On December 16, 2024, from Tokyo, the State of the Word 2024 took place, the annual event where Matt Mullenweg summarizes everything that has happened in the WordPress world.
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Program transcript
Hello, Iâm Alicia Ireland, and youâre listening to WPpodcast, is this special about the State of the Word 2024.
Once again, Matt Mullenweg presents the State of the Word, an event that provides a summary of the state of WordPress and everything that has happened, in this case, in 2024.
This year, the event was broadcast from the Tokyo Node Hall in Japan, for the second time outside of the United States, with 2023 being held in Madrid, Spain.
Starting with live piano music playing Clair de Lune, Matt Mullenweg began by welcoming everyone and especially highlighting the importance of Japan in the WordPress world, such as being the first language the software was translated into, at a time when no translation system existed.
Also, the Wapuu, the WordPress Community mascot, began in 2009 in Japan, and today there are dozens of versions, almost one for each local community.
Regarding growth, WordPress powers 43.6% of the web, which is 62.3% of all content management system (CMS) sites. In Japan, it exceeds half of the websites.
In terms of languages, English continues to have 50% of the language support, followed by Spanish, German, and Japanese. Farsi, Indonesian, Thai, and Vietnamese are among the fastest-growing languages.
In the past year, over 1,000 block themes have been created, 2 billion plugin downloads, and more than 3 billion updates. The plugin review queue has been reduced to near real-time reviews today.
MatĂas Ventura took over from Matt to discuss the state of the Gutenberg project, explaining some of the improvements made to the editor in recent months. Dragging blocks within the editor and displaying the full design are some of the highlighted features.
Regarding Phase 3 of Gutenberg, the comment system within the editor and the notification system were showcased.
Visually, the system distinguishing Write from Design and the Zoom Out mode when including patterns were shown. Also, the Styles screen, now separated, includes the Style Book.
Looking ahead, the next step will focus on Block Bindings, connecting blocks with custom fields and also the registration of custom templates, so that themes and templates can be separated.
On the front end, the Interactivity API was also highlighted, allowing the use of the website without loading and with excellent performance.
As for WordPress Playground, the use of blueprints was highlighted, enabling the immediate creation of a pre-configured WordPress version with plugins, themes, and content. Also, the Playground block was introduced, allowing you to show a WordPress instance configured in a specific way from your own WordPress.
In terms of pure design, the WordPress Library in Figma with all the components was mentioned.
Mary Hubbard, the new CEO of WordPress.org, began by explaining the legal battle with WP Engine and the importance of defending open-source as a platform.
In total, 1,097 unique contributors participated in the release of WordPress core versions 6.5, 6.6, and 6.7.
For Openverse, 884 million images are now available for use on WordPress or any other project.
Junko Nukaga, in Japanese, explained the state of the WordPress ecosystem in Japan, such as companies that started using WordPress years ago now being listed on the stock exchange, or some of the most important and influential plugin providers in the Community, like Contact Form 7.
Matt returned to the stage to thank Aki Hamano, with 774 contributions to the WordPress core, being the most prominent contributor from the Japanese community.
Some features that may be considered for 2025 include, for example, the ability to upload an ePub and convert it into different posts. However, the focus remains on the Data Liberation project.
In the Q&A session, Matt answered questions such as the importance of links and WordPress sites on various social networks, how some promote openness while others do not.
Regarding performance and SEO, improvements continue to be made in performance through various team plugins. As for SEO, the focus should be on content rather than technology.
What is the vision regarding the decline of websites with the rise of Artificial Intelligence? According to Matt, we will soon see personal LLM (large language models) that will learn from our own content, schedule, and other elements, so the system will continuously learn more about you and help you in your daily life based on your experiences and knowledge.
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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