I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday break and is coming back into 2025 with new ideas to continue propelling WordPress forward.
Last year, we saw the introduction of a lot of fun features for extenders. I’m partial to the Block Bindings API, but features like Data Views, section styles, and block hooks are pretty exciting too. There are far too many to list here, so just check out past editions of the monthly roundup to catch up on anything you may have missed.
Just because many of us were on holiday break doesn’t mean that WordPress development completely ground to a halt. Since the last monthly update, contributors released both version 19.9 and 20.0 of the Gutenberg plugin.
Highlights
State of the Word 2024
State of the Word 2024 was held in Tokyo, Japan, celebrating WordPress’s continued growth and global reach. The event highlighted key achievements in the past year. Some of those include nearly half a billion Core downloads each year, an uptick in plugin activity, and the introduction of APIs like Interactivity and Block Bindings. The event also celebrated Japan’s connection to WordPress, including the first person to localize the platform and the history of Wapuu, WordPress’s mascot.
Check out the State of the Word 2024 playlist on YouTube, which includes all sessions and discussions.