WordPress is ready for AMP, but are you?

Lots of news in the world of WordPress today as Google’s AMP has gone live on WordPress.com sites and self-hosted sites are being encouraged to give the AMP Plugin a try. The question you should be asking yourself isn’t if you should implement AMP on your site, but when.

AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is something Google cooked up to make the mobile web lighter and faster. When properly implemented it does just that and your listings in search engine results get a nice little lightning indicator to show that they are valid AMP content. In theory, users should be more inclined to choose your content.

So why not just install the plugin and let all that juicy new traffic hit your newly optimized posts? If you have any kind of custom fields, forms, ads, or custom programming you can generally expect it to not display properly – or at all – in AMP. Even simple things like Google Analytics tracking code aren’t included by default, even if you already have it configured on your desktop or mobile site. Sure, you can dive in and customize your AMP templates, but that’s quite a bit of work (you can find the WordPress AMP plugin customization guide here), and it’s not something a non-programmer should attempt. Also of note: as of right now the WordPress AMP plugin doesn’t support pages and archives, only posts. The developers have said they are planning on implementing them, but no ETA has been provided.

While it’s fairly safe to install the plugin and try it, we’re recommending you hold off until it has a little more development time and the process of customizing the output becomes a little less cumbersome. If you’re eager to dive in now, find a trusted programmer who can help you customize your AMP output and verify that the big G sees your contact as AMP valid.