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";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:20:"Matt: Fight For Open";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=150050";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:37:"https://ma.tt/2025/10/fight-for-open/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2067:"<p>Sometimes the battle for open source and freedom can take on very prosaic and practical terms, but the wins can benefit everybody. To give an example: In <a href="https://www.beeper.com/">Beeper</a> we need more memory for showing notifications, because we support end-to-end encryption for networks like Signal, but Apple&#8217;s default was to only give 15 megabytes — barely enough to do anything. The previous CEO of Beeper, Eric Migicovsky, started a lobbying effort with the <a href="https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/index_en">EU’s Digital Markets Act</a> on behalf of the team to give third-party apps the same memory limits that Apple provides for their own apps, which is 50MB instead of 15MB. (And up to 250MB on their higher end devices.)</p>



<p>Today we’ve gotten a notification that as part of iOS 26 update Apple has shipped to 2.3B devices around the world, our memory limits issue has been addressed globally, for every application developer, and some interoperability requests we had for <a href="https://developer.apple.com/documentation/telephonymessagingkit">SMS/RCS</a> have been addressed for EU users. Kudos and huge thank you to Apple for giving us all new capabilities to build amazing experiences for users on par with what they seek to deliver themselves. If you want to geek out on this, <a href="https://blog.beeper.com/2025/10/01/how-beeper-ios-implements-notifications/">check out the technical deep dive that Beeper just posted</a>.</p>



<p>BTW, if you haven&#8217;t heard of it yet, <a href="https://www.beeper.com/">Beeper</a> is an Automattic product which aims to democratize messaging, just like WordPress democratized publishing for the world, by allowing you to get all your messages from friends across 11 different networks, like WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram, Twitter/X, Signal, Discord, in one single inbox. The new version we launched in July does this in a completely secure way that&#8217;s local to your device, so the same encryption, privacy, and security each network provides is maintained.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 01 Oct 2025 20:29:45 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:1;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:114:"WPTavern: #187 – June Liu and David Denedo on Making the Web Accessible: The Mission Behind WP Accessibility Day";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"https://wptavern.com/?post_type=podcast&p=199767";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:127:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/187-june-liu-and-david-denedo-on-making-the-web-accessible-the-mission-behind-wp-accessibility-day";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48317:"<details>Transcript<div>
<p>[00:00:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.</p>



<p>Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress, the people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, making the web accessible, and the mission behind WP Accessibility Day.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to wptavern.com/feed/podcast, and you can copy that URL into most podcast players.</p>



<p>If you have a topic that you&#8217;d like us to feature on the podcast, I&#8217;m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head to wptavern.com/contact/jukebox, and use the form there.</p>



<p>So on the podcast today, we have June Liu and David Denedo.</p>



<p>Both June and David are key members of the WP Accessibility Day organizing team, a global, volunteer driven, event focused on improving accessibility in the WordPress ecosystem.</p>



<p>June serves as the marketing team co-lead, and works with sponsors, bringing her background in project management to keep the events efforts on track.</p>



<p>David, a web designer and content creator based in London, contributes to the marketing and post-event teams, with his interest in web accessibility stemming from his personal experience as a visually impaired user.</p>



<p>WP Accessibility Day has grown significantly in the past few years, uniting a large international group of volunteers, and organizers, to drive awareness and practical change in web accessibility.</p>



<p>The event is powered by a host of teams, marketing, sponsors, tech and vendor, post-event, translation, speakers, and more, ensuring that everything from live captioning to sign language interpretation is in place.</p>



<p>We begin by learning about June and David&#8217;s unique paths to accessibility advocacy. One through direct lived experience, and the other through supporting a loved one with cognitive challenges. Their stories highlight why accessibility can&#8217;t be an afterthought, and how events like WP Accessibility Day are raising awareness in this important area.</p>



<p>We discuss what attendees can expect at this year&#8217;s event happening from the 15th of October, 2025. It&#8217;s free, fully virtual, and runs for 24 hours, making space for a diverse range of speakers and topics.</p>



<p>Whether you&#8217;re interested in the moral, legal or technical cases for accessibility, there&#8217;s something for you here, including sessions on accessible design, risk management for agencies, legal compliance, and demonstrations of assistive technologies.</p>



<p>June and David share how the event format, a combination of prerecorded talks and live chat, mixes polished content with real time engagement. Plus how translation and community involvement are key to its growing impact.</p>



<p>If you want to learn more about how you can make your WordPress sites, and the web in general, more inclusive, or if you&#8217;re motivated by global collaboration or personal stories, this episode is for you.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast, where you&#8217;ll find all the other episodes as well.</p>



<p>And so without further delay, I bring you June Liu and David Denedo.</p>



<p>I am joined on the podcast by two fabulous guests. I&#8217;ve got June Liu and David Denedo. Hello both. How are you both doing?</p>



<p>[00:03:58] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> Hi there.</p>



<p>[00:03:59] <strong>David Denedo:</strong> Hello. I&#8217;m doing all right.</p>



<p>[00:04:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Well, it&#8217;s very nice to have you both with us. The intention of today&#8217;s podcast is to draw attention to something which well, I&#8217;m sure many of you will know about. If you don&#8217;t know about it, I certainly hope that by the end of this, not only do you know about it, but you are highly engaged, and hopefully going to attend and all of those kind of things, maybe even contribute some of your time, you never know.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s called WP Accessibility Day, and we&#8217;re going to get into that in a moment. Before we do that, I just want to get the little bio, the introduction from both of you, one at a time, just telling us who you are, what your interest is in WordPress and accessibility, I guess.</p>



<p>So we&#8217;ll keep it nice and short and sweet. So I&#8217;ll go to June first. Just let us know who you are, June.</p>



<p>[00:04:39] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> Thank you, Nathan. I&#8217;m June, I serve on the organising team for WP Accessibility Day as the marketing team co-lead, and I also work on the sponsors team.</p>



<p>My background is mostly project management, so my forte right now is helping the team coordinate tasks, and keeping the initiatives on track. Yeah, I coordinate between the sponsors and the marketing team to get the sponsor page prepared. So that&#8217;s basically my work with WPAD.</p>



<p>[00:05:08] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you so much. That&#8217;s great. And David, let&#8217;s go to you next. Same question really.</p>



<p>[00:05:11] <strong>David Denedo:</strong> Hi, I&#8217;m David. I&#8217;m visually impaired, so that&#8217;s why I love accessibility. I work in London as a web designer and a content creator, and I&#8217;m part of the WP Accessibility Day organising team, as part of the post-event people. But I&#8217;m also in the marketing team, just jumping around, and at least trying to put as much as I can into web accessibility.</p>



<p>Yeah, I got into web accessibility mainly because of some talks I had two years ago from the WP Accessibility Day, and that just encouraged me. And then here we are two years later.</p>



<p>[00:05:53] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you so much. So, WP Accessibility Day, one thing that just jumped out at me straight away from what you were both talking about there, you both talked about, I&#8217;m on the, and then you mentioned a team. That implies that there&#8217;s quite a lot of you in the background.</p>



<p>So just to give credit where credit&#8217;s due, I think it&#8217;s always important to make sure that we credit not just the two of you, because there&#8217;s probably a lot of people behind this as well. I don&#8217;t want to go down the route of missing anybody out. So I wonder if it&#8217;s possible for us to just mention the kind of teams and things like that. And if there are any people in particular that you&#8217;ve been working with that you do wish to name, caveat emptor, dear listener, I apologise on behalf of everybody on this panel. If we miss anybody&#8217;s name out, sorry about that. But let&#8217;s go for the, how many teams there are and how big an enterprise is this these days?</p>



<p>[00:06:39] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve ever counted how many teams there are, but I&#8217;ll list some of them. And David, add yours if I miss any, please.</p>



<p>There is a volunteer team that&#8217;s, right now, pivotal. That&#8217;s their work right now in preparing the event. The event is on October 15th, so we&#8217;re just about a month away. So the volunteer team is very active right now in onboarding the volunteers.</p>



