Jonathan Desrosiers, principal software engineer at Bluehost and a long-time WordPress contributor and Core committer, joined the Jukebox Podcast to talk about aligning WordPress releases with flagship community events, improving contributor experience, and strengthening the community after COVID disruptions.
Jonathan’s role at Bluehost is sponsored through Five for the Future; he spends most of his time contributing to WordPress, focusing on processes that make it easier for people to participate—mentorship, clearer procedures, automation, and reducing blockers.
Releases and Live Events
A notable experiment came when a WordPress major release coincided with State of the Word, creating a theatrical live moment—complete with people gathering and pressing a symbolic “release” button. The idea behind synchronizing releases with major WordCamps (WordCamp Asia, WordCamp Europe, WordCamp US, and State of the Word) is to create community celebrations that amplify awareness and involvement.
Jonathan explains that while the timing last time was partly serendipitous, synchronizing releases with events can create meaningful shared moments where contributors and users celebrate together. It helps turn what is usually a Slack or social media announcement into a tangible, memorable community occasion.
Practical Constraints
However, aligning releases with events faces real logistical limits. WordCamps are scheduled based on local realities—budgets, holidays, venue availability, and other regional factors—so it’s not feasible for Core to expect event organizers to plan around WordPress’s release cadence. Religious holidays, winter breaks, and other regional schedules can compress available development windows, complicating release planning. For example, branching for a release and achieving feature-complete status requires predictable time; holiday seasons reduce available workweeks and affect momentum.
Global coverage is another concern. Release squads must include people across time zones so someone is available to triage and investigate issues when others are offline or traveling. While attending an event in person is valuable, it’s not a requirement; distributed participation remains essential so releases aren’t jeopardized by unreliable venue Wi-Fi or travel issues.
Creating Release Moments
Jonathan and Nathan discussed making releases feel like major cultural moments—akin to a TV season launch—rather than low-key background updates. While some users appreciate the seamless nature of auto-updates, others might miss awareness of new features. Historically, manual updates redirected admins to an “about” page that highlighted features; much of that visibility is lost when updates are automatic or performed by a single admin.
Ideas to increase awareness include:
– Surface upcoming features earlier in the dashboard, inviting users to test and learn.
– Improve opt-in channels for testing pre-release features, similar to feature flags in browser development.
– Use Learn WordPress resources and dashboard widgets to educate users on new functionality after or before release.
Technical and process challenges exist—many parts of WordPress, especially the block editor, are tightly interconnected with dependencies managed via packages. Releasing isolated features independently requires architectural changes and automation. A move toward more frequent, smaller releases might help by shortening feedback loops, but it also introduces trade-offs around stability and maintenance.
Adoption and Quality
Jonathan analyzed adoption data and noted an accelerating trend: recent major versions reached significant install thresholds faster than earlier releases. For example, 6.9 hit 50% of WordPress installs in 10 days—faster than previous recent releases. This suggests increasing confidence in auto-updates and perceived quality, a positive signal for the project.
Community Health and Recovery
Both hosts observed the strain on the community since COVID. Meetups and WordCamps were disrupted, many volunteer leaders stepped away, and that interrupted the typical mentoring pipeline where newcomers learn under seasoned contributors and eventually step into leadership. The effect varies by region: APAC communities often feel strong and growing, whereas some areas like parts of the US and the UK struggle to fill meetups with speakers and attendees.
To rebuild and sustain community, WordPress is investing in education and mentorship: WP Campus Connect, the Credits program, contributor mentorship rounds, and other initiatives aim to bring in younger contributors and provide structured pathways from first-time participants to maintainers and release squad members. Jonathan emphasizes it’s not enough to recruit people; the project must activate and support them with clear, achievable tasks and guidance so their contributions lead to tangible results.
Engaging Younger Generations
Attracting younger contributors means meeting them where they are and offering value: career paths, practical skills, and empowerment to build. Younger people have different expectations for how they consume information and engage; events and Meetups may need to evolve in format and content to be relevant and compelling. Educational programs targeting students and early-career developers can feed into local communities, but those programs must be coupled with mentorship and concrete opportunities to continue contributing.
AI, Open Source, and Empowerment
Jonathan sees AI as a significant enabler—an opportunity to empower people to build and learn faster. AI can summarize complex documentation, tailor explanations to a learner’s style, and lower the barrier to trying new things. This could encourage more people to use WordPress in innovative ways, or to build their own solutions without needing as much upfront expertise.
At the same time, AI raises the perennial tension between closed platforms and open-source models. Recent moves by closed social platforms show the fragility of depending solely on walled gardens—embeds, APIs, and data access can change. In response, there’s renewed interest in owning personal content (blogs, RSS, Fediverse), and AI may accelerate individuals’ willingness to create and operate their own sites and services, which benefits platforms like WordPress.
Practical Ways to Recruit and Retain Contributors
Jonathan highlights lower-friction release tasks as great entry points: shipping a release candidate zip for people to test, collecting structured feedback (PHP versions, installation methods, steps to reproduce), and ensuring contributor days leave a lasting result—patches committed, tests written, or documentation improved. In-person events are opportunities to pilot improved onboarding and activation workflows; fresh participants bring fresh perspectives that can reveal broken processes and suggest improvements.
Outlook
Both hosts are cautiously optimistic. They see renewed building energy, faster adoption of releases, and new tools (notably AI) that make contribution and site development more approachable. Rebuilding community pipelines and making events and releases engaging will be ongoing work. Education, mentorship, clearer contributor pathways, and creative release moments tied to community gatherings are among the strategies to sustain WordPress into the next decade.
Where to find Jonathan
Jonathan can be found at jonathandesrosiers.com, as desrosej across many platforms, and in the wordpress.org Slack.
