WordPress News Roundup January 2020: XML Sitemaps and Lazy Loading Head for Core as WordPress 5.4 Takes Shape

January 2020 had no WordPress release, but it set much of the year’s agenda. Contributors published an XML sitemaps feature plugin, proposed native lazy loading for images, and kicked off planning for WordPress 5.4. In the Gutenberg plugin, the long-requested Buttons block arrived, and themes began to be discussed in terms of blocks rather than templates.

Outside core, the community celebrated recognition for two of its leaders, counted down to the first WordCamp Asia, and dealt with an authentication bypass in a widely used site management plugin.

Mergers, Acquisitions, and Investments

No major acquisitions or funding rounds were announced in January. The month’s money stories ran the other way: the Pods framework lost its primary sponsor and appealed for donors to keep development going, while GiveWP reported that its users had raised more than $100 million in donations during 2019.

WordPress Core Updates

• WordPress 5.4 planning: The core team published a 5.4 planning roundup on January 14, with beta scheduled for February and release targeted for the end of March.
• XML sitemaps feature plugin: First proposed in June 2019, core sitemaps became a working feature plugin on January 27, available as Core Sitemaps for testing.
• Lazy loading proposal: On January 29, contributors proposed adding native lazy loading for images to core using the browser’s loading attribute.
• Gutenberg 7.2 (January 8): The first release of 2020 included more than 180 pull requests from over 56 contributors and introduced the multi-button Buttons block and an image size option for galleries.
• Gutenberg 7.3 (January 22): Added colours for the Navigation block, a block collections API and dynamic post blocks.
• Controlling the editor: A proposal set out a more consistent way for developers to control and restrict the block editor.
• Block-based themes meetings: The Theme Review Team announced biweekly meetings on block-based themes, starting February 5.

Other WordPress News

• CMX award: Josepha Haden and Andrea Middleton were nominated for CMX awards, and Andrea won Executive Leader of a Community Team.
• WordCamp Asia countdown: The first WordCamp Asia, set for Bangkok in February, was expected to draw around 1,500 attendees, making it the largest WordPress event in the region.
• New contributor FAQ: The core team published an FAQ for new contributors.
• GoDaddy’s Go theme: GoDaddy released Go, a free theme offering a page-building experience through the block editor.
• Do the Woo: BobWP.com rebranded as Do the Woo to focus on the WooCommerce community.
• WordCamp Houston returns: Houston announced its first WordCamp in a decade.
• Autoshare for Twitter: 10up released a plugin to automatically share posts to Twitter.
• Design updates: The design team shared regular progress reports on Gutenberg phase 2.
• People of WordPress: The series profiled Robert Cheleuka from Malawi.

Security Alerts and Plugin Vulnerabilities

• InfiniteWP Client: On January 14, Wordfence reported a critical authentication bypass in the InfiniteWP Client plugin, used to manage many sites from one dashboard. An attacker who knew an administrator’s username could log in without a password. A similar issue was disclosed in WP Time Capsule the same week.
• WP Database Reset: Easily exploitable flaws patched in WP Database Reset could let unauthenticated attackers reset tables or escalate privileges, Wordfence said on January 16.
• Code Snippets: On January 28, a high-severity cross-site request forgery flaw that could lead to remote code execution was patched in the Code Snippets plugin.
• Minimal Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode: Multiple vulnerabilities were patched in this plugin early in the month.

Industry Trends and Insights

• Core takes on SEO and performance basics: Sitemaps and lazy loading were features many sites had relied on plugins for. Bringing them into core promised better defaults for millions of sites.
• The browser landscape shifts: Microsoft released its new Chromium-based Edge on January 15, further consolidating the web around Chromium and making native lazy loading more widely supported.
• Search volatility: Google rolled out its January 2020 core update, a reminder for publishers that technical SEO and content quality both mattered.
• Themes go block-first: Products like Go and Blocksy showed theme makers building around the block editor rather than page builders.
• Cookie changes coming: Chrome 80, due in early February, was set to begin treating cookies without a SameSite attribute as first-party only by default, a change that developers of login, payment and embed integrations needed to test against.
• Funding open source: The Pods sponsorship news reopened a familiar question about how widely used free plugins can be sustained when a single backer steps away.

Theme of the Month: Go

GoDaddy’s Go theme, released on WordPress.org in January, used block styles and design presets to let users build polished pages entirely in the block editor. Coming from one of the largest hosts, it was a strong vote of confidence in blocks as a site-building tool.

Plugin of the Month: Core Sitemaps

The Core Sitemaps feature plugin gave site owners a preview of XML sitemaps built into WordPress, with an extensible API for plugins. It was a good example of the feature plugin process at work, letting the community test a core feature months before it shipped.

Host of the Month: Pressable

Pressable, the managed WordPress host owned by Automattic, offered plans with Jetpack Premium features included. For agencies already using Jetpack across client sites, the combination simplified security, backups and performance tooling.

Founder of the Month: Matt Cromwell

Matt Cromwell co-founded GiveWP, the donation plugin that nonprofits use to accept gifts on WordPress. In January, GiveWP reported that its users had raised more than $100 million in 2019, a striking measure of how much good work runs on WordPress.

Looking Ahead to February 2020

February should bring the first WordPress 5.4 betas, ahead of a release targeted for March 31. WordCamp Asia is scheduled for February 21–23 in Bangkok, though growing concern about the coronavirus outbreak is being watched closely by organisers. The first block-based themes meeting takes place on February 5.