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Our Hopes and Fears for WordPress 4.8 (Roundup)

I should probably add a little context before we jump into this one and talk “our hopes and fears for WordPress 4.8.” This article is not exactly what it looks like.

Everything started back in December when I and the rest of the team traveled to Philadelphia to take part in 2016’s WordCamp US. Getting there was a big deal for us so we wanted to make the most out of the whole experience. One of the ideas was to meet some of the WordPress people who we only knew online, and do speed interviews with them.

This was a success and a failure both at the same time.

Let’s start with the success. First off, I want to thank everybody who took part and was kind enough to push their shyness away and talk with me in front of the camera. Yes, we filmed the interviews, professional and all, with separate tracks for video and audio. It was supposed to come out right after the conference, and … this is where the failure part comes into play.

As it turned out, the SD card that held the audio track was corrupted, and there was nothing that could be done about it. And we tried … we even contacted two separate data recovery firms. Both said the card was doomed.

Regret and helplessness was what I felt seeing that all that effort and work was gone. We really couldn’t release any of the videos because the sound was horrific. However, trying to listen to what the people were saying in the videos, I realized that we can still transcribe the answers and recover at least parts of the experience.

So I did just that! But with a twist:

Out of all the questions that we asked during those speed interviews, I decided to just focus on one aspect of it for this post. Specifically, it was very interesting to see what people wish for the future of WordPress and what their fears are.

Since the roadmap for WordPress 4.8 hasn’t been announced yet, maybe there’s still time to look into some of the things mentioned by our interviewees.

Disclaimer

Since I was dealing with the audio that was picked up by the camera (and not by the pro mic that we had), the transcripts couldn’t be 100% accurate. Sometimes there were other people fooling around in the background, as they do on WordCamp premises, and I couldn’t understand everything the interviewees were saying. Sorry about that. (By the way, if I’ve misheard your answer, please reach out and let me know. I’ll fix it right away!)

 

What are your hopes for WordPress 4.8?

 
 
Luca Sartoni
Luca Sartoni
Growth Engineer at Automattic
My hopes are the same since the very first day, which is for WordPress to get easier and easier and easier to use, so more people can join, more people can take advantage of the opportunities that the open web can give to them.
 
 
Omar Reiss
Omar Reiss
CTO Yoast
A totally sleek JavaScript API.
 
 
Nick Roach
Nick Roach
Founder & CEO Elegant Themes
More stuff with the Customizer would be nice, more controls that we can tap into to make it easier. I know ever since Divi 2.4 last year, we did a lot of customizing for it and it was a bit difficult. It got a lot better, a lot of performance issues have been fixed […], but making it easier to add different kinds of controls in the Customizer would be great.
 
 
 
 
Topher DeRosia
Topher DeRosia
Developer, Founder HeroPress
I’d love for it to be a lot easier to make Custom Post Types.
 
 
Milan Ivanović
Milan Ivanović
Web Developer at GoDaddy/ManageWP
My hopes? It’s a tricky one. Deeper integration with Rest API.
 
 
Tammie Lister
Tammie Lister
UX Designer at Automattic
I hope for more user focusing, I hope for putting a lot of user testing at the heart of it from the team.
 
 
Jon Ang
Jon Ang
CTO Wingz Communications
For the community, my real hope is for WordCamp Asia to happen. Maybe in 2018, or as early as possible. For the software, to be really regarded as a real application framework after the REST API is fully merged. People should regard WordPress not only as a CMS. Just as its transition from a blogging platform to a CMS, now we’re moving from a CMS to an application framework. So I hope we really get there as fast as we can.
 
 
Zac Gordon
Zac Gordon
WordPress Educator
I’m really hoping that more and more of the API comes in, that’s kind of my main focus.
 
 
Liam Dempsey
Liam Dempsey
Communications Designer at LBDesign
Even greater ease of use.
 
 
Michelle Schulp
Michelle Schulp
Independent Designer and Front-end Developer
I’m hoping that in WordPress 4.8 they get more direction with what they want to do with the Customizer and other similar front-end live-editing stuff.
 
