After an eventful weekend at the WordCamp Retreat in Soltau, we're a little late with the latest WP news for you: Tracking is also GDPR-compliant, the WordPress app doesn't work with Gutenberg content and we show you technical GDPR measures for your WordPress site. We also have our experience report from the #WCRetreat Soltau. 

WordCamp Retreat - The best WordCamp so far! 

As sponsors of the first WordCamp retreat, we traveled to Soltau on Friday (at 4 a.m.!) full of expectations. Our short conclusion: The retreat format blew us away! The talks were super informative, the hotel was great, the weather was fantastic and the atmosphere was accordingly exuberant. The icing on the cake for us were the shared leisure activities that rounded off the whole event. As we were so impressed by the retreat format, we have summarized our impressions and highlights from the weekend for you 🙂

WordPress Analytics without tracking cookie - Statify in focus

With the upcoming EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the ePrivacy Regulation, the WP community needs to rethink its approach. Not only the numerous plugins, but also WordPress itself is not yet sufficiently prepared for this step. As there is a lot of uncertainty among most website operators, especially when it comes to tracking, Denis Sandmann shows you why Google Analytics is problematic and to what extent Statify is a good alternative.

WordPress

GDPR-proof with the "WP GDPR Tools" plugin
As the operator of a WP website, you have a few things to consider before the GDPR comes into effect on May 25. Because if your site requests, analyzes or stores personal data - which is probably the case - you must ensure legally compliant processing. The new "WP GDPR Tools" plugin from Shapepress helps you to implement the requirements of the GDPR. The plugin has been checked for compliance with German and Austrian law and developed together with lawyers.

GDPR & WordPress: You should implement these technical measures
A GDPR plugin can support you in many areas to prepare your WordPress site for the General Data Protection Regulation. Nevertheless, there are some settings and adjustments that you can easily implement yourself, such as choosing GDPR-safe plugins. We will show you an overview of the technical measures that we consider useful in light of the GDPR and have already implemented.

The WordPress app and Gutenberg don't (yet) understand each other
To test a typical scenario for WordPress users, Jeff Chandler from WP Tavern created and published a post with the Gutenberg editor. He then tried to open the post with the iOS app on his cell phone to correct a typo, for example. You can find out why he is anything but satisfied with the result of his test in his short field report.

The organizing team on the #WCRetreat
Lead organizer Sven Wagener takes stock of the very first WordCamp in retreat format in the Presswerk podcast. Among other things, Sven talks a little about the preparations and reveals the hurdles the organizing team had to overcome on the long road to the event weekend. Once again, a huge thank you from us for the great weekend! 🙂

Business

Data protection in times of GDPR - Q&A
At the WordCamp retreat in Soltau, our data protection officer Virginia spontaneously jumped in and gave a Q&A session with Udo Meisen on the unpopular but important topic of "GDPR". Even if you have already dealt with the GDPR, there are certainly one or two takeaways for you. You can watch the session online on WordPress TV.

Performance

What does the perfect meta description look like?
The colleagues from the popular SEO plugin Yoast have tested four different meta descriptions (long + keyword once, long + keyword several times, short meta description, no meta description). The result of the experiment: You have less control over what Google actually uses as a meta description than you thought.