WordPress 6.9 RC Adds Saved Views for Custom Post Types
The release candidate lets editors store a filtered list of events, listings, or recipes and return to it. Agencies that live in CPTs will notice first.
August 21, 2026·Sam Calder
Archives: News
WordCamp Europe Opens Mentor Applications Early
Contributor Day wants names on the table cards before the flight deals vanish. The form is short. The commitment is a Saturday.
August 20, 2026·Sam Calder
Plugin Check CLI Lands Alongside Core Tooling
A command-line run of Plugin Check is no longer a gist you copy from Slack. Contributors can fail a zip before they open a ticket.
August 18, 2026·Sam Calder
Translation Plugins Ship Language Switcher Blocks
The switcher is no longer a widget that hopes a classic theme still exists. A few vendors built a block that survives a header template part.
August 17, 2026·Sam Calder
WordPress 6.9 Beta Puts Data Views in the Spotlight
The next major release spends its energy on listing screens, not another writing surface. We look at what actually changed for editors and site builders.
August 16, 2026·Sam Calder
WordPress Studio Adds Two-Way Sync for Local Sites
A long-requested workflow lands: pull a hosted site down, work locally, and push changes back without a third-party migration plugin. We look at what it solves — and the edge cases it still leaves open.
August 14, 2026·Sam Calder
Stop Measuring WordPress Health by Plugin Count
Opinion: a site with forty plugins is not ‘mature.’ It is a support contract wearing a dashboard.
August 13, 2026·Alex Harlan
Interactivity API Gets a Formal Versioning Policy
Store names, directive stability, and what you can break in a minor. The docs now say it in a voice that is not a hallway conversation.
August 12, 2026·Riley Cho
Theme Directory Requires a theme.json Spacing Scale
Unnamed pixel soup will bounce. Patterns that travel between themes need a shared idea of ‘large.’
August 10, 2026·Sam Calder
WordCamp Asia Announces a Larger Contributor Travel Fund
More tickets and travel support for first-time contributors. The application is short on purpose. The report-back is not optional.
August 9, 2026·Riley Cho
Preview WordPress Core Pull Requests Directly in Playground
Contributors can now boot a Pull Request in WordPress Playground from the GitHub UI. The loop from patch to clickable site just got shorter, which matters if you review with your eyes as much as your diffs.
August 8, 2026·Sam Calder
Contributor Mentorship Cohort Adds a Hosting Track
Not everyone wants to live in Gutenberg. A hosting-and-performance path joins the usual docs and core tables.
August 7, 2026·Riley Cho
Ecommerce Plugins Add Partial Refund Blocks
Store managers can refund a line without leaving the order screen for a gateway tab from 2018. The honest versions log it as a store note.
August 5, 2026·Riley Cho
Stop Shipping Settings Screens Nobody Asked For
Opinion: the WordPress admin does not need another tab. It needs fewer decisions on day one and a door to the rest.
August 4, 2026·Alex Harlan
Playground Blueprints Get a Public Directory
A catalog of one-click WordPress environments lands for contributors, educators, and plugin authors who are tired of README install novels.
August 2, 2026·Sam Calder
The Site Editor Is a Product. Treat It Like One.
Opinion: a canvas without an onboarding path is not ‘powerful.’ It is unfinished retail.
August 1, 2026·Alex Harlan
Form Plugins Race to Ship Native Blocks
The contact-form market is rebuilding itself as blocks. Some of the rebuilds are real products. Some are shortcodes wearing a block wrapper.
August 1, 2026·Sam Calder
Query Loop Patterns Gain a No-Hero Default
A plain list of titles and dates ships next to the cinematic cards. Teachers and newsrooms asked for the boring one.
July 31, 2026·Riley Cho
Hosting and Themes Teams Name Representatives for 2026
Make WordPress teams posted their representatives for the coming year. We outline who is stepping in, what the roles actually decide, and why these unglamorous seats shape the release train.
July 30, 2026·Riley Cho
WordPress.org Profiles Show Five Years of Props
The props graph on profiles now goes back far enough to look like a career, not a weekend. Hiring managers, you have a URL.
July 28, 2026·Sam Calder
Twenty Twenty-Seven Ships With Fewer Patterns on Purpose
The next default theme cuts the pattern library nearly in half. The remaining ones are built to be finished, not screenshotted.
July 27, 2026·Sam Calder
Two-Factor Plugins Move Recovery Codes Off Email
Emailing backup codes to the same inbox that just got phished was a tradition. A round of plugins now force a download at enrollment.
