2020 - Year in Review

2020 was a terrible year. A viral pandemic brought everyday life to a halt worldwide and challenged the status quo. So many people got sick, suffered consequential illnesses, or died. But even the people who didn't get ill suffered. Be it with their relatives or because they were put on short-time work or no longer had a job. Economic hardship at every corner, also because state aid does not reach everywhere.

Now, at the end of the year, there is some hope that thanks to the vaccine, some normality might return to our lives sometime in 2021. I covered Dot All 2018 in this space two years ago. How great I thought it was to meet the craft community. Having conversations and meeting new people. All so informal, friendly, and helpful.

And now we have to keep 5 feet away; best not to leave the house and wear mouth guards.

If 2020 should have taught us one thing, it is humility. And that we should not take anything for granted.

The best thing that happened to me in 2020? My family stayed healthy. Liverpool FC won the Premier League after a 30-year wait. Xbox Series X was released, and Donald Trump lost the presidential election in the US.

In Craft CMS, events like Dot One and Dot All were canceled, but there were great releases like Craft 3.5 and 3.5.

Brandon Kelly also looked back on the year.

We had big plans for this year. We were going to launch Craft Cloud, Craft 4, and Commerce 4. We were going to celebrate in Amsterdam at Dot All. 2020 had different ideas. - Brandon Kelly

Despite the economic crisis and the pandemic, Pixel & Tonic increased sales by 25% compared to the previous year. And so that made it possible to hire additional employees and make donations to charity.

The team grew from 10 to 14 employees.

• Matt, from Texas, has been responsible for technical documentation since January and is also expected to create learning materials for the community.
• Matsuko from British Columbia has cared for Crafts Control Panel accessibility since September.
• Since October, Dale from the Philippines has been taking care of Commerce's maintenance and support.
• Since November, Tommy from Melbourne has supported the support team and brought a new language with her: Japanese.

In March, Pixel & Tonic gave an update on Craft Cloud. The resulting discussions led to the realization that potential customers do not want service without DevOps.

Therefore, Craft Cloud is now being redesigned, and it will be quiet around this project for quite a while to avoid further uncertainty.

• 139 plugins were added to the Craft Plugin Store in 2020.
• 59 new agencies became a member of the Craft Partner network.
• Pixel & Tonic donated 33 Craft Pro licenses to COVID-19-related projects.
• The W3C announced they would be using Craft CMS for the upcoming redesign of w3c.org.
• New documentation for Craft, Commerce, and Nitro, as well as a new Intro to Craft CMS Tutorial, were published.
• Craft Nitro 1.0 was released in August, and currently, Nitro 2.0 is imminent.
• Pixel & Tonic released the official Gatsby Source plugin in November.
• Various official RSS feeds have been published, including Plugin Store

We know this hasn’t been an easy year, but we’re extremely grateful for the Craft community for all the support you’ve given us. It’s thanks to all of you that we get to keep building these tools and services. We wish you all a healthy, happy, and prosperous 2021. - Brandon Kelly