Since being released 7 years ago, Wagtail is all grown up and has matured quite well. But this year, there is a swelling of energy and initiatives surrounding Wagtail that will eclipse anything we have seen to date.

Here's an outlook of what's coming to Wagtail in 2022, and why it has me excited.

500 contributors strong

Coming into the new year, Wagtail surpassed over 500 individual contributors on GitHub! This goes to show the breadth and diversity of people and organizations who actively build Wagtail around the world.

WordPress migration toolkit

The WordPress-to-Wagtail migration toolkit has been released, and this is big news. Although it has not had much fanfare, this is a HUGE accomplishment that will make adopting Wagtail so much easier.

A new look for Wagtail

While development is still in progress, the Wagtail Admin is set to get a major visual overhaul. The new design is shaping up quite nicely and is really going to compete as one of the the most beautiful and streamlined CMS's out there.

Semantic versioning

A discussion that has come up many times within the Wagtail core team is better adherence to semantic versioning (X.Y.Z versioning scheme). While this may not seem like a big deal, it is actually a major win for the Wagtail ecosystem, as it will help foster compatibility among 3rd party packages and plugins.

Wagtail Space US is back!

Wagtail Space US is scheduled for March 24-26, 2022. In addition to streaming over Zoom, we have also planned an in-person event! It will be great to see everyone again after several years apart, and no doubt we will have lots of fun in Cleveland!

Whether virtual or in-person, we hope to see you at Wagtail Space 2022!

E-Commerce for Wagtail

Planning is still in the early stages, but CodeRed is looking to organize a development sprint to create an officially supported open-source e-commerce package for Wagtail. To accomplish this will involve collaboration from various commercial sponsors and Wagtail Core Team members. This is still in the ideation stage, but will hopefully come together if we can get enough collaborators on board.

If you're interested, check out the draft and get in touch.

Wagtail-specific hosting platforms

Hosting Django/Wagtail has always been a point of complexity compared to some of the other web technologies out there. I am pleased to see that Wagtail-specific hosting options and documentation has been growing. CodeRed now has a permanent free Wagtail hosting service and also offers mid-range and enterprise plans. This is a big accomplishment and something I am immensely proud of our small-but-mighty team for rolling out.

A Wagtail book!

I can't divulge too much, but was excited to learn that a well-known Wagtail professional and contributor has begun writing the first-ever book about Wagtail. Early talks with publishers are in progress. Official news should be coming soon — keep an eye on the Wagtail Slack and Wagtail Blog.

The dawn of the Wagtail ecosystem

The general theme of 2022 is that Wagtail is expanding beyond a CMS into a rich ecosystem of developers, packages, plugins, and integrations with other web technologies. This is the kind of energy that makes it fun coming to work each day on this amazing system with amazing collaborators.

On to the new year!