The WP Minute | State of the Word 2023

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The WP Minute brings you news about WordPress in under 5 minutes -- every week! Follow The WP Minute for the WordPress headlines before you get lost in the headlines. Hosted by Matt Medeiros, host of The Matt Report podcast.

Welcome to a special episode
of the WP minute today.

It's a long one.

It's a recording of the
state of the word 2023.

Largely featuring Matt Mullenweg
out in Madrid, Spain, where a

collection of the WordPress community.

Joined him to hear what happened
across 2023 and into the

future of WordPress and beyond.

another fantastic recap of our
beloved open source software.

Today's episode is brought
to you by Omni send.

Thank our friends at Omni.

Send one of the world's
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you like what we do here at the
WP minute, don't forget to support

us at the WP minute.com/support.

This is just a recording of the live
stream, the links to go back and

watch a live stream on WordPress.

A YouTube account will
be in the show notes.

And the Q and a portion
is not included here.

Uh, shear sheerly because of the
length of the, uh, the entire session.

I will have the Q and a, posted
on the WP minute Twitter handle.

Uh, I'll have all of the Q and a.

audio snippets there.

Along with the transcript.

At the WP minute at this
original blog post of the

recap of the state of the word.

So thanks for listening to this episode.

Here we go with state of the word 2023.

Josepha: Thank you, Rocio, my friend.

Thank you, everyone, also, for
listening to my lovely joke earlier.

Hola, WordPress España.

What a time to be involved
in WordPress, am I right?

Applause: Woo!

Josepha: I'm about to start, pretty
soon, my tenth year working with

this project, and it has been an
absolute honor to serve these past

four years as your executive director.

You have so much heart and spirit and
it is that heart of this community that

keeps me filled with hope for the future
of WordPress and the web and the world.

Just last month, we, WordPress,
wrapped up WordPress 6.

4, which was run by a group of
people from underrepresented genders.

And as we all collaborated on that
project across time zones and boundaries,

I was reminded just how much the
WordPress project comes together to

ensure not only the freedoms of the
open web, But the freedoms of people

we welcome into our communities.

It's that feeling of shared responsibility
for our project that has brought us

this far, 20 years into the project.

And it's about, and it's probably also,
what will take us into the next 20 years.

And so now, my friends, I would like
to introduce to the stage WordPress

Project Co Founder, Matt Mullenweg.

Matt: Wow.

Hello.

Do I need to hold this or will these work?

Hello, hello.

Okay, I'll hold this.

Ah.

Thank you, Rocio.

Thank you, Josefa.

Hola, WordPress España.

What an amazing time to be
involved with WordPress.

This is also our very first
international State of the Word.

So thank you for starting,
perhaps, a new era.

We'll do more of these around
the world in the future.

Um, uh, should I say, it's gonna
be State of the Word, or should

I say, I'm told this is a joke
in Spanish, Estado de la Palabra.

Applause: little

Matt: translation, right?

It's really great to be here in
Madrid in such a beautiful venue.

I hope we can show like what
the roof of this looks like.

And also, it's a great way to honor
the spanish community, which has really

been, you know, leading the world and
setting example in amazing word camps.

I believe the first word
camp after covid was here.

Um, and some of the most war camps ever.

And was that Sevilla?

Yeah.

Um, this is our time to really,
first we're going to start

with sort of celebrating some
of the things we did in 2023.

We're going to move on to a little bit
of what's coming next, and we've got

some fun announcements for you today.

So, as you may have heard, WordPress
turned 20 this year, on May 27th.

Applause: I

Matt: feel a little bit
like a proud parent.

And actually we can all feel like
a proud parent, because we are all

part of making WordPress what it is.

You know, the past two decades,
WordPress has evolved from being You

know, starting very humbly, it's just
sort of a journaling or blogging tool.

It's really being something that
can build entire websites and

be a framework for applications.

You can build all sorts
of things on the APIs.

And now running over a third
of all websites in the world.

