New features, a big event, and important announcements marked December as a milestone month for the WordPress community.

Release of WordPress 5.0

On December 6 WordPress 5.0 was released. This release includes the much anticipated new block editor as the default editing experience. While some users have chosen to continue using the Classic Editor on their sites, many site owners have quickly upgraded to this latest version.

Two security and maintenance releases came out over the course of the month, with the latest update providing a huge boost to performance and stability.

The new version of WordPress comes a new default theme: Twenty Nineteen. This theme is designed to highlight how the block editor can be used.

Want to get involved in developing WordPress Core? Follow the Core team blog and join the #core channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.

Gutenberg Phase 2

The next phase of Gutenberg is being decided, starting with widgets, which will make it easier for users to customize their sites. This will be done with features being added to the Gutenberg plugin.

Want to get involved in develop the future of the WordPress dashboard? Follow the Core team blog and join the #core channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.

9 Projects for 2019

WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg outlined 9 projects for the year 2019. These projects range from creating a block for navigations menus, porting all existing widgets into blocks, forming a triage team to tackle open issues on Trac and more.

A status update for porting existing widgets to blocks has been posted by Mel Choyce.

WordCamp US 2019 Dates announced

WordCamp US 2019 will be held during Nov. 1-3, 2019, in St Louis, Missouri. It will be one of our largest events of the year and will feature Matt Mullenweg’s annual State of the Word address.

Further Reading:

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