 
Bernhard Kau
Bernhard Kau
Web Developer
I would say a feature called lang-swapping where you have a second language you can set to translate from your first language – which is crucial for Germany.
 
 
Luca Sartoni
Luca Sartoni
Growth Engineer at Automattic
I don’t have fears. I have a lot of trust in people who develop core and all the ecosystem. However, if I need to look into something that I am a little scared of, even though we have a community that is very welcoming, sometimes we might be falling to behaviors that are not fully encouraging new people to join. So we need to be careful with that.
 
 
Omar Reiss
Omar Reiss
CTO Yoast
WordPress being more than 50% of the Internet.
 
 
Milan Ivanović
Milan Ivanović
Web Developer at GoDaddy/ManageWP
That it won’t make it to 50% of the Internet.
 
 

(Did you know that WordPress was once caught guiding missiles? More stats from WordPress’ timeline here.)

 
 
Nick Roach
Nick Roach
Founder & CEO Elegant Themes
I guess my biggest fear for WordPress is increasing complexity, so anytime we add new features we risk scaring away new users. So I guess that is always my biggest fear, making it too complex for the users. I think WordPress is gonna be increasingly battling against Squarespace, Wix, these kinds of really simple editors. Going back, another thing to focus on is the onboarding experience. So my biggest fear would be not improving the onboarding experience by adding features and making it harder to use WordPress.
 
 
Tammie Lister
Tammie Lister
UX Designer at Automattic
I don’t really have any fears because the community is very good about adjusting things, so I don’t have any fears about it.
 
 
Jon Ang
Jon Ang
CTO Wingz Communications
If there’s any fear, I think it might be that we are huge and we simply do not have enough people helping. So if there’s any fear it’s that we might be too big, and then people get upset about waiting and things like that. So for that to not become a real thing, everyone should help with WordPress, no matter how small.
 
 
Liam Dempsey
Liam Dempsey
Communications Designer at LBDesign
Like anything, focus could be lost over time, and I hope that, as a community, we appreciate and maintain true to its inclusivity and its sense of belonging, and realizing that democratizing publishing really does mean including everybody in the decisions about the community.
 
 
Michelle Schulp
Michelle Schulp
Independent Designer and Front-end Developer
My fears about it, I guess, are the same as in the other releases where I worry that we get too bogged down to individual specific features and not a broader direction for where we’re going.
 
 
Bernhard Kau
Bernhard Kau
Web Developer
Maybe it’s getting too big in options.
 
 
Topher DeRosia
Topher DeRosia
Developer, Founder HeroPress
My fear about 4.8 would be the same for every release, that it will get confused and lost. I don’t want a release to get confused and lost.
 
 

Describe the WordPress community in one word

Now that the serious stuff has been laid out, there’s also one more cool part of the interviews that has survived. Here’s how people describe the WordPress community in just one word:

Omar Reiss, CTO Yoast Open
Luca Sartoni, Growth Engineer Automattic Welcoming
Nick Roach, Founder & CEO Elegant Themes Empowering
Topher DeRosia – Developer, Founder HeroPress Family
Milan Ivanović – Web Derveloper ManageWP/GoDaddy Welcoming
Zac Gordon – WodPress Educator A hug
Jon Ang – CTO at Wingz Communications Pte Ltd Family
Ulrich Pogson – WordPress Developer at WeAreRequired Helpful
Liam Dempsey – Communications Designer at LBDesign Belonging
Tammie Lister – UX Designer at Automattic Karma
Michelle Schulp – Independent Designer and Front-end Developer Welcoming
Bernhard Kau – Web Developer Family
Akshat Choudhary – Founder blogVault Friendly

There’s certainly a very positive vibe here!

How would you describe the WordPress community? Tell us in the comments, or tweet using: #WordPressCommunityInOneWord

In the end, I am happy for having the chance to meet all these great people, and, hopefully, we’ll re-do the show in Paris, at the next WordCamp Europe!

Lastly, the floor is yours! As in, what are your hopes and fears for WordPress 4.8? Hit us up in the comments.

Layout and presentation by Karol K.

 
Sabina Ionescu

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