It’s a new year, and we have a new major release of WordPress coming soon. (We’re currently aiming for the 22nd.) It’s as good a time as any to examine where we’ve been, and where we are, and where we’re going as a community. 2006 was a pretty exciting year, we saw 1.54 million downloads of WP, and that’s not even counting the people who install it through their host’s one-click install or the half a million who have experienced it through the hosted WordPress.com. WordPress is touching more lives than ever.
However, just because what we’ve done has worked in the past doesn’t mean it’s the best for the future. We have to take a self-critical look at assumptions we have about our development process and WP itself. The upcoming release, which has been long coming, is a perfect time to focus on WP’s secret ingredient… you.
If you could add anything in the world to WordPress, what would it be? If you could name the thing that frustrates you the most about WP, what would that be?
Now you can tell us. We’re announcing new projects—two sides of the same coin.
The first is simply called Ideas, and it’s a place where you can share your wildest WordPress wishes with the world, and also vote on other people’s ideas. This allows people outside our normal circle of developers to have a direct say in what goes into the next version of WordPress. For 2.2, which comes out in late April, we will include the top voted on features, so propose something, tell your friends about it, and link it from your blog.
The second we’ve named after the Yiddish word, Kvetch. This is a place where you can quickly and anonymously express whatever might disagree with you in the WordPress world. Let it all loose, but try to keep it PG rated, and we’ll show a random kvetch on the page once we get enough in the system.
Both are just part of putting you guys—our users—first. It’s easy because there’s so many of you.