Hi there,
So I’ll be off next week to Manila, Philippines. After a 15 hrs flight to a seven-hour time difference, I need a couple of days to acclimate, and I also want to get some sightseeing in before immersing into WordCamp Asia. The next weekend edition will be published after my return to Munich.
I will be sharing photos on Bluesky if you would like to follow along my adventures. I’m excited about an infinite amount of 3D interactions with my fellow WordPressers. Sending virtual hugs to you. 🤗
Have a wonderful weekend, and if you are coming to Manila, too, have a safe journey!
Yours, 💕
Birgit
PS: Getting ready for WordCamp Asia 2025 in Manila, Philippines
In the 407th episode of WP Build, titled “At The Core” with Birgit Pauli-Haack and Anne McCarthy, we had a fun chat with Nathan Wrigley about all the cool updates and features from the last three months. We dove into the neat experimental features aimed at making collaborative editing in WordPress a reality, which feels a lot like using Google Docs! Plus, we covered some handy tools and resources spotlighted on the Developer Blog, from nailing light and dark modes in block themes to figuring out data views and form components. And let’s not forget about “WordPress Playground,” an awesome tool that lets you whip up a site right in your browser without any hassle!
Developing Gutenberg and WordPress
Aaron Jorbin announced WordPress 6.7.2 RC1 is now available for testing. Final release is expected next week on February 11, 2025. The post has the list of all the bug fixes from trac tickets and GitHub pull requests. With the minor release, we will also see a new version of the default theme, Twenty-Twenty-Five.
George Mamadashvili worked on this week’s Gutenberg plugin release. Here is the changelog of Gutenberg 20.2. At first glance, two enhancements stood out for me:
- Details block: Add name attribute for exclusive accordion. (56971)
- Post-content block header color support. (67783)
Krupal Lakhia published the Roadmap to WordPress 6.8. WordPress 6.8 is dropping on April 15, 2025, and it’s all about making site building smoother and faster. Expect an improved editing flow with an enhanced “Zoom Out” mode, better style controls, and more typography options. The update also introduces “Write” and “Design” modes, so you can focus on content or layout separately. Under the hood, new tools like Block Hooks and Block Bindings make it easier to customize, while performance boosts—like speculative loading—help sites run faster. Plus, accessibility upgrades and continued PHP 8.x support keep WordPress user-friendly and future-proof. Lakhia goes into much more detail in his post and shares corresponding PRs from the tracking systems.
Did you know that you can use Playground to test single Gutenberg PRs?
🎙️ The latest episode is Gutenberg Changelog #125 – WordPress 6.9, Gutenberg 22.1 and Gutenberg 22.2 with JC Palmes, WebDev Studios
Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners
After building multiple extensions for Gravity Forms, Johnathon Williams, owner of Odd Jar, has released his first plugin for the Block Editor – QuickLink Pro, a link management solution designed specifically for the block editor. It adds external links to the standard link dialog in the block editor for easy linking after you manage your link library on a settings page. This is a great tool to manage your affiliate links, subscription links, or documentation pages you keep referencing in your tutorials. It’s not free, and hopefully, there are a few more features added later this year. Williams also has some helpful tips on coding with AI. Hat tip to Davinder Singh Kainth from the WP Weekly for finding the plugin.
Eric Karkovack, The WP Minute, dives into How WordPress Block Patterns Improve Your Workflow. WordPress block patterns are pre-designed sections that enhance your workflow by offering a quick way to build websites. Karkovack explains the value of patterns because they save time and offer ready-made reusable designs for common content. Multiple patterns can be combined to create landing pages and shorten their production time.
Six newest block themes
in the WordPress repository are:
- HR Management by Peter Williams – helps you showcase HR services with eleven patterns and five Style variations
- Gutenify Bold by Code Yatri, a child theme of Gutenify Starter, comes with 10 Style variations and 16 patterns.
- EduGrove by Theme Grove – designed to meet the needs for educational institutions of all kinds. It entails 30 (!) patterns and 7 style variations.
- WENS Food Palette by WEN Solutions, a child theme of WENS Haelo, for food related business with 20 patterns.
- Healthy Food Blogger by Creta Themes – for passionate food bloggers, recipe creators, and culinary enthusiasts, with 10 patterns and a slider.
- NAS Construction Build by Template House a theme for a construction company with 9 style variations and 16 patterns.
The total number of Block themes in the repository is 1,130 as of today.
Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks
In his post Block Theme Circles WP – Developing and Customization, Hans-Gerd Gerhards takes you along his development journey of the block theme Circles WP, which is available in the WordPress repository. Gerhards characterizes his theme as “lightweight and therefore extremely fast.” Circles WP is already prepared for an accessibility-ready website. The font used is Lexend – an accessible font – as standard. Alternatively, the Atkinson Hyperlegible Font – Braille Institute (also accessibility-ready) or “System Font” are available. Circles WP was deliberately developed without any additional CSS, i.e., he only uses the settings of the block editor.
The co-founder of simplenet, a hosting and web development agency from Romania, Andrei Chira, announced that their first theme, a block theme called Simplenet, was accepted into the WordPress repository. Chira also shared the genesis of the theme and its features. It’s meant to be used as a base theme to get started building a website with WordPress. “The Simplenet theme is the result of this learning process. I was inspired by other existing themes and tried to understand how the structure of a block theme works,” he wrote. The theme is also available on GitHub.
Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.
Geoff Graham created a WordPress block Baseline Status of a web feature base, meaning its browser compatibility. It’s the baseline status component formatted as a WordPress block. Graham then takes you along the journey of how he built it and what design decisions he made along the way. The plugin is available in the WordPress repository
A new course for WordPress developers is now available: Advanced WordPress Debugging Course. Although published by Learn VIP, the learning site of WordPress VIP, the course is open and free to the public. “Debugging is a critical skill for any software developer. We understand how important it is to quickly find and resolve issues, reducing downtime and ensuring users have a seamless experience on your site. For your organization, this means saving time, avoiding unnecessary costs, and having the flexibility to grow and adapt without worrying about technical hiccups,” Rick Hurst wrote on the announcement post. And the course is a “comprehensive exploration of advanced WordPress debugging techniques, equipping learners with the skills and tools needed to troubleshoot and resolve complex issues in WordPress applications.” The estimated course completion time is 5 to 8 hours. Other courses from the same team are:
- Enterprise WordPress Security
- Enterprise WordPress Performance
- WordPress VIP Architecture and Tooling
In his post, Getting the Block Editor Ready for AI, Brian Coords discusses his conversation with Matt Medeiros about the shortcomings of AI and then offers a few strategies on how to help AI become smarter about WordPress.
So there is a new thing called Invoker Commands API coming to browsers. It’s so new, it’s only available in pre-release browsers like Chrome Canary, Firefox Nightly, or Safari TP (Technical Preview) behind a feature flag that you need to enable. So if you are not interested in these new experimental browser features, you can skip this paragraph. Pascal Birchler, WordPress core committer sponsored by Google, explored what Invoker Commands in WordPress would look like. He explains what the Invoker Commands API tries to accomplish and how, and then he switches to what this would mean for Blocks and how it relates to the Interactivity API. Then Birchler introduces the Block Invokers plugin and how you can provide Invoker commands to a custom block in WordPress.
Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg’s master branch?
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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
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Don’t hesitate to send them via email or
send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph.
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send them to changelog@gutenbergtimes.com