<p>Then we have the tech and vendors. And those are also very active. They work closely with the volunteer team to prepare the day of. So they&#8217;re the ones that prepare the Zoom platform for us. So making sure that it all runs well.</p>



<p>Then we have website, APAC, post event, translation, sponsors, marketing. What else? I feel like there&#8217;s a few others that I&#8217;m missing. But there is a huge team behind Amber, Bet and Joe, working and making sure that we can make the event as smooth as possible, and take some of the load off of them.</p>



<p>[00:07:36] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> The Amber, the Bet and the Joe that you just mentioned, we have got Amber Hinds, Bet Hannon and Joe Dolson. So there&#8217;s three names. Do you have any recollection whether they were the people that kind of kickstarted the event, whenever that was? Because if that was the case, it sounds like it&#8217;s gone gangbusters since then with lots of people joining on, and you two being some examples.</p>



<p>[00:07:56] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> We do have a pretty big team this year. And yes, you&#8217;re right, the history is that Joe Dolson did start WP Accessibility Day. I don&#8217;t recall all of the specifics, but I think the second year, Bet, I think it might&#8217;ve started with Bet and Joe, and then Amber also came on soon after that.</p>



<p>But we&#8217;re in our fifth year. It&#8217;s very exciting. I joined last year as an organiser and it was a point in my time where I was returning to work. So finding WPAD was kind of a sweet spot for me to test out my skill sets again, get used to being out in the public, so I have a soft spot for them.</p>



<p>[00:08:35] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you. Okay, so there&#8217;s a few that we&#8217;ve rattled off. David, I don&#8217;t know if you can fill in any gaps that might have been left there. If so, go now.</p>



<p>[00:08:42] <strong>David Denedo:</strong> Yeah, I think those are the main ones that were involved. And I would say Amber Hinds, when she came on board, she brought in a lot of organisation because, you know, with Joe, Joe understands the technical bits of things, but he&#8217;s not really so organised. So when she came in, that&#8217;s why the team grew exponentially from 2022, I believe when she joined. And then the year after, things just kept spiraling. And then now we have a massive team with lots of volunteers, everybody&#8217;s happy to help.</p>



<p>The other thing that is quite nice is that there was a nice spread of people who are volunteering. So it&#8217;s not just maybe from one region or one country. We are a very nice spread of people, so that&#8217;s really nice. So from different parts, from Asia, from Africa, from the Americas and all of that, they&#8217;re all wide base.</p>



<p>[00:09:33] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> That&#8217;s amazing. Everybody from all over the place. That&#8217;s really lovely.</p>



<p>David, in your introduction, in your bio, you described that you are kind of eating your own dog food a little bit here in that, I can&#8217;t remember the exact phrasing that you had around your eyes. How did you describe the condition that you have, if that&#8217;s the right word?</p>



<p>[00:09:50] <strong>David Denedo:</strong> Okay, yeah. So I am visually impaired, so I have very high myopia and high astigmatism. I also struggle to see myself, so that&#8217;s one reason why I got really interested when I saw how people are able to make the web more accessible. Because I grew up in a background where we had to adapt to so many stressful things, like there wasn&#8217;t really much help for people with accessibility needs.</p>



<p>So I didn&#8217;t really know there were ways to help people out. Until I came into the whole system and I realised that, oh wow, so you can actually do this to help somebody else. Because I was always struggling, most times I couldn&#8217;t see the screen. So I&#8217;m always like relying on other people to tell me what&#8217;s in front of me, what&#8217;s on the screen, and all of that.</p>



<p>But then when you start to see that, oh yeah, we can use a screen reader, you can use screen magnifier, you can do this, you can do that, you can just improve a little bit on your website, or even on the reality, makes things more accessible. I was like, wow, I&#8217;ve been living under the rock basically.</p>



<p>[00:10:53] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, that&#8217;s absolutely fascinating. I&#8217;m just wondering, June, if you have a similar story to tell in that, is there anything that you would like to share in that regard?</p>



<p>[00:11:01] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> I do. My mother had a stroke, and from that she had vascular dementia. And being her caregiver for that many years, and seeing the decline in her loss of independence, because she wasn&#8217;t able to navigate the medical system by herself anymore. It was kind of, I learned everything in hindsight. I wish I had the knowledge that I have today to have helped her like 8, 10 years ago. But that drew me in.</p>



<p>I was telling you how I came back into the workforce, and one of the things that somebody said to me was, hey, there&#8217;s this free event. It&#8217;s online, you don&#8217;t have to leave your house, just try it out. And it was WPAD. And when I was listening to the talks, I was like, yeah, wait a second, you mean that websites can be laid out differently so that it would be easier for somebody to navigate it, even with a mental decline?</p>



<p>And it&#8217;s those simple, to us, it initially could be simple, but in the back end it might not be so simple. But just having her read through an online PDF, you know, it was difficult for her to hit the right area, because the PDF lines were so tiny. And her eye, hand coordination was reduced, so she&#8217;s not able to hit those lines to fill in the PDF.</p>



<p>So for me it was the acknowledgement of, oh my gosh, it doesn&#8217;t have to be this way going forward. So it&#8217;s me trying to learn as much as I can to direct my future clients into a direction that gives better accessibility to all, and not just their one demographic.</p>



<p>[00:12:41] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s so curious that you&#8217;ve both got two stories where the end of it, the target, if you like, is the same, but how you&#8217;ve arrived at the things are entirely different.</p>



<p>David, a very personal story about your own life. And June, well, another personal story, but viewed through the prism of somebody else. Almost like standing over somebody&#8217;s shoulder and being able to ascertain, well, this person&#8217;s not getting what they could out of the internet.</p>



<p>And it strikes me that if you rewound the clock, I don&#8217;t know, let&#8217;s say 30 years ago before the internet was in any way, shape, or form common, but you could describe what would be available in 30 years time. And you could say, well, so many people, they&#8217;d have this little device in their hand, and there&#8217;d be these machines where there&#8217;d be screens on desktops and things like that.</p>



<p>At that moment, you would be thinking to yourself, this is literally the perfect technology to help people who, let&#8217;s say for example, are struggling to see. Are unable to get out of the house. There may be an aspect of their body which doesn&#8217;t function in the way that your body or my body might function.</p>



<p>You would describe that and you&#8217;d think, oh, this is like manna from heaven. This is the perfect thing. But it never turned out that way. The internet went in a way entirely leaving those people behind, I think, which was such a lost opportunity.</p>



<p>So we&#8217;re kind of 25 years or whatever it is into the internet, and we&#8217;re now going back and filling in all of the gaps that probably, with the benefit of hindsight, should never have been left.</p>



<p>I mean, I don&#8217;t know that there&#8217;s any question in there, but it&#8217;s curious that that one technology which could have made the lives of so many people so much more straightforward, really hasn&#8217;t serviced those people particularly well until events like this come along and educate the rest of us in how to do it.</p>



<p>[00:14:23] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> I think, Nathan, you hit two big points. Everyone&#8217;s journey with accessibility is very personal, and unless you experienced it firsthand, or even secondhand in my case, you don&#8217;t really see that impact.</p>



<p>And the second part is that the second nail that you hit is that a lot of times it becomes an afterthought. Accessibility becomes the afterthought. I think that with an event like WPAD, we want it to become the foundational, so we&#8217;re hoping to make that change.</p>



<p>[00:14:53] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> For example, I&#8217;m imagining, again harking back to how the internet could have been, we&#8217;ve now got a technology where a small rectangle held in your hand, with a few clicks of a few buttons can enable you to more or less have anything delivered to your front door, in a very short space of time. Which is like, how incredible is that, that that is even possible?</p>



<p>And so this is the perfect answer to people, let&#8217;s say for example, who struggle to get out of the front door, and navigate the shops and what have you.</p>



<p>And yet we&#8217;re faced with a situation where that sublimely cool technology is impenetrable, and unavailable, to many people because it never got baked in as a requirement, and we can come to that later. David, I&#8217;m sorry, I think I interrupted.</p>



