Now that we are home and settling back into our time zone, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on WordCamp Europe that took place in Belgrade last week. For those who don’t know, this is the largest annual WordPress community-lead conference in Europe. The event ran from June 14-16— just weeks after the 15th Anniversary of the first WordPress release. Spirits were high and the Sava Center abuzz from developers, designers, bloggers, and more who were ready to soak up knowledge from industry leaders and influencers.
Thousands of people travel from around the globe to be part of this event every year. The best of the best take the stage to discuss all things WordPress and the volunteers that make up WordPress.org also come together to work on projects to help maintain open source.
Automattic CEO and Co-Founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, delivered his mid-year update on the status of Gutenberg and WordPress to a full audience on Day One of WordCamp. He also opened the floor for questions and the audience didn’t disappoint. To keep things light hearted, Matt offered an attendee a cookie before answering a GDPR question.
Matt spent the majority of his time reviewing his full Gutenberg roadmap, which announced the expected 5.0 release slated for August. News that sent anticipation and excitement rolling through the crowd like the storms just outside the center.
If you aren’t familiar with Gutenberg, it is what Matt describes as more than an editor and the next phase of WordPress that will keep it thriving for the next 15 years. The block-based writing feature makes it easy for novice users to get online faster than ever before. Matt also mentioned his excitement surrounding the copy and paste feature which has not been easily accomplished in the past from places like Evernote or Microsoft Word.
June will begin a push to invite agencies to opt websites into Gutenberg to gather the information needed for the next release in July. This should lead to a strong release of 5.0 in August—although a confirmed date has not been announced. At that time, Matt plans to have over 100,000 sites and more than 250,000 posts using Gutenberg as it merges with core.
For many— including developers and agencies— the clock is now ticking to get their companies ready for this release.
Here is Matt’s full roadmap for Gutenberg:
June 2018
Freeze new features into Gutenberg
Hosts, agencies and teachers invited to opt-in sites they have influence over
Opt-in for wp-admin users on WP.com
Mobile App support in the Aztec editor across iOs and Android
July 2018
4.9.x release with a strong invitation to install either Gutenberg or Classic Editor plugin
Opt-out for wp-admin users on WP.com
Heavy triage and bug gardening, getting blockers to zero
Explore expanding Gutenberg beyond the post into site customization
August 2018 and beyond
All critical issues resolved
Integration with Calypso, offering opt-in users
100k+ sites having made 250k+ post using Gutenberg
Core merge, beginning the 5.0 release cycle
5.0 beta releases and translations completed
Mobile version of Gutenberg by the end of the year
Bluehost is excited about Gutenberg and the ability it gives people of all skill sets to get online and fully harness the web.
Were you at WordCamp Europe? If so, tell us your favorite moment in the comments or learn more about Bluehost & WordPress!
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