Happy New Year, and welcome to 2024! 🎆
I trust you’ve had a busy but relaxing holiday season.
My wife and son had a superb time at a nearby NRMA holiday park. There were heaps of native birds hopping on and off the balcony fences, two pools, a beach, and pedal go-karts.
While the park WIFI was thoroughly tested with many hours of Roblox playing when it was too hot to go outside (🌡️ 38° on three consecutive days), we spent plenty of time outdoors and chillaxing in the pool.
We even unexpectedly bumped into one of my son’s classmates whose family was also at the same park.
Then there were Christmas carols and kids’ fun at the school church, Christmas Eve BBQ, Christmas day lunch and present opening/building (fun but exhausting), Roblox Code Camp for my son, and Hogmanay (I fell asleep before midnight).
We have one more holiday time to look forward to – a week in the Blue Mountains with family before school term one begins on Jan 29th.
Busy and relaxing at the same time.
I’ve spent time planning juicy WordPress bits and business goodies to share this year.
I’ll cover various topics in my 2024 newsletters to help your WordPress business grow, focusing on the following core issues:
💫 Work-Life Balance
💫 Business Growth and Scaling
💫 Skills, Knowledge, and Self-Value
💫 Lead Generation, Client Acquisition, and Retention
💫 Client and Project Management
💫 Competition and Market Insights for Income Stability
WordPress Trends In 2024
Another new year brings more WordPress versions. This year, we can expect three WordPress core releases: 6.5 in March, 6.6 around July and 6.7 around November. Exact dates still need to be set, but that’s the plan.
WordPress will roll out real-time collaborative features as the Gutenberg project moves into phase 3. Think of Google Docs editing but inside WordPress. Real-time collaboration could revolutionise team web development and the client feedback process.
Other core features expected in 2024 include:
- Dark Mode – yes, WordPress is finally getting a dark mode built into the core app
- Font Library – separating themes from fonts and adding a central font management system in the admin dashboard
- Media Library Update – a long overdue refresh of the media and assets library with tagging, sorting, and filtering mechanisms.
- Enhanced Post Revisions – the ability to roll back selective blocks
- Search & Command Prompt – search for anything across the dashboard and AI-driven prompts to help manage your site more effectively, e.g. “update all plugins except WooCommerce”.
- Enhanced Publishing Workflows – e.g. you define a post that can’t be published until it has a featured image and assign a task to a registered site user
Even if WordPress gets half of these features, you should plan for significant changes to WordPress this year. Whether you’re a user, developer or designer, WordPress continues to evolve away from “just a blogging platform”.
Bring it on like Donkey Kong!
Until next time, keep thriving!
Wil.
PS: Let me know which new WordPress core feature you’re excited to try out or which one needs to be added to the list for which you’d sell your left leg! 🦵