<p>[00:15:36] <strong>David Denedo:</strong> Oh no. Yeah, what you said is quite right. There is an imbalance in the way things are getting better, but it&#8217;s getting better for a certain set of people, but leaving some other people behind. So that is the problem.</p>



<p>With the web, it was improving at a very fast rate in terms of how to build the web, but somewhere along the line, people forgot that the whole essence of worldwide web, the man who created the W3C consortium, who basically created the web, the father of the web, his whole idea was that the web should be accessible to all. That was his vision, his goal from the very start.</p>



<p>But as people are trying to push the boundaries, sometimes they forget, well, it is quite normal that sometimes unless you are experiencing a certain problem, you will not find a solution to it. So now that we are bringing the awareness to people, then they&#8217;re now finding out, okay, we forgot this certain set of people, let&#8217;s now incorporate them into our thinking, into our design, into everything.</p>



<p>So that is one nice thing about having a conference like WPAD, to help spread awareness to people. Because if you&#8217;ve never experienced a certain problem, for example, you&#8217;ve never been blind or you&#8217;ve never had something with your mobility. You may not really appreciate the struggles of those people. But when they&#8217;re able to express it out and explain to you in these conferences, then you can now get that third party understanding, and at least you can incorporate accessibility into your own lifestyle.</p>



<p>[00:17:21] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, I have a question around that, because I am in the position where my eyes, despite the fact I wear glasses, once the glasses are on my nose, my eyes, functionally, I think you would describe them as normal, and I have good ish hearing, and my body functions. And so, David, you&#8217;ve basically just described me.</p>



<p>It can be, it has been hard to imagine, what is the lived experience of people who are not in the same boat as I am?</p>



<p>And I did wonder if a part of WPAD, I did wonder if a part of that was that educational piece? Whether it was explaining to people, web developers, people who may not be accustomed to what the conference is about, and what the summit will, you know, the educational pieces. I wondered if there was a piece where you explained, okay, this is the setup that somebody using a screen reader, this is what it feels like to them when they&#8217;re on the internet. This is what it would feel like, for example, I don&#8217;t know, if you are using a puff and sip system or something like that.</p>



<p>So I don&#8217;t know if you are providing content like that, but I&#8217;d be curious to know whether you explain what the lived experience would be for people who may benefit as a result of the tech talks in the conference.</p>



<p>[00:18:34] <strong>David Denedo:</strong> Yeah, so from what we have planned, there are a few of the conference talks that will reflect about accessibility. I think one of them is by Dennis, he&#8217;s going to show how a screen reader user will access a website. And then there are also talks about post-production of videos. So some people will incorporate the talks in, or at least talk about the experiences, but it may not be like a full on description.</p>



<p>But yeah, I&#8217;ve seen a few of the talks that will be happening and they will be incorporating some of the disabilities that we know, like colorblindness, and then like audio and other things. So that will help people to get an awareness of what disabilities are out there, and how to incorporate that into building a more accessible system.</p>



<p>[00:19:26] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay, that&#8217;s really interesting. I suppose the old adage is, you know, a picture says the same as a thousand words or something like that. And being able to perceive what&#8217;s going on. I&#8217;ve always found that incredibly motivating, because immediately I can see how the internet is a more difficult place than a thousand words could describe and what have you.</p>



<p>So, okay, so that&#8217;s interesting. And then moving on to the conference itself, I&#8217;m presuming that this is aimed squarely at people already using WordPress as their content management system, their website builder. But it is curious because, I don&#8217;t know exactly where you land on this, maybe what I&#8217;m about to say doesn&#8217;t fit at all, but I&#8217;m presuming the conference is designed to enable everybody to get some way along the road of producing an accessible website.</p>



<p>But presumably also the audience is a little bit of, trying to do what I&#8217;ve just described, make the case, the moral case, the legal case for needing to do it as well. So it&#8217;s the tech side of how to do it, as well as the sort of the moral and the legal obligations that might sort of follow that in train.</p>



<p>[00:20:32] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> Yeah, there is one session that I think you might find interesting along that line, is that it&#8217;s talking about accessibility as a risk management for agencies and for business owners. So I think that in particular, I have found it most interesting. With a background in project management, I&#8217;ve often had conversations where somebody will say to me, but why do I need to have it assessable? And then you&#8217;d have to take that pause and go, okay. But I think that to have the angle of risk management is certainly something that business owners will be able to relate to a little bit better.</p>



<p>We also have another one that is talking about what features you should be on a lookout for so that you can kind of mitigate the legal portion of it. I&#8217;m not saying that you can avoid it completely, but at least you&#8217;re more aware of it.</p>



<p>So there&#8217;s that one and, of course, our keynote speaker is Vitaly Friedman, from Smashing Magazine. He&#8217;s going to come at it from the UI, UX portion of it. So it&#8217;s not just all on the development, but it&#8217;s also on different aspects of website building and different viewpoints on business and ownership of a website.</p>



<p>[00:21:48] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, it&#8217;s kind of interesting because there are many threads there aren&#8217;t there. If you were just to take the technical side, you could probably do a conference that lasted many, many weeks about the technicalities of how to do it.</p>



<p>But it&#8217;s curious that you&#8217;ve also leaned into the things like, well, the compulsion, the kind of maybe the advent of the ambulance chasing lawyer, dare I say it, who has realised, latched onto the fact that the European Accessibility Act over this side of the Atlantic is now a thing. There is no longer just a moral component to doing the accessibility work on your website. There is now increasingly a big legal hammer, which could be deployed.</p>



<p>And so that alone, I presume will draw a certain audience who, you know, if the only thing that they want to hear about is how to mitigate that problem, well, maybe that&#8217;s not the ideal motivation for it, but nevertheless, it is a bit of a carrot and stick, and it will bring some people into the arena, which is good.</p>



<p>[00:22:41] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> And here&#8217;s why I&#8217;d like to give a shout out to a team that I forgot, the speaker team. They&#8217;re the ones that put together the application, and they vetted through all the applications to see what would be more interesting for everybody.</p>



<p>The rating system is, when they go through the rating system, they kind of make it anonymous of who the presenter would be. So it makes it, you are really looking at what the topic is being talked about, rather than who might be presenting. And that gives us an edge in finding topics that might not be as well known and from areas that are less featured.</p>



<p>So we do have a couple of speakers that are coming from the continent of Africa, and those are always very interesting to hear. In the past, because of the location and the technical availability, there had been technical issues. But this year we&#8217;re having it so that the sessions are all prerecorded. So that will kind of help with the presentation of it, the clarity. But each of the speakers will be in the chat and they&#8217;ll be available to answer questions in the chat.</p>



<p>So I think that&#8217;s an interesting fold into this year&#8217;s event, to have that feature in there so that the speaker is not just presenting, but they&#8217;re in the chat room answering questions. I think that adds another layer to the event.</p>



<p>[00:24:04] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, I think what&#8217;s really nice about that as well is that if everything&#8217;s prerecorded, the speaker will get the chance to create and then re-edit, and then adapt and modify. And what you end up with hopefully is the best version of that talk.</p>



<p>With the best will in the world, some people are not as great as others at doing live things. You know, they go down rabbit holes, and they lose their train of thought or what have you. This completely gets rid of that problem. They can do it as many times as they like and give you the best version.</p>



<p>But also that lovely aspect of, they suddenly become available to have a conversation in the chat, whereas before, they was presenting, you know, and presumably needed to go and have a bit of a lie down afterwards. Whereas in this situation, much more relaxed, you can ask them the questions.</p>



<p>I really appreciate that format. I think that&#8217;s actually, that&#8217;s my preferred way of a summit, kind of like this, the Accessibility Day in this case, being put together. I think that&#8217;s very forward thinking. And I hope that you continue doing it that way because I think the presenters probably appreciate it. Your audience will appreciate it, because it will be polished, and also you get to chat with the person involved. Anything on that, David?</p>



