WordPress’s Troubled Real-Time Collaboration Feature

WordPress has hit a controversy with the highly anticipated release of version 7.0, which was set for release in April of this year and has now been pushed back due to issues with RTC. 

The cause for the delay has raised concerns regarding the reliability of the technology as well as launched a much larger discussion about the entire structure of WordPress and its proper functioning.

What Is Real-Time Collaboration?

The RTC falls under phase 3 of the Gutenberg Roadmap. This phase is focused primarily on collaborative edit and teamwork-based enhancements.

Both of these areas have become part of the evolution of how teams will be able to edit the same document at one time using a method similar to Google Docs.

The introduction of RTC will be a major change in how WordPress operates. Traditionally, one person was able to edit a document while the other contributors were unable to make changes.

However, with RTC, all changes will be immediately updated in real time so that a team can work together on documents simultaneously. Publishers, agencies, and large editorial staff that produce high quantities of content will find RTC particularly beneficial.

Why WordPress 7.0 Was Delayed

The delayed rollout of WordPress version 7.0 can be attributed primarily to problems with the stability of the real-time collaboration component.

This newly developed feature was still not functioning reliably enough for full-scale production by WordPress developers, thereby forcing them to delay the scheduled launch. 

The technical issues that needed to be resolved were related to the way in which collaboration data would be stored.

To begin with, WordPress had been trying to store all real-time collaboration data in existing database structures like post meta; however, this became cumbersome and unable to support the level of interaction that would be required if multiple individuals were collaborating on a single document.

Accordingly, the current plan is to create an entirely separate data table meant exclusively for the purpose of storing collaborative activity.

Although this method should improve performance and reliability, it will first need further development and verification/testing before it will be considered complete.

Testing Reveals Mixed Results

Nevertheless, preliminary investigation of RTC has demonstrated its potential and constraints. Enterprise users on WordPress VIP and other beta testers have been able to use the feature since the end of 2025. 

The feature worked well in controlled settings with the use of modern WordPress setups and also native blocks.

The team could collaboratively edit the content, add several blocks, and even test the system with simultaneous edits without significant problems.

These positive results however came at a certain condition. The system was most effective where the sites had been constructed with the contemporary developmental practices and compatible block construction structures. Performance problems and bugs in less optimized environments were more visible.

A recent GitHub issue has shown major constraints of the real-time collaboration feature of WordPress. Developers acknowledge that the existing version cannot cope with performance and scalability.

The number of collaborators at once is deliberately limited in order to avoid overloading the system, providing a bare but functional demonstration of the working process of collaborative editing.

Key Technical Limitations

Scalability is one of the biggest drawbacks of the existing implementation of RTC. The initial versions were forced to limit the number of users who could edit a document simultaneously to avoid overloading the system.

This shortcoming underscores the challenge of introducing real-time capabilities to a platform that serves millions of websites that have dissimilar hosting environments and settings.

The other problem is the compatibility with older WordPress. As an example, real-time collaboration cannot be integrated with traditional, so-called, meta boxes, which many plugins typically use.

In the case of their presence, the collaboration feature will not work properly or can be turned off altogether. This poses a risk to the developers who are dependent on the old systems because they might be required to upgrade or restructure their plugins to fit in the new architecture.

A Symptom of Deeper Problems?

This lateness has brought about a wider discussion in the WordPress community. Certain analysts feel that the real-time collaboration problems are indicative of structural issues that lie within WordPress as a core.

Joost de Valk, the founder of Yoast SEO, also stated that the necessity to rethink how data is stored to RTC is indicative of the constraints of the current WordPress architecture.

This view states that new features are becoming more and more constrained by older systems, compelling developers to either work around them or stall development completely.

Nonetheless, this opinion is not shared by all. Community conversations reveal that most developers feel that WordPress can be developed without necessarily having to rewrite its core.

Concerns for Hosting Providers

The other significant factor of the RTC feature is that it is likely to affect web hosting providers. The aspect of real time collaboration adds continual data updates and synchronization, which may impose further load to the servers, particularly those found in shared hosting.

The feature is still developing and it is not yet clear to what extent this impact will be. Hosting providers might have to change their infrastructure or provide specialized solutions that can help in real-time collaboration. 

Should Real-Time Collaboration Be in Core?

Matt Cromwell (LinkedIn profile) shared an opinion is real-time collaboration part of WordPress core at all? Critics suggest that functions that are not needed by most users can be implemented as a plugin and not as part of the platform.

Their thinking is that this method will make WordPress lean and efficient. Still some consider RTC to be an inevitable progression, which has resulted in WordPress keeping up to date with the latest content creation tools and enhanced team productivity. 

Matt Cromwell pointed to the main philosophy of WordPress, which is simplicity to a common user. Citing its design principle, he said that the focus of the platform is non-technical users who just want to have a comfortable writing experience, which further confirms that most development choices are made to make it easy to use and not difficult to write.

Although Matt Cromwell proposed limited mass adoption, collaboration tools are in demand. Atarim collaboration plugin, which has thousands of active installs, has been claimed to be used on more than 120,000 sites, and there is apparently high demand among agencies and freelancers to have built-in real-time collaboration functionality.

What Happens Next?

At their current pace, the developers of WordPress are concentrating primarily on improving the ability to collaborate with one another using the new collaboration feature — specifically its data storage structure and how well it will scale.

Once they resolve those issues, they’ll need to conduct further testing for the feature before it can be safely introduced to users.

The delay of WordPress version 7.0 is a careful approach to being more stable than introducing it quickly; while some users may be underwhelmed, it should lead to an even more dependable final product.

The roadmap created by WordPress back in 2018 did not predict the emergence of artificial intelligence as a big promise for version 7.0; however, real-time collaboration continues to be valuable to teams/freelancers/agencies that work together all over the world.

Because of how useful it would be to many users, there is a very good reason for real-time collaboration being released as a core feature of WordPress rather than as a plugin.