WordPress has defined a set of clear principles and steps to determine if a project should be hosted or migrated under its official GitHub organization.
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Program transcript
Hello, I’m Alicia Ireland, and you’re listening to WPpodcast, bringing the weekly news from the WordPress Community.
In this episode, you’ll find the information from June 1st to 8th, 2025.
WordPress has defined a set of clear principles and steps to decide whether a project deserves to be hosted or migrated under its official GitHub organization. Firstly, the aim is to ensure community ownership and quality, meaning only repositories that bring value to the ecosystem, with accessible and well-managed code, will be considered candidates.
To join the organization, a project will need to meet three main sets of requirements:
The first point is clear documentation and objectives, having either a README file or a Make WordPress blog entry clearly defining the problem it solves and its goals, as well as periodically updating its status.
The second point is sponsorship and maintenance, with at least one active maintainer within a recognized contributor team—ideally several—to ensure the continuity of the project, clearly indicated in the README and a CODEOWNERS file.
The third point is a commitment to support and best practices, responding promptly to requests and bugs, following WordPress coding standards, maintaining accessible documentation, and complying with licensing (GPL) and the Community’s code of conduct.
Once accepted, there are rules regarding lifecycle and security:
For example, if a repository becomes orphaned or unmaintained and is not a canonical plugin, it will be archived after six months without response, although it can be reopened if a new maintainer appears.
Only repositories explicitly included in the HackerOne policy will be covered by the bounty program, though any critical bug must be addressed immediately in coordination with the security team.
Additionally, experimental projects or internal tools should have distinct labels and support expectations to avoid confusing end-users with components still in development.
All of this falls under the umbrella that launching new WordPress features should rely less on the core itself and more on functional plugins that help improve and test ideas which could later be included in WordPress.
Gutenberg 20.4 and 20.5 are now available with several notable updates.
In Gutenberg 20.4, a persistent user preference for the “Show Template” option in the editor has been added. Additionally, the Query Loop block now supports sorting content according to the menu order.
For Gutenberg 20.5, blocks created with the “create-block” package now include a block manifest with metadata, improving loading performance. Also, no tag or category suggestions are shown in the pre-publish panel if none have been added.
The Performance team has launched the canonical plugin View Transitions, implementing the new CSS View Transitions API to smooth page transitions when navigating between URLs on WordPress sites. Instead of the usual “flash” when changing pages, the plugin defaults to applying a “fade” effect between the old and new DOM states, resulting in a smoother experience.
After the introduction of the AI team as a group dedicated to openly and responsibly exploring how artificial intelligence can enhance the WordPress experience, their initial phase will focus on creating a set of canonical plugins and foundational tools to lay the groundwork for future inclusion in WordPress core.
For its operation, the team will follow an open structure: bi-weekly meetings, planning and code in public GitHub repositories, and decisions made through both pull request reviews and formal proposals.
The Test team has discovered a flaw in WordPress’s current workflow. When someone tests a bug fix—a “patch”—and the test passes, that person adds the dev-feedback tag to inform developers that the patch is ready. The issue is that most testers don’t review the code in depth, leaving developers uncertain if the tag represents a thorough technical examination or not. Consequently, developers often disregard these notices unless they come from testers known for detailed code reviews, rendering other reports practically useless.
To address this, introducing a new label, needs-code-review, is proposed. With it, testers who only perform functional tests can mark that a thorough code reviewer is required, while those who perform a comprehensive review can continue using dev-feedback. This way, developers can quickly identify which patches have undergone a thorough review and which still need additional scrutiny before moving into production.
WordCamp Europe 2025 closed its doors last Saturday in Basel, with 1,723 in-person attendees from 84 countries and over 20,000 online participants, after three intense days that began with a Contributor Day attended by 640 participants spread across 21 teams.
As in previous WordCamp Europe events, Matt Mullenweg, this time accompanied by Mary Hubbard, dedicated half an hour to discussing WordPress projects and ecosystem and subsequently answered questions from attendees.
Among the key topics highlighted were European regulations on data protection and cybersecurity, the launch of the FAIR Project, and the Campus Connect project, where in Italy, 5,000 students will earn university credits by contributing 150 hours to WordPress, although specifics on managing their integration into the community and tasks were not detailed. Everything related to Five for the Future received considerable attention both during discussions and questions, as well as during the WP Café that took place the same morning with Mary’s participation.
If you missed the event, there are over 6,000 photos available to explore attendees and key moments. And remember, next year, WordCamp Europe 2026 will be held in Krakow, Poland, from June 4 to June 6.
And finally, this podcast is distributed under a Creative Commons license as a derivative version of the podcast in Spanish; you can find all the links for more information, and the podcast in other languages, at WPpodcast .org.
Thanks for listening, and until the next episode!
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