Currently, WordPress is the leading CMS on the market and it has been influenced by the development community’s needs and expectations from time to time.
Since more than 40% of all the existing websites on the internet today rely on WordPress, it becomes important for developers, entrepreneurs and writers to keep up with the latest trend in wordpress development.
Looking forward to the future, concerning 2024, several tendencies could be distinguished that will define WordPress advancement.
Table of Contents
6 Future Trends of WordPress Development
This blog by CustomWP will give those who dare to think about what lies ahead a chance to know what to expect and how they should prepare for that change.
#1. The Rise of Full Site Editing (FSE)
Full Site Editing or FSE is one of the most notable shifts in WordPress development in the last couple of years. Introduced with WordPress 5. 8 and evolved over the releases, FSE empower the users to craft and style every part of the site utilizing blocks. The Future of FSE will further entwine seamlessly with WordPress in 2024 and revolutionize the way of creating and using themes.
Key Aspects of FSE in 2024:
Block Themes Dominance: Slowly traditional themes are fading away and new block themes are introduced where a user has much more control. We expect that developers will have to pay special attention to design of block-based themes to which it will be easy to apply changes with the help of FSE.
Customization and User Experience: It’s a tool that even for users with little coding skills allow them to develop complex design strategies. The democratization of design will further progress and introduce more features and more context-aware interfaces to that end.
Third-Party Block Libraries: Indeed, with growth of FSE, number of third-party blocks will increase as well. WordPress users will continue to look toward the delivered block of libraries so as to improve the utility and design of a WordPress site embraced by application developers.
#2. Headless WordPress and Decoupled Architectures
WordPress has been trending in the development community for a couple of years and the Headless WordPress trend is also expected to rise further in 2024. Headless WordPress enables the changing of WordPress to be a content management system and delivers content through another frontend, like frontend frameworks like React or Vue. js, or Angular.
Advantages of Headless WordPress:
Performance Optimization: This type of architecture can be beneficial as it provides increasing loading speed and performance since the frontend is free from being bound to WordPress PHP.
Enhanced Security: From this point, headless WordPress enhances the probability of avoiding security flaws by decoupling the back-end from the front-end.
Flexibility in Frontend Design: A web developer is able to design attractive and more engaging user interfaces and experiences with present day JavaScript frameworks and toolkits without being tied down by the conventional themes and templates provided by WordPress.
By the year 2024, wither advancement in the headless WordPress platforms would see more tools and plugins that would help developers to easily configure and manage headless WordPress sites easier.
WordPress development is also not an exception of embracing AI and ML to transform several sectors. It is therefore expected that in 2024 there will be more deploys of AI and ML in WordPress with the aim of improving users’ experiences, streamlining various tasks and also in aiding the creation of content.
#3. AI and Machine Learning Integration
AI & ML integration is into many industries and WordPress development is not an exception of any of such industries. In the year 2024, there will be the advancement of AI & ML in the WordPress that can improve user expressed experience, intelligent & autonomous tasks, and content generation.
Content Creation and Optimization: The plugins can help in producing content, analysing SEO aspects, and even propose alterations for a better experience based on the information gathered.
Personalization: People prefer using site that meet their needs through understanding their behavior through AI and offering them related content, products, and even pathways to other pages.
Chatbots and Customer Support: WP chatbots powered by artificial intelligence can offer round the clock customer support, clients’ inquiries regarding the site, and general questions.
Considering that AI capabilities are constantly evolving, it becomes clear that they will be able to play a more important part in further WordPress development and enhancing users’ experience of their sites and how they are maintained.
#4. The Growth of E-commerce on WordPress
This is especially true when it comes to e-commerce, which remains one of the driving forces in the world of the web, and WordPress is well-placed in this realm, thanks to WooCommerce.
According to the analysis of the development of e-commerce based on WordPress indicated that will continue to grow in 2024 Because the trend in the increasing delivery of online shopping and the technological development of digital payment solutions in WP.
Trends in E-commerce Development:
Mobile-First Design: Continuing the growth of consumer mobile device usage, mobile first design will become paramount for WordPress based e-commerce stores. This is why it is expected that there will be an increase in the number of themes and plugins that are suitable for m-Commerce.
Subscription-Based Models: The subscription model is rapidly gaining popularity, and the requirement for WordPress developer to create and optimize the subscription eBusiness sites will grow significantly.
Integration with AI: The impact of AI in e-commerce will be notable through customised shopping experience, optimum pricing and efficient customer support through chatbots.
This way, WordPress developers will have to shift their methods focusing on the development of integrous and user-friendly international e-commerce platforms.
#5. Sustainability and Green Hosting
As utilizing the Earth’s resources is exacerbated with the onset of Climate Change, the topic of sustainability in the development of websites is emerging. By 2024, the interest in the availability of green hosting solutions and promotion of sustainable development initiatives will still be trending.
Sustainability Trends in WordPress Development:Sustainability Trends in WordPress Development:
Green Hosting Providers: There will be an increase in the number of wordpress sites hosted by green hosting providers who conduct their servers from renewable electricity.
Efficient Coding Practices: This will force developers to embrace coding that would lead to low energy consumption including the proper sizing of images, using efficient algorithms and avoid including non-essential features.
Sustainable Design: Better and more sustainable design and architecture will appear as themes and plugins which limit number of heavy animations and scripts usage will become more popular.
By following the trends that encourage developers working in the WordPress environment to implement the principles of sustainability, they can positively affect the reduction of the web’s negative impact on the environment, which corresponds to the increased attention to socially oriented business activity.
#6. Enhanced Security Measures
Since WordPress is a platform for web applications, the priority in its development will remain security as web applications become more complex and cyber threats do not disappear. WordPress as a core platform is pretty secure but just like any other CMS platform, the issues come with the plugins, themes and laxity in security measures.
Security Trends to Watch:
Zero-Trust Security Models: More and more WordPress site management will apply the zero-trust security paradigms where no entity is trusted by design.
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Over the years, cyber threats constantly change and as a result there will be a high uptake of WordPress sites users using MFA to enhance the level of security for users and admins.
Regular Security Audits: There will be enhanced frequent security scan among developers and site owners to recognize the gaps which a hacker may seize or manipulate.
In this way, WordPress developers can prevent their sites as well as their users’ information from these new security threats and stay ahead of them.
Conclusion
Full site editing, headless WordPress, artificial intelligence, e-commerce, sustainability, and security of WordPress will shape the future of WordPress, which is predictable to stand out in the next seven years (wp2024).
In this regard, developers will always have to keep abreast of these trends and ensure that they adapt themselves to them in order to succeed. With these changes on board, the developers will be in a position to develop enhanced, more flexible, and more user-oriented WordPress sites that can suit the current web standards.
As you continue to work with WordPress development or whether you are just getting started, the trends analysed in this blog will guide you on where the future of WordPress development is heading and how to ensure your projects are at the edge of technological advancement.