<p>[00:25:11] <strong>David Denedo:</strong> Yeah. Another thing we forgot to talk about is the translation team. So as the talks are being presented, there are also some nice volunteers who are translating it into other languages to have as much diversity as possible. Because some people, English is not their first language, so we have a team trying to convert to like French. We have the one for Spanish. There are also some other ones, even like Hebrew and so many other ones. So it&#8217;s a very nice feeling to have so many translations and everybody is doing their bit.</p>



<p>That is one thing I love about WP Accessibility, the entire organising team is the fact that everybody&#8217;s skill level, it doesn&#8217;t matter your skill level, you can always put in something. So that is something great. Whether you are a web designer, you are just a business owner, you can sponsor the event. If you are good with multilingual, you can be part of the translation. You can apply to speak.</p>



<p>The whole talks is not all technical, like you already mentioned. The talks are varied, so we talk about risk management, we talk about designers can give their own bits. People who are in business can give the business case for accessibility. So it&#8217;s all, it&#8217;s a lovely spread and I really love it.</p>



<p>[00:26:30] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> There really is a lovely spread. I mean, firstly, one thing that I should have done right top of the show, which I didn&#8217;t, and I will mention it because I record a preamble before we actually start talking, one thing I will do is I&#8217;ll read into the record the URL. But I&#8217;ll do that now as well.</p>



<p>So the URL is fabulous, by the way. It&#8217;s just ideal. If you are returning customer, if you like, it&#8217;s wpaccessibility.day. Just one more time, wpaccessibility, the regular spelling, no underscores, no hyphens or anything like that, dot day.</p>



<p>And then as a subdomain you are going to put in the year. So in this case it&#8217;s going to be 2 0 2 5, 2025.wpaccessibility.day. And you&#8217;re going to find all the different bits and pieces over there.</p>



<p>And one of the things that I noticed about the getting involved side of things is, yeah, there&#8217;s the whole sponsorship thing. So you can become a sponsor if you&#8217;d like to do that. But also you can volunteer, you can become a media partner. If you feel philanthropic and you just want to donate some of your money into the project, that is also an option. And then there&#8217;s a whole tab for the attendees as well. It&#8217;s under community. There&#8217;s an attendee section as well.</p>



<p>So it sounds like it&#8217;s not just this little event which flicks on for a couple of days and then turns off again. I mean, certainly from your side, it sounds like there&#8217;s a whole fun community of things happening in the background.</p>



<p>And really that&#8217;s the glue that binds a successful project together. If it was all very uninteresting and dry and a bit boring and you were all feeling under pressure, it wouldn&#8217;t have so many legs, it wouldn&#8217;t be able to run for this many years. But I&#8217;m guessing that you&#8217;ve had nice experiences, right, in the background?</p>



<p>[00:28:04] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> Oh, yes. Yes. We have a lot of fun. But thank you for mentioning those links.</p>



<p>[00:28:08] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> No, I think that&#8217;s wonderful. So again, go and check that out.</p>



<p>The other thing to say though is, let&#8217;s talk about how it&#8217;s actually happening. Obviously you&#8217;ve described that it&#8217;s going to be prerecorded videos. How are you making that content available? What&#8217;s going to be the platform of choice, or how are you going to get it?</p>



<p>Is there a way that you can, I don&#8217;t know, for example, download all of the bits and pieces so you can watch them in your own time? Is it an event which is spanning a single day, you know, a 24 hour time?</p>



<p>[00:28:35] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> Yeah, we do say that it is 24 hours, but all the content and the videos, they&#8217;re going to be available for replay after we go through the post-event production. Either from each subdomain, as you mentioned, the 2025 will be available on the 2025.wpaccessibility.day.</p>



<p>Last year&#8217;s event is available on the 2024.wpaccessibility.day. So you can rewatch them. It&#8217;s also available through YouTube. So if you need some background noise, I often do it. I just turn on that and let it roll.</p>



<p>I have to say, it is a lot of information to absorb, but I do find it to be very resourceful. I know that one of David&#8217;s work this year is to put in chapters for these past event videos. So that has been very helpful to me when I find the relevant video from the past. And I said, I remember somebody saying something about that. Now with the chapters there, it&#8217;s much easier to navigate and find it. So good work, David. Thank you.</p>



<p>[00:29:37] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, indeed. Good work. But what&#8217;s this, in the show notes that were shared before we actually joined the call, it describes, it says here, and I don&#8217;t know which one of you wrote it, but it says, the event will be hosted through Zoom events. And Zoom is capitalised, so I presume it&#8217;s the platform Zoom that we&#8217;re all familiar with. I don&#8217;t know what a Zoom event is. Does that differ from a regular Zoom call? Is there some key difference?</p>



<p>[00:29:59] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> Yes. It&#8217;s different from like a Zoom webinar or a Zoom call. It&#8217;s a platform that has a lobby. You&#8217;re registering on our site, but then on event day you&#8217;ll be able to go into the Zoom event.</p>



<p>There&#8217;ll be a lobby and there&#8217;ll be a chat room, that&#8217;s where you can find all the information for the event. So, it&#8217;s not like a traditional webinar where there&#8217;s just one link in order to go and join it, to join that session, or that sector of sections. So now you can go in and when that hour pops up, that session would pop up.</p>



<p>[00:30:32] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Oh, I see. Right. So you go to this one central place, and everything&#8217;s kind of bound in this one, so as soon as you&#8217;re in, you&#8217;re in, basically, and you don&#8217;t have to keep clicking links in emails to find the latest session, which is going live.</p>



<p>[00:30:44] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> Exactly.</p>



<p>[00:30:45] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay. That&#8217;s really nice. Dave, anything to add to that?</p>



<p>[00:30:47] <strong>David Denedo:</strong> Yeah. And you also have access to like swag. Everything will be in the event, so you can get some of the sponsor swag, you can chat with the speakers, you can chat with other event members, all within the same platform. So not having to jump from one platform to another platform to chat and then come back. You can lose people that way, but now everything all packaged together.</p>



<p>[00:31:12] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> I wanted to give a shout out to the platform itself. It allows us to do live captioning. A lot of times with webinars, it is just automated caption. We actually do have live captioners typing into Zoom. That is another layer to WP Accessibility Day that is not a feature in other events.</p>



<p>[00:31:32] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> No kidding, yeah.</p>



<p>[00:31:33] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> Yes. And the other big one, expense for us is the American Sign Language interpreters. So they will be also on hand on event day, and there&#8217;s a team of them that will be available to us, and they do the ASL.</p>



<p>This year one of our speakers is from Australia and he will be bringing in Australian Sign Language, which is different from American Sign Language. So there&#8217;s another layer to the accessibility. We understand either British Sign Language or American Sign Language but, yeah, there&#8217;s Australian Sign Language too.</p>



<p>[00:32:08] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You drop this as if it&#8217;s really straightforward, but when my head starts spinning on the technicalities there, the idea of injecting real time, typed transcriptions, somehow overlaying that into the video, there&#8217;s a whole technical piece there.</p>



<p>And then you&#8217;ve got a sign language person. That&#8217;s a whole nother layer as well. That all needs, presumably, I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s going to be done live or filmed. Maybe there&#8217;s an opportunity.</p>



<p>[00:32:33] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> It&#8217;s live.</p>



<p>[00:32:33] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, okay. So all of that, there are lots and lots of moving parts here.</p>



<p>[00:32:37] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> That&#8217;s why we have the technical and vendor team, and the volunteer team. They&#8217;re pivotal on event day to have those two teams in place.</p>



<p>[00:32:47] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Can I just ask, because I know there&#8217;ll be some people that are curious about the, how to describe it, the business status, let&#8217;s put it that way. And maybe this is not something that either of you can answer, I don&#8217;t know.</p>



<p>What&#8217;s the structure of WP Accessibility Day? So, for example, if I was to donate, in the UK we call these things charities. I think in the US the correct term is non-profit. So if I was to donate, do I have some sort of assurance that the money isn&#8217;t going to end up in some, I don&#8217;t even want to say the words because I know that nobody&#8217;s ethics are this poorly thought through, but I&#8217;m going to say it anyway. Just want to make sure that the money doesn&#8217;t end in somebody&#8217;s back pocket.</p>



