Recap of the State of the Word 2024  – WP Tavern

WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg delivered his annual State of the Phrase (SOTW) handle in the present day from Tokyo Node Corridor in Tokyo, Japan. This marks the second time the occasion was held exterior North America, following final yr’s handle in Madrid, Spain.

This yr’s occasion spanned three hours, with a particular emphasis on Japanese tradition. Matt explained, “We’ve gotten a lot inspiration over time from Japanese tradition, we needed to make this occasion actually “of the house,” so we’re doing a couple of additional issues this yr. My presentation will embrace Mary Hubbard and Matías Ventura, but in addition a part of will probably be in Japanese and offered by Junko Fukui Nukaga. We’ll have a piano efficiency by Aiko Takei. After the presentation and Q&A we’ll do a panel in Japanese with Mieko Kawakami, Craig Mod, Hajime Ogushi, and Genki Taniguchi.”

Matt enumerated the WordPress contributions of the Japanese group, primarily Translation, and Wapuu. Japan was the nation that made him notice that WordPress was greater than a running a blog software, and Kansei engineering fascinates him. 

A Japanese WordPress web site was arrange in December 2003, simply six months after WordPress was launched.  The model initially referred to as “WordPress ME” (WordPress Multilingual Version) was maintained by a consumer referred to as Otsukare. Wapuu, the official mascot character of WordPress, was designed by Kazuko Kaneuchi in 2011 and is GPL licensed.

Matt then shared some statistics:

• WordPress now powers 43.6% of the web and, in accordance with W3Techs, has a 62.3% CMS market share.
• WordPress powers 58.5% of all of the web sites in Japan and has an 83% market share, which is 31x Shopify, which is simply at 2.7%.
• WordPress has surpassed 500M core downloads. 
• English is essentially the most used language (50.8%), adopted by Spanish (6.87), German (5.99) and Japanese (5.82%)
• 1,700 new themes had been uploaded within the final 12 months, a rise over the 1,400 new themes final yr. Of these new themes, over 1,000 of them are block themes.
• WordPress is predicted to hit 2.35 billion downloads of plugins this yr, which is a 20% year-over-year progress.
• Plugin ecosystem is prospering, with the overview queue lowered to zero. After launching the Plugin Verify software, 41% fewer points had been reported per permitted plugin and enabled the group to approve 138% extra plugins every week.

Gutenberg 

The occasion additionally highlighted the development of Gutenberg, which is coming into its third part centered on collaboration.  Matias Ventura, Gutenberg’s lead architect, mentioned upcoming options that can allow customers to collaborate immediately inside the editor, together with leaving feedback and receiving notifications, just like Google Docs. 

WordPress is for everybody. So we have to actually put our minds collectively into understanding how can or not it’s the perfect writing software, the perfect design software, the perfect developer expertise. It takes time, it takes effort from the entire group however I believe it’s very rewarding.

– Matias Ventura

The group can also be engaged on a ‘Zoom out’ function. He then talked about Kinds, the theme JSON construction, block bindings, question block, the continuing efforts to deal with the shortage of responsive instruments within the editor, and the brand new Registered Weblog Template API, which has simplified the method of registering and managing customized templates.

“Now we have rather a lot to undergo,” Ventura stated, “and we wish to strategy this one by means of kind of 4 lenses, and that’s Write, Design, Construct, and Develop.”

WordPress Playground

WordPress Playground was one other thrilling function mentioned. This software permits WordPress to run immediately on any machine with out internet hosting, enabling customers to experiment with out installations. New updates embrace help for a number of situations inside a single window, the mixing of Blueprints (JSON information for establishing your WordPress Playground occasion), and a Playground block that embeds WordPress situations inside WordPress itself. Mullenweg emphasised that these improvements goal to make WordPress extra accessible and highly effective whereas preserving its open-source ethos.

We don’t wish to simply make issues that work. We wish to make them stunning.

– Matt Mullenweg

WordPress & WP Engine

WordPress Government Director Mary Hubbard stated she hopes to resolve the WP Engine challenge equitably. She stated, “So like Matt, I imagine that whenever you select WordPress, you need to get WordPress. And that ought to by no means be something that any person is confused about. And that’s one thing that I personally imagine is value preventing for and driving my driving power and motivation of taking over this function as a result of we’ve come too far as an open supply platform and we must always not stand by because it’s being exploited or watered down for the short-term positive aspects of some on the expense of the long-term wants of the numerous as a result of WordPress belongs to all of us, us and to our group and that’s what I’m most keen about.”

She additionally talked about Learn WordPress which now options structured studying pathways, and Openverse which has expanded to incorporate 884 million photos and 4.2 million audio information, almost 4 million web page views this month alone and over 21 million API requests.

WordPress does belong to us all and what we’re doing is taking good care of it for the following era and the following era is essential to WordPress’s ongoing progress as a platform and making it accessible and frictionless as doable has by no means been extra necessary.

– Mary Hubbard

Grassroots applications are flourishing and she or he talked about two programmes – WP Campus Connect from India and National ICT Innovation Hub from Uganda.

Native Japanese Group

WordPress Group Program Supporter and Workforce Rep Junko Fukui Nukaga shared the updates on Japan and WordPress. Japanese is now the fourth most used language on this planet by WordPress. In October 2024, the Japanese WordPress group celebrated DigitalCube’s IPO on the Tokyo PRO Market. Different notable Japanese companies embrace Contact Kind 7, HAMWORKS, SAKURA Internter, KOMOJU and Xserver.

Japan can also be dwelling to 26 energetic meetup teams and 11265 group members who hosted 189 native meetups this yr. Japan’s contribution to the Core are rising. 

Matt then talked about the contributions of Aki Hamano, a Core Committer (made 774 contributions to WordPress core with 338 props for six.7),and Akira Tachibana, an energetic Docs Workforce member. 13 Japanese contributors supported 5.4% of WordPress 6.6 growth.

Information Liberation

Matt had introduced Data Liberation finally yr’s State of the Phrase to be the gold commonplace of liberation and interoperability. The thought is not only to make WordPress extra highly effective however to make sure that it’s actually free. It’s the liberty to maneuver content material wherever, to collaborate with out limitations or constraints. WordPress Playground performs a essential function on this imaginative and prescient.

“Some individuals would possibly see 2024 as a yr of distractions or assaults from unhealthy actors in the neighborhood. But it surely was actually a yr of progress and focus the place we had been capable of speed up so many issues that we’re doing. It was additionally a tremendous yr of progress in a whole lot of areas.”, he stated.

Q&A Session

The occasion additionally had a brief Q&A session the place Mullenweg fielded questions on the way forward for running a blog, whether or not the efficiency plugin of WordPress might be built-in into core, AI-generated content material, digital id, and democratising publishing. 

Matt additionally congratulated developer Aki Hamano. He then talked about Automattic’s missions – to democratize publishing, democratize commerce (with WooCommerce), and democratize messaging (by means of Beeper). These three issues will hold him busy for all times, and he revealed that he’ll work on WordPress for the remainder of his life, which he considers to be an honour and privilege. 

Panel Discussions

The occasion had two panel discussions moderated by Mary Hubbard. The primary panel that includes Mieko Kawakami, Craig Mod and Matt explored ‘Publishing within the Open’ whereas the second panel of Hajime Ogushi, Genki Taniguchi, and Matt mentioned ‘The Way forward for WordPress in Japan and Past’. 

The occasion was live-streamed and is on the market on WordPress YouTube channel.