I got a chance to celebrate,
uh, first in, this was in Tokyo.

As you can tell, we had
like a really awesome cake.

But actually there are
amazing 20th anniversary

celebrations all over the world.

And it turns out We really like cake.

This was a year as well of
us coming together again.

So this year, there have been
70 WordCamps in 33 countries.

That was a subset of the 3, 300
gatherings, including about 300

dedicated to learning, events
like WordPress School Days.

As I mentioned before, bringing
future generations into WordPress

is very important, so things
like KidCamps and others.

To put in perspective the 70
WordCamps for this year, Um,

obviously in covert we dipped in 2021.

We only did 19 in 2022.

We only did 26.

So we have more than doubled year to year.

And it's really exciting to
see the community coming back.

Um Although I couldn't be there
physically, uh, to WordCamp

Asia, I'm very, very excited.

So mark your calendars.

The next big WordCamp is going
to be in Taipei for March 9th.

The last batch of tickets are on sale.

And actually, although I've
traveled the world, I think I've

been to over 500 cities, um,
I've never really been to Taiwan.

So this will be my first time there.

I'm looking forward to
exploring the country.

I think I connected in the airport
once, but I don't count that.

So, this will be my first time to
actually get out of the airport, explore

the amazing food, and, uh, meet some
of the, I think, what's the attendees

registration so far for WordCamp Asia?

Do we know?

I think it's, it's, it's coming up there.

It might even be WordCamp Europe.

So, around 2000.

So, I don't know.

See a little competition.

Um, but get ready for a
little bit of a surprise.

Um, there were over 2, 500
organizers that made this possible,

including 1, 600 meetup organizers
and 800 WordCamp organizers.

So thank you so much to all the people.

And with all things in WordPress,
we are always trying to get

better and always trying to learn.

So we are right now running a survey
for how to make meetups better.

So for those, for those who don't
know, meetups are basically like

local, typically monthly events
that are often sort of the feeder

to later becoming WordCamps.

So we got a QR code here, you can
scan it or um, you know, there's a,

there'll be a link to it on wordpress.

org as well.

We, we want to learn how to make these
better and also create great feedback

loops to get them going all over.

Um, it can feel challenging to
keep track of so many wordpress.

org events in the world.

So one thing we're doing, you may have
noticed in WPAdmin on the dashboard,

there's a nice little widget.

that shows, like, nearby
events, sort of geolocates.

Uh, we are adding this now to wordpress.

org.

So at w.

org slash meet, there is going to be
a sort of thing that'll show you all

the events happening in your area.

Um, other things that I've
launched, um, is we've relaunched

how the showcase works.

So if you go to w.

org slash showcase, um, it's
now a great sort of example of

what can be done with WordPress.

I find this is the most effective
antidote to when you meet someone

and they're like Can WordPress scale?

Is it secure?

Can it grow?

Well, it turns out it can scale
enough to handle Swifties.

As we saw the other day.

We're at time.

com named Taylor Swift,
the person of the year.

And at their peak they were serving
over 100, 000 requests per second.

I know.

It's kind of like the new dig
effect or slash doc effect.

When Taylor Swift joins.

And can it be secure?

Well, it runs whitehouse.

gov and nasa.

gov and many other you know,
incredible websites around the world,

so the answer is yes, and I find
examples are the best way to show

this, so check out the showcase.

We're also hoping to expand this in
the future with more case studies,

particularly around enterprise
WordPress, which is something that, as

I've mentioned, is very very, uh, it's
happening, but we're still fighting

some perceptions of people who think
that open source can't do these things.

And of course, we know it really can.

Finally, and we've talked about this
before, as our community grows and

matures, um, we want a way to honor and
remember those who are no longer with us.

So at w.

org slash remembers, you will see a
place where we can honor those WordPress

community members who are no longer here.

We have talked about
the open verse before.

For those who aren't familiar, the
Openverse is basically a project

that we took over from the Creative
Commons, which aims to index all the

open license content in the world.

