Hi there,
WordCamp Europe is over. I had a blast and also caught a bug.🤧
The next flagship WordCamp is just around the corner: WordCamp US will take place August 26 – 29 with Contributor Day, Showcase Day and a two-day conference. The call for speakers is open, notice the deadline June 20 for your submission. Also open are the call for sponsors and for volunteers.
I am so excited as I will finally connect with my WordPress friends from the US again. It took me three years to get back to WordCamp US after our move to Germany.
With Automattic getting back to contributions, the team caught up on Gutenberg release posts and there is a new Gutenberg version available. I also have a few notes and links collected about the new AI team and their work.
I hope to see you at WordCamp US, too
Yours, đź’•
Birgit
Developing Gutenberg and WordPress
In the latest edition of What’s New for Developers (June 2025), Justin Tadlock collected lots of information relevant for plugin authors, themes builders and agency freelance developers from Core, Gutenberg, and Playground. It’s the best post to catch up on the last to month of updates in WordPress.
Carlos Bravo release Gutenberg 21.0. In his release post What’s new in Gutenberg 21.0? he highlighted.
- The HTML Element is now selectable on Button and Separator blocks.
- Extensive ToolsPanel Refactoring
- Accessibility and usability
Jessica Lyschik used the time during Contributor Day at WordCamp Europe to get a head start on catching up with the release posts for earlier Gutenberg releases.
- What’s new in Gutenberg 20.4 and 20.5?
- What’s new in Gutenberg 20.6 and 20.7?
- What’s new in Gutenberg 20.8 and 20.9?
🎙️ The latest episode is Gutenberg Changelog 121—Gutenberg 21.6 and 21.7, Block Theme Development, and Block Themes with Anne Katzeff of AskDesign.
If you are listening via Spotify, please leave a comment. If you listen via other podcast apps, please leave a review. It’ll help with the distribution.
New WordPress AI Team
Just ahead of WordCamp Europe, Mary Hubbard announce the new AI team, identifying James LePage and Felix Arnzt as team reps. James LePage followed up with his post Welcome to the Core AI Team Blog.
The community came together for the Introducing the AI Team Hallway Hangout and Anne McCarthy published the recap and the recording.
What I learned:
- The AI Team is laying the groundwork to bring AI into WordPress, and the timing couldn’t be better. With AI moving at lightning speed, it’s important for WordPress to stay in the mix.
- For now, the AI Team isn’t adding big AI tools directly into WordPress. Instead, they’re working on simple plugins that help connect WordPress to different AI services. Maybe someday AI will be built right into the core, but that’s not on the table yet.
- WordPress leaders are fully behind the AI Team, recognizing that AI is the future and wanting to keep WordPress front and center as things evolve.
The current initiatives / plugins have been mentioned in early editions of the newsletter:
- AI Services Plugin by Felix Arnzt provides an abstraction layer for multiple AI providers, enabling plugin authors to use a unified API for AI interactions.
- MCP for WordPress plugin by Pascal Birchler implements Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers in WordPress, enabling advanced AI integrations via command-line or plugins. You can learn more about reading Pascal Bichler’s post Enabling AI-Powered WordPress Development with WP-CLI and the Model Context Protocol (MCP)
- WP-Feature-API plugin by Automattic structures WordPress features for better AI interaction, offering a standardized way to register resources for AI use. It’s a system for exposing server and client-side functionality in WordPress for use in LLMs and agentic systems
The WordPress AI Team chats in the WPSlack #core-ai channel and holds meetings every other Thursday at 16:00 UTC. You can read the summary of this week’s meeting on the Make AI blog.
In his video The WordPress AI fightback begins! Jamie Marsland interviews James LePage about AI in WordPress and the new team.
WordCamp Europe
It was a fantastic WordCamp at a great venue. I enjoyed the many, many conversations with attendees, sponsors, contributors and fellow speakers. The organizing team has done a fabulous job, in all areas, and the volunteers were awesome. The speaker team was first-class in their support. As a first time WCEU speaker, I felt very well cared for. I loved the bright and brilliant designs at the venue as well as on the website and on screens.
The most astonishing work was done by the AV team, who uploaded all videos to WordPress TV by the end of the WordCamp. In contrast to previous WordCamps, all workshops were also recorded, and you can watch them at your own speed.
As always, I share my opinionated list of favorites:
During Fire side Chat with Mary Hubbard and Matt Mullenweg they discussed, among other things, the WordPress Campus Connect project that’s being rolled out as an official program. Hubbard also announced the start of a pilot project for student internships with the University of Pisa, encompassing 5000 students to contribute 150 hours and received six college credits.
Another great talk was by Noel Tock WordPress without Borders – The Fight for Digital Freedom. Tock not only shared from his charity work in Ukraine but also about other charities who help with finding kids, providing a roof over the head of people who lost their homes, and trying to alleviate other hardships. Tock made us realize the true impact of WordPress has to all the agencies who use it for their web site to fundraise and connect with communities. The pictures from Ukraine are heart-wrenching.
