I'm sure. We're all glad that year of WordPress is behind us. WordCamp us 2024 marked The start of a transformative era for the culture of ward pressers. A situation that thrust the community and the greater ecosystem. Into a tailspin with widespread uncertainty and instability across various sectors. As of this writing, we're still unsure how the lawsuit between Matt Mullenweg Automattic and WP engine will fully play out. While we witnessed the dust settle and find our new normal.
Here are the ways I think WordPress will change over the year 2025. Number one. Automatic continues to rip off the band-aid. I think we can all agree that since the inception of Gutenberg there hasn't been a major, wow. Moment for WordPress. Usability has improved some cool concepts have shipped, but nothing showstopping has graced our WP admin dashboards. It's a two-sided coin. Really. A stable tool for publishing.
Yeah. Buzzworthy or exciting for the outside world, including our closed source competitors. No. Automatic needs to stay relevant charm investors and keep building cool stuff. That's hard enough for any product company. Let alone an open source product company. It boils down to marketing and awareness, which WordPress has always struggled with. Even if Gutenberg was welcomed with open arms, excitement for building with blocks and using WordPress for your next website project was still necessary.
I believe that for Matt and automatic to steer the ship back to relevancy, he needed to pull this entire operation back under full control lines needed to be drawn, and they certainly were in 2024. I noticed a different tone and body language. Wouldn't I appeared on the WP product talk earlier in 2024, the change was coming back then did I think it was going to be a scorched earth approached?
No, I didn't think that you wouldn't be wrong if you argue that Mullenweg has been trending in this direction for years. But it seemed like 20, 24 was filled with far too many distractions. Uh, flailing tumbler acquisition or spending tens of millions on messenger apps. What about WordPress? I often ask myself.
I've predicted that in the future we'll visit wordpress.org and find the best way to experience WordPress is@wordpress.com or by hosting WordPress powered by Jetpack, and then somewhere far below that you'll find in small text, click here to download WordPress for free. In the short term, ripping off the bandaid to let the world know Mattson charges. One step closer to that reality.
One step closer and fewer distractions for Mullenweg, perhaps less community involvement and much more mothership and control in 2025. Prediction number two. Community becomes communities. The WordPress community, as we knew it is not coming back. You're either for or against automatic using the project or spinning up your own fork, meaning us on X or you've already quit the whole thing. And you're riding off into the sunset in a new CMS. I'm still left. Wondering what would Joseph ado.
There have been two public opportunities for Mary Hubbard, the new executive director of WordPress to share her plans for the community. Both appearances have left me still searching for answers. On a live stream with Mullen. Hubbard mentioned not wanting to be Joseph at two point. Oh, totally understandable. No one wants to be 2.0 of their predecessor. However, the north star held by the previous ed was shining bright with the desire to Help WordPress thrive a call to action.
We could all rally around. And the state of the word 2024 Hubbard opened up with. Well, I am deeply passionate about defending and celebrating WordPress. And this is where I believe the community begins to fracture. Is WordPress truly under attack from external forces. Specifically private equity or is it just suffocating from within. On paper P E consuming more of WordPress's a good thing.
From what I've witnessed in the traditional tech space, they don't care much for community investment either. The playbook is to grow the asset, sell the asset and keep the revolving door for the portfolio. Moving. However, I also don't agree with Matt and automatic turning the community into cannon fodder, something that has done magnitudes more damage than a fiscal quarter. Then if Silverlake sold WP engine to Wix.
We the community could have been the biggest advocates for mullenweg's change, but instead we were tossed aside, regardless of tenure or contribution. This is why we'll see more micro communities pop up around WordPress through 2025. People fall out of love with WordPress as a quote place to be. And WordPress just gets tossed into the toolbox alongside things like MailChimp or Google apps.
It has transformed from an open source project backed by a global community into a free website builder by automatic. Over 2025, WordPress will go from one big community to a decentralized collection of users who care less about the mission of WordPress and more about building their websites. Prediction number three. Playground is the future for WordPress. As sure as the iPhone gets 10% better year after year. So does the software have WordPress? So, yes, that's part of this prediction.