July 26, 2026·Sam Calder
Meetup Organizers Get a Shared Code of Conduct Kit
A CC-licensed deck, a one-page reporting path, and language that is not copied from a 2014 wiki. Local groups can still make it local.
July 24, 2026·Sam Calder
An Abilities API Draft Circulates Among Core Teams
A proposal to describe what a plugin can do, in a machine-readable way, is getting comments. The interesting fight is over who is allowed to declare an ability.
July 22, 2026·Riley Cho
SEO Plugins Finally Start Reading Block Markup
Canonical titles and schema are less wrong when the plugin can see the actual blocks on the page. A few vendors got there. Most still parse the classic field.
July 21, 2026·Riley Cho
Agencies Should Budget for Review, Not Just Launch
Opinion: the launch party is not the expensive part. The month after, when the plugin update lands, is.
July 20, 2026·Alex Harlan
WordCamp US Tries a Half-Day Contributor Format
A packed Saturday is being split so newcomers can leave with a merged patch before the hallway track takes over.
July 19, 2026·Sam Calder
Plugin Directory Tightens Rules for AI-Generated Submissions
A surge of near-duplicate plugins, many clearly machine-written, is clogging review. New guidelines ask authors to disclose automated generation and to ship something a human could defend.
July 18, 2026·Riley Cho
Fluid Typography Caps Land in theme.json
A maximum size so a heading cannot become a billboard on a TV. Clamp() with a ceiling, documented.
July 17, 2026·Sam Calder
New Default Robots Guidance for Block Themes
A handbook note tells you when a noindex on an archive is a feature and when it is a support ticket. Query loops made this urgent.
July 15, 2026·Sam Calder
The Plugin Directory Is Infrastructure. Treat It That Way.
Opinion: calling the directory a marketplace makes slop inevitable. Calling it infrastructure makes curation a duty.
July 14, 2026·Alex Harlan
Redirect Plugins Warn When You Stack Three of Them
A notice when another redirect plugin is already active. Late. Still better than a loop that takes the homepage with it.
July 13, 2026·Riley Cho
Block Themes Hit a New Accessibility Milestone in the Directory
More than half of newly submitted block themes now meet accessibility-ready criteria on first review. Theme developers say the block markup did more of the work than they expected.
July 11, 2026·Sam Calder
WordCamp Canada Tests Captioning as a Default Budget Line
Not a sponsor perk. A line item. Organizers want to know if the community will fund it when it is not optional.
July 10, 2026·Riley Cho
Classic Theme Authors Publish Honest Block Migration Guides
A cluster of popular classic themes now document how to leave. That is rarer than a changelog that says “improved performance.”
July 9, 2026·Riley Cho
Security Team Publishes a Plain-Language Incident Playbook
What to do in the first hour of a compromised site, written for people who do not live in incident response. Hosts are already linking it.
July 8, 2026·Riley Cho
Open Source Credit Is a Labor Practice
Opinion: props are not a gold star. They are how a volunteer economy tells the next person the door opens.
July 7, 2026·Alex Harlan
PHP 8.4 Becomes the Recommended Runtime for WordPress Hosts
Hosting teams are updating the handbook language. Sites still on 8.1 are not illegal. They are just on borrowed time.
July 6, 2026·Riley Cho
Backup Plugins Add Playground as a Restore Target
Restore-to-Playground is a small feature with a large teaching use: show a client the broken site without touching production.
July 4, 2026·Sam Calder
Header Template Parts Get a Skip-Link Checklist
Review volunteers now have a one-page test for the first tab stop. Overlay menus are the usual failure.
July 3, 2026·Riley Cho
Local Meetups Get Shared Slide Kits for Core Releases
A set of CC-licensed decks lands so a Thursday meetup can talk about the latest release without a custom Keynote from scratch.
July 2, 2026·Riley Cho
Analytics Plugins Drop Universal Analytics Leftovers
ga.js snippets that survived in ‘just in case’ settings are finally getting deleted. The page weight thanks you. Legal might too.
July 1, 2026·Sam Calder
Gutenberg Performance Lab Merges INP Fixes
Interaction to Next Paint on the editor canvas gets a round of boring, important patches. Writers with large posts will feel it.
June 30, 2026·Sam Calder
Open Source Does Not Owe You a Roadmap Webinar
Opinion: asking WordPress to narrate its future like a SaaS company is how you get slides instead of software.
