Blog

Introducing 10up’s Open Source Practice

10up Summit in Jackson Hole, Wyoming

10up aims to make a better web through finely crafted websites, innovative tools for content creators, and open-source contributions that drive growth. As a leading contributor to WordPress and the greater open-source community, the creation and sharing of open platforms and tools is a large part of our identity.

The establishment of an official Open Source Practice within 10up demonstrates our commitment to advance open-source technology, lead by example, and grow the community of which we are proud to be a part and upon whose shoulders we stand.

We have long utilized employee downtime between client projects for open-source contribution. Earlier this year, I joined the team as Open Source Practice Manager. I work most closely with Helen Hou-Sandí, our Director of Open Source Initiatives, and Adam Silverstein, a Lead Open Source Initiatives Engineer, both of whom primarily focus on open source and contribution. That core team is augmented by additional 10uppers, some of whom have dedicated recurring time carved out for open source initiatives, and some of whom join our efforts for discrete projects. Collectively, 10up invests more than 350 hours every month into our open source initiatives.

10up Releases Insert Special Characters For The New WordPress Editor

Adam Silverstein on September 5 • 1 Comment

Last week, we released Insert Special Characters, a plugin that brings a special characters menu to the new WordPress block editor.

The new WordPress editor (aka Gutenberg) introduced a modern, block-based paradigm for visually authoring content. For all of its advancements, a button to insert special characters was not carried over from the classic editing experience—a feature critical to writers and publishers frequently using mathematical notation or other symbols. Feedback concerning its absence and some client questions inspired our Open Source Practice to take action.

10up Hits The Roads And Skies For Conferences Across The Globe

Taylor Lovett on August 30

Fall Conference Logos

As summer comes to a close, conference season kicks into high gear. This means 10uppers are taking to the roads and skies to attend and speak at conferences and events around the globe.
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Distributor Delivers Enhanced Performance and Improved Media Handling

Helen Hou-Sandi on August 20

Distributor WordPress Plugin

Distributor—our plugin that makes it easy to syndicate and reuse content across WordPress-powered websites—was released in beta last year. Since that time, 10up has shipped several point releases, representing significant and continued investment in Distributor and delivering improvements in performance, smarter media syndication, and enhancements to the content “pull” feature.

John Eckman on August 7

From its conception, 10up has worked with vital publishers and content creators to improve storytelling across the web. This week I’m in Columbus, Ohio to participate in the third annual WordCamp for Publishers—a conference bringing together content creators using WordPress to manage and grow publications of all sizes. Thursday, I’ll be delivering the lightning talk “#NoStalking,” about the challenges of delivering advertising that drives revenue but also respects user privacy.

10up’s Partnership With The News Project Makes Headlines

Jake Goldman on July 12

CALmatters Website

The News Project has launched its first customer on its new SaaS platform for small to mid market publishers, and we couldn’t be more thrilled.

You may have read about The News Project—and our involvement—earlier this year on Axios. As a long-time digital partner for publishers and news organizations around the world, 10up is proud to be the technical strategy and implementation partner for The News Project, helping bring to life its vision for a “news business in a box”. In engineering the core platform atop WordPress, we worked closely with its first customer—CALmatters—to provide customizations and ensure a successful launch.

Extending Gutenberg With SlotFill and Filters

Ryan Welcher on July 10 • 1 Comment

Last year, WordPress 5.0 launched with an entirely new, block-based content editing experience—previously codenamed Gutenberg—and along with it, a new paradigm for developers to extend the editing and content publishing experience.

SlotFill Distributor Plugin Example SlotFill PostPublishPanel Example Slotfill PluginDocumentSettingsPanel Example

SlotFills enable developers to extend WordPress’ new editor interface.

10up Project Scaffolds Released

Tim Wright on June 25

Project Scaffolds Screen With Code

At 10up, we make remarkable tools for building and telling stories—and make those tools available to everyone. With a goal of maintaining the highest standards for design and engineering, we created a scaffold to help ensure the 10up standards are applied to all projects in the most efficient way possible.

Today, we are excited to open-source and release our project scaffolding application suite.

ClassifAI Brings AI and Machine Learning Services to WordPress

Jake Goldman on June 18 • 1 Comment

ClassifAI Screen Example

Drive.ai uses artificial intelligence to create self-driving cars. OpenAI, a nonprofit research company backed by Elon Musk, created an artificial intelligence model called GPT2 that can generate text relevant to topic, tone, and feeling based on only a few words. Navigation services use artificial intelligence to decipher hundreds of thousands of data points to provide real-time traffic data.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are revolutionizing technology and when applied to digital publishing, the opportunities available to streamline internal workflows, enhance visitor experiences, and increase revenue are endless.

Artificial Intelligence vs. Machine Learning
AI is the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior. Machine learning is a subset of AI with the ability to modify itself when exposed to more data; i.e. machine learning is dynamic and does not require human intervention to make certain changes.

Search engines like Google rely on AI and machine learning to “understand” what your content and site are about and how it should be ranked. But have you ever wondered if search engines interpret your content the same way you do? Or have you ever considered how these cutting edge technologies could be used to improve your content strategy or reduce resources?

These are the questions we’re asking at 10up as we look to the future of publishing technology and explore practical solutions that streamline editorial processes, increase audience engagement, and boost profits—solutions like our new plugin ClassifAI.

ClassifAI is a free, open-source plugin that leverages leading cloud-based services like IBM Watson and Microsoft Azure AI to augment WordPress-powered websites with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technology.

With years of experience working with some of the largest digital content creators, 10up understands that AI and machine learning will play an important role in the future of content creation and website experiences and we’re committed to driving this technology forward in the WordPress community. Today we are excited to share merely the first steps for ClassifAI: automated content tagging and classification as well as the automatic creation of image ALT text.

10up Heads To Berlin for WordCamp Europe 2019

Gabe Karp on June 10

From speaking and delivering product demos to volunteering at contributor day, #team10up is excited to be part of WordCamp Europe 2019, a WordPress conference happening June 21-22 in Berlin, Germany that attracts more than 2,000 attendees.

Contributing to communities that value an open web is a big part of our identity, and we can’t wait to share insights and collectively further the WordPress project. Several 10uppers, including myself and Brent van Rensburg, Director of Engineering, will be roaming the event, presenting, and lending a hand at the Google booth.