What’s New in Gutenberg: The Latest Version (February 2024)

Editor’s Note: This article was last updated February 14, 2024 with the most recent version of Gutenberg (17.7). When WordPress 5.0 was released in late 2018, it came with a brand-spankin’-new block editor known as Gutenberg. In contrast to the Classic Editor, which was far more reliant on manual code, the block editor offers a modular approach to page and post editing making each piece of content in the editor—from a paragraph to an image gallery to a headline— its own editing block. WordPress presents a larger barrier to entry for some, and the Gutenberg Editor was created to make […]

WordPress 6.4 “Shirley” Leans Into Smooth, Seamless Content Creation

WordPress 6.4, “Shirley,” was released today, marking the third major WordPress release of 2023 and a significant leap forward for the world’s most popular content management system. Named for iconic jazz singer and pianist Shirley Horn, WordPress 6.4 has an impressive suite of enhancements and new features that further streamline the editor experience while offering greater creative flexibility. In the following sections, we’ll unpack some of the most transformative additions found in the 6.4 release, from new editor enhancements to the “Twenty Twenty-Four” theme and everything in between. Let’s get started! Note: In addition to testing 6.4 using a staging or […]

Don’t Miss WordCamp Rochester 2023

WordCamps and local meetups are back! After a tough few years, we are finally able to get back together and celebrate all things WordPress under one roof. This year, we have covered WordCamp Europe and WCUS, but local and regional WordCamps are still just as important. That’s why we are excited for WordCamp Rochester 2023. This one day event is perfect for anyone looking to level up their website on Saturday and get back to work on Monday. Held on September 30 at the Rochester School of the Arts, this conference is jam-packed with talks from experts ranging from page […]

WordPress Accessibility Day 2023 Registration Open

Come one, come all to the third annual WordPress Accessibility Day happening Sept. 27 and 28. The 24-hour free event covers all of the best practices to make your site as accessible as possible. Talks range from data visualization, audio descriptions, user tests, and more. The event was originally started by the Website Core Accessibility Team back in 2020 and has been carried on by volunteer organizers since. According to the website, “Our mission is to demystify website accessibility for WordPress developers, designers, content creators, and users so that they can more easily build websites that work for everyone, regardless […]

WordCamp US 2023 Looked to the Future and Beyond

Landing in Washington DC you immediately feel the history. You feel the weight of the decisions being made in the city and it gives you a sense of pride for belonging to something bigger than yourself. That’s why it was such an apt setting for WordCamp US 2023, on the heels of the 20th anniversary of the CMS. Being around community members and seeing the work they’re doing shows how far we’ve come in 20 years and where the CMS can go in the future. The Gaylord National Resort was buzzing with the excitement of WordPressers eager to discuss the […]

Get Ready for WordCamp US 2023

The country’s biggest WordCamp is back and bigger than ever! WordPressers from all over the world will descend on National Harbor, Maryland for WordCamp US 2023. You can expect informative talks, interesting networking, and killer after parties. Since 2015, WCUS has been a staple of the WordPress community providing a place to come to together to celebrate WordPress, meet new people, and catch up with old friends. This year’s conference will be held at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center. Contributor Day is on August 24 with the conference occurring August 25 and 26. Organizers are expecting over 1,700 […]

WordPress 6.3 “Lionel” Streamlines Site Design

Just ahead of WordCamp US, an exciting WordPress update was released, WordPress 6.3 named for Lionel Hampton. Hampton was a jazz vibraphonist, pianist, and percussionist who worked with the likes of Quincy Jones, Benny Goodman, and Charles Mingus. In 2021, he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Grammy. Image source: make.wordpress Enjoy some of Hampton’s fast fingers in “Hot Mallets” as we go through the exciting updates to WordPress. WordPress “Lionel” 6.3, makes creating beautiful and powerful sites easier than ever before. There are updates for non-coders creating their first website and ones for long-time developers looking to optimize theirs. We […]

WordPress Sustainability Team: Here’s What It’s All About

If you are familiar with WordPress as a project, you probably know that it is divided into teams for different areas. There is the Core team, the Design team, and the Polyglots team, which we have talked about before. In this post, we want take a look at the newest addition to the roster: the WordPress Sustainability team. The topic of sustainability first came up during a Q&A session with Matt and Josepha at WordCamp Europe 2022. This also resulted in the establishment of a #sustainability channel in the official WordPress Slack chat to give members of the community a […]

Real-Time Collaboration in WordPress: Here’s What to Expect

Bringing real-time collaboration or collaborative editing to WordPress will be the focus of the third phase of the Gutenberg project. It started off with the block editor in WordPress 5.0 and has by now progressed to Full-Site Editing aka the WordPress Site Editor. Adding real-time collaboration will be the second-to-last phase, while the final phase will add native multilingual capabilities. Lead Architect Matias Ventura recently posted a preliminary outline of what is planned for Phase 3. The planned changes will not only bring new functionality to WordPress but also necessitate rebuilding (large) parts of its interface. The developers also predict […]

WordCamp Europe 2023 – A Report: WordPress Next Generation

Well, it’s June again and you know that means: time for a report from WordCamp Europe 2023! Like many others, I descended on Athens this summer to attend the annual WCEU convention. It was the second in-person WordCamp Europe since the pandemic after last year in Porto. Besides meeting old friends, making new connections, and general socializing, I came to learn what’s new in WordPress and listen to talks on different topics. The two main themes that dominated the discussion for me this year were artificial intelligence and the problem of bringing members of the younger generation to the WordPress […]

Samuel Sidler’s Improvement List

Ongoing

Immediate

Short Term

Medium Term

Long Term