Automattic, the creator of WordPress, announced on Monday the relaunch of the hosted version of its content manager that features some major changes.
In a blog post, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg detailed the new changes, revealing that the company is now open-sourcing WordPress.com.
"A lot of people thought we should keep this proprietary, but throughout my life I've learned that the more you give away, the more you get back. We still have a ton to figure out around plugins, extensibility, contributions, Windows and Linux releases, API speed, localization, and harmonizing the WordPress.com API and WP-API so it can work with core WordPress," Mullenweg writes. "Thousands more PHP developers will need to become fluent with JavaScript to recreate their admin interfaces in this fashion. I'm also really excited to revisit and redesign many more screens now that we have this first version out the door."
Wanting to start from scratch, Mullenweg announced that the project, codenamed Calypso, has been in development for the past 20 months.
Completely open-sourcing the code and API endpoints to all developers, WordPress.com has ditched PHP and is now written in JavaScript, using libraries like Node and React.
Because the platform is now open-source, uses can make their own custom interfaces and manage plugins and themes on Jetpack sites, which allows more advanced users to manage hundreds of Wordpress pages from one location.
The relaunch provides faster performance when loading pages, as well as a simpler and more modern interface. There is now instant publishing with in-page preview for desktop, tablet and mobile, with the ability to preview image galleries before inserting. Also in the back-end side, Wordpress.com now features new "discover" and "recommended" sections.
Automattic has also announced the launch an official Mac app for WordPress.com, with Windows and Linux support coming soon.
Its relaunch will provide a more enhanced experience for users. WordPress.com is currently used by 25 percent of the Web.
Source: Automattic
