WordPress in 2018 - What to expect when you're expecting

A look at what we can expect from the WordPress project in 2018. This was presented at the 22 February 2018 WordPress meetup in Cape Town.

1. WordPress in 2018 What to expect when you’re expecting
2. Core “A strong core compliments everything you do.” - Susan Trainor, Fitness expert
3. Core focus areas REST API Editor Customiser
4. Gutenberg A new publishing experience for WordPress is in the works. Get ready to make your words, pictures, and layout look as good on screen as they do in your imagination, without any code. Gutenberg will ship in WordPress 5.0 slated for an April release. wordpress.org/gutenberg
5. Serve Happy A project to encourage users to upgrade their server’s PHP version. It includes educating people about PHP and why it should be upgraded, as well as assistance on how to upgrade and how to petition your host to upgrade. wordpress.org/support/upgrade-php
6. GDPR Compliance The General Data Protection Regulation is a set of regulations to help strengthen the protection of all users’ personally identifiable information (PII) in the EU. The WordPress Core Team will be making changes to ensure that WordPress is GDPR compliant for all users. make.wordpress.org/core/tag/gdpr-compliance
7. 15th Anniversary of WordPress “We’re going to party like it’s your birthday.” - 50 Cent
8. 27 May 2018 This May, it will be 15 years from the first release of WordPress - v0.76-Gold. We held a party for the 10th anniversary and definitely plan on doing something for this one too - we’ll announce it on the meetup group when we have things planned. meetup.com/WordPress-Cape-Town
9. Community Code of Conduct “Why can’t we all just get along?” - Jack Nicholson, Mars Attacks
10. For Everyone, Everywhere The Community Code of Conduct (CCoC) will be a code to help everyone communicate across the whole WordPress project. The CCoC will apply to online communication, events, and all other contributions. make.wordpress.org/updates/tag/ccoc
11. Marketing “The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing.” - Tom Fishburne, Marketing cartoonist
12. Enterprise Growth Council The Enterprise Growth Council is a group of representatives from several companies who are focused on marketing, delivering and using WordPress as an enterprise-grade CMS. They meet monthly to share the work they’re each doing as well as discussing things they could do better as a community or via WordPress.org. make.wordpress.org/meta make.wordpress.org/marketing
13. Tide “Be merry! We meet again, at the turn of the tide. A great storm is coming, but the tide has turned.” - Gandalf, Wizard
14. Improving Plugins for Everyone The mission of Tide is to raise the code quality of all the plugins and themes in the WordPress.org directories. It is a series of automated tests run against every plugin and theme in the directory and then displays PHP compatibility and test errors/warnings in the directory. make.wordpress.org/tide
15. Events “It takes real planning to organise this kind of chaos.” - Mel Odom, Writer
16. WordCamp Incubator v2 The intention of the incubator program is to help spread WordPress to underserved areas through providing more significant organizing support for a first event. Harare was one of the three successful incubator communities in 2016 and 2018 will see a second round of incubator WordCamps. make.wordpress.org/community
17. WordCamp EU & WordCamp US The flagship WordCamp events. WordCamp Europe will be held on 14-16 June in Belgrade. WordCamp US will be help in Nashville near the end of the year. europe.wordcamp.org us.wordcamp.org
18. WordCamp Cape Town Our annual community WordCamp. Always a good time. If you would like to be involved in organising it, let me know! capetown.wordcamp.org
19. do_action do_action is a charity hackathon that uses WordPress to uplift local communities. We started do_action in Cape Town in 2014 and now it has grown to a global level. There are currently 6 do_action events in pre-planning for 2018 around the world. doaction.org/event/cape-town-2018
20. Cape Town monthly meetups We will be continuing our monthly meetups on the last Thursday of every month. We want you (yes you!) to speak. For reals. meetup.com/WordPress-Cape-Town
21. make.wordpress.org Get involved!