The Month in WordPress – December 2023

As 2023 came to a close, WordPress bid farewell with the much-anticipated annual State of the Word and the 6.5 roadmap, among other exciting updates.

Read on to learn more about the community’s end-of-year celebrations and catch a sneak peek of what’s in store for the year ahead.

Highlights from State of the Word

On December 11, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg delivered his annual State of the Word keynote in Madrid, Spain, marking the first international edition of the event. Nearly 200 WordPress enthusiasts and tech industry leaders gathered in person to hear what’s next for WordPress—with a large audience joining online or from one of the 47 watch parties held across 18 countries.

The keynote highlighted last year’s milestones and showcased compelling demos, providing a glimpse into the upcoming developments for the Site Editor, Collaboration phase, and Admin redesign. Matt also introduced 2024’s focus on Data Liberation, aiming to unlock digital barriers and frictionless migrations into WordPress for a more open web.

The event concluded with a Q&A session and this follow-up post.

Roadmap to WordPress 6.5

WordPress 6.5 is scheduled for release on March 26, 2024. This major release is set to introduce a new Font Library for easy global font management, support for Appearance Tools in Classic Themes, Data Views for templates and patterns, and more robust revisions across the editing experience, among other highlights.

6.5 will also include new APIs like Interactivity, Custom Fields, and Block Binding that expand block capabilities and underpin features like Synced Pattern Overrides.

Learn more about the features planned for WordPress 6.5 in this roadmap post.

Don’t wait for the next release to optimize your creative workflows with these powerful Site Editor tools.

New in the Gutenberg plugin

Two new versions of Gutenberg shipped in December:

• Gutenberg 17.2 introduced improvements to the site editing experience, including the ability to drag and drop blocks to the top and bottom of documents and sticky table headers. The update also enhanced the Interactivity API docs and addressed numerous bug fixes.
• Gutenberg 17.3 featured a summary of changes in the global styles revision history, an updated preferences panel, and a new social icon for the Gravatar service, along with the ongoing development of Phase 3 features.

Team updates

• Openverse introduced new features to filter sensitive content, aiming for a more accessible and safer browsing experience. This update marks the beginning of a significant initiative to enhance content safety tools.
• Matrix contributors announced the decision to pause the Making WordPress Slack migration to Matrix and the factors contributing to it.
• The redesign of the Developer Resources section went live last month.
• Are you searching for events in your local community? Explore the recently launched WordPress.org Events page—your new central hub for discovering upcoming events or applying to organize one.
• In 2023, WordPress significantly improved Core Web Vitals (CWV) across sites. The overall passing rates went up from 28.31% to 36.44% on mobile and from 32.55% to 40.80% on desktop, making both WordPress and the whole web perform better.
• Volunteers are needed for 2024’s WordPress major releases. If you’re interested, now’s the time to get involved!
• Check out all the community achievements and contributions that moved the WordPress project closer to its goals in 2023.

Requests for feedback & testing

• Complete the 2023 Annual Meetup Survey before January 14, 2024, and help strengthen WordPress meetups in the future.

WordPress events

• WordCamp Asia has opened registrations for its Contributor Day. The conference will be held in Taipei, Taiwan, on March 7-9, 2024.
• WordCamp Europe’s call for speakers is open until January 15, 2024. Don’t miss the chance to be part of this event by either submitting your speaking proposals or supporting it as a sponsor.
• Mark your calendars! WordCamp US 2024 is headed to Portland, Oregon, from September 17 to 20, as revealed during the State of the Word.
• Check out these WordPress events happening soon:
  • Kolkata CareerCamp, India on January 6, 2024
  • WordCamp Nepal on January 12-13, 2024
  • WordCamp Zaragoza, Spain on January 19-20, 2024
  • WordPress Web Challenge, Indonesia on January 27, 2024

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Thank you to Bernard Meyer, Nicholas Garofalo, and Lauren Stein for contributing to this edition of The Month in WordPress.