Uh, including that under Creative
Commons license, like CC0, CC, there's

a variety of Creative Commons licenses.

Um, this, uh, the Openverse work
actually just won an award this year.

It got the Open Education Award for
excellence in open infrastructure.

Um, we've also been growing our
photos directory and everything, so

basically we're trying to make it
Uh, where all the open content on the

web, just like WordPress has become
a repository and a resource for great

open source code and functionality.

We want to make it so, uh,
other content is available.

So, congrats to the
OpenVerse team on this win.

Another project that's been super
exciting is the Playgrounds.

Who's played with the Playgrounds?

We got a good number in this room.

So who, for those who haven't seen
this, it's one of the most mind blowing

things you'll see, especially if you've
been working with web technology.

So what the playground is, is basically,
uh, using Wasm, uh, WebAssembly,

we can actually found a way to load
all of PHP, and like a little web

server, and a little database, in
your browser, in a few seconds.

So you can visit it, and it basically
creates an entire virtual machine.

On the fly, in your browser.

Um, this allows for a lot
of fun experimentation.

You know, when we did contributor days
and other things in the past, a big

challenge was always like, getting
people's development environments

set up, all those sorts of things.

Now it can happen literally in seconds.

And you can do all this learning
and development in the browser.

Um, we have a little demo here, I
believe narrated by Adam Zielinski,

showing some cool stuff with Playgrounds.

Voiceover playground: The blog
editor handbook tutorials now

provide more than just code snippets.

They provide actual live examples
built with WordPress Playground.

Like this one here.

You can now interact with
blogs as you learn about them.

And there's more.

The upcoming plugin editor blog
will enable interacting with the

code directly in the tutorial.

And here are the latest
features in Playground.

You can store your Playground
in the browser and retain

it beyond a page refresh.

You can load more PHP
extensions, like libxml.

You can even give Playground access to
network to interact with APIs or simply

to browse plugins indirectly in WP Admin.

And you can also stay ahead of the
latest WordPress features with the

latest nightly WordPress version preview.

Furthermore, you can even test
specific upcoming features with a

new WordPress pull request previewer.

Just paste a link to a WordPress PR of
your choice to try it in Playground.

And by the way, previews.

WordPress plugins, like this interactive
code log, may now opt in to a live preview

feature in the WordPress plugin directory.

With a single click, you get a pre
configured Playground where you can

try the plugin out without risk.

You can also use Playground
to develop WordPress plugins.

First, synchronize Playground
with your local directory.

Then, update the code on your
computer, like here, we're updating

the admin color from navy to purple.

Finally, sync your changes
back into Playground.

And voila!

The admin is now purple
without any local setup.

Want to learn more?

Visit developer.

wordpress.

org slash Playground.

Matt: That will never cease to amaze me.

Think of how much you used to have
to set up with, like, running, like,

things locally on your On your device or
servers, I mean, it just blows me away.

Um, in the past six months, almost 57, 000
of you have worked with this tool, and the

buzz that's growing is really phenomenal.

So, there's been great
enthusiasm at WordCamp Europe.

We also got to display this
at Google, the Google I.

O.

conference in California.

And we're hoping to see a tenfold
increase in users in the next year,

especially with this live preview.

It's really a testament to the
spirit of innovation in the

community, and the closest thing
to sci fi I think we WordPress.

Another fun achievement of
this year is the 2024 theme.

So 2023 saw the finalization of
phase 2 of the Gutenberg roadmap,

which is around customization.

And our most recent default theme,
2024, is a great example of everything

that's been accomplished there.

It's got over 35 patterns built in,
and it really can meet the needs of

anyone, whether you're an artist, an
entrepreneur, or a prolific writer.

It's kind of the first to take
advantage of the full powers of

Gutenberg and show what can be done.

So I also hope that this inspires
many, many other themes being built.

If you haven't tried it
yet, set up a demo site.

