I saw a post from my friend Matt Mullenweg where he said they're working on WordPress for the next generation. I like that idea.

I'm doing the same, myself — only I'm one generation ahead of Matt. So the improvements I'm working on will likely end up benefiting people his age and younger (he's 41) more than people of mine (I'm a boomer).

I want to leave them the web we had in the 90s and 00s, but doing a lot of the new things we've learned how to do since, without the silos.

Everything built on the web, everything replaceable, choice for users. And all the writing features of the web show through.

When this done, the writer's web will be as open as podcasting, something I had a hand in developing. Any time you want to switch platforms, you can, and lose absolutely nothing.

It's not decentralized, it's uncentralized. Important distinction.

The storage system for writing, by default, is WordPress, thanks to their fantastic wpcom API, which very few people know about apparently. They opened this door in 2017, I didn't discover it until 2023. My chin dropped. All of a sudden storage for writers was openly available through a simple API.

WordPress is of the web. You're not locked into hosting with any specific company, and you can run your own, and it's a lot easier to install and uses less resources than Mastodon, which right now is the only social networking software you can install on your own server. We can do a lot better.

So this would be my "State of the Word" from the point of view of the web. Let me know what you think!

Taking care of WordPress for the next generation.

This appeared in a tweet this morning.