WordPress
Version 7.0 "Armstrong" shipped May 20, laying an AI foundation across the platform with a modernized admin dashboard and 24 accessibility fixes.1
Real-time collaboration was pulled before release. After beta and five release candidates, project lead Matt Mullenweg removed the feature from 7.0, citing race conditions, server load, memory efficiency, and bugs found through fuzz testing.2 Performance testing across eight hosting environments settled on custom-table-with-transients as the storage strategy for continued iteration toward a future release.3
Accessibility got practical wins. The media library now works with voice-control software, and image alt text imports automatically from IPTC photo metadata when present.4 Color-contrast fixes landed across the new admin color scheme, part of 24 accessibility enhancements in Core.
PHP 8.x support shed its "beta" label. The qualifier was retired and removed retroactively across all versions — 7.0 and 6.9 now fully support PHP 8.5, and 6.8 and later fully support PHP 8.4.5
The Block Editor expanded image editing and design tooling. A Media Editor Modal experiment — freeform and aspect-ratio cropping, flip, rotation, and metadata editing — is open for testing, replacing the third-party crop library.6 Gutenberg 23.2 added responsive global block styles with states (experimental), a SelectControl in @wordpress/ui, and modals that render as bottom sheets on mobile; earlier 23.x releases added a revisions panel for templates and patterns and Custom Taxonomies management.78
A Presence API feature plugin entered experiments, adding a system-wide awareness layer that shows who is logged in, which admin screens they are on, and which posts they are editing.9 WordPress 7.1 development opened the same day 7.0 shipped.10