Today we have the last WP news of 2018 for you: In his annual "State of the Word" address, Matt Mullenweg presents his vision for the future of WordPress, the WordPress Governance Project aims to strengthen the WP community's right to have a say, and the first WordCamp is coming to Osnabrück in 3 months. We also have the web design trends for 2019 in store for you and show you how toprepare your WordPresssite for high traffic.

How to make your WordPress fit for high load

As a WordPress host, we regularly get requests from clients whose product will soon be getting a lot of attention – be it through an appearance on "Dragon's Den", coverage on YouTube or a large-scale marketing campaign. All of this means one thing: a lot of traffic on the server - too much for some sites and servers. Our Senior WebDev Matthias explains which measures are necessary so that your WordPress can cope with this high visitor load.

These are the web design trends for 2019

Web design trends don't just happen - they evolve in response to the ever-changing preferences and needs of your website visitors. We'll show you which design elements have been in focus over the past few years and which design trends you should count on in 2019 to successfully stand out from your competition.

WordPress

Big plans for WordPress in 2019
In his annual keynote, WP co-founder Matt Mullenweg reviews the past year and talks about future plans for WordPress. In his speech this year, the focus was on the next phases of the Gutenberg project. Also, WordPress is scheduled to require PHP 7.0 as a minimum requirement no later than December 2019. You can watch the full keynote here.

Who should decide about the future of WordPress?
During the development of Gutenberg and WordPress 5.0 there was a lot of criticism from the WP community about the project management, the intransparency and the lack of communication from Matt Mullenweg and his project leads. In response to these tensions, Morten Rand-Hendriksen introduced the WordPress Governance Project at WCUS. In an interview with Torque Magazine, he explains what it's all about.

Get ready for WordCamp Osnabrück!
WordPress fans from NRW and Lower Saxony take note: From March 23-24, 2019, the very first WordCamp will take place in Northwest Germany. Follow WordCamp Osnabrück on Facebook or Twitter so you don't miss the start of ticket sales. We look forward to seeing you in beautiful Osnabrück!

Security

First security update for WordPress 5.0
On December 13, shortly after the release of WordPress 5.0, the first security update to version 5.0.1 with some important fixes has been released. However, the update had to compromise on backward compatibility. Yesterday the next small update to 5.0.2 was released. As a Raidboxes customer with WP 5.0 you don't have to act, because we apply minor updates automatically as usual.

Google+ to close earlier than planned
After a new security vulnerability was discovered in an API interface of Google+, Google announces that it will shut down its social network earlier than initially planned: "With the discovery of this new bug, we have decided to expedite the shut-down of all Google+ APIs [...]. We have also decided to accelerate the sunsetting of consumer Google+ from August 2019 to April 2019."