<p>Where did the donations end up? How is the structure of this organisation ensuring that everything is out in the open and clear and easy to understand?</p>



<p>[00:33:28] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> Well, this year WordPress Accessibility Day was recognised by IRS as the 501 C3 public charity. So based upon that, a hundred percent of our income that comes in goes right back into the event.</p>



<p>Organisers and volunteers are not paid. Every one of us who are working on this is out of the goodness of our heart, and what time availability that we have.</p>



<p>The one caveat I will say, some of our translators are paid because translation is an income based business. And this is a recent development. In the past we&#8217;ve had to ask them to please donate their time to do the translation. But now we have a little bit more security to be able to pay them.</p>



<p>People who have the ability to speak multiple languages, look into the translation because if you aren&#8217;t able to participate as an organiser or a volunteer, donating your time to translate or being paid for be translators for us is a huge difference for us to bring all these sessions available to a greater audience.</p>



<p>[00:34:36] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I think everybody would understand that there&#8217;s, that is how that industry works, isn&#8217;t it? When you go to a WordCamp, for example, and you see the people doing the live captioning, or you see the people standing on the stage and they&#8217;re doing the sign language, I think it&#8217;s understood that that is what they do for a living.</p>



<p>[00:34:51] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> And I would be remiss not to give credit to our sponsors too. We have many sponsors who are repeat sponsors year after year, and they support us with their sponsorship. We are very appreciative of that.</p>



<p>This year we have some new ones and a lot of repeating ones from every range. Our higher level are of course now closed, but we still have the bronze level, which is at a $500, or a micro sponsor which is at $150. And the difference between that is the Bronze has a webpage, a dedicated webpage for their company, and the micro sponsor has a logo on our sponsor page.</p>



<p>[00:35:28] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So as of recording, and maybe that will keep going right up to the deadline, I don&#8217;t know, so if what you&#8217;ve heard has made you feel that you&#8217;d like to be involved on a sponsorship level, bronze is available, that one is $500, and there&#8217;s a micro one. And obviously you can go onto the 2025 Accessibility Day website and discover for yourself what&#8217;s available in there.</p>



<p>So we found out what&#8217;s happening. We found out why it&#8217;s being done. We found out some of the people that are being involved. I suppose what we ought to do at this point is drive people toward the schedule.</p>



<p>Well, you&#8217;ve announced it already, but let&#8217;s just make sure we&#8217;re doing it again. The date for this event is when?</p>



<p>[00:36:03] <strong>David Denedo:</strong> So it&#8217;ll be happening on October 15th to the 16th, and it&#8217;ll be 24 hour long event. So it&#8217;s going to go right up for 24 hours. We have the speakers all in the schedule, so you can go ahead and check it out. The link will be in the shownotes.</p>



<p>[00:36:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It will. Yeah, that&#8217;s absolutely right. So the 15th of October, it&#8217;s a 24 hour event. So I don&#8217;t know if you start in the sort of Pacific neck of the woods, that seems to be the traditional way that things are done. So Australia, they&#8217;re the sort of first people to receive the content, and then it just goes around the globe. And maybe the people in, on the west coast of the US and Hawaii and what have you, they get the content more towards the end of the day. I assume that&#8217;s how it&#8217;s working.</p>



<p>But if you go to the URL that we mentioned earlier and just add forward slash schedule to it, you will be able to see through opening remarks from Joe Dolson right at the beginning of the day, right through the keynotes and everything, to the closing remarks, or at least the last presentation, which is happening some 23 or so hours later.</p>



<p>I think that&#8217;s all the questions that I had. Is there anything that you feel it would&#8217;ve been important to say that we didn&#8217;t say? If that&#8217;s the case, please feel free to use this platform now.</p>



<p>[00:37:09] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> The event is free, but we do ask that you register, so that we do have a good count of how many people are coming. So please sign up at 2025.wpaccessibility.day and you&#8217;ll find the registration link there.</p>



<p>[00:37:26] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Is that a mere request or is that a requirement? In order to gain access, do you need to have, yeah, okay. So I&#8217;m getting a nod of the head there from June. So go and register in order to access the content as well. David, anything we missed?</p>



<p>[00:37:38] <strong>David Denedo:</strong> Yeah, the only thing is that I&#8217;m excited for Vitaly Friedman, because he has a very wide following, so he will bring more people into our event, hopefully. And he is going to be talking about accessible designs, which is something quite powerful. Because in this day and age, people always associate accessibility with very boring designs. But he&#8217;s coming to show you that you can have very beautiful designs in 2025 and still be accessible. So that&#8217;s a very important topic.</p>



<p>[00:38:09] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Well, the WP Accessibility Day website is an example of that. It&#8217;s actually a really tasteful, beautiful design. I&#8217;m going to guess that it&#8217;s, you know, the accessibility credentials of it are fairly strong. Let&#8217;s just, make that assumption, but it&#8217;s beautifully designed.</p>



<p>Yeah, we didn&#8217;t really touch on the names of the speakers or what have you. But yeah, I&#8217;ll just go through a few just as I scroll through, just to give you some ideas.</p>



<p>So accessible design patterns is Vitaly. Being a colorblind designer, typography, readability, digital accessibility, building accessibility that works in the global south, hyper accessible web design for the blind, audio accessibility, accessibility lawsuits, gosh, we&#8217;re only like six or seven in, and we&#8217;ve run the full gamut already. So here we go. Why accessibility matters, video and media your post-production, guide making WordPress events accessible, gosh, that&#8217;s fascinating. Auditing WordPress plugin accessibility, demystifying screen readers, technical checklists. That means testing WordPress themes and plugins for accessibility. The future is automated, will it be accessible? Making Gutenberg blocks accessible. I&#8217;m going to stop there, but you get the idea. There&#8217;s absolutely loads of breadth and depth.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s very much the case that if you were to show up, I would guarantee more or less that there&#8217;s going to be something which will pique your interest and keep you engaged. The schedule, like I said, is at forward slash schedule.</p>



<p>Okay, if that&#8217;s the case, I will just say thank you so much for being one of many cogs in this very important wheel. Thank you for doing what is incredibly important work, making the web accessible to far more people. Thank you. That&#8217;s quite amazing.</p>



<p>So June and David, thanks for joining us today. Really appreciate it.</p>



<p>[00:39:46] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> Thanks for having us.</p>



<p>[00:39:48] <strong>David Denedo:</strong> Thanks for having us.</p>
</div></details>



<p>On the podcast today we have <a href="https://2025.wpaccessibility.day/people/june-liu/">June Liu</a> and <a href="https://2025.wpaccessibility.day/people/david-denedo/">David Denedo</a>.</p>



<p>Both June and David are key members of the <a href="https://2025.wpaccessibility.day/">WP Accessibility Day</a> organising team, a global, volunteer-driven event focused on improving accessibility in the WordPress ecosystem. June serves as the marketing team co-lead and works with sponsors, bringing her background in project management to keep the event’s efforts on track. David, a web designer and content creator based in London, contributes to the marketing and post-event teams, with his interest in web accessibility stemming from his personal experience as a visually impaired user.</p>



<p>WP Accessibility Day has grown significantly in the past few years, uniting a large, international group of volunteers and organisers to drive awareness and practical change in web accessibility. The event is powered by a host of teams, marketing, sponsors, tech and vendor, post-event, translation, speakers, and more, ensuring that everything from live captioning to sign language interpretation is in place.</p>



<p>We begin by learning about June and David’s unique paths to accessibility advocacy, one through direct lived experience, and the other through supporting a loved one with cognitive challenges. Their stories highlight why accessibility can&#8217;t be an afterthought and how events like WP Accessibility Day are raising awareness in this important area.</p>



<p>We discuss what attendees can expect at this year’s event, happening from October 15th, 2025. It’s free, fully virtual, and runs for 24 hours, making space for a diverse range of speakers and topics. Whether you’re interested in the moral, legal, or technical cases for accessibility, there’s something for you here, including sessions on accessible design, risk management for agencies, legal compliance, and demonstrations of assistive technologies.</p>



