Good Reads: WordPress VIP’s 2023 Top Content Roundup
Including notable favorites from our customers and partners
This year alone, our customers and partners trusted the WordPress VIP Platform to publish ~120M+ million pieces of content, a 33% increase YOY.
We’ve done our best to showcase exceptional posts that stood out (and indeed took off), as well as our own top-performing content.
Table of contents
- Standout content from WordPress VIP customers
- Engaging posts, news, and background from our featured agency partners
- WordPress VIP’s top-performing content of 2023
Standout content from WordPress VIP customers
We’re proud to provide an enterprise-grade platform that helps iconic media brands, public agencies, and large organizations run the web by safely and securely publishing content that resonates with audiences worldwide.
Here are a few stellar favorites from 2023.
NASA: Telescopes Discover Record-Breaking Black Hole
Mission Control, we are go for launch! The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is working with WordPress VIP and Gold Partner Lone Rock Point to build and host the agency’s new CMS platform that’ll help “put the universe at everyone’s fingertips.”
Vox: All the Republicans Running for President in 2024, Explained
All the news that’s fit to scale! Vox Media wanted its creative and development teams focused on experiences instead of platforms, creating industry-leading content for their audiences across iconic media properties. Enter WordPress VIP: the secure, scalable, reliable, and fully-managed enterprise-grade content platform that will let them do just that.
Accuweather: Hurricane Lee Explodes to Category 5 Strength Prior to Caribbean
Brighter days ahead for your CMS forecast! Since 1962, AccuWeather has been helping people and businesses make the best weather-impacted decisions. But a lack of customization clouded its relationship with its Brightspot CMS, stymying content creation. Migrating to WordPress changed all that, from greater flexibility to more straightforward integrations.
Learn how AccuWeather leverages decoupled WordPress.
Capgemini: Harnessing the Value of Generative AI
The transformative potential of technology revealed! After moving their CMS of choice from Drupal to WordPress VIP, Capgemini—the multibillion-dollar international consultancy focused on digital transformation—realized a 13x increase in content contributors, thanks to an intuitive, flexible, consistent user experience.
Read our Capgemini case study.
CNBC: Harvard-trained psychologist: If you use any of these 9 phrases every day, “you’re more emotionally secure than most”
Because a results-driven culture is money! The recognized world leader in business news, CNBC provides real-time financial market coverage and business content consumed by more than 355 million people per month across all their platforms. Driving their content strategy? VIP Content Analytics by Parse.ly, which helps democratize data across the organization.
Learn more about WordPress VIP solutions for media.
Engaging posts, news, and background from our featured agency partners
Our extensive agency partner network plays a key role in the success of our customers—from enterprise brands to the halls of government. So let’s shine the spotlight on a few deserving organizations.
Osom to Know: Building the Perfect CMS
The Osom to Know podcast is “your gateway to the world of WordPress.” For programmers, marketing specialists, or business owners, each episode is a tech treasure trove of expert advice, practical tips, and the latest trends in WordPress.
For an early summer podcast, their featured guest was WordPress VIP CTO Brian Alvey. Brian shed light on his background, building CMS tools for enterprise-level clients, and the importance of hiring and building remote teams of psychologically-driven people who are responsible and communicate well.
Listen to the Ossom to Know podcast.
Studio Science: Why You Deserve a (WordPress) VIP Experience
“Contrary to what some may believe, it’s not the features of a website that differentiate companies in the market—it’s the end-user experience.” That’s WordPress VIP Silver Agency Partner Studio Science putting its collective stake in the CMS ground.
So, just why do organizations deserve a WordPress VIP experience to run the enterprise web? Think security, higher performance and scalability, large-scale site management, and deeper support.
Learn more about Studio Science.
Ad Hoc: Better Serving the People
Today, many federal government services are still out of step with consumer technology regarding features, availability, and ease of use. WordPress VIP and partners like Ad Hoc are changing that.
