Showcase redesign

The marketing team would like to redesign the WordPress showcase and the processes around it. The showcase, when used well, is one of our most powerful marketing tools. We can and should use it to show off the most inspiring and innovative uses of WordPress from around the web.

Features to add

The showcase lacks a few features that in our eyes are essential to make it truly successful. The things we should add:

  • Case studies – The marketing team currently does these on the Make/Marketing blog but that doesn’t seem like a good spot. Adding more depth and reasoning as to why a site is in the showcase would make it more worthwhile.
  • A one-line description – For use in search engine metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. descriptions, on social when a showcase is shared, and in listings, showcases should have a one-line description.
  • Add (mobile) screenshots – We currently only feature one screenshot per site, adding a few more to highlight nice sections of the site would be good. In those sets of screenshots, we should also make certain to include mobile screenshots.
  • Highlight agency and hosting company – The showcase has tags for WordPress.comWordPress.com An online implementation of WordPress code that lets you immediately access a new WordPress environment to publish your content. WordPress.com is a private company owned by Automattic that hosts the largest multisite in the world. This is arguably the best place to start blogging if you have never touched WordPress before. https://wordpress.com/ and WordPress.com VIP but currently not for any other companies. We should add tags (or a custom taxonomyTaxonomy A taxonomy is a way to group things together. In WordPress, some common taxonomies are category, link, tag, or post format. https://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies#Default_Taxonomies.) for different hosting companies and agencies as their cases come into the showcase, and highlight them more prominently on the showcase pages. This will make it worthwhile for agencies to submit their best work.
  • Add tags – We can’t currently link to a listing of sites that, for example, do cool stuff with GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/. Adding tags would allow grouping sites in other ways and show off uses of WordPress better.

Design changes

The Showcase needs design changes to overcome the following problems:

  • A slightly dated design – The design currently looks slightly dated, especially on the single pages.
  • Mobile version – The current design doesn’t work too well on mobile and actually has a double hamburger menu, which is confusing.

Internationalization

As we’re building this, we should make sure that the Showcase can also be added to Rosetta sites in the future. Local showcases are much more useful for local marketing teams.

Process changes

There are a few things in the process around the Showcase that we should change:

  • We’re not 100% sure all sites currently listed in the Showcase are running WordPress. We should change that.
  • There are hundreds if not thousands of submissions waiting to be added to the Showcase. We should probably never have thousands of sites in the showcase, so we need a way to clean up that list.
  • Sites that are in the showcase should be re-evaluated yearly to see if they are still a good fit.

Promotion changes

When sites get added to the showcase, that should be a thing we as a community (and specifically also the agency and hosting company involved) celebrate.

We’re thinking about the following ways of promotion:

  • Tweet new additions from the WordPress account and likewise share them on our other social profiles.
  • Give sites and agencies a badge to show that their work has been acknowledged.
  • Highlight them as “New” on the frontpage of the Showcase for a while.

Share your thoughts!

Did we forget things? Should we not do some of the above? Let us know.