Maybe using Playground.

And check out the 2024 theme.

It is quite, quite powerful.

It's been getting some
great reviews so far.

Um, Jamie Marsland said it's the best
default WordPress theme we've ever seen.

Ray Marais says, 2024 are
a match made in heaven.

And Brian Con Cordes says, personally,
I think this theme is a game changer.

So, please check it out
if you have not already.

Here's a little short demo of it.

So, basically what you're seeing
here, everything, all of these

screenshots were made with default 2024.

And just editing through the site editor.

You can see you can make portfolios,
you can make business sites.

Literally everything you're seeing here
is, this is a great sort of like gallery.

Everything you're seeing is
being done with Gutenberg.

That was a little blog going by.

Look at that.

All of that now, built in.

We have 1339 new contributors
to WordPress this year.

That is five better than being leet.

Or two better, right?

One, three, three, seven?

To remind you of the
four phases of Gutenberg.

The first phase was around editing.

The second phase was customization.

We're currently working on phase
three, which is collaboration.

And phase four is going
to be multilingual.

Something might be exciting here in

Applause: Europe.

I

Matt: would now like to invite my
esteemed colleague and lead architect

of WordPress, a very influential person
in many, many ways, Matias Ventura.

Matias: Thank you, Matt.

Good afternoon, everyone.

It's a pleasure to be here.

It's like being at home.

I had thought of doing this part in
the Uruguayan Ignoto language, but they

told me that I didn't understand most
of it, and that I would have to do two

translations from Uruguayan to Spanish,
well, Castilian, and then to English.

So, better than if we showed a video,
they were going to say no, that here it

says video, with a strange tilde there.

So, anyway, nothing, we
continue with English.

Apologize for that intermission.

So as Matt was sharing, we
got a lot done this year.

Um, and as we move into this phase
three, which is called collaboration,

Um, I want to touch a bit on the,
sort of how we conceive Gutenberg

as an editor, because it's aiming
to do two things extremely well.

So it's a very challenging,
uh, design effort.

Um, one is as a writing environment,
and the other one is as a design tool.

We've been making a lot of progress
on simplifying the writing experience.

Even though this was technically
part of phase one, we continue to

add, like, writing flow improvements.

Um, we recently launched
this year, uh, footnotes.

Alguien página de Gutenberg?

It's a pretty cool feature, the footnotes.

Um, and the distraction free is also
getting like extremely well now.

We've applied this also to the site editor
itself, so you can get like a distraction

free experience in the design editor.

So this is the context for what we need
to do next, which is to start looking

into these and workflows environments.

Uh, we really, we're going to continue to
polish these experiences as they are now

part of the core offering of WordPress.

So, collaboration and workflows.

Um, we have a, we don't have a timeline
yet for these, but we do have an

actual working Uh, prototype of real
time collaboration in the editor.

It's a pretty interesting flow
because it's doing some peer to peer.

Um, it's establishing a sync
engine into WordPress so you

can have this side by side.

And as you're seeing, like, again,
you update an image, it gets

reflected for everyone on the
session as soon as it gets updated.

You can test this today if you
install the Gutenberg plugin.

You need to enable the lib collaboration.

It's going to be buggy.

But we want to get as much feedback as
possible so that we can figure out, like,

how viable this, uh, this approach is.

Uh, so if you can, and there's
a, if you go to, uh, github.

com slash WordPress slash Gutenberg,
there's a pinned issue with a lot of the

sort of next steps that we're looking into
for the real time collaboration feature.

Moving on to some other
cool stuff that's coming up.

Um, we, with the site editor, we
really started emphasizing patterns.

So we want to continue us
moving to like in phase three.

We're doing both collaboration and
workflows for the workflows part We want

to really embrace the idea of patterns
as these sort of section elements of

design To also to answer to a lot of the
feedback, which is like blocks are great

but sometimes they are a bit too granular
and people want to have like Again,

people, freelancers, agencies, enterprise
customers, they want to define the design

units that then users can interact with,
but they cannot really like, modify

or messed up or, uh, deconstruct them.

