In technology, partnerships are frequently the key to success. Recognizing and leveraging each other’s strengths can lift up all parties involved—and even the industry as a whole. XWP’s collaboration with Cloudinary, the two companies’ complementary strengths, and the benefits accorded the CMS industry by the technology we built together are a shining example of effective partnerships. Most important, we share a common goal of forging a user-oriented and performant web at enterprise scale.
The Mantra of XWP
As a technology company, XWP focuses on raising performance across the web: sites, platforms, editorial workflows. Since our inception in 2014, we’ve worked with global technology companies, mostly in the open-source arena, e.g., WordPress, to help them expand into new platforms and ecosystems. Because we are extremely adept with coding standards and knowledgeable about the needs of the community, close collaboration with companies like WordPress VIP gives us a unique advantage in helping companies develop platforms in the CMS industry.
Take another one of our partners, Google, whose technical contributions to platforms like AMP and Web Stories have enabled countless publishers to improve their website performance and user experience. Those publishers rightly saw a tremendous growth opportunity in the WordPress space, as attested by the fact that, since 2017, XWP has jointly developed plugins as tools that are playing a significant role in boosting web performance for publishers and media companies.
A Performance Mindset
Just as Cloudinary recognized XWP’s potential in bringing the Cloudinary platform to WordPress, so did XWP see Cloudinary’s capacity for growth in the ecosystem. Publishers love WordPress, in large part due to its customization features, which satisfy specific user or website requirements.
When Cloudinary approached us with the idea of codeveloping a WordPress plugin, we knew right off the bat that it would be a hit with WordPress’s core user base. Also exciting was that such an undertaking would advance our goal of creating a more performant, user-centric web. Closely matching that goal is Cloudinary’s core focus on web-performance enhancement: acceleration of page loads for both end-users and site owners.
A Growing and Satisfying Partnership
The XWP-Cloudinary partnership turned out to be seamless and successful. The Cloudinary team developed the plugin’s new features on its platform, and we at XWP then iterated them into the plugin, adapting them for real-world use and refining the interface.
“Working on Cloudinary is different from normal project work, which has an endpoint. What I like about the Cloudinary project’s ongoing nature is that I feel like more of a stakeholder—like a subject-matter expert.” — Claudio Sossi, quality analyst
In the open-source arena, however, iterations and updates are not just about new features. WordPress is a thriving community whose members worldwide constantly help find bugs, suggest fixes, and alert the team to users’ emerging needs. We are deeply aware of and alert to this important aspect of the community because we work in the ecosystem not just as an agency, but also as users and contributors.
New Features
Below are the new Cloudinary features that resulted from the partnership and that promise to be a boon to WordPress users:
- The ability to synchronize all media types through the WordPress library.
- Higher video-player performance.
- Optimization and synchronization of all assets: plugins, themes, and custom folders.
- Optimized delivery of static assets from WordPress core, plugins, and themes.
- Support for the newly launched Media Optimizer.
- Smart lazy loading.
- Adaptive responsive breakpoints.
- UI refinements that load additional features.
- A WooCommerce plugin.
An Introduction to the WordPress Space
XWP was eager to facilitate an enlargement of Cloudinary’s footprint in the WordPress space, especially since we were perfectly positioned to do so. Why? Because many of our customers are publishers or media companies whose teams must resize—time and again for various purposes—massive amounts of media on their sites. With its automation and robust, time- and labor-saving capabilities, the Cloudinary platform is ideal for those organizations. It’s a pleasure to introduce Cloudinary to our customers.
Separately, we at XWP also partner with hosting platforms that power publishing sites like WordPress VIP, Pantheon, and WP Engine, simultaneously championing Cloudinary with teams around the globe. As Cloudinary broadens its presence in the WordPress ecosystem, XWP also gains recognition as a performance and user-experience expert. Truly a win-win!
XWP and Cloudinary have now jointly created a high-quality plugin, which offers the new features listed above, surpassing WordPress standards, delivering a rich user experience, and enabling users to enhance their site performance. That success didn’t magically appear overnight, but of course. Rather, it arose from the vision and drive of the Cloudinary team and the high level of expertise within XWP—an exemplarily productive and gratifying alliance.
