At WordCamp San Francisco 2014 conference, Matt Mullenweg delivered the annual State of The Word address, focusing on WordPress updates in the past year as well as future plans.
In addition, Matt shared the results of the annual survey, completed by more than 33,000 WordPress users and developers.
https://twitter.com/ahockley/status/526433228945883137
Takeaways from The State of the Word
Since the last WordCamp San Francisco in July 2013:
- Five major versions of WordPress have been released, with 785 contributors
- Seven minor versions have been released
- 6,458 plugins have been added (there are now over 34,000 plugins)
- 684 themes have been added
- Eight mobile updates for Android and iOS have been published
- Seven WordPress release leads and five new committers
Survey Results
- 33,378 responses from 179 countries
- 77 percent of responses were from people outside of the United States
- https://twitter.com/larryfurr/status/526451246828240896
- WordPress as a CMS has declined in the past few years, from 93 percent in 2012 to 89 percent in 2013, to 87 percent in 2014
- WordPress as a blog has also declined, from 32 percent in 2012 to 26 percent in 2013 to 20 percent in 2014
- WordPress as an application framework has increased from five percent in 2013 to six percent in 2014
- 25 percent of people surveyed make their living off of WordPress
- 95 percent of WordPress sites take less than four to five weeks to create
Future Plans for WordPress
- Language packs are coming in 2015, allowing themes and plugins to be translated, without the developer having to know the language. Will also include description translation.
- Version 4.1 will include a full localized plugin and theme directory on all the language sub-domains from the dashboard. You’ll be able to go to the dashboard and type what you’re looking for in Spanish (or other language). You’ll be able to get a list of the plugin in the language you choose.
- https://twitter.com/heatherjbrunner/status/526446677842857986
- WordPress plans to work more closely with web hosts to encourage them to support PHP 5.5 or higher
- Twenty Fifteen will be the next default theme, with a focus on a book-like feel
- WordPress will be accepting Github pull requests
- IRC will be replaced by Slack (Yay!), an online tool that works across operating systems and on mobile. Slack offers channels, color themes, and is searchable. WordPress.org users can learn more and get started using Slack now. Personally, I love this change. In my opinion, IRC and its interface has been a barrier for many people to get involved with the WordPress community.
Other News
Matt noted there are more mobile devices in the world than there are people. Here’s a source about the world population and mobile devices (announced earlier this month).
As a WordPress meetup leader and past WordCamp organizer, it was wonderful to hear Matt announce over 100 meetup leaders and WordCamp organizers attended WordCamp San Francisco. He gave a nice shoutout to everyone for their work organizing events.
This year will be the last year for what has been called WordCamp San Francisco. Next year, the plan is for the event to be renamed, and hosted in a different location and date. The annual event will be similar to WordCamp Europe.
The WP REST API expected in 2015 allows WordPress to become a kernel, changing the way we build things.
Matt encouraged organizations and freelancers to join Five for the Future, giving five percent of their time to WordPress, whether it’s to core, organizing events, or other ways supporting the community.
As Matt closed out his speech, he reminded attendees of the mission of WordPress:
Democratize publishing
Everyone can be a part of the WordPress community. We want WordPress to be available to everyone, in terms of accessibility, language, and device.