So patterns are a crucial tool for that.

And we're introducing this new mode,
like we're calling it like zoom out mode.

So the ideas that you can step a bit
back and see the structure of the side

and operate at a bit of a higher level.

So the other thing that, um,
we're adding to this is the.

to swap, um, patterns that are related
to a specific semantic category.

So if you define a hero section, like
you'll be able to like swap between

patterns that are related to that.

The other thing that we're
adding to patterns is the, um,

who has played with the theme.

json files?

Okay, got a few people.

So theme.

json can now be applied
to specific patterns.

So you'll be able to have Um,
specific style variations that only

apply to the patterns, so you're
not changing your whole site design,

you're just changing these units.

And this is one tool that we're
giving to developers and agencies

to ensure that, uh, users can have
this, um, sort of some ability to

customize, but within the boundaries
that are established by the creators.

And there's one thing that I'm really
excited about, which is, uh, um, I think

like with this new thing, Patterns are
going to be gaining, like, superpowers.

Like, so far, patterns
have came in two flavors.

You could either have these reusable
pattern blocks, where, like, any

modification you make to them,
they apply across the whole site.

Or you have these patterns that
are sort of a starting point.

You insert them and
then you customize them.

But once you insert them, you sort
of lose that original pattern.

What we're doing now is to have, like,
a sort of hybrid between the two.

So you'll be able to customise the
text of the pattern, so you can

add it to like a hundred pages,
customise the text, but still be

able to update the design globally.

So this would allow you to, as was seen
in the demo, to offer people the ability

to have this really powerful thing, which
is the ability to, like, again, change

the content, which is what you want to do.

And at the same time, keep
control of the global design.

So once you go into editing the pattern
And if you modify, like, the color,

the layout, the structure, that would
update and reflect across all the pages.

So this is, uh, I think it's going
to be, like, a really powerful tool

for developers and the workflows
between developers and users.

Now we're going to get a
bit into custom fields.

This has been the UI for custom
fields for years now in WordPress.

Um, What we're going to have now is the
ability to connect blocks to custom fields

without having to create custom blocks.

So essentially you can insert a heading
or a paragraph and say I want this

to come from this other custom field.

So then this becomes the, again
it's just a regular core block.

The interactions for the user are
extremely intuitive but it's coming

from this separate data field.

It's not serialized back to the HTML.

So this is a way to bridge the
worlds between custom fields, which

are very developer friendly, and
blocks, which are very user friendly.

So we're trying to make these
like the best of both worlds.

I want to talk a little bit about
another thing that we're constantly

doing, which is performance.

Uh, performance, and when we talk about
performance here, it applies in both.

Uh, in two cases, it's both for
the editor itself, so the people,

the creators that are using the
editor, and it's also for visitors.

Like, we have a responsibility for
the people landing on websites,

that they get something that's
both super fast, performant,

usable, accessible, and so forth.

So performance was just
like those two components.

So we'll first talk about
the editor performance.

And we have this beautiful
dashboard, uh, if you scan the

code, you can see it, uh, live.

This tracks, um, the past, sort of
like 20 or so commits to Gutenberg.

And what this is measuring
is, uh, How fast are the basic

operations of the editor?

Like typing, inserting,
hovering blocks, and so forth.

It's a great sort of feedback loop for
everyone that's contributing to Gutenberg,

especially as we keep adding features that
we want the curve of speed to go down.

So we want to add features while at
the same time making things faster.

And the really cool thing is that
over the past few weeks, we're making

the editor at least twice as fast.

And hopefully the typing experience
might even get like a 3x improvement.

We still are quite not sure if we're going
to get there, but it's looking like this.

This is the, if you look at the
early portion of the graph, that's 6.

4.

And 6.

5 is going to be like a
lot significantly faster.

