In the State of the Word, Matt Mullenweg reveals from Tokyo the year of 2024 and WordPress’ journey into 2025. I didn’t get a chance to view this live as it occurred later in the year as apposed to the WordCamps before COVID. Matt opened by acknowledging Japan, it’s people, and it’s cultural contribution to the WordPress project and went into the year’s progress which included the increase of market share on the internet. Then, he mentioned the plugins and themes. In 2024 I updated my own theme, Altimeter, and my website as well to include video backgrounds.
After the plugins and a quick Gutenberg mention, he handed the presentation to Matias Ventura. Matias talked about design and the progress of Gutenberg. As great as Gutenberg is – it does not pertain to me as I edit the code of pages and templates to deliver my work directly to the viewers. It’s a process I’ve adopted due to my history of using and deploying HTML/CSS. Matias also went over a feature (which I don’t use) native to Gutenberg – design, which has style panels and customized blocks for quick page/post building. Having said that, I still like Gutenberg and one slide that Matias had caught my eye – complete 100% performance on Google’s page speed test. That’s not easy. Also, Matias revealed a project to update the break points for fluid/responsive design.
Then, I got an idea for a side project I’m working towards with a very close friend – a piece of that puzzle is missing I hope this will work: WP Playground. I’m building out an example “white page” sort of sales site for services I offer and this could be a great sandbox solution for WordPress and showing different layout options for potential customers. Then Matias turned it back over to Matt. It was inevitable that AI would be mentioned it was…briefly. I imagine it’s a huge scare and that’s why very little attention was given to it?
The next subject, covered by Mary Hubbard, was the legal action involving WPEngine and more WordPress self-promotion and the community growing in other countries.
The presentation was then handed over to Junko Nukaga, Japan’s community WordPress organizer and WordCamper. Her presentation was given in Japanese and she covered Japan’s contribution and an update for some local organizations working with WordPress. She did great and it was nice to see someone, other than Matt, smile.
Matt closed out the main presentation (followed by Q&A) with an acknowledge to the core contributor in Japan followed by a quick mention of the data liberation project.