<p>June and David share how the event format, a combination of pre-recorded talks and live chat, mixes polished content with real-time engagement, plus how translation and community involvement are key to its growing impact.</p>



<p>If you want to learn more about how you can make your WordPress sites, and the web in general, more inclusive, or if you’re motivated by global collaboration and personal stories, this episode is for you.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Useful links</h2>



<p><a href="https://2025.wpaccessibility.day/">WP Accessibility Website</a></p>



<p><a href="https://2025.wpaccessibility.day/about/organizers/">The WP Accessibility Day Team</a></p>



<p><a href="https://2025.wpaccessibility.day/schedule/">The WP Accessibility Day Schedule</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCes9XCUZd51CAigbBEGlfNg">WP Accessibility Day YouTube Channel</a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 01 Oct 2025 14:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Nathan Wrigley";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:2;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:43:"WordPress.org blog: WordPress 6.8.3 Release";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=19204";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:59:"https://wordpress.org/news/2025/09/wordpress-6-8-3-release/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4937:"<p><strong>WordPress 6.8.3 is now available!</strong></p>



<p>This is a security release that features two fixes.</p>



<p>Because this is a security release,<strong> it is recommended that you update your sites immediately</strong>.</p>



<p>You can <a href="https://wordpress.org/wordpress-6.8.3.zip">download WordPress 6.8.3 from WordPress.org</a>, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”. If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically.</p>



<p>The next major release will be <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/6-9/">version 6.9</a>, which is planned for December 2nd, 2025.<br />For more information on WordPress 6.8.3, please visit the <a href="https://wordpress.org/documentation/wordpress-version/version-6-8-3/">version page on the HelpHub site</a>.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Security updates included in this release</h2>



<p>The security team would like to thank the following people for <a href="https://hackerone.com/wordpress?type=team">responsibly reporting vulnerabilities</a>, and allowing them to be fixed in this release:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>A data exposure issue where authenticated users could access some restricted content. Independently reported by <a href="https://hackerone.com/mnelson4">Mike Nelson</a>, <a href="https://hackerone.com/hurayraiit">Abu Hurayra</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/timothyblynjacobs/">Timothy Jacobs</a>, and <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/peterwilsoncc/">Peter Wilson</a>.</li>



<li>A cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability requiring an authenticated user role that affects the nav menus. Reported by <a href="https://x.com/Savphill">Phill Savage</a>.</li>
</ul>



<p>As a courtesy, these fixes have also been made available to all branches eligible to receive security fixes (currently through 4.7). As a reminder, <strong>only the most recent version of WordPress is actively supported</strong>.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Thank you to these WordPress contributors</h2>



<p>This release was led by <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/johnbillion/">John Blackbourn</a>.</p>



<p>In addition to the security researchers and release squad members mentioned above, WordPress 6.8.3 would not have been possible without the contributions of the following people:</p>



<p><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/jorbin">Aaron Jorbin</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/hurayraiit">Abu Hurayra</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/zieladam">Adam Zieliński</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/xknown">Alex Concha</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/andraganescu%20">Andrei Draganescu</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/davidbaumwald/">David Baumwald</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/ehtis">Ehtisham Siddiqui</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/iandunn">Ian Dunn</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/whyisjake">Jake Spurlock</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/audrasjb">Jb Audras</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/joehoyle">Joe Hoyle</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/johnbillion">John Blackbourn</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/jonsurrell">Jon Surrell</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/desrosj">Jonathan Desrosiers</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/mnelson4">Michael Nelson</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/peterwilsoncc">Peter Wilson</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/phillsav">Phill</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/noisysocks">Robert Anderson</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/rmccue">Ryan McCue</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/coffee2code/">Scott Reilly</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/timothyblynjacobs">Timothy Jacobs</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/vortfu">vortfu</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/westonruter">Weston Ruter</a></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">How to contribute</h2>



<p>To get involved in WordPress core development, head over to Trac, <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/report/6">pick a ticket</a>, and join the conversation in the <a href="https://app.slack.com/client/T024MFP4J/C02RQBWTW">#core</a> Slack channel. Need help? Check out the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/tutorials/faq-for-new-contributors/">Core Contributor Handbook</a>.</p>



<p>Props to <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/ehtis/">Ehtisham Siddiqui</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/johnbillion/">John Blackbourn</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/paulkevan/">Paul Kevan</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/desrosj/">Jonathan Desrosiers</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/jorbin/">Aaron Jorbin</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/westonruter">Weston Ruter</a> for reviewing.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 30 Sep 2025 19:31:04 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:15:"John Blackbourn";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:3;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"Matt: What’s Your Time?";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=150037";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://ma.tt/2025/09/tick-tock/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:908:"<p>I think some of the best writing about technology PR is this ten-year-old article by <a href="https://www.onbackground.com/">Aaron Zamost</a>: <a href="https://medium.com/backchannel/how-the-tech-press-forces-a-narrative-on-companies-it-covers-5f89fdb7793e">What’s Your Hour in ‘Silicon Valley Time’?</a> It describes the cycles that companies go through in public perception, and the beauty of revisiting it ten years later is that you can see which of the examples are still relevant, or the domains that 404. As someone who has been around this clock probably a dozen times now, I highly suggest this for anyone &#8220;going through it.&#8221; Some of the most powerful words in the English language: <em>This too shall pass</em>. </p>



<p>See also: The Zen fable or old Chinese poem of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_old_man_lost_his_horse">the old man who loses his horse</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 30 Sep 2025 17:30:25 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:4;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:95:"Open Channels FM: Surviving the WordPress Plugin Grind Growth, Marketing and Overcoming Burnout";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=110777";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:101:"https://openchannels.fm/surviving-the-wordpress-plugin-grind-growth-marketing-and-overcoming-burnout/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:237:"In this WP Behind the Builds episode, guest Devin Walker discusses his transition from corporate IT to successful WordPress plugin development, focusing on GiveWP, WP Rollback, and lessons learned about business and community engagement.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 30 Sep 2025 11:34:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:5;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Matt: Om 59";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=150022";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://ma.tt/2025/09/om-59/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3905:"<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-150030" height="340" src="https://i0.wp.com/ma.tt/files/2025/09/IMG_0803-1-edited-scaled.jpeg?resize=604%2C340&#038;quality=89&#038;ssl=1" width="604" /></figure>



<p>I want to dedicate my blog post today to my dear friend and brother, <a href="https://om.co/">Om Malik</a>, whose birthday it is. Om is a multi-hyphenate, but at his core, he&#8217;s a writer, someone who looks at the world and parses it down for others, a seeker who appreciates the spark of creation before most others.</p>



<p>Om was one of the earliest users of WordPress and he was one of <a href="https://ma.tt/2005/01/meetup-aftermath/">8 people who came to the very first WordPress meetups at Chaat Cafe on 3<sup>rd</sup> street in San Francisco in 2005</a>. (You can tell what an early adopter he is because he has the username &#8220;Om&#8221; <a href="https://x.com/om">on Twitter/X</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/om/">Instagram</a> and WordPress and probably more.) We had connected on the WordPress support forums when I helped him get set up around the 1.0 days. After I moved to San Francisco to take the job at CNET he connected me to people like Phil Black, Tony Conrad, and Toni Schneider who would become, respectively, an investor, board member, and CEO of Automattic. These are folks I still work with and consider close friends today. As a journalist, he had a keen nose for BS and made sure as a naïve 20-something in SF I was connecting with quality people.</p>



<p>Since we met we&#8217;ve both had a shared love for photography, and I&#8217;ve seen Om blossom into an amazing photographer with a really unique style and approach, <a href="https://www.photosbyom.com/">in fact you can even buy some of his photography prints</a>.</p>



