I remember celebrating 15 years of WordPress. I wasn’t yet contributing directly to the larger open source project yet still felt the impact reverberate through my being. A lot has changed in five years. I’ve switched jobs twice and am now spending my days both deep in the future of what’s to come for WordPress and doing my best to bring others into that future (and present). Being a part of release squads for various WordPress releases has been humbling and the responsibility has been immense. As I said recently in a post about turning thirty, it feels amazing to give back to a software and community that’s given me so much freedom, privilege, and opportunity in the last decade.
I can’t imagine those who have been carrying this weight for others for twenty years. The panic, excitement, and joy of each release, wondering what bugs will be found and what features might be a game changer. Whew, thank you over and over again. At the same time, I am as appreciative of those who choose WordPress and who play an equal part in the present it has. The tinkerers, the builders, the bloggers, the big names, the new names, the “mom & pop” or “mom and mom” or “pop and pop” shops. It’s all a choice and not one to take for granted.
In the age of AI, I want WordPress to last and to be a pathway for folks to participate in this new information “economy” of sorts, especially when we have a ways to go and there’s a weight to what’s been created by a certain subset of those with internet access. I want to be much older than I am now reflecting on many more years of WordPress and whatever WordPress evolves into. I want open source to play a deep role in what’s to come and to level the playing field against companies collecting mountains of data. I want the messiness and chaos that comes with humans from all over the world colliding over ideas. I want to be a part of the years to come. I want to get to “better problems”, solving the pain points I hear about everyday from folks (if you’re doing well, all we have are better and better problems). I want folks to continue choosing WordPress and for WordPress to feel good, twenty or thirty years on.
Happy twenty years, WordPress. I can’t wait to celebrate a decade on from now.
agm 