Status
Report

Howdy Friends,

June was an exciting month! We launched a new product and made significant progress on the next update.

Introducing Boost

Without a doubt, performance related questions are some of the most frequently asked in our forums...and for good reason.

Google has made it abundantly clear that performance is a ranking factor, and it can (and does) have an impact on the price you pay for ads.

Beyond that, having an optimized website provides the best user experience. You have fractions of a second to capture your visitor's attention, or they are gone.

Bottom line? If you have a website, you can't ignore performance.

For our customers, there are several things we do under the hood to optimize the code to be as performant as possible (and we're always working to improve). If you'd like to hear more about this from a customer perspective, Miso has a great write up on his blog.

All in all, this is a significant topic and one we spend a lot of time researching and discussing both internally and with customers.

As part of this, we realized there were some significant challenges when it comes to properly optimizing a website. There are certain things you can do globally related to image optimization, plugin setup, and script management. Those are important and fairly standard across the board.

But we realized that to in order to really dial things in, you need to take a personalized approach. Every website is unique, and so is their combination of tools, content, and code.

So we went to work.

We tested every major theme and builder that was out there. We played with multiple different plugin configurations (dozens and dozens of active plugins at once). We worked with shared hosts, cloud hosts, and everyone in between. And we tracked our progress throughout.

When all was said and done, we were able to find a way to optimize any WordPress site, using any theme/builder, and with any number of plugins. This done-for-you service is the answer to your performance challenges, and it starts with a completely free review of your website.

But that's not all. Should you decide to use the Boost service, we guarantee an increase to your desktop or mobile scores or your money back!

You truly have nothing to lose and faster speeds to gain.

This can be for personal or client websites, and we even have some agencies building Boost into their own product offering — reach out if you'd like to discuss.

Ready to get started? Learn more about Boost and get your free site review.

Update on the Update

We are continuing to make progress on the next update and are now dealing primarily with bugs and usability issues. These are challenging because they are hard to quantify and generally only present themselves once you have the feature built and begin to test.

Sometimes decisions made on paper need to then be reworked as the reality of those decisions is different than expected. We try to minimize as many of those as possible, but part of it is just the reality of this sort of development.

The good news is that the majority of the technical heavy lifting has now been completed. We are also doing some really advanced testing with Components and Parameters (you will be shocked at what you can do).

We try to push things to the limit in our own testing to identify additional edge cases and potential improvements. Some of our best refinements have come through this process, and little things like the new eyedropper tool are examples of new features that have come as a result.

As it stands, we have 43 open issues to tackle. Some are simple and straight forward. Some are more involved.

It is challenging to provide estimates for this sort of an update, but I also know how important they are from your perspective. At this current trajectory, I would expect the beta to be ready in August, and that is our next goal line.

July will be a very heads down month developmentally speaking, so expect more news in next month's Status Report.

All in all, we are most excited about how this update is shaping up! This is the most signigicant update since the 1.0 release of Cornerstone, and we can't wait for you to see it. Thank-you for your patience as we get it across the finish line.

Until next time,
Kyle