WordCamp Asia: No 5-Year Plan for WordPress

At the WordCamp Asia 2025 Q&A session, Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress, was asked about the platform’s direction over the next five years. However, he struggled to provide a clear answer, appearing unprepared for the question.

In an attempt to offer some insight, Mullenweg turned to the Lead Architect of Gutenberg, hoping for a more concrete response. Surprisingly, they too were unable to outline a definitive vision for the platform’s future.

The exchange left many attendees puzzled, as WordPress has long been considered a dominant force in website creation and content management. Without a clear roadmap, concerns have been raised about whether the platform is adapting effectively to emerging trends and technologies.

This moment of uncertainty has sparked discussions within the WordPress community, with some wondering whether the platform’s leadership has a strategic plan in place to maintain its relevance in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

 

Project Gutenberg

Gutenberg is a redesigned approach to website building in WordPress, aiming to make the process easier for users without coding knowledge. It provides a visual interface with blocks that represent different sections of a web page, simplifying content creation. Launched in 2017, Gutenberg was planned as a four-phase project and is currently in its third phase.

The four development phases are:

• Phase 1: Easier Editing
• Phase 2: Customisation
• Phase 3: Collaborative Editing
• Phase 4: Multilingual Support

Despite its widespread adoption, with 85.9 million installations, Gutenberg has faced mixed reactions. Many in the WordPress developer community, as well as everyday users, have expressed reservations about its usability and effectiveness.

At the recent WordCamp Asia event, a developer raised concerns with Matt Mullenweg during the Q&A session, highlighting the hesitation she encountered when recommending WordPress. She also voiced frustration over the platform’s learning curve, suggesting that its usability issues may be discouraging potential users.

 

During the Q&A session, one attendee shared her struggles with WordPress, highlighting how overwhelming it can be for beginners. She explained that when she first started learning, she had to be highly motivated just to grasp the basics of the block editor.

She asked for advice, saying:

“Some of those hesitations were that it’s easy to get overwhelmed. You know, when you look up how to learn WordPress, and I had to be really motivated… for myself to actually study it and kind of learn the basics of blocks… So do you have any advice on how I could convince my friends to start a WordPress site or how to address these challenges myself? You know, like getting overwhelmed and feeling like there’s just so much. I’m not a coder and things like that… any advice you can offer small business owners?”

Her question pointed to a fundamental issue: the Gutenberg block editor was designed to simplify WordPress for non-coders, yet users still found it difficult to navigate. The fact that she was asking how to persuade others to use WordPress unintentionally reflected the ongoing challenges and mixed reception of the Gutenberg project.

 

Where Will WordPress Be In Five Years?

During the Q&A session, another awkward moment arose when someone asked Matt Mullenweg about the future of WordPress over the next five years. The question appeared to catch him off guard, as he struggled to provide a clear vision for the world’s leading content management system.

At the time, Mullenweg had been discussing the growing role of AI in WordPress, particularly its integration into the commercial version on WordPress.com. Sensing the conversation was heavily focused on AI, the questioner asked if he had any other ideas about how WordPress might evolve.

The question was:

“If you have other ideas beyond AI or even how we consume WordPress five years from now that might be different from today?”

Mullenweg responded hesitantly:

“Yeah, it’s hard to think about anything except AI right now. And as I said a few years ago, before ChatGPT came out, learn AI deeply. Everyone in the room should be playing with it. Try out different models. Check out Grok, check out DeepSeek, two of the coolest ones that just launched.”

Then, he attempted to address the original question, mentioning that WordPress would likely be past all phases of the Gutenberg project by then but seemed unsure of what would follow.

“I think… I don’t know…” he admitted, before turning to Matías Ventura, Lead Architect of Gutenberg, to see if he had any insights.

Mullenweg asked:

“Matías, what do you think? What’s post-Gutenberg? We’ve been working for so long, it’s…”

Ventura stepped up to the microphone and, rather than providing a concrete answer, added to the uncertainty.

“I mean, hopefully we’ll be done by then so…” he said, referencing the ongoing development of Gutenberg.

Mullenweg then commented on the slow progress of long-term projects:

“Sometimes that last 10% takes, you know, 90% of the time.”

Ventura jokingly added that it could take a hundred years before he continued his response. Rather than offering a definitive roadmap, his answer suggested that WordPress would simply adapt as new technologies emerged.

“I don’t know, I think, well in the talk I gave I… also reflected a bit that part of the thing is just discovering as we go, like figuring out how like, right now it’s AI that’s shaping reality but who knows, in a few decades what it would be. And to me, the only conviction is that yeah, we’ll need to adapt, we’ll need to change. And that’s part of the fun of it, I think. So I’m looking forward to whatever comes.”

This exchange highlighted an apparent lack of a defined long-term strategy for WordPress. While AI was a major focus, there was no clear vision for where WordPress would be in five years, leaving many to wonder about the platform’s future direction.

 

Mullenweg jumped in at this point with his thoughts:

“That’s a good point of the, you know, how many releases we have of WordPress right now, 60 or whatever… 70 probably…. Outside of Gutenberg, we haven’t had a roadmap that goes six months or a year, or a couple versions, because the world changes in ways you can’t predict.

But being responsive is, I think, really is how organisms survive.

You know, Darwin, said it’s not the fittest of the species that survives. It’s the one that’s most adaptable to change. I think that’s true for software as well.”

 

Mullenweg Challenged To Adapt To Change

During the Q&A session, another tense moment unfolded when Taco Verdonschot, co-owner of Progress Planner, raised a pointed question about WordPress’s commitment to adaptability.

Verdonschot, formerly of Yoast SEO and now sponsored by Emilia Capital to work on WordPress, referenced Mullenweg’s earlier comments about the importance of being open to change. However, he questioned whether WordPress was truly living up to that principle, particularly in light of recent controversies.

Stepping up to the microphone, Verdonschot asked:

“I’m Taco, co-owner of Progress Planner. I was wondering, you were talking about adaptability before and survival of the fittest. That means being open to change. What we’ve seen in the last couple of months is that people who were talking about change got banned from the project. How open are you to discussing change in the project?”

His question directly addressed concerns within the WordPress community about how dissenting opinions and discussions around change were being handled. It implied that those advocating for change had been removed from the project, raising questions about whether WordPress was genuinely fostering open discussion.

Mullenweg responded carefully, avoiding specifics:

“Sure. I don’t want to go too far into this but I will say that talking about change will not get you banned. There’s other behaviors… but just talking about change is something that we do pretty much every day. And we’ve changed a lot over the years. We’ve changed a lot in the past year. So yeah. But I don’t want to speak to anyone personally, you know. So keep it positive.”

His response suggested that there were additional reasons behind the removals, though he did not elaborate on what those reasons were. Instead, he maintained that WordPress remains open to discussions about change, despite the concerns raised.

This exchange highlighted an ongoing tension within the WordPress community. While leadership insists that discussions about change are welcomed, some contributors feel that expressing differing views may come at a cost. The moment left lingering questions about how open WordPress truly is to differing perspectives and what this means for its future development.