This also to me, it makes me really
proud of everyone that contributes to the

project that keeps always this at heart.

Like everyone is so passionate about
making This sort of improvements,

ensuring that like, it's not
just new features, but we're also

like polishing and making things
snappier, more usable, and so forth.

The other part of performance
is the frontend performance.

And we have the, we're going to be
working this year on this um, thing

we're calling the interactivity API.

And this is purely for the frontend.

This website is built
entirely with blocks.

It's a block theme, and it's
the transitions are instant.

Even searching is instant.

But all of these things are real WordPress
templates, it's not like just done in

the, like the permalinks when you go
to a single movie and so forth, are

real, all real WordPress permalinks.

We want to bring this to the tool
set of blogs, so that anyone creating

a site with blogs is going to be
able to get this sort of experience.

And if you saw in the demo there was
also a trailer playing while navigating,

so you'll be able to get like, again,
if you're building, with a podcast, you

can sort of toggle this on and you don't
need to do any sort of headless setup

or anything, it's just normal WordPress
running in the browser like this.

You can check this one on,

Applause: if

Matias: you go to wpmovies.

dev you can see it in action
and play with it a bit.

So last but certainly not least,
we're looking at the admin design.

And the, we're going to start
expanding the design that started

to develop around the site editor,
um, focusing a bit on list views.

So this is showing, I'm going to resume
the video so that you can see it again.

So we're transitioning
from the Are we fine?

Yes.

So, list views are really powerful.

So we want to allow as
much customizability and

extensibility as possible to them.

So you can see pages as a list
view or as grid items and so forth.

This is going to be highly extensible.

And the idea is that everyone
will be able to shape WordPress

to like their specific needs.

If you have a commerce, if you have
a, um, if you run a plugin with a

newsletter, that all the elements in
the admin are relevant to each use case.

So the idea is that each WordPress can
be unique, yet familiar to everyone.

That's sort of the direction
that we're going with, with

the, these design improvements.

Um, a lot of these elements will need a
ton of feedback, a ton of, um, and your

ideas, suggestions are invaluable, so
if you can engage, if you can give that

wherever in all the places that these
are at, in, either in GitHub or on,

Social media, whatever you want to reach
out, like, we'll be hearing about this.

So, that's it from me, I'm sending it
back to Matt, so thank you very much.

Muchas

Applause: gracias.

Matt: You know, Matias mentioned
it, but I do want to encourage

you to go to that wpmovies.

dev site.

As you might have noticed, there's been
some controversy recently on people

faking or speeding up demo videos.

That was real.

And you can verify
yourself in the browser.

The pages load instantly.

It is so cool to see sort
of a more native headless

implementation, uh, around Wordpress.

So, check it out, verify.

Trust but verify.

Last year, um, in Porto,
at WordCamp Europe, I asked

you all to learn AI deeply.

Uh, This was actually before
ChatGPT came out, or anything else.

And this year, the year of
2023, I think we can very, very

safely say it was a year of AI.

It's been incredible to see the growth
of generative AI, the amazing models like

GPT 4V, Gemini, Mid Journey, there's so
much exciting stuff happening out there.

Um, I want to show you just a little
experiment of something we've been

playing around with in WordPress itself.

So this is combining playground
and a little bit of AI to use

natural language to instantiate and
interact with playground blueprints.

So, as you can see what it typed there
was, make a woosh site for the shoe shop,

Ola Madrid, and give it, uh, SEO, give
it some e commerce, and call it this.

And it responded yes, and it
created a playground blueprint.

What playground blueprints are, it's
almost just like you might have a.

You know, files for kubernetes
or something else that tell you

exactly how to configure the site.

It says How to set it up with plugins,
extensions, version of WordPress,

everything that you just saw earlier.

So this is, uh, pretty fun.

I'm excited to see, you know, I feel like
generative AI, so far, has already given

superpowers to everyday people and users.

Um, if you're a developer, please
check out Copilot and other things.

