The Future of WordPress

A presentation at WordCamp Rochester in October 2020 in by Francesca Marano

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The future of WordPress

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Ciao! Sono Francesca

  • WordPress core team lead at Yoast
  • Release co-lead WordPress 5.3 and 5.4

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Coordinator of WordPress 5.3 and 5.4

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How does change happen in WordPress?

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Tentative schedule until the end of 2021

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Coming up next WordPress 5.6 - Mid December 2020

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Security changes

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Don’t fear the auto-updates :)

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Security changes

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Speed matters

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Accessibility matters

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The WP Campus Gutenberg accessibility report

A community-led initiative to get Gutenberg tested

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The results are in

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The W3C decision

We need to ask ourself as a project if accessibility is important for us as it is for the W3C

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What’s next?

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Gutenberg (WordPress) phases

Phase 1: The editor itself

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Gutenberg (WordPress) phases

Phase 2: full site editing

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My concerns on full site editing

Concerns

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My concerns on full site editing

Timeline. When will it be ready?

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My concerns on full site editing

The future of WordPress theme shops Tl;dr: I think it’s good if they leverage it :)

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My concerns on full site editing

What it means for old themes? Fear not! They will continue to work.

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Stay in the loop

  • https://gutenbergtimes.com
  • https://fullsiteediting.com
  • https://make.wordpress.org (/Core /Design /Accessibility /Themes)

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Beyond 2020

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Gutenberg (WordPress) phases

Phase 3: collaboration

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Gutenberg (WordPress) phases

Phase 4: multilingual

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Hopes and Dreams

What colleagues and friends hope and dream for WordPress ♥

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Hopes and Dreams

  • More translations
  • Multilingual in Core

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Hopes and Dreams

  • Eco-conscious and sustainable platform and codebase
  • More privacy-related tools and functionality
  • Better performance
  • Better SEO out of the box

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Hopes and Dreams

  • More competition from other platforms
  • Fully accessible
  • wp-admin as a Single Page Application
  • Application of blockchain

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Quote from Marieke va de Rakt, CEO of Yoast

“I would love WordPress to become easier in the future. It is still rather hard for nontechnical people to get started. Also, I think the platform has grown despite its marketing and not because of it. So, in the future of WordPress I would love to have a consistent story, and a consistent strategy” Marieke van de Rakt, Yoast CEO (aka my boss lady)

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The Future is bright

If…

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Contribute selfishly and generously

We need everyone’s help!

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Quote from Eric S. Reymond, The Cathedral and the bazaar

“Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer’s itch” And not only a developer one. Please join!

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Let’s continue the conversation