WordPress unwrapped its new version 6.9 at the annual State of the Word, hosted by Matt Mullenweg in San Francisco this week.

A holiday tradition that reminds us of the gift that WordPress is for all involved. From agency owners using it as the backbone of their business, to the hobbyist blogger publishing prose. The WordPress community should embrace the successes of 2025 — because it certainly looked grim back in January.

Sadly, the livestream was powered by a lump of coal, so those of us on the “outside” couldn’t enjoy the presentation live, along with our peers that attended in person. Like most of you, I had to catch the replay on YouTube, which was fine, but did stifle some of that holiday cheer.
If Tokyo was the minimum viable product framing State of the Word as Automattic’s “Apple Day”, this year’s version was merely a beta release.

I can’t help but feel like 12-year old me unwrapping the sweater my Aunt Jane got me for Christmas while my Mom poked me in the shoulder “Hold it up and show everyone” while my brother shot plastic missiles from his new Transformer toy at my face…

At least we’ll look good in school photos! Here are my thoughts on State of the Word 2025.

The Presentation

It didn’t have the same weight as Tokyo.

Maybe because it wasn’t on a literal stage, or because the livestream kept breaking, but it didn’t feel like a State of the Word — more like a meetup.

When I criticize Automattic for taking the reins as the “company behind WordPress,” it isn’t because I think it’s a bad thing, it’s because I want them to represent WordPress (and our community) in the best way possible. This presentation wasn’t it. It lacked the pizzazz a release day and capstone event needs.

I’m still unsure what the role of the Executive Director of WordPress actually is. Maybe it’s just the past I’m still holding on to? Where is the fusion between the community + Open Source WordPress + Automattic and someone to fortify all of these important pillars that hold us up? Guidance and leadership, not vanity stats on a slide deck.

When Automattic/WordPress wants to hear from the non-developer crowd, Anne McCarthy comes knocking on my door. She’s bridging a communication gap, and I thank her for her efforts. Rich Tabor regularly pings me to ask about Gutenberg stuff. Woo has a fleet of people that I chat with about WooCommerce — and I’m not even selling anything!

The last address to the community on the Make blog from the Executive Director was back in November 2024, all other posts have been strictly operational.

It’s possible the Executive Director role is less about community & communication and more about drawing the lines between WordPress the product and WordPress the open source tool.

Ripping the bandaid off was part of my prediction this year, anyway.

Matt Mullenweg

For all of his faults and criticisms, I do believe he wants open source to win.

He has a desire to push people to publish and own their corner of the internet, and he doesn’t force funnel it to WordPress.com or Automattic products! If it were me, you better believe that I’d be telling you the best place to do this is using my products.

It’s hard for me to put words to it but I think it’s 80% wanting WordPress and open source to win, 20% how can Automattic become the commercial company behind it.

There’s a moment on the AI panel where Mary tees up a softball closing question to him and he just passes. A more enterprising CEO would have a call to action or capitalist take — or maybe he was just tired. Maybe I’m being naive.

He’s still pushing for WordPress to be easiest CMS to transfer to, or the “Gold Standard” as he put it. Shining light on Data Liberation again through the lens of the new WordPress importer that will now let you rewrite URL’s on import.

Short of commenting on future collaboration features of WordPress 7 and taking a seat in the AI roundtable, there wasn’t much “what’s next?” from Matt this year.

WordPress & AI

WordPress’ role in the AI era has so much to talk about, but with little to show.

Hold your criticism horses, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, this stuff is moving fast. We don’t have a standard for any of it, and you’re talking about rewiring a 20 year old piece of software to meet technology which is basically powered by investors’ hopes & dreams.

Traces of it are beginning to appear with the AI experiments plugin showing up in the repo. Match that up with the new Abilities API, sprinkle in a dash of WooCommerce MCP — we’ve got the fixins’ for a holiday punch that will surely get you in the spirit.

Like the 12 months of WordPress releases, the AI stuff that James LePage and team are producing set the foundation for a future for WordPress with AI in it. Sure it’s early, but the team just got started 6 months ago.

WordPress Wins

We continue to see the dominance of WordPress, which is awesome.

43% of the web, 60% of the CMS market, 49.4% of the top 10,000 websites globally, and WooCommerce runs on 8.9% of all websites. Amazing!

Highlighting the broading adoption of WordPress around the globe and especially in traditional education programs should signal that WordPress still has a lot of opportunity ahead.

I am really excited for WordPress’ future, especially WooCommerce. I speak to a lot of people that are on the outside of WordPress, looking to invest in the space. They are looking to acquire products, agencies, or service businesses. When they ask about opportunity, to me it’s two areas:

• WooCommerce feels like it’s just getting started. Lots of headroom here, and I think that team is doing great work which might not be getting enough credit.
• Building with WordPress will be great again. As much as the naysayers fill your X stream or toxic Facebook group, there’s a revived feeling of interest in building with WordPress. We’ll see that resurgence of agency work.

While we might not be getting shiny new toys this year, 6.9 feeling a bit flat, I know it’s all setting the groundwork for something better. Look at where we’ve come over the past year:

• Scorched Earth ending to 2024
• Court case and tons of Trademark issues
• Automattic stopped major contributions
• Community felt collapsed
• Real world economic uncertainty
• Layoffs

Give yourself and WordPress some grace as you reflect.

The back half of this year did trend to a more positive outcome than I had imagined it would given how we ended 2024 and started this year. WordPress faced real weighted challenges (still does!), and while the ball was mostly in Automattic’s court to correct, I give them credit for realigning before the ball drops.

I know WordPress 6.9 is less than 24 hours old, but I’m already looking forward to what 7+ brings us next year.

How about you?