Um, if you're a user who wants to be more
creative, like, play with these things.

It's kind of like, uh, I love the
democratization of technology,

where This is very much the
vision of WordPress to democratize

publishing, like what does that mean?

It means we take things that used
to require developers or advanced

technical knowledge to do and try
to make it accessible to everyone.

And I feel like that's what
these tools are really doing.

Uh, I'm very excited now to see
if, because WordPress is still

a power tool, if we can create
more conversational interfaces

to some of the things that we do.

And I'm particularly excited for this,
when it doesn't just do the thing,

but actually shows you how it did it.

Um, we don't have quite all of that
yet, but you know the old saying, if you

give someone a fish, they eat for a day.

If you teach them how to fish You know,
they can eat for the rest of their lives.

Um, or they have a hobby now.

I don't know.

When I go fishing, it's more
fishing, not as much catching.

But the, um, very much so, I would
love for future versions of this,

whether it's developed on WordPress.

org or by anyone else, to not just
do the thing, not just make the site.

But actually maybe walk people
through what they're doing.

Hey, I'm loading the settings page.

I'm putting this in.

Here's how I'm creating blocks.

I think there's very, very
exciting things you can do.

Um, the thing that if I had to say what
I'm most excited about with AI is that

we will all have access to essentially
like a personalized tutor available 24 7.

So, imagine that, throughout history,
that's been inaccessible, but now, in

any language, 24 hours a day, we can
have a very, very smart assistant, if

you will, to teach us whatever we want.

It means that our growth and development
will only be limited by our curiosity.

And I think that's been one of
the most amazing things about

the internet so far, and I cannot
wait to see where this goes next.

So, please keep learning AI deeply,
and also have AI teach you stuff.

So that's our AI stuff.

Can't have a presentation
in 23 without AI, right?

But the next thing I'm going to show you
is actually what I'm most excited about.

And this is a little bit of
a new direction in 2024 that

we're going to be taking.

So, you know, for a long time,
six, seven years now, we've

been on this Gutenberg roadmap.

The four phases that I
talked about earlier.

And so, uh, plans are great, but
you shouldn't just blindly follow a

plan that you made seven years ago.

You should be, feel free
to modify it or change it.

Based on changing market conditions
or whatever else is going on.

So, what I'm excited to announce for 2024,
as a focus area that we will be doing

in parallel to Phase 3 of Gutenberg, is
what we're calling, uh, Data Liberation.

So, if you notice a common thread
in all of our projects, it's around

everything we do with open source is
around data ownership and freedom.

In 2024, we want to unlock the web.

Uh, through a dedicated
focus on migration tools.

Whether you're switching from a
different WordPress, a different CMS,

you know, like a Wix or Squarespace.

By the way, Wix does not
even offer export right now.

Or, if you're just moving between
WordPresses, which is a lot

harder than it should be, right?

Like, we offer an export format, WXR,
but it doesn't bring over plugins

or images and moving WordPress,
you know, migrating from a staging

site to a main or migrating between
hosts is very, very difficult today.

Um, so we want to make sort of first
party community plugins, tools, and

workflows available on WordPress.

org that are going to assist with this.

I want it to be seamless, straightforward,
and as zero friction as possible.

So, what we want to do is
unlock the digital barriers.

Um, I think what has happened You
know, in mobile we've seen this

since 2008, the advent of the iPhone.

Is mobile platforms were a lot more
locked down than desktop or the web were.

Um, the same thing is that the new breed
of CMSs, particularly the ones that have

become popular in the past 10 years,
really do a lot, a lot to lock you in.

Whether that's through the payment
providers, not allowing you to

export your subscribers, they
create this sort of subtle friction,

which, uh, again, I think decreases
the amount of freedom on the web.

So, we're going to work on one click
migrations between all of these.

Um, we're going to do a lot to focus
on the export format for WordPress.

Finally, we're going to keep
working on copy and paste.

