Late December 2024 Edition – Holiday Drama & Community Updates
🎄 WordPress.org Takes an Unprecedented Holiday Break
Matt Mullenweg just announced something we’ve never seen before: WordPress.org is hitting the pause button on several free services for the holidays. Think of it as WordPress’s version of hanging up the “Gone Fishing” sign.
What’s paused:
– New account registrations
– Plugin reviews
– New submissions to plugin, theme, and photo directories
Don’t worry—WordCamp ticket buyers can still create accounts thanks to a quick fix by Dion Hulse. And yes, WP Engine keeps full access (more drama on that front in Matt’s spicy blog post).
🎯 Numbers That’ll Make Your Head Spin
Cloudflare dropped their yearly radar report, and guess what? WordPress now powers 53% of top websites. Let that sink in.
Meanwhile, internet traffic jumped 17.2% this year. Not too shabby!
🏆 Community Spotlight: Meet WordPress Scholarship Winner
Big congratulations to Lena (Eleni) Stergatou, who just won the first-ever WordCamp Europe Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship! Coming from Greece, Lena’s been wrangling code and spreading WordPress love since 2008. She’ll be joining us at WCEU 2025 in Basel, Switzerland.
🛠 Gutenberg 19.9: The Last Update of 2024
The final Gutenberg release of the year is here with some neat tricks up its sleeve:
– Style Book now works with classic themes
– New Query Total block for better user experience
– phpMyAdmin in wp-env (developers, rejoice!)
– Fresh features for featured images in Cover blocks
– Easier homepage settings right in the Site Editor
Looking Ahead
While WordPress.org takes a breather, the community keeps moving forward. Matt hopes to restore services “sometime in the new year,” but the timing remains as mysterious as PHP’s type system.
Keep building great things,
The WPMore Team
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