As we’re now tantalising close to the festive break, we felt it would be a good time to take stock of some of the amazing technological progress that we have seen in the WP space.
There’s so much we could cover so I’ve picked out 5 of the best stories from the last 6 months:
1) WordPress 6.1 “Misha” was released in November which brought many advancements including Fluid Typography, upgraded design tools, and various accessibility improvements https://wordpress.org/news/2022/11/misha/
2) WebP support was also added to WP Core in version 6.1, paving the way for a faster and responsive experience on sites that are starting to move away from JPG and PNG. https://core.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/53751
(LottieFiles also released an official plugin in 2022, making it even easier to add cool vector animations to your site with little to no detriment on load speed.)
3) The problem of plugin dependency management is closer to being resolved with the introduction of a new plugin spearheaded by members of the WP core team https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/02/24/feature-project-plugin-dependencies/
4) WordPress Playground was launched this year – allowing developers and testers to quickly get a version of WordPress that runs completely in the browser without a PHP server thanks to the magic of WebAssembly! https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-playground
5) AI continues to evolve and deliver exciting possibilities for the future. Earlier this month, ChatGPT was tasked with creating a working WordPress plugin from a simple text prompt, which it did in a matter of SECONDS! https://twitter.com/johnofhousejohn/status/1599858839771176960
6) And a bonus story for 2023 – Athens was selected as the host city for next year’s WordCamp Europe event, and members of the WPETG will be flying over so we hope to see you there! https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/
Consider joining our WordPress for Education and Training User Group over on LinkedIn and share your stories for how using WordPress has shaped your personal/professional journey in 2022! https://www.linkedin.com/groups/14094004/
