled the most important figures of the year for you in an infographic.

Raidboxes Fun Facts 2018

 

Our product features and improvements in 2018

With one click on the feedback forum in RB-Dashboard every RB user can independently provide feedback and/or suggestions for improving Raidboxes and discuss and vote on other users' ideas.

We take the ideas and criticism of our users very seriously and regularly incorporate this information into product development. Even the features from 2018 were not excluded from this and thus follows a list of features and improvements that we have implemented with the help of the RB community:

Tools for a better workflow

Free hosting for agencies and freelancers

For all those who implement WordPress projects for customers, we have developed our exclusive FREE-DEV program into being. With this program, you as a freelancer or agency can develop up to three parallel WordPress projects for 90 days free of charge. More information and the registration can be found here.

SSH environment

You can use Secure Shell (SSH) to establish a secure network connection with our servers. SSH uses a unique encryption in the form of a key, which you can store with us in the RB-Dashboard with us. You will then be able to establish a secure connection to your WordPress websites with us and speed up the development of your WP projects.

WordPress -templates for recurring use

In 2018, we integrated the template function in Raidboxes Dashboard. From your saved WordPress templates, you can then create as many additional WordPress websitesas you like in a flash - and already pre-configured with all your favourite settings. You can find more information here.

Features for better working with WordPress

ResetWordPress with one click

From now on you can reset each of your BOXES to its original state with one click. This will delete all Plugins, Themes and contents from the file system and the database and you can continue working with a completely empty Box.

WordPress Change database prefix

For various reasons, it can happen that the table prefix (Table_prefix) wp_which is created by default during the WordPress installation, has to be replaced or changed. Whether it serves the clarity of your database or the security, this is now possible under "Settings" for each of your web pages.

Add special entries in wp-config.php

In addition, it is now possible to enter special entries in wp-config.php. Our write protection remains active and successfully prevents hackers and malware from using your wp-config.php for criminal activities.

Set PHP Max Execution Time

BOXFrom now on you can set the PHP max_execution_time yourself. You can set separate values for the frontend and the WP dashboard. The setting is available for all activated BOXES from STARTER plan .

Integrated cronjob management

In the settings of your BOX(EN) you can now view all cronjobs and, if necessary, delete them directly.

IP Blocking - Black- and Whitelisting

The 'IP Blocking' setting implemented in 2018 allows you to create blacklists and whitelists. This allows you to control exactly which IP addresses should have access to your site and which should not.

General Data Protection Regulation

Special GDPR measures

Login Audit Log Change settings

Under the profile settings at Raidboxes-Dashboard you now have the option of setting whether your visits to our website are saved, only saved in encrypted form or not saved at all. By default, we do not store your visits, in accordance with the EUGDPR.

WordPress Gravatars removed from RB dashboard

The service we use, Gravatar, which displays your avatar and those of your colleagues in the RB dashboard, is no longer allowed after GDPR because it sends data to Gravatar without your consent. As a result, we have removed the service until we find a GDPR -compliant alternative and have provided the administrators with the first letters of their first and last name.

WP Session Eraser Setting

The WP Session Eraser brings you one step closer to GDPR compliance and is unique so far! The background: WordPress stores session data of logged in users until they explicitly log out. This can lead to them being stored in the database even though there is no longer a purpose for processing this data. With our WP Session Eraser you decide in which interval this data is deleted.

WordCamp Soltau 2018

Our planned projects in 2019

New planned positions in the RB team

In 2019, we also plan to fill additional positions in system administration, support and sales/consulting. As soon as there are new job offers, you will also find more information in our our overview open job advertisements.

Raidboxes sponsors the WordCamp Europe 2019 in Berlin

To the delight of all of us, this year's WordCamp Europe 2019 will take place in the German capital Berlin. This makes it not only interesting because of the short journey, but we are proud to be there for the first time as an official sponsor.

Raidboxes will present will present its own booth and we are looking forward to meeting many new WordPress fans from all over Europe. We look forward to seeing you at the RB booth for a personal chat! By the way, tickets can be ordered be ordered here.

Planned product features in 2019

WordPress Multisite

A frequently requested product feature from the Feedback-Forum is the use of WordPress multisites on our BOXES. Due to the necessary measures in the area of GDPR and with the launch of WordPress 5.0, this feature will now be implemented in the first and second quarter of 2019 instead of 2018 as planned.

Create email mailboxes

Another request from the RB community from the feedback forum is, in addition to the possibility, Domains to acquire (which we implemented in 2018), the offering of email inboxes. Because of our specialization in the WordPress Hosting we've long struggled with implementing mails on our own. But: email inboxes are a perfect example of involving the RB community in the ongoing process of desired features and improvements.

The first release of our email service, which we are developing with the help of our cooperation partner mailbox.org - a German email provider that specializes in secure email communication.

Content Delivery Network (CDN)

In addition, we will finalize the already started development of the CDN integration in 2019. Here, too, the actual roadmap was postponed by the necessary measures in the area of GDPR and WordPress 5.0. Unfortunately, there is no exact date for the release of this feature at the moment.

Detailed status overview of a BOX

In the first version of the status overview of a BOX, the utilization of the CPU as well as the RAM can be read out. Further information, such as detailed log files, will be added in subsequent versions. Again, the exact date of release is not yet known.

Planned features without a fixed deadline

  • Optional password entry when deleting a BOX
  • Optional two-factor authentication of the RB account
  • Images are automatically compressed during upload
  • NGINX cache is more individual in the professional settings
  • Raidboxes-Bulk plans can be booked more flexibly than before
  • Price discount if you choose annual billing
  • Space-saving list view selectable in RB-Dashboard

"Be free and wild and creative"

That was our recap of 2018 and the first look ahead to the current year 2019. We are sure that 2019 will be at least as exciting as 2018 and we start with the goal to support you again this year in a way that you can, according to our slogan "Be free and wild and creative!" you can pursue your passion: your business!

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