WordPress, the leading content management system (CMS) by a significant margin, is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. From its humble beginnings as a blogging platform in 2003, WordPress has evolved into a versatile and widely-used tool for creating websites of all types. As we commemorate this milestone, it is worth considering what the future holds for WordPress and its vibrant community of users, developers, and contributors.
The technology landscape is currently going through a turbulent phase, making it challenging to predict what the future holds. Metaverse, Web 3.0, blockchain, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality are among the technologies that promise to bring about a new revolution. While there is much hype surrounding these technologies, some may take many years before their impact becomes apparent.
Regardless of which technologies disrupt the current ecosystem, WordPress is poised to remain a dominant force for many years to come. Here are our WordPress predictions to help you have a strategic perspective on it.
WordPress Predictions
Predicting the future is subjective and challenging, particularly with the growing number of technologies available. Therefore, take all our suggestions with a grain of salt. Our WordPress predictions are based on the WordPress roadmap, the current needs and requirements of users, and our expertise. To make this post more digestible, the predictions are divided into three categories: short, medium, and long-term.
Short-Term Predictions
At the beginning of 2023, WordPress enthusiasts expressed concern as WordPress, for the first time in history, experienced a slight decrease in market share. WordPress’ share of all online websites felt from 43.2% in 2022 to 43.1% in 2022. However, this should not be seen as a cause for alarm, as the rate of decline is minimal and no competitor has experienced exponential growth. It is increasingly challenging to sustain exponential growth over many years. These minor variations indicate that WordPress has reached a level of maturity.
Under these circumstances, it becomes pretty clear that WordPress will maintain its dominance in the following years. WordPress will constantly evolve, thanks to its open-source format and vibrant community.
Gutenberg, the block editor, is a result of WordPress’ maturity. Many experts are involved in the Gutenberg project and its implementation generated harsh debates in the past. This situation shows the huge implication of the community and the democracy of the WordPress ecosystem. Everyone may bring their contribution to the product evolution. Nowadays, Gutenberg is widely accepted and a huge army of developers work hard to improve it. Expect to see more improvements to the blog editor in the near future.
The rise of block themes comes naturally to ensure a consistent experience for WordPress builders. A block theme and a block editor make sense, doesn’t it? Moreover, block themes are more user-friendly and load faster. Many will switch to block themes in the near future. 2024-2025 will likely be the period where block themes will see solid growth in the preferences of users.
WordPress Playground helps everyone run a WordPress instance directly into the browser. In this way, you can easily test themes and plugins, build a website, or embed a WordPress instance in an online tutorial. The Playground is in its experimental phase and looks promising.
Medium-Term Predictions
The third phase of the WordPress roadmap aims to enhance real-time collaboration. Currently, WordPress lacks the capability for real-time collaboration, and this feature would be a valuable addition to the platform. WordPress started as a tool to democratize publishing and has evolved into a professional platform for editing, publishing, and managing multimedia content. It represents the transition from a simple blog to a complex content hub.
Content creators who run their own blogs need to adapt to the current landscape to remain profitable. While personal blogs will continue to exist, more complex magazine news websites are likely to be more profitable. The future will see an increase in the number of sophisticated websites. However, these websites will not be feasible unless WordPress becomes a faster CMS. Speed has become an important factor in SEO, and WordPress requires substantial improvements in this regard. The WordPress leadership has established a team dedicated to speeding up WordPress, and it is likely that we will see results in the coming years. Additionally, the community actively contributes to making WordPress a faster CMS.
Creating more accessible WordPress websites is a moral obligation for us. Despite the advanced technologies used to build modern sites and applications, many users do not have access to a standard user experience. While there have been steps in the right direction, there is still much room for improvement. The WordPress community should strive to ensure that everyone, regardless of their physical or mental condition, can have a good user experience.
Artificial Intelligence is on everyone’s lips, and many plugins include AI-based modules. Yet, no AI plugins have managed to disrupt the ecosystem. We are quite skeptical that AI plugins will revolutionize the WordPress universe, but it’s certain that AI helps developers craft better WordPress products.
Long-Term Predictions
In the current context, with so many emerging technologies, it’s almost useless to offer detailed long-term WordPress predictions. However, one thing is almost certain: WordPress will be here for many years to come. This statement is not just because we are WordPress enthusiasts. Whether willing or not, WordPress doesn’t have any major contenders. As of mid-2023, WordPress holds a 43.1% market share, while the second most popular CMS among users is Shopify, with a 3.9% market share. While Shopify excels in e-commerce features, it falls short when compared to WordPress in other areas. Although it’s possible that a new CMS is currently under development that could surpass WordPress, it would require a significant amount of time to establish a community as strong as WordPress. Therefore, it’s safe to assume that WordPress will continue to lead the CMS market for many years.
Multilinguality isn’t a strong point of WordPress, even though the current translation plugins are good and effective. The WordPress development team has proposed to improve this aspect, and the fourth phase of the WordPress roadmap is dedicated to enhancing multilingual support. While the details are yet to come, it’s certain that WordPress will have improved multilingual features.
Apple VR headset is considered either a complete failure or a groundbreaking device that could change the world, similar to the iPhone. While it’s possible that the headset could be the biggest failure for Apple, there are signs that other tech companies will create similar products. In other words, VR is a promising technology, and WordPress leadership should keep an eye on it. VR has the potential to change how we navigate the internet, and WordPress should adapt to this new context to survive. This prediction is the most uncertain, but it may be more important than all the others.
Over to You
WordPress has changed the Internet and it looks like no other alternative put its dominance under questioning. These are our WordPress predictions, and we are greatly interested in finding out your thoughts. Hence, share with us your thoughts about WordPress evolution.
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