The Block related talks:
- Ryan Welcher and his block development cookbook workshop and
- Milana Cap conducting the workshop WordPress Gems around the Interactivity API.
- Ellen Bauer talked about how block themes speed up stores and sites and give back control for the layouts to the merchants
- Robert O’Rourke asked Do you really need a custom block.
If you are interested in working with Playground, two workshops might help you get started depending on your needs
- From Zero to Demo: Mastering WordPress Playground Blueprints with yours truly and
- Building Automated Tests with WordPress Playground with Berislav (Bero) Grgicak
This is only a small list, and there are many great talks about all WordPress topics, for content creators, developers, entrepreneurs, and educators. Check them out.
A few attendees published recap posts:
- WCEU 2025: A Community Celebration in the Swiss Sun by Brett McSherry
- WordCamp Europe 2025 | Recap of the event by Benjamin Zekavica
- WCEU 2025 : Test Team Contributor Day Recap by Krupa Nanda
- TechRadar: WordCamp Europe 2025 – here’s all the highlights from the event
- WordCamp Europe 2025 – A trip to a beautiful city by Bernhard Kau
Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners
Carlo Daniele, Kinsta, dug deeper in the term WordPress Hybrid Themes. He covered two approaches. The first is how hybrid themes bridge the gap between Classic and Block Themes by supporting modern block features. They maintain compatibility with traditional plugins and templates. The second highlights ways developers can enhance hybrid themes with global styles. They can use block patterns and template parts for flexible site building.
In her post, From Page Builders to Blocks, Johanne Courtright, founder of Groundworx, explains why it’s time to move from page builders to Gutenberg, the built-in block editor. She points out its built-in stability, better performance, and easier design control. Courtright tackles common worries, then suggests starting small—like switching your blog first, updating your theme, and helping users learn—showing that Gutenberg’s block system is the way forward for WordPress.
In here post Design Once, Build Everywhere:The Lego Principle for Page Builders, Tammie Lister reflects on the fragmented world of page builders, arguing for a “Lego principle” where design components are created once and used everywhere. She suggests that adopting shared foundations and modular systems—much like Lego’s approach—would unlock creativity, improve portability, and better meet modern demands. Ultimately, Lister envisions a future where page builders are collaborative, flexible, and empower users to build without barriers.
Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks
Fabian Kägy, director of Editorial Engineering, introduced Fueled’s open-source Figma to WordPress plugin, which exports design tokens from Figma directly into a WordPress theme.json file, reducing a 10–15 hour manual process to about an hour and enabling rapid, consistent theme development without extra frameworks or licenses
Jeremy Holcombe at Kinsta, also researched How to convert a Figma project to WordPress and walks you through three methods. He covers using the Figma plugin by Yotako for automation, manually rebuilding designs in WordPress for precision, and hiring professional services, highlighting the pros, cons, and best use cases for each approach..
Mike McAlister introduced the Ollie Theme Academy video course a free and in-depth video course teaching everything from the basics to advanced techniques of WordPress block theme development. The course covers full site editing, global styles, patterns, and aims to help anyone modernize their WordPress workflow for 2025 and beyond.
10 days later, McAlister followed up with the announcement of a Block Development course. This is a new resource to help developers master building custom WordPress blocks. It provides practical, hands-on video lessons focused on modern block development. This approach aims to make it easier for anyone to create powerful, custom blocks for their WordPress sites.
Bernhard Kau explored Implementing a custom block style variation using only JSON files in WordPress block themes. He explains how to make a perfectly round button by defining a new style in a JSON file. This approach bypasses the need for PHP or JavaScript. Despite some limitations, this approach allows for easy customization. There is incomplete support for certain properties. Nevertheless, it enables consistent design without writing traditional code.
Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor
Alfredo Navas, developer at WebDevStudios, explored the MCP server plugin. He shared his findings and highlighted how it enables external tools or AI agents to interact with WordPress. These interactions are useful for tasks like creating posts or debugging. He notes its usefulness for automating workflows, its extensibility, and that it’s still under active development.
Eric Karkovack explains how to add custom style variations to WordPress blocks using a custom plugin. He guides you through creating custom style variations for WordPress blocks. He details building a plugin, using the ‎`register_block_style()` function, and applying unique styles—like a “Unicorn” button—via PHP or JSON. This way you empower your users to personalize block designs and enhance site consistency.
I mentioned DeepWiki before, in WE #329, and now Jonathan Bossenger invites you in you YouTube video to learn more about DeepWiki | AI powered documentation you can talk to.
I asked DeepWiki the following questions, click on the links to get to the answers.
Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg’s master branch?
Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review.
Now also available via WordPress Playground. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? Email me with your experience
Questions? Suggestions? Ideas?
Don’t hesitate to send them via email or
send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph.
For questions to be answered on the Gutenberg Changelog,
send them to changelog@gutenbergtimes.com