The Month in WordPress – November 2023

November is usually a busy month for the WordPress project, and this year is no different. Following the empowering release of WordPress 6.4, the energy continues to build, setting the stage for the anticipated State of the Word and upcoming projects. 

Read on for all the exciting updates that marked the past month.

Get ready for State of the Word

Mark your calendars—State of the Word 2023 is approaching fast. In this annual keynote, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg celebrates the progress of the open source project and offers a glimpse into its future.

For the first time in WordPress history, the event will be held outside North America, in the vibrant city of Madrid, Spain, on December 11, 2023.

If you’re unable to attend the State of the Word in person, you can watch it live on the WordPress YouTube channel or join one of the many community-led watch parties. Find one near you or organize one.

Meet Twenty Twenty-Four

Along with the release of WordPress 6.4 “Shirley,” the new default Twenty Twenty-Four theme was introduced.

This theme breaks away from the tradition of previous default themes that focused on a specific topic or style. Instead, Twenty Twenty-Four was created to fit any website and explore different use cases for entrepreneurs, artists, and writers.

You’ll find more than 35 beautiful patterns, including full-page patterns for templates like homepage, search, and more. Twenty Twenty-Four boasts the latest site editing capabilities and a sophisticated aesthetic inspired by contemporary design trends.

New in the Gutenberg plugin

• Gutenberg 17.0 was released on November 9, 2023. It introduced improvements to the Command Palette, an alternative implementation of the DropdownMenu component, additional visual cues for LinkControl, and various accessibility and performance iterations.
• Gutenberg 17.1 shipped on November 22, 2023. In addition to several accessibility and writing flow enhancements, this version brought a new block spacing control in the Quote block.

Episode 66: Advocating Open Source Solutions – WordPress Briefing – A WordPress Podcast

WordPress Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, speaks to the strategic approach to integrating open source solutions within your company and offers insight into initiating open source advocacy conversations. Tune in for a session that could redefine your company's technological approach.

Team updates

• WordPress is switching to Matrix in replacement of the Making WordPress Slack. The move stems from the project’s commitment to implementing a new chat system aligned with WordPress’s open source values. If you haven’t already, now is the time to explore Matrix and share your questions.
• With phishing scams on the rise, the WordPress Security team is actively monitoring the current threat and has posted an advisory to help you protect your site.
• The Plugin Review team is now reopening applications to join their team. They’re looking for three new members who can improve the state of the plugin review queue and help create a diverse and inclusive team.
• Over the past few months, contributors have been working on redesigning the WordPress.org Developer Resources section.
• This post outlines proposed dates for major WordPress releases in 2024.
• The Meta team shared an improved version of the plugin preview feature. This version builds on feedback and allows plugin developers to safely test the preview experience for their plugins in a WordPress Playground environment.
• Polyglots and Meta contributors introduced a new plugin called Tour, which enables the creation of tours to guide contributors through a Make WordPress blog.
• Are you looking to broaden your knowledge and improve your WordPress skills? See what’s new on Learn WordPress in November 2023.
• The latest edition of People of WordPress features back-end web developer Artemy Kaydash from Ukraine.

Episode 67: Openverse & Photo Directory Rewind – WordPress Briefing – A WordPress Podcast

WordPress Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, returns to a recent episode of the WordPress Briefing, which discussed two resources for openly licensed media in the WordPress project– Openverse and Photo Directory– and how they differ from one another!

Requests for feedback & testing

• The Community team announced the 2023 Annual Meetup Survey. Both event attendees and organizers are encouraged to provide feedback in this 5-minute survey to help strengthen WordPress meetups in the future.
• Version 23.7 of the WordPress mobile app for iOS and Android is ready for testing.

WordPress events

• 🇹🇼 WordCamp Asia opened the third round of ticket sales and announced that their first speaker is WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. The conference will be held in Taipei, Taiwan, on March 7-9, 2024.
• 🇪🇺 WordCamp Europe opened its call for sponsors and speakers for their conference slated to take place in Torino, Italy, on June 13-15, 2024. 
• Don’t miss these upcoming WordCamps:
  • 🇮🇳 WordCamp Ahmedabad 2023, India on December 9, 2023
  • 🇵🇰 WordCamp Lahore 2023, Pakistan on December 9-10, 2023

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Thank you to Bernard Meyer for contributing to this edition of The Month in WordPress.