<p>Over the years, we&#8217;ve dipped in and out of shared obsessions with cameras, watches, shoes, fashion, and design. We have a fair number of matching things in each. In photography we&#8217;ve shivered in minus thirty weather in Antarctica and Jackson Hole at odd hours to catch a special shot. We&#8217;ve traveled to Europe and Japan dozens of times, being very early (pre John Mayer and Kanye) to brands like <a href="https://www.visvim.tv/">Visvim</a>. <span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">When I wear something like a bespoke<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">, hand-made piece from <a href="https://45rglobal.com/" target="_blank">45R</a> to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45HRzzc0waU" target="_blank">speak at WordCamp US</a>, he recognizes it off the cuff </span>and even knows the one store on Crosby Street in New York where you can buy it.</span> He is a tastemaker and an aesthetic connoisseur in every area he&#8217;s interested in, from food to coffee to pens, and everything in between. Sometimes we&#8217;ll start a journey together, for example, trying nice pens, and years later, I&#8217;ve moved on and he&#8217;s gone deep into collecting dozens of them, being in obscure forums and Reddits, or attending events like the <a href="https://sanfranciscopenshow.com/">SF Pen Show last month</a>.</p>



<p>When you walk into a coffee shop with Om he doesn&#8217;t just know the barista&#8217;s name, he knows their dog&#8217;s name and the story of every person working there.</p>



<p>I&#8217;m 500 words in, and I still haven&#8217;t even scratched the surface of describing Om&#8217;s journey, from growing up in Delhi to becoming a journalist for a Japanese publication in New York, a book author, party promoter, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, photographer, and explorer. If you want to understand the AI bubble we&#8217;re in right now, you should <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0471660612?tag=photomatt08-20">read his book Broadbandits on the crazy telecom / Enron bubble</a>. This is a long way to say, happy birthday Om!</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 29 Sep 2025 15:50:56 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:6;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:19:"Matt: Craft vs Slop";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=150017";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"https://ma.tt/2025/09/craft-slop/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1964:"<p>In an age where AI can generate an infinite amount of stuff, what matters? Some of the most interesting writing I&#8217;ve read on this comes from <a href="https://willmanidis.com/">Will Manidis</a>, who makes it biblical and says that Craft is the Antidote to Slop:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p>From Genesis, man enters not a paradise without labor but a world of intentional creation. The LORD God places man in the Garden of Eden<em> &#8220;to dress it and to keep it&#8221;</em> (Genesis 2:15) establishing labor not as punishment but as sacred vocation. This original calling invites us to co-create the Kingdom, tending and developing the world with intention and care. Our fundamental purpose is not consumption but participation in the ongoing work of creation.</p>



<p>The serpent&#8217;s temptation represents the first shortcut in human history<em>.&#8221;Ye shall be as gods&#8221; </em>(Genesis 3:5) was not an invitation to deeper engagement with creation, but a way to get out of the work required to tend to it. The consequence wasn&#8217;t the introduction of work itself, but its corruption into burdensome toil: <em>&#8220;In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread&#8221; </em>(Genesis 3:19). Humanity&#8217;s first sin was, in part, choosing the easy shortcut over the meaningful process – preferring effortless gain to the demanding but fulfilling work of tending the garden.</p>
</blockquote>



<p>You can read the rest as <a href="https://x.com/WillManidis/status/1971920155996574168">screenshots on X</a> or <a href="https://minutes.substack.com/p/craft-is-the-antidote-to-slop">on his Substack</a>, but I hope he gets a real website soon. This also makes me think you should watch the <a href="https://www.weareasgods.film/">We Are As Gods documentary on Stewart Brand</a>, supported by the amazing folks at <a href="https://press.stripe.com/">Stripe Press</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 29 Sep 2025 06:41:36 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:7;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:111:"Gutenberg Times: Gutenberg Changelog 121—Gutenberg 21.6 and 21.7,  Block Theme Development, and Block Themes";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?post_type=podcast&p=42062";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:124:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-121-gutenberg-21-6-and-21-7-block-theme-development-and-block-themes/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:81565:"<p>In Episode 121 of the Gutenberg Changelog podcast, Birgit Pauli-Haack and Anne Katzeff dive into Gutenberg 21.6 and 21.7, touching on theme development, block themes, Figma workflows, Playground blueprints, and upcoming WordPress 6.9 features. They discuss enhancements to data views, grid layouts, the new accordion block, command palette improvements, block-level commenting for collaboration, accessibility updates, and the ongoing evolution of global styles and admin redesign, offering insights for both theme builders and developers.</p>



<p><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-121-gutenberg-21-6-and-21-7-block-theme-development-and-block-themes/#shownotes">Show Notes</a> / <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-121-gutenberg-21-6-and-21-7-block-theme-development-and-block-themes/#transcript">Transcript</a></p>



<p></p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Editor: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandy-reed/">Sandy Reed</a></li>



<li>Logo: <a href="https://markuraine.com/">Mark Uraine</a></li>



<li>Production: <a href="https://icodeforapurpose.com">Birgit Pauli-Haack</a></li>
</ul>



<p class="has-larger-font-size" id="shownotes"><strong>Show Notes</strong></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Special guest: Anne Katzeff</h2>



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<p><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/live-q-a-design-systems-and-theme-json/">Gutenberg Times Live Q &amp; A: Design Systems and Theme.json</a></p>



<p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/05/hallway-hangout-theme-building-with-playground-create-block-theme-plugin-and-github/">Hallway Hangout: Theme Building with Playground, Create-block-theme plugin, and GitHub</a></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Gutenberg plugin releases</h2>



<p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2025/09/10/whats-new-in-gutenberg-21-6-10-september/">What’s new in Gutenberg 21.6? (10 September)</a></p>



<p><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/releases/tag/v21.7.0">Changelog 21.7</a></p>



