The Month in WordPress: September 2018
The new WordPress editor continues to be a major focus for all WordPress contribution teams. Read on to find out some more about their work, as well as everything else that has been happening around the community this past month.
Further Enhancements to the New WordPress Editor
Active development continues on Gutenberg, the new editing experience for WordPress Core. The latest update for the editor includes great new features, such as reusable content blocks, a dark editor style, export and import of templates, and much more. In addition, the Gutenberg team has published a comprehensive guide to the features currently included in the editor.
Users can test Gutenberg right now by installing the plugin, which currently has over 450,000 active installs according to the new Gutenberg in Numbers site. Along with that, the Gutenberg Handbook has some very useful information about how to use and develop for the new editor.
Want to get involved in building Gutenberg? Follow the #gutenberg tag on the Core team blog and join the #core-editor channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.
Work Begins on WordPress 5.0
After initially announcing a minor v4.9.9 release, the Core team has shifted their focus to the next major release — v5.0. One of the primary factors for this change is that Gutenberg is nearly ready to be considered for merging into Core, with the goal to complete the merge in v5.0.
To maintain flexibility in the development process the final timelines are not yet determined, allowing work already done for v4.9.9 to be moved to v5.0 if needed. Ensuring that WordPress is compatible with the upcoming PHP 7.3 release is a high priority for the Core team. Once a final decision is made, the details will be announced on the Core team blog.
Want to get involved in building WordPress Core? Follow the Core team blog and join the #core channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.
Further Reading:
- The Community Team has some great updates on the progress of the current WordCamp Incubator Program.
- A team inside the Drupal community is working on integrating Gutenberg into their CMS.
- There is a current discussion among community organizers about plans to increase the maximum ticket price for WordCamps.
- The Mobile Team is looking for people to grow the beta program for testing the iOS and Android mobile apps.
- The Diversity Outreach Speaker Training group is looking for feedback on their document to assist WordPress Meetups and WordCamps in building diverse speaker rosters.
- The Theme Team has updated their rules regarding sponsored and affiliate links inside themes added to the Theme Directory.
- Meetup organizers are now able to receive a WordPress.org profile badge for their community work.
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