WordPress, the software does get better, but probably not by all that much. Playground, we'll start to set an important stage for WordPress. One that I think is needed for the longterm survivability and interest. Of the product. To stay competitive, relevant in easily accessible. The playground will take the center stage and here's why. As I explored other software in 2024, specifically other CMS apps, no other website allowed me to try their software. Hands-on in the browser.
Without installing registering like WordPress camp. Even if you argue that WordPress's monolithic uses old technologies and generally can't get out of its own way. I don't see other tech stacks solving the complete stack like WordPress does website builder, theme layer, drag, and drop design publishing, plugins, and ecosystem of login infrastructure, et cetera. It's a real light bulb moment.
When you put that power instantly into the hands of someone looking to learn, build, or publish online without friction. Playground allows you to build out a custom WordPress instance, save the blueprint, and then theoretically, deploy that to your hosting provider. Most important of all it lets you learn how the web and the software works. All. Thanks to doing it in the browser.
Most developers are already running their own Docker variants for local development with deployment workflows wired up so deep that on their laptops, they forget which directory their shell scripts are in. But for the average user to play with WordPress without risk or cost is a tremendous boon. In 2025, look for playground to play a critical role in capturing new users for the platform. Prediction number four. Automatic cuts the product fat. Automatic has a lot of products.
Just look at the proportion of the lineup that doesn't directly impact WordPress simple note, long reads tumbler CloudApp beeper pocket CAS day one. The list does go on. Yes, I'm sure that the case can be made that it fits the automatic culture, but how does it directly make WordPress a better product or experience? Well, the bandaid is still being torn off this whole thing. Now is the time for automatic to get hyper-focused on the CMS. Most of us have a vested interest in.
I predict Milan WEG will evaluate whether or not he needs these accessory products. The still Dawn, the automatic footer badge. If my predictions are correct, cutting the distractions that automatic makes the most business sense. Matt has signaled to the community and to investors that he's taking this 20 plus year old Project back under control. The call from her focus was heard and it's time to execute.
If we are to believe that automatic is the sole defender of WordPress, then all resources should go into defending. Well, WordPress. Make a better product and double down on that effort. Reassign the iOS and Android teams within automatic to the studio team bridge the studio native app through the playground web based app. Then tie playground into wordpress.com or pressable hosting. There's your flywheel.
An end-to-end WordPress design development, education and deployment workflow, but it doesn't happen with all that extra product overhead hanging around. In 2025, automatic closes out a lot of products. They don't need in doubles down on WordPress. Fifth and final prediction. AI threatens everything. Okay. Remember, I'm still trying to make sense of this mess.
AI threatened WordPress and mullenweg's John Connor came back to tell him if you don't burn this whole thing down now and take control, you're screwed. And scene. Having gone all in, on some AI experimentation last year, I can confidently say that building for the web is changing rapidly right before our eyes. Most AI building tools plugged into WordPress are merely parlor tricks. Once users start prompting chat GPT to build the software they want.
And it's hosted in the cloud, the landscape of web development changes dramatically. At that point, every piece of software is under threat. And so it was WordPress has coveted 45% of the web. And let's be clear. That's not something I'm rooting for, but it looks like the path that we're on. It's not all doom and gloom for WordPress though. My time with AI has also given me a new appreciation for the software.
Sure I can spin up a blog built bespoke using whatever JS framework chat, GPT, suggest that day. But it's not sustainable and it's not a way to develop software. Even if you prompted your AI overlord to build a WordPress cologne, who's going to take care of the bugs, the security patches, a future iterations of cool features. Not me, probably not. You. It was built. You used it for a while and then it landed in the digital trash heap.
When WordPress loses market share to quote unknown AI apps and future charts, it makes up for when somebody chooses WordPress because humans made it It's a complete package And is being cared for by automatic. AI isn't doing that for you. Yet. In 2025, look for automatic to release its first version of building WordPress with AI, whatever that ends up being hint. It might also start with the playground.
Now is the best time to invest in WordPress, the 2024 WordPress timeline left us with a lot of uncertainty, but I do believe now is the best time for you to invest here. There are many of us who still wants to see WordPress thrive, even if the hallways to the community look a little different these days. WordPress is still the foundation of so many livelihoods giving back to the project and challenging the status quo will be at a premium. Remaining extremely important.
And while you might have to get comfortable with a new normal, those who find fresh ways to invest here, we'll see a return on their commitment.