Since WordPress 3.5, we’ve had a rotating release leadRelease Lead The community member ultimately responsible for the Release.. Because of the ever-present demands of the current release’s development cycle, we’ve found it tough to make these appointments well in advance. We’ve always wanted to give leads opportunity to prepare, so they can hit the ground running. (Long term, we’d love for release development to overlap pretty significantly, aided primarily by feature pluginFeature Plugin A plugin that was created with the intention of eventually being proposed for inclusion in WordPress Core. See Features as Plugins. development, but also by branching.)

A release lead determines all important parameters for a release, like schedule, deadlines, which feature plugins are merged; and more generally, scope, goals, vision, and process. They take point when it comes to holding meetings, shepherding contributions, and writing announcement posts and updates. A release lead is a connector and facilitator, identifying bottlenecks and friction wherever they may be. They’re in frequent communication with the developers and pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party teams that are aiming to have something in a given release. The release lead follows what’s being committed, and sets the tone for prioritizing and gardening tickets. Given the constraint of time in hitting deadlines, help with prioritization and ensuring good communication lines are two of the most valuable things a lead can contribute.

Today, I’m excited to announce release leads for both WordPress 4.3 and 4.4.

Konstantin Obenland will lead WordPress 4.3, currently planned for August. Many of you may know @obenland (twitter) from his early work on default themes, but his contributions span across WordPress coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.. More recently, he shipped the new WordPress.org theme directory. Obenland is a native of Germany and lives in southern California. He’s a code wrangler at Automattic, which donates all of his time to WordPress core and WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/.

Scott Taylor will lead WordPress 4.4, due at the end of the year. A committercommitter A developer with commit access. WordPress has five lead developers and four permanent core developers with commit access. Additionally, the project usually has a few guest or component committers - a developer receiving commit access, generally for a single release cycle (sometimes renewed) and/or for a specific component. since 3.7, @wonderboymusic (twitter) has been plowing through major changes to media and pretty much everything else he can get his hands on. Scott is a Tennessee native and lives in New York City. He’s a senior software engineer on the interactive news team at The New York Times.

You’ll hear from both of them in the coming days and weeks as they start to plan out their releases, including potential features, deputies, and strategies. Congratulations 🎉 and best of luck to both!

Not an April Fools’ joke.