The Month in WordPress: May 2021

It’s really fun to contribute to something larger than yourself.

Matt Mullenweg’s words in “The Commons of Images” episode of the WP Briefing podcast exemplify the core philosophy of the WordPress project,  especially as we inch closer to the next major release (version 5.8). This post covers exciting updates from the month of May.

WordPress turns 18

WordPress celebrated the 18th anniversary of its launch on May 27, 2021. To celebrate 40+ releases and WordPress’ support of 40% of the web, the team released 40 milestones to celebrate the anniversary of the software. Here’s to the next 18 and beyond! 

CC Search joins WordPress and is renamed to Openverse

Creative Commons Search has officially joined the WordPress project. Creative Commons Search (CC Search) is a CC0 image search engine with over 500 million openly licensed images. The search product, which is being renamed to Openverse, will eventually live on the URL: https://wordpress.org/openverse. Contributors working on CC Search will continue their work as part of a new dedicated Make team: https://make.wordpress.org/openverse. Check out “The Commons of Images” podcast episode for more information.

WordPress 5.7.2 released

WordPress version 5.7.2, a short-cycle security release, came out on May 13. Get the latest version directly from your WordPress dashboard or by downloading it from WordPress.org.

Want to contribute to WordPress core? Check out the Core Contributor Handbook. Don’t forget to join the WordPress #core channel in the Make WordPress Slack and follow the Core Team blog. The Core Team hosts weekly chats on Wednesdays at 5 AM and 8 PM UTC. 

Gutenberg versions 10.6 and 10.7 are out

Gutenberg version 10.6 and version 10.7 were launched this month. Version 10.6 features experimental Duotone filters (which are shipping with WordPress 5.8), block pattern suggestions in placeholders, and enhancements to the table block. Version 10.7 adds a responsive navigation block, block design tools, and the ability to load block patterns from the directory.

Want to get involved in building Gutenberg? Follow the Core Team blog, contribute to Gutenberg on GitHub, and join the #core-editor channel in the Make WordPress Slack. The “What’s next in Gutenberg” post offers more details on the latest updates. If you are unfamiliar with the Gutenberg plugin, learn more in this post.

Full Site Editing updates

Don’t miss the latest Full Site Editing (FSE) Outreach program testing call on building portfolio pages using the Template Editing feature shipping with WordPress 5.8! The deadline is June 9. The team has published a recap of the Query Quest FSE Testing call, which shares some interesting results. The answers to round two of FSE questions are also out.

Countdown starts for WordCamp Europe 2021

The countdown to one of the most anticipated WordPress events, WordCamp Europe 2021 (Online), has started! The full schedule of the event is now available, and the team has exciting plans! Don’t miss this event: get your tickets now before they run out!

Further reading

• The Core Team published its first-ever WordPress CSS Audit tool. The team has also kicked off a project to improve all the updaters in WordPress core.
• The Community Team proposed adding vaccination status to the in-person meetup checklist as a criterion to organize in-person WordPress meetups. The team also published results of the 2020 Meetup Organizer survey and Meetup Member survey. 
• WordCamp Venezuela and WordCamp North East Ohio were held successfully in May. Don’t forget to grab your free tickets for WordCamp Japan 2021 and WordCamp Cochabamba 2021, both happening in June.
• The Design Team floated a proposal to tweak existing core icons and add new ones.
• Josepha Haden published an experiment to create a public channel for team reps. 
• The Support Team is considering adding two or more deputies to the team. 
• The Themes Team requests theme authors to check their themes’ compatibility with WordPress 5.8 in view of the upcoming major release. 
• The CLI Team released version 2.5.0 of WP-CLI.
• The Tide Team seeks contributors to help with documentation reviews, cleaning up Tide locally, and making the documentation clearer. 
• The Hosting Team recommends all web hosts to install the Internationalization PHP extension. The team also launched its official meetup chapter.
• The latest edition of “People of WordPress” features Fike Komala from Indonesia.
• The BuddyPress Team released the BuddyPress 8.0 Release Candidate. 
• Read about the brand new Duotone filter for blocks feature, that is shipping with WordPress 5.8!
• Catch the latest episode of the WP Briefing Podcast where Josepha talks about the cartography of WordPress.

Have a story that we should include in the next “Month in WordPress” post? Please submit it using this form. 

The following folks contributed to May’s Month in WordPress: @meher and @chaion07