Cleaning up Slack channels, GitHub repositories, database versions, and establishing AI development foundations are among the proposals from a week dedicated to tidying up the WordPress project.
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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 23rd to 29th, 2025.
Doing a bit of general housekeeping, and following criteria for repositories under the official WordPress GitHub organization, all repositories were cataloged and evaluated regarding their maintenance status, alignment with active initiatives, and ongoing purpose. As a result, 20 repositories in the WordPress organization and one in bbPress were archived, 11 plugins were closed in the official directory, and 30 inactive Slack channels were archived. The goal was reducing noise and concentrating efforts on active development.
All archived repositories, plugins, and channels remain publicly accessible, with detailed explanations documented in a spreadsheet and a new page within the Core Team Handbook. The project emphasizes the importance of periodic audits to ensure resources align with current priorities, and invites the community to suggest improvements or reverse premature archival decisions via comments.
In line with keeping everything up-to-date, database versions were also addressed. The proposal stems from data revealing that over 37% of WordPress sites run MySQL or MariaDB versions already at their end-of-life and no longer receiving security updates. To avoid confusion about which editions are truly supported, it clarifies that only LTS versions (Long-Term Support) of MySQL and MariaDB are officially recommended. Non-LTS “innovation” or “rolling GA” versions, which have shorter lifespans, won’t ensure medium-term compatibility or security and thus will be removed from official documentation.
Practically, this maintains the current recommendation—MySQL above 8.0 or MariaDB above 10.6—and explicitly notes in Core and Hosting manuals that innovation and rolling GA releases should not be used in production, reserved solely for compatibility testing in the PHPUnit workflow. It also suggests enhancing tools such as ServeHappy, Site Health checks, and WP-CLI to alert administrators if their database isn’t officially LTS supported.
The AI team started with project organization, introducing their new GitHub repository, including php-ai-client, a provider-agnostic PHP SDK designed to connect with various AI models, upon which a WordPress-specific layer will be built. Guidelines were established to coordinate future repositories for “building blocks” like MCP and a unified tools registry, and to involve external contributions integrating various providers.
A modular, extensible approach was agreed upon, starting with the “big three” (OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google), and defining clear criteria and an approval process for new providers. Initial functionalities are planned for release as a Feature Plugin without immediate core integration, maintaining REST API specifications in the SDK, and evaluating parity with GraphQL.
The Hosting team has proposed an RFC for a fully automated service for preparing and executing hosting environment tests. Users only need to provide their SFTP/SSH credentials, database credentials, and WordPress.org credentials; the system returns a public key to install on the server, connects automatically, deploys and executes tests, and sends results to make.wordpress.org, eliminating the need for manual environment setup and reducing entry barriers. For security and uniformity, session-specific key pairs and IP-restricted connections will be employed. Plans include creating a prototype, iterating after initial testing, and documenting deployment procedures.
The Community team is expanding the WordPress Incident Response Team (IRT) and seeking new collaborators committed to maintaining a safe and respectful environment. Their mission is to provide a clear channel for any community member to report and manage incidents violating the WordPress Code of Conduct, ensuring everyone’s well-being. To continuously integrate fresh perspectives, the IRT will introduce a rotational system, allowing periodic recruitment rounds.
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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