Wagtail evolves quite a bit from release to release; here are options for users and contributors to keep up

With a new release every three months, Wagtail ships new features quite fast compared to other open source projects and content management systems out there. This has a lot of benefits for the health of the project but does mean it can be hard for users and contributors alike to keep up with all of the updates.

Years ahead: big-picture roadmap

For those who want to be aware of what’s coming up months or even years ahead, we offer:

• Our Wagtail project roadmap. Introduced a year ago, it covers big product changes coming up in future releases, and what we want to see happen longer-term.
• A Wagtail vision. We last drafted it for 2023, and it’s due for an update with the current technology landscape. Our current vision focuses on accessibility and sustainability. We also want to introduce AI-powered features as and when it can go beyond the hype.

From release to release, we’re also working hard on making Wagtail more usable by a wider audience. We went through recent updates in How and why the Wagtail page editor is evolving.

🤫 for those who want a historical perspective – you can also see all past release highlights in GitHub.

6-month horizon: upcoming releases

As part of upcoming and recent releases, we’ll spend more time unpacking relevant changes. We offer:

• What’s new in Wagtail webinars. Running 2-4 times per year, with an assortment of early concepts for future releases, and what has just recently been shipped.
• Release candidate versions. Generally shared on social media and contributor channels, 2 to 3 weeks ahead of a new release, for feedback by the community.

Our This week in Wagtail newsletter is a great way to be aware of those events as they come up. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel to be notified of any new recordings, or follow Wagtail on LinkedIn for announcements.

🤫 for people who want a heads’up on release dates – check out our release schedule, with all upcoming and past dates.

Keeping up with contributor discussions

For contributors to Wagtail – all of our tickets and project-specific backlogs are also publicly accessible. Specific contributor groups maintain their own curated backlog. For example, for user interface changes:

• Our UX contributors maintain the Wagtail Design Backlog, with a focus on UI improvements in Wagtail.
• Our accessibility team maintains WCAG 2.2 & ATAG 2.0 CMS admin, an overview of all known accessibility tickets in the CMS.
• The release team uses a separate project board for the next Wagtail release. For example, see Wagtail 6.0 release planning.
• Our contributors also publish Wagtail RFCs for larger changes requiring further technical evaluation.

All of the above curated backlogs pull from the same source of information in our issue tracker. All tickets will display which of those “Projects” it’s tracked in, so it’s clear whether a given change is currently being worked on, by whom, within what timeframe.

For even more detailed information, the Wagtail Slack workspace is where contributors discuss their current work.

An example: dashboard enhancements

As a practical example of an upcoming change, we recently shared our thinking on improving the Wagtail dashboard. We’re actively looking for feedback and contributions of all forms, to shape how this key interface could better serve the needs of CMS users.

A possible concept is showcasing page performance data on the dashboard – pictured above, showing accessibility checker results as part of our direction for automated accessibility checks in the CMS.

After a release

After a release, we publish more definitive information about any changes in more formats.

• For CMS users, we publish highlights on our editor guide website, guide.wagtail.org. Here’s an example: New in Wagtail 6.0.
• For developers, the release notes track all changes. For example, see the Wagtail 6.0 release notes.
• For everyone, we also publish our release announcement blog posts with more information about headline features. For example, Find what you need faster in Wagtail 6.0.

Here as well, the Wagtail newsletter and social media are good ways to keep tabs on the publication of blog posts and webinars.

Ways to contribute

As an open source project, we welcome all contributors and all kinds of contributions. Being transparent about what is coming up ahead is a big part of enabling this collaboration. For open source contributors, we provide an extensive contribution guide.

For organisations who want to support our work but don’t have the capacity to join an open source project, here are recommended ways to help:

Report issues, possible improvements, or provide feedback. This can be on the issue tracker, via the Wagtail Slack, or more directly to existing contributors.

Provide feedback when invited. We will occasionally reach out for input on specific topics, for example our direction with universal listings.

Feature sponsorship. A lot of Wagtail’s UI changes over the years have been funded by organisations that use the CMS

Participate in user research / usability testing. We will occasionally conduct more thorough user research for specific features in the CMS.