<p></p>



<p class="has-large-font-size">Stay in Touch</p>



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<p class="has-large-font-size" id="transcript"><strong>Transcript</strong></p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Hello, and welcome to our 121st episode of the Gutenberg Changelog podcast. In today&#8217;s episode, we will talk about Gutenberg 21.6 and 21.7, as well as about theme development, block themes, and all this good, good stuff. And I&#8217;m your host, Birgit Pauli-Haack, curator of the Gutenberg Times, developer advocate, and core contributor for the WordPress open source project sponsored by Automattic. And with me is Anne Katzeff, a dear friend of mine. She joins me in this episode. She was here before on the show, and she&#8217;s a longtime WordPress theme builder, educator and artist, and a longtime friend of mine. He previously connected on WordPress Meetup Co-organizers in Southwest Florida, but that&#8217;s ages ago. Anne has been on a podcast before, and it was episode 109 almost a year ago. So glad you&#8217;re here, Anne. How are you today?</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> I&#8217;m good, Birgit. Thanks for inviting me. It&#8217;s great to see you and reunite. I hope you&#8217;re well. I was just thinking, I can&#8217;t wait to catch up on all the WordCamp stuff that you and others have been posting. I&#8217;ve been immersed in two things recently. Redesigning a client&#8217;s very old website.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>When you say very old.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Oh, it was using. It&#8217;s still live, although it barely displays correctly because the code is so old. It uses custom templates from a custom theme that has some of the content baked into the code.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Oh. Oh, yeah.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> So it&#8217;s really hard to edit. The client has a real hard time doing that, as I do as well. And now I&#8217;m rebuilding the site. I&#8217;m using a cadence theme, and it&#8217;s a whole new area for me. I&#8217;m seeing the pros and cons of that system. And I&#8217;m also redesigning my own website. I don&#8217;t even want to tell you how long that&#8217;s been since I designed it. It&#8217;s built on Bootstrap. I do have a WordPress blog, so I have to update the bootstrap part and the WordPress part.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Okay. So you have the design and the styling is in Bootstrap, and you kind of massage it into the WordPress, so.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Exactly.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Seamless. Okay. Yeah, yeah.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>And, you know, people ask me, why don&#8217;t you do the whole thing in WordPress for me? I do occasionally build bootstrap sites, so this is a way. It&#8217;s kind of an excuse for me to keep current in what&#8217;s happening in Bootstrap. So I&#8217;m using new tools like figma for my prototyping, and once I get that finished and we&#8217;re nearing that point I&#8217;ll start rebuilding and bootstrap, and probably I&#8217;ll use the 2025 WordPress default theme for the blog part. So with both of these projects I&#8217;m using these new tools and riding a learning curve and it&#8217;s all good. It&#8217;s challenging and stimulating and integrating the new with the familiar. So it&#8217;s like my mind is like uhh.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, but it could be. It&#8217;s a great exercise. You have to kind of see okay, how far can I still rely on what I&#8217;m doing? And oh this cool new stuff is also good. So I know that Jonathan Bosinger, he&#8217;s a co-worker of mine and he was one of the educators on the Learn team and he has started live streaming and this last livestream he&#8217;s trying to. He got a Figma design from a designer and now wants to create a block theme about it and finds that there are no like you know in the old days where you had a Photoshop to WordPress kind of. Yeah, yeah. He kind of had hope that there is a from figma to WordPress kind of thing and there is but you need to be very deliberate on how you set up Figma exactly to make this work. So.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> God, I was just thinking about all that. That&#8217;s so interesting. Yeah. You have to have they call it auto layout and of course I don&#8217;t, and I&#8217;m not going to redo all my stuff in Figma just to pray that whatever plugin I use will work. But that&#8217;s what they recommend the so. Oh well it wasn&#8217;t what I had planned. I wasn&#8217;t going to do an automated thing but. But now this kind of validates a reason why I can&#8217;t. It&#8217;s not quite there yet. Yeah, there are curious things in Figma and there are amazing things in Figma.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>So it&#8217;s like any new tool. Yeah, yeah. It has your tradeoffs and you need to kind of unlearn a lot of things before you can learn. Yeah. So the VIP theme builders or designers, they actually have a process where they go from Figma to theme JSON because they&#8217;ll have websites where they like you do. There&#8217;s a component that&#8217;s not WordPress and there&#8217;s a component that&#8217;s WordPress, or they have customers that have multiple different brandings for different things but they&#8217;re also, they&#8217;re all in Figma but then you can do themes and then that theme, you can use a plugin that you can then export your design decisions on the, on fonts and on colors and other things to migrate to theme JSON and then immediately kind of start up a block theme. I&#8217;m going to find that, dear listeners, I&#8217;m also going to find the link for you, not only for Anne. Thank you. We had David Bowman on the live Q and A maybe two years ago where he kind of demonstrated that all. So we will share those in the show notes and kind of see how that, I don&#8217;t know how that kind of works with you and how you approach figma, but it might be a good way to see if that works for you.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> That would be fascinating as well. I mean, I am using variables for some of my styles. I&#8217;m limiting it because again, of the learning curve. But I&#8217;ve got so far the color palette and very basic typography assigned to, you know, text in the six head levels to match up with a bootstrap scenario. And I&#8217;m thinking ahead even beyond that. Well, how will I translate that into a WordPress theme? So it&#8217;s. I like the complication. I don&#8217;t mind it.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, yeah, no, the complexity is really intriguing because all of a sudden you kind of have these, all these pieces that fit together very well and you feel like, oh, this is genius.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Yeah, yeah, I actually, I wish I could remember the guy&#8217;s name, but I saw, I watched a YouTube video. Maybe I&#8217;ll find it and I&#8217;ll send you a note about it. But he explained the Figma variables really well, and he has maybe an hour and a half tutorial that I&#8217;ve yet to just scratch the surface.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, I know that Justin Tadlock, who is our theme guru, I would call him, he is working on a design system where he combines the color palette and the fonts with semantic kind of. So he&#8217;s not saying, okay, this is the main color, this is the background color, foreground color. But he&#8217;s saying, okay, this is a text color and has a separate design system that&#8217;s built into theme that he builds into theme JSON. So he can actually switch out a theme if the theme actually follows the same standards in there. He just can change colors and then the theme looks totally different.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Exactly. That&#8217;s kind of the idea behind the variables.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, exactly.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Definitely try to be semantic.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. Michelle Hunt did a good funnel from Atomic Design to the Design system at WordCamp US and the video is online. And she also had a similar custom color setting design system in Theme JSON actually built into. Yeah, so I&#8217;m, of course I&#8217;m going to share all that, but with you and our listeners.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Yeah. We can&#8217;t anticipate everything that comes up in these conversations, can we? No, we don&#8217;t have all the links right here.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. But at least I know where I can look. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I&#8217;m writing a blog post and I&#8217;m still a little bit stuck in that. But on how to use Playground to build a theme demo where you can have content, like to showcase your theme and then create a Playground blueprint to share with your clients or your customers so they can test WordPress with the theme and some content in there.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>So great idea.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>So they know how the patterns look or the color scheme or how the front page can look. And because sometimes you have this problem that you have a theme and you see that there was a front page, but when you install the theme, it doesn&#8217;t look like that. Yeah, so, yeah, so that&#8217;s kind of part where theme builders or even agencies can really make some great showcase for their product. And I&#8217;m using Playground, but there is actually importer. So you can put all the content into your local site and then export it and then import it into Playground with the blueprint. Kind of have the XML file on GitHub and it kind of puts it in and you can do all the settings here. What&#8217;s the front page like? A blog post or a block theme? Or is it a page? Or is it. Which one is the news page then? And so you can build that all out. And now I&#8217;m kind of. The missing piece is still navigation. So the navigation, if you just build the pages, it automatically builds the page layout or the page list layout. But if you do a custom navigation work, it doesn&#8217;t get imported yet because somehow the parser doesn&#8217;t know that those links need to be transferred to the new site. So it didn&#8217;t work. Right. But I&#8217;m working on it and I know that the Playground people are really busy on doing stuff, doing this and fixing things. So that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m working on. And I&#8217;m.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>So it sounds like you&#8217;re using it also as a prototyping tool.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> You could, you could. Yeah, yeah, yeah.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Is it like the concept, like a live link that you can share with a client and they can view it? Yeah, okay.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, yeah. You could also do the prototype thing with. Well, you can share. You can. Yeah, you can share it with a client and every client who kept the link gets the same site. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>So is it stored in GitHub?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>No, it&#8217;s stored in memory on browser. On the browser, it&#8217;s Playground is a tool that runs WordPress. In the browser. You don&#8217;t need a server, you don&#8217;t need a database. You just need the playground.WordPress.net and then you have a WordPress site. And then with blueprints that are configuration files in JSON written in JSON, you can say, okay, which plugin do I want to install? Which. What&#8217;s the landing page? Which theme do I want to have in there? And do I want to have additional content in there? Yeah. So you can use it to showcase your plugin or your theme. And we use it for. For all kinds of different things as well. And on the team, we use it to test PRs from a good look and track that are not merged yet, that are not yet in a. In a version of that. So you can just kind of isolate the whole thing and just test this particular thing. That&#8217;s really cool. And I&#8217;m going to have a talk at a WordCamp about using Playground, GitHub and the great block theme. Okay. To change themes without touching code. So making changes to the themes through the editor. So if you need a new template or need to change a template, change or add colors and all this kind of things, but then at the end you export it to GitHub and it creates the PR that then one of your developer is going to merge with the theme where all the other developing things are happening.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em></p>



<p>That sounds really cool.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Well, clearly I haven&#8217;t used Blueprint very much.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Or Playground.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Or Playground. Sorry.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, but I get what you said before. Yeah. I like the complexity. So. Okay, let&#8217;s see how complicated and easy we can make it. Yeah. Well, I think we could now head into Gutenberg 21.6. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">WordPress 6.9</h3>



<p>So WordPress 6.9 is coming. Let&#8217;s talk a little bit about WordPress 6.9. We will have other shows about that, of course, but just to get the timing right, we are about four weeks away from Beta 1, and Beta 1 is pretty much feature freeze, and it will all have in there 15 Gutenberg releases from 20.5 when WordPress 6.8 came out, 20.4 was the last one. So 20.5 until 21.9, it&#8217;s pretty much 15. But there was a period of Gutenberg releases for about four, four months when not a whole lot of features came in. But that is going to be offset that in the last two or three releases. There will be a ton of things in there. So we