Born out of the rescue of HealthCare.gov, Ad Hoc is a digital services company that helps technologists collaborate closely with government partners. Ad Hoc believes applying “human-centered methods” with the “publishing ease and infrastructure scale” of WordPress VIP are keys to creating effective, resilient websites and digital experiences that meet the public’s expectations.
Hammer Marketing: Mapping Events From Universal Analytics to GA4 – A How-to Guide With Resources
Based in Lehigh Valley, PA, Hammer Marketing is “a collaborative group of hard-workin’ and good-time havin’ nerds, insight-mining strategists, clutter-busting creatives, and tech-stack-taming developers.”
They had us at “insight-mining strategists.”
Hammer Marketing: Five Attributes of Attractive, User-Friendly School Websites
Let’s go for two!
We couldn’t resist Hammer’s thoughtful take on safeguarding school websites in the face of increasing cybercrime, including data breaches, online meeting invasions, ransomware, and other types of cyberattacks.
Read the Hammer Marketing blog.
WordPress VIP’s top-performing content of 2023
Finally, let’s break down our own top five pieces of content we published over the past 12 months.
Because we certainly practice what we preach, we used our own content analytics solution—Parse.ly and its top listings view based on site visitors—to easily narrow down our Top 5 performing content pieces.
5. Where no content has gone before: WordPress VIP Powers NASA’s Flagship Websites
“Our vision is to inspire humanity through a unified, world-class NASA web experience,” said Jeff Seaton, chief information officer at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Our POV: Launch announcements about high-profile brands and federal agencies joining the WordPress VIP family are always big traffic draws, especially originating on LinkedIn, which drew 22% of this post’s overall traffic.
4. On the CMS blog: Pointing DNS Directly vs. Reverse Proxy
Developers want to know: When launching a new website, is it best to point DNS directly to your web host, or use a reverse proxy? That depends, really. We’ve got the answers.
Our POV: Deep technical connect aimed at WordPress developers also consistently drives traffic from search, the vast majority new visitors (up to 90% in fact).
3. Making headline news: Vox Media Partners With WordPress VIP
Our enterprise-grade platform is the message for elite media brands Vox Media powers. That roll call includes Vox, New York Magazine, The Verge, The Cut, Eater, Vulture, The Strategist, Polygon, SB Nation, Intelligencer, Curbed, Grub Street, Thrillist, Popsugar, and The Dodo.
Our POV: Fresh content drives fresh audience engagement—almost 9 in 10 (86%) visitors reading our Vox announcement on our blog were first-time visitors.
2. Basic blocking and tackling: How to Enhance WordPress Blocks With Block.json and Server-side Registration
The WordPress Site Editor, powered by blocks, lets you create and customize your content in an organized, good-looking way. Each block’s a specific type of content, like a text paragraph, image, video, or any other custom element. But for these blocks to work, they gotta be registered with WordPress Core.
Our POV: As we’re thisclose to the WordPress origin story and continually shaping the development of WordPress Core, it’s no surprise the WordPress community looks to WordPress VIP for answers and best practices related to the world’s most popular CMS.
1. The state of content | Content Matters 2023: 4 Reports for Content Creators
From growing budgets and salaries to emerging technologies and AI adoption, 2023 was a big year for content and the creators who produce and publish it. Our Content Matters 2023 report series dives into what we learned and what you need to know about the future of content, so you can work smarter (and maybe earn more $$$) in 2024.
Our POV: Content creators are hungry to know their net worth. Of the four Content Matters reports, by far the most trafficked was our salary report—which proved adopting a data-driven mindset is key to higher compensation.
Download all four Content Matters 2023 reports.
TIME has the electric touch
Finally, is our 2023 in-review post all over now? Not a chance.
Not until we’ve put the cherry on top and high-fived the hard-working engineering team at newly replatformed TIME.com, which relies on WordPress VIP and Gutenberg for its nextgen editorial experience.
Even at “peak Swift,” their platform effortlessly handled the incoming traffic tidal wave from Swiftees—more than 100k requests/second—associated with TIME naming Taylor Swift its “Person of the Year.”
