The strategy of the Core team up to WordPress 7.0 will focus on maintaining the platform with few changes in new features, while continuing to advance the editor.
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Program transcript
Hello, I’m Alicia Ireland, and you’re listening to WPpodcast, bringing the weekly news from the WordPress Community.
In this episode, you’ll find the information from February 17th to 23th, 2025.
At WordCamp Asia 2025, the Core table met to emphasize the need to reorient WordPress development toward smaller, more concrete projects, with a short-term outlook and a strong focus on maintaining the system. It was agreed that instead of undertaking large, long-term initiatives, the upcoming releases—from 6.8 to 7.0 and beyond—will concentrate on targeted improvements that ensure the ecosystem’s stability and security.
This strategy aims to facilitate the implementation of gradual changes and reduce the risks associated with major updates. By focusing on smaller-scale projects, the goal is to ensure a more controlled evolution and a rapid response to technical and security challenges, such as the adoption of new algorithms for password hashing.
However, during the meeting, there was also a strong emphasis on the growing concern over the lack of active contributors to the project. The scarcity of collaborators makes it difficult to execute even small-scale projects, which could slow down the pace of updates and the resolution of critical issues. This situation underscores the urgent need to expand and energize the developer community.
The future of WordPress is shaping up with a shift in focus: moving away from large, long-term projects to adopt smaller, more specific, short-term maintenance initiatives. This new direction, while promising continuous and sustainable improvement, must be complemented by a renewed effort to attract and retain new contributors who will drive the system’s growth and innovation.
The Core team has announced that WordPress 6.8 will adopt bcrypt for password hashing, replacing the previous method with one recognized for its greater security and resilience against attacks. This update reinforces the protection of credentials by employing a more robust algorithm, ensuring that users’ login data is better safeguarded.
The implementation will be carried out gradually and in a backward-compatible manner, so that existing passwords will continue to work correctly while they are progressively updated to the new standard. This careful transition ensures that the user experience remains unaffected while improving the integrity and security of password storage.
The Plugins team has explained that a plugin author’s information in the directory is now directly linked to the public WordPress.org profile of the owner, instead of being extracted from the plugin metadata. This change ensures that the displayed name and link correspond to the identity established in the profile, offering a more accurate and consistent attribution.
With this change, all author attribution in the directory will update automatically, affecting both new and existing plugins. The modification does not prevent the inclusion of external links on plugin pages, and the possibility to list other contributors in the “Contributors and Developers” section remains.
The Training team has proposed to centralize all Learn WordPress resources in one place to avoid having materials scattered across personal platforms like Dropbox or Google Drive, which often makes it difficult to correct errors or update content. The current dispersion prevents easy modification of details such as typos or outdated content, as access to these files is restricted to the original creator.
The initiative aims to create a centralized repository where creators can upload their files, thus enabling more consistent management and the possibility to update or correct the material easily. In addition, this measure will make it easier for others to reuse the resources, providing users with more direct and coherent access to updated educational materials.
And finally, this podcast is distributed under a Creative Commons license as a derivative version of the podcast in Spanish; you can find all the links for more information, and the podcast in other languages, at WPpodcast .org.
Thanks for listening, and until the next episode!
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