June 29, 2026·Alex Harlan
WordCamp Season Opens With a Push for Contributor Onboarding
This year’s event circuit is putting first-time contributors in the center of the schedule, not the hallway. Organizers are adding mentor tables, shorter contributor days, and tickets held for newcomers.
June 28, 2026·Riley Cho
Online Workshops Cover Playground for Teachers
A weekly hour for people who send a link instead of a Docker file. Syllabus-friendly, timezone-honest, no install theater.
June 27, 2026·Sam Calder
Your Staging Site Is Not a Personality
Opinion: three stagings, a design preview, and a ‘final-final’ subdomain is not process. It is fear with a DNS record.
June 26, 2026·Alex Harlan
theme.json v3 Tightens the Spacing Scale
A smaller, named spacing scale is replacing the anything-goes pixel soup. Designers who loved 13 unique paddings will need a meeting.
June 25, 2026·Sam Calder
Documentation Team Opens a Glossary Sprint
Block, pattern, template part, and the words people actually search. A two-week push to make the handbook less of a dialect.
June 24, 2026·Riley Cho
Openverse Search Lands Directly in the Media Library
Editors can search openly licensed images without leaving wp-admin. Attribution is attached. The usual caveats about taste still apply.
June 22, 2026·Sam Calder
Commercial Theme Shops Publish Unminified theme.json
If reviewers cannot read it, they cannot ship it. A few shops stopped treating tokens as a trade secret.
June 21, 2026·Sam Calder
Why WordPress Still Needs Boring Defaults
Opinion: every year we add power. Every year a new user drowns in it. The next leap for WordPress is not another surface — it is the courage to hide more on day one.
June 20, 2026·Alex Harlan
LMS Plugins Adopt Course as a First-Class Post Type
Less custom-table mystery, more REST, more backups that actually restore lessons. A few of the rebuilds are real.
June 19, 2026·Riley Cho
Membership Plugins Drop the Kitchen-Sink Billing Layer
After a decade of supporting every gateway poorly, several membership tools are going Stripe-only. The forums are loud. The checkout is quieter.
June 18, 2026·Riley Cho
Community Summit Publishes Unvarnished Governance Notes
The notes are long, slightly awkward, and more useful than a polished recap. Teams, teams, and the spaces between them.
June 15, 2026·Sam Calder
Flagship Camps Publish Visa Letter Templates
A letter that a consulate can read, with the dates and the role filled in. Organizers were writing these by hand at midnight.
June 14, 2026·Riley Cho
Do Not Ship a Dashboard Widget Because You Can
Opinion: the WordPress dashboard is not your billboard. It is a room people are trying to leave.
June 13, 2026·Alex Harlan
Application Passwords UI Gets a Revoke-All Control
One button for the day a laptop walks away. The API was always there. The admin screen finally grew up.
June 12, 2026·Sam Calder
Theme Directory Draws a Harder Line on Encrypted PHP
IonCube and friends are out. If reviewers cannot read it, it does not ship. A few commercial authors are loudly surprised.
June 11, 2026·Riley Cho
Dark Style Variations Must Pass Contrast on Buttons
A pretty dark homepage that fails the primary button is no longer accessibility-ready on a technicality.
June 9, 2026·Riley Cho
Core Commits Pass a Quiet Milestone in 2026
The commit log does not make a press release. It still tells you whether a project is alive. This year, it is.
June 8, 2026·Riley Cho
Anti-Spam Plugins Share a Common Honeypot Spec
A small interoperability note so two spam plugins do not both hide a field and both miss it. Forms authors asked. A few vendors answered.
June 7, 2026·Sam Calder
Agencies Should Publish Their WordPress Defaults
Opinion: if every project starts from a secret stack, you do not have a practice. You have folklore.
June 6, 2026·Alex Harlan
Cache Plugins Warn Against Stacking Page Cache on Guesswork
New notices tell you when a full-page cache and a persistent object cache are fighting. The notice is late. It is still welcome.
June 1, 2026·Sam Calder
Local Photo Walks Return as Official Contributor Events
Not a lanyard. A two-hour walk, a shared album, and credits that show up on profiles. Photo Day’s little sibling.
May 31, 2026·Sam Calder
Photo Day Returns With Portraits for Contributor Profiles
A volunteer photo crew will shoot Make-profile portraits at three upcoming WordCamps. Bring a shirt that is not a lanyard.
May 30, 2026·Riley Cho
FSE Starter Kits Drop jQuery from the Front
A new generation of starters ships without a library the block editor does not need. Classic leftovers have to justify themselves.