You may have noticed this, but
Gutenberg is actually one of the

best places to copy and paste from.

Um, Super nerds in the audience will
know that when you have rich text,

when you copy and paste from certain
other webpages or applications,

it goes very, very, very wrong.

So we've been doing a lot of work,
doing even things like sideloading

images on demand to bring that in.

These solutions are going to
be available at wordpress.

org slash and slash whatever the thing is.

So, as these projects boot up,
there might be a slash and slash

Shopify, or slash and slash whatever.

Um, it could be page builders,
it could be anything.

And we're going to create great
migration tools from that to the

first party things for WordPress.

Um, but the data deliberation is not
just about building the tools, it's

about cultivating a community ethos.

So we're setting up a streamlined
moderation frameworks.

So every one of these, uh, sort of
migration paths or projects, um,

well one that's really exciting
is they can be done in parallel.

I've been thinking a lot, especially
around 5 for the future, how do we make

it easier to contribute to WordPress?

So, 20 of these projects
can happen at once.

They don't need to happen one at a time.

We're going to give every one of these
projects a dedicated Slack channel.

And, um, they're going to get GitHub
repositories on the official WordPress.

org GitHub.

So, they will have the best in
class tools, very similar to

what we do to develop WordPress
itself, are going to be available

to every one of these communities.

You might have noticed as well
that there's a little bit of a

backlog for registering new plugins.

I believe right now we have a 79 day
delay to add things to the directory.

So we are also ensuring that for every
new one of these projects If you apply

to start one of these, it's going to
be reviewed in about one business day.

So these will be able to
start almost immediately.

So again, if you're thinking about
getting involved with WordPress,

and you've probably done migrations
before or written tools for this,

Come join one of these projects.

I think it'll be a really
exciting way to get involved.

Thanks.

This would not be possible without
the amazing work of the plugins

team and the community team.

We have seen a huge growth in
sort of sponsoring companies

and things around this.

But, as I mentioned, we are right now
very behind with reviewing plugins.

The plugins team is now accepting
applications for new members.

So if you would like to be part of
that group that, you know, keeps the

plugin directory healthy, thriving,
and representing the very best that

WordPress and its community has to offer.

Um, you can now, uh, apply to
join the plug in review team.

Alright, it wouldn't be a WordCamp
without a little bit of a reveal.

So, I am happy to announce that
WordCamp US is going to be in

Portland, Oregon this year.

If you haven't been,
Portland is a lot of fun.

We're actually excited that this
is actually going to be, you know,

with WordCamp US we tried to do it
in the same city two years in a row.

And we are locked in for Portland
now for the next two years.

Also, if you've never been to
that part, the West Coast of

America is beautiful, and Portland
is super weird in amazing ways.

So I'm looking forward to the
WordPress community getting

to explore and experience it.

Alright, so we're gonna do a
little QA, but we also have

a little bit of an AI twist.

So, uh, we're gonna have a
little announcement here.

You might recognize the speaker.

In Portland, Oregon
World, Portland, Oregon

World Camp US in Portland, Oregon.

Josepha: Join us this year for
Word Camp US in Portland, Oregon,

Applause: So

Matt: Joseph is amazing and you do
speak more than one language, yes or no.

But that was all actually AI.

That wasn't her reading
a script or anything.

So, uh, there's some really
cool AI tools for translations.

Now if you spoke those languages
literally, you know that it might

be kind of a literal translation,
so it's not perfect yet.

But one thing we're going to do
with the state of the word is we're

going to run the whole presentation
through these online tools.

So you'll be able to hear me, in
my voice, and with my lips moving,

like I can speak another language.

Which is going to be kind
of fun to experiment with.

It's imperfect, it's early versions,
but I like that we're embracing these

new tools and having fun with it.

So, keep an eye out for, you
know how many languages we're

going to translate this into?

We're going to translate it into
four languages, and so it'll be

posted in the next, uh, couple days.

So, see you all soon, in a new language.