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The Month in WordPress: May 2018

Posted June 1, 2018 by Hugh Lashbrooke. Filed under Month in WordPress.

This month saw two significant milestones in the WordPress community — the 15th anniversary of the project, and GDPR-related privacy tools coming to WordPress Core. Read on to find out more about this and everything else that happened in the WordPress community in May.


Local Communities Celebrate the 15th Anniversary of WordPress

Last Sunday, May 27, WordPress turned 15 years old. This is a noteworthy occasion for an open-source project like WordPress and one well worth celebrating. To mark the occasion, WordPress communities across the world gathered for parties and meetups in honor of the milestone.

Altogether, there were 224 events globally, with a few more of those still scheduled to take place in some communities — attend one in your area if you can.

If your city doesn’t have a WordPress meetup group, this is a great opportunity to start one! Learn how with the Meetup Organizer Handbook, and join the #community-events channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.

Privacy Tools added to WordPress core

In light of recent changes to data privacy regulations in the EU, WordPress Core shipped important updates in the v4.9.6 release, giving site owners tools to help them comply with the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It is worth noting, however, that WordPress cannot ensure you are compliant — this is still a site owner’s responsibility.

The new privacy tools include a number of features focused on providing privacy and personal data management to all site users — asking commenters for explicit consent to store their details in a cookie, providing site owners with an easy way to publish a Privacy Policy, and providing data export and erasure tools to all site users that can be extended by plugins to allow the handling of data that they introduce.

To find out more about these features and the other updates, read the 4.9.6 update guide. You can also get involved in contributing to this part of WordPress Core by jumping into the #core-privacy channel in the Making WordPress Slack group, and following the Core team blog.

Updates to the WordPress.org Privacy Policy

In a similar vein, WordPress.org itself has received an updated Privacy Policy to make clear what is being tracked and how your data is handled. Along with that, a Cookie Policy has also been added to explain just what is collected and stored in your browser when using the site.

These policies cover all sites on the WordPress.org network — including WordPress.org, WordPress.net, WordCamp.org, BuddyPress.org, bbPress.org, and other related domains and subdomains. It’s important to note that this does not mean that anything has changed in terms of data storage; rather that these documents clarify what data is stored and how it is handled.


Further Reading:

If you have a story we should consider including in the next “Month in WordPress” post, please submit it here.

See Also:

Want to follow the code? There’s a development P2 blog and you can track active development in the Trac timeline that often has 20–30 updates per day.

Want to find an event near you? Check out the WordCamp schedule and find your local Meetup group!

For more WordPress news, check out the WordPress Planet or subscribe to the WP Briefing podcast.

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