{"id":39193,"date":"2018-06-18T14:24:20","date_gmt":"2018-06-18T19:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpengine.com\/?p=39193"},"modified":"2024-09-18T14:44:36","modified_gmt":"2024-09-18T19:44:36","slug":"wordpress-a-summer-update-from-wordcamp-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpengine.com\/case-studies\/wordpress-a-summer-update-from-wordcamp-europe\/","title":{"rendered":"WordPress: A Summer Update from WordCamp Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last weekend, thousands of members of the WordPress community came together in the beautiful city of Belgrade, Serbia for WordCamp Europe. One of these attendees happened to be Matt Mullenweg, a WordPress co-founder. During the event, Mullenweg led a 50-minute session filling in the WordPress community about the state of WordPress. This was an opportunity to inform and discuss highly anticipated topics like the Gutenberg roadmap and major core releases. The last 20 minutes of the session included a Q&A, allowing members of the community to ask Mullenweg pressing questions. <\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve summarized some of the highlights from Mullenweg\u2019s presentation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Public Money, Public Code<\/b><\/h2>\n

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The presentation began with Mullenweg\u2019s outright support for the Public Money, Public Code campaign. The campaign, spanning both Europe and the US, requests legislation requiring that publicly financed software developed for the public sector be made publicly available under a <\/span>Free and Open Source Software<\/span><\/a> license. If it is public money, it should be public code as well. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf a small fraction of federal money went into open source software, I think we could have a Cambrian explosion of open source software. If two cities in different parts of the world are doing the same thing, there\u2019s no reason two completely separate solutions should be created,\u201d Mullenweg said.<\/span><\/p>\n

WordCamp US 2019-2020 Host City<\/b><\/h2>\n

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The host city for WordCamp US 2019-2020 was announced. Following Nashville in 2018, <\/span>St. Louis, Missouri <\/b>will host WordCamp US!<\/span><\/p>\n

Major Core Updates<\/b><\/h2>\n

A lot has been happening in WordPress core since WordCamp US in December. There have been six major core releases in 4 major focus areas: customization, WP-CLI, REST API and Mobile Apps. <\/span><\/p>\n

Customization<\/b><\/h4>\n

Mullenweg reminded the crowd that while Gutenberg is initially meant to change the editor, the plan is to extend the functionality to the entire website. These initiatives included turning widgets into Gutenberg block, turning sidebars into post content and adding mockups for selecting page layouts. <\/span><\/p>\n

WP-CLI<\/b><\/h4>\n

WP-CLI, the command-line interface for WordPress, has been updated twice. Version 2.0 which changes the packaging to be easier for distribution will be released in July. <\/span><\/p>\n

REST API <\/b><\/h4>\n

The REST API has been expanded quite heavily in the past year. Mullenweg attributes this to the fact that Gutenberg is built in the REST API. This expansion included work on the autosave and search functionality.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mobile Apps<\/b><\/h4>\n

Mobile Apps are starting to become a major part of how people interact with WordPress. Due to that, the WordPress mobile apps team has been hard at work to improve the mobile app’s functionality. This year, the team have improved the right to left (RTL) support and accessibility. New features include <\/span>background post<\/span><\/a> for more efficient publishing and the ability to support native OS things like voice over. <\/span><\/p>\n

In the past month, 13 million posts and 3.7 million photos and videos have been uploaded via mobile apps!<\/span><\/p>\n

Gutenberg<\/b><\/h2>\n

Gutenberg is arguably the hottest topic in the WordPress community right now. The Gutenberg team has been working diligently to put in the massive amount of work to make Gutenberg usable. Work so far has included 30 Gutenberg releases and 1,100 closed issues. Currently, 14,000 sites are actively using Gutenberg. <\/span><\/p>\n

Major Features <\/b><\/h4>\n