How is roadmap decided?

  • Hi,

    Does anyone have any links related to the WordPress roadmap, specifically how those decisions are made?

    Do the Automattic team solicit feedback and input from a wide range of users, analyse use cases etc?

    Before anyone gets defensive, I’m a huge WP fan, and in awe of the skill and commitment shown by the contributors. I’m not sure my technical skills are up to helping contribute, but I’ve been building bespoke sites with WP for over 10 years, so feel my experience is valid in terms of how I’ve seen people use WP in the wild.

    I must have personally built 500+ WP websites, supported double that again. I can count on one hand the number that have been blogs, where the user wants visual control and custom layouts. 99% of sites I’ve been involved with are small/medium businesses, where staff change often – they don’t want design control. They want templates, or custom fields, where they can fill in a few fields and post a news story, or vacancy, and get back to their day jobs.

    Reading the notes on each WP release, more and more customisations and block changes are included. I just find the development direction incredibly jarring, compared with my own experience using the software, that I feel I need to at least make an effort to feedback.

    Again, this isn’t a comment on the technical skill, quality and effort of contributors – I might be the edge case – perhaps of the 43% of websites powered by WP, perhaps most do want the level of customisation offered by Gutenberg/blocks, who knows?

    My point is, is an effort made to gauge how WP is used, and what ultimate end-users want? Where are the stats on this, for something powering 43% of all websites?

    Thanks in advance.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Moderator Yui

    (@fierevere)

    永子

    If you want to engage or just watch how does WordPress community work, i suggest you to check https://make.www.ads-software.com/

    Release (generally) happens by Core team
    https://make.www.ads-software.com/core/
    Important stuff is posted there.

    You can join developer’s chat as well

    Slack


    its #core channel there.
    Weekly chat happens every Wednesday, i.e. todays agenda

    Dev Chat agenda, November 30, 2022

    There are also other teams to contribute too (and yes, including Support team too!)

    Regarding statistics, CMS usage ratio is gathered by various 3rd parties, such as
    https://w3techs.com/technologies
    who’s crawler does periodically query various sites across the net for “fingerprints” of used technologies.

    https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management
    thats it, WordPress with 64%

    Also there will be yearly survey for WordPress user’s and contibutors, soon.
    Feel free to participate.

    Thread Starter crdunst

    (@crdunst)

    Thanks for the links, I appreciate the reply.

    I’ve had a look around https://make.www.ads-software.com and again, I love the transparency and open source nature. I’m not sure jumping in a devchat, trying to plead my case, will do any good (understandably).

    The stats for WP CMS share is mind-blowing, I’d just love to see some stats on usage – i.e. what are people doing with WP, rather than how many are using WP.

    If someone asked the question: “Who uses WordPress, what do they do with it, how do they use it day-to-day?”, there must be an answer? There must be stats to justify the development of Gutenberg; showing the majority of end-users want to have that level of control over typography, spacing, menu blocks and so on?

    I refuse to believe the World’s most used CMS is deciding direction based on gut-feeling, or a handful of people in a devchat, who might be pulled along by perceived consensus.

    I guess in summary, I’m just trying to find statistical justification for the WP direction, at the highest level, rather than trying to change it myself. Do those stats exist?

    Moderator Yui

    (@fierevere)

    永子

    I’m not sure jumping in a devchat, trying to plead my case, will do any good (understandably).

    You can just watch, as many others do.
    There are over 40 thousand participants on #core channel.

    If someone asked the question: “Who uses WordPress, what do they do with it, how do they use it day-to-day?”, there must be an answer?

    thats what Maketing team asks in yearly surveys (stats are published later)

    There must be stats to justify the development of Gutenberg; showing the majority of end-users want to have that level of control over typography, spacing, menu blocks and so on?

    Gutenberg development goes on Slack in #core-editor, as well as on their GitHub in “Issues”

    https://www.ads-software.com/about/stats/
    example survey results of 2020
    https://www.ads-software.com/news/files/2021/11/www.ads-software.com-2020-Annual-Survey.pdf

    PS: https://www.ads-software.com/news/2022/11/state-of-the-word-2022/

    • This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by Yui.
    Thread Starter crdunst

    (@crdunst)

    Fantastic PDF, thank you. I’ve taken part in surveys, but never seen the results.

    Couple of interesting points of note:

    1) WP use as a CMS is massively more than as a blogging platform, and mostly for other people. This begs the question, how often do end-users, who didn’t build their site, play with their site design/layouts?

    2) About half of professionals use classic editor.

    3) Classic Editor is the second most ‘essential plugin’, more than doubling from 2019.

    I’d very much like to see a 2021 or 2022 version, I’ll do some digging.

    Thanks again for your comments @fierevere , much appreciated.

    Moderator Yui

    (@fierevere)

    永子

    survey 2022 gonna happen soon, prelimianary results can be told by Matt on State of the Word.

    2021 results hopefully will be available as PDF when survey 2022 starts

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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