WordPress Birthday, Elementor Milestone, Template Kits, PHP and WP Version Checks

June 2020 was a month of reflection and forward momentum for the WordPress community. The open-source platform celebrated its 17th anniversary, a testament to its journey from a simple blogging tool to powering over 39% of the web. Concurrently, the popular page builder plugin Elementor announced it had surpassed 5 million active installations, underscoring the massive demand for visual, no-code design within the ecosystem.

Beneath the celebrations, developers were busy adapting to significant technical shifts. A major focus was the ongoing push for PHP version upgrades, with WordPress core strongly recommending PHP 7.4 for improved security and performance. Additionally, the integration of the block editor (Gutenberg) into core continued to reshape plugin and theme development. This period also saw the rise of “template kits” – comprehensive, ready-to-import collections of templates built for page builders like Elementor. These kits democratized sophisticated web design, enabling users to launch polished, functional sites in hours rather than weeks. The news from June 2020 collectively highlighted a mature platform at an inflection point, balancing its legacy with a progressive drive towards modern development practices and user-centric design tools.