May 29, 2026·Sam Calder
Hybrid Themes Keep a Narrow, Useful Lane
Not every site needs a full block theme tomorrow. Hybrid setups — block templates on a classic backbone — are getting clearer docs.
May 28, 2026·Sam Calder
Community Photos Need Consent That Survives the Recap
Opinion: a wave at a camera is not a license for a Make blog, a sponsor reel, and a slide three years later.
May 27, 2026·Alex Harlan
Cookie Banners Start Reading Consent from a Single Option
Fewer duplicate banners, fewer scripts that ask twice. The option is boring. That is the point.
May 25, 2026·Riley Cho
Performance Is an Editorial Problem
Opinion: the heaviest thing on most WordPress homepages is not PHP. It is a carousel of stories nobody edited for the field.
May 23, 2026·Alex Harlan
Pattern Directory Flags Full-Page Patterns That Lock Colors
A pattern that hard-codes a brand palette cannot pretend to be global. Reviewers get a label. Users get a warning.
May 18, 2026·Riley Cho
Youth Outreach Day Pilots at Three University Meetups
A Saturday for students who have never filed a ticket. The bar is a docs edit or a test, not a clever patch.
May 17, 2026·Riley Cho
Image Optimization Plugins Move the Work to the Edge
Local batch compression is giving way to on-the-fly transforms. That is faster for editors and weirder for anyone who likes files on disk.
May 16, 2026·Riley Cho
The Fastest Host Cannot Save a Theme That Loads Five Sliders
Opinion: you cannot buy your way out of an editorial decision. You can only hide the invoice.
May 15, 2026·Alex Harlan
Backup Plugins Add Incremental Media Diffs
Uploads that changed since yesterday, not another 40 GB zip. Restore still wants the last full. The daily run gets lighter.
May 14, 2026·Sam Calder
Campus Connect Expands Beyond Research Universities
Community colleges and adult-ed programs can now join the education track with a lighter syllabus and a real contribution goal.
May 11, 2026·Sam Calder
Style Variations Gain Per-Template Overrides
A variation can now shift a single template without forking the whole theme. Magazine sites with a dark homepage and a light article will cheer.
May 9, 2026·Riley Cho
Translation Contributor Weekend Scheduled for October
A global weekend for locales that are always ‘almost caught up.’ Live office hours, not a Slack that goes quiet at 17:00 UTC.
May 8, 2026·Sam Calder
Child Themes of Block Themes Get Clearer Docs
When to fork templates, when to use a variation, and when you are just scared. The handbook finally says it in that order.
May 6, 2026·Sam Calder
Contributor Credit Should Be Boring and Visible
Opinion: if the only people who know you contributed are the people in the Slack huddle, the project will keep looking like a closed room.
May 4, 2026·Alex Harlan
Map Plugins Stop Putting API Keys in the Footer
Keys move to a restricted referrer setup and a server proxy. The ones that still print a key in HTML are now the story.
May 3, 2026·Riley Cho
SMTP Plugins Add App Passwords That Do Not Live in wp-config
A round of mail plugins is storing credentials in a secrets API instead of a define() that gets committed to git. About time.
May 2, 2026·Riley Cho
Beginners Do Not Owe You a Figma File
Opinion: a first site can be a heading, a paragraph, and a photo that does not explode. That is still WordPress.
May 1, 2026·Alex Harlan
Online Contributor Hours Now Follow Every Flagship Camp
A remote session a week after the event keeps hallway conversations from dying in an airport. Calendars are on Make.
April 27, 2026·Riley Cho
After-Hours Hallway Track Goes on the Official Grid
The conversations that used to happen in a lobby get a room and an end time. Introverts get a map. Extroverts get a fence.
April 26, 2026·Riley Cho
Theme Unit Tests Expand for Navigation Overlay
A fixture for open, close, escape, and the page behind the menu. Overlay navs that were ‘good enough’ have a new exam.
April 24, 2026·Riley Cho
A Contrast Checker Lands in the Site Editor
Pick a text color that fails WCAG and the editor will tell you before a reviewer does. It is not a full audit. It is a seatbelt.
April 22, 2026·Sam Calder
A Five-Star Directory Review Is Not a Security Audit
Opinion: stars measure feelings. Review measures whether the zip should exist. Do not confuse the two in a sales deck.
April 20, 2026·Alex Harlan
Local-First Is Still the WordPress Promise
Opinion: a CMS you cannot copy to a laptop is a landlord. WordPress should stay a suitcase.
April 18, 2026·Alex Harlan
