Each year, members of the WordPress community (users, site builders, extenders, and contributors) provide their valuable feedback through an annual survey. Key takeaways and trends that emerge from this survey often find their way into the annual State of the Word address, are shared in the public project blogs, and can influence the direction and strategy for the WordPress Project.

Simply put: this survey helps those who build WordPress understand more about how the software is used, and by whom. The survey also helps leaders in the WordPress open source project learn more about our contributors’ experiences.  

To ensure that your WordPress experience is represented in the 2021 survey results, take the 2021 annual survey now.

You may also take the survey in French, German, Japanese, Russian, or Spanish. These are the top five languages (other than English) based on the number of WordPress locale downloads. For 2022, additional languages may be considered for translation.

The survey will be open through the end of 2021, and the results will be published in a future post on this blog for anyone to view. Next year, there will be a new format for this survey, including which segments and questions are included, so that your valuable time spent responding results in equally valuable information.

2020 Survey Results

For the 2020 survey, more than 17,000 responses were collected, representing the highest submission volume in four years, up three times from the prior year. In the inaugural year of the survey (2015), over 50,000 responses were collected. Given the reach and adoption of WordPress, there is a significant number we have not reached. As you take the 2021 survey, consider sharing the link on social media and with other colleagues who use WordPress. Gathering feedback from more folks who benefit from WordPress will strengthen our project.

The 2020 survey results show that the pandemic has had a major impact on how we operate as a community. With few in-person events, many community members continue to find it challenging to balance community contributions with their own personal and professional obligations. 

Footnotes:

Data security and privacy are paramount to the WordPress project and community. With this in mind, all data will be anonymized: no email addresses nor IP addresses will be associated with published results. To learn more about WordPress.org’s privacy practices, view the privacy policy.

Like last year, the 2021 survey will be promoted via a banner on WordPress.org, and throughout the make blogs. However, taking a moment to amplify these posts through your own social media and Slack accounts will ensure broader participation. Each of the translated surveys will be promoted through banners on their associated localized-language WordPress.org sites.

Thanks to @dansoschin for the initial draft of this post, and to @annezazu & @zackkrida for review!

WordPress 5.8.2 is now available!

This security and maintenance release features 2 bug fixes in addition to 1 security fix. Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately. All versions since WordPress 5.2 have also been updated.

WordPress 5.8.2 is a small focus security and maintenance release. The next major release will be version 5.9.

You can download WordPress 5.8.2 by downloading from WordPress.org, or visit your Dashboard → Updates and click Update Now. If you have sites that support automatic background updates, they’ve already started the update process.

For more information, browse the full list of changes on Trac, or check out the version 5.8.2 HelpHub documentation page.

Thanks and props!

The 5.8.2 release was led by Jonathan Desrosiers and Evan Mullins.

In addition to the release squad members mentioned above, thank you to everyone who helped make WordPress 5.8.2 happen:

Props @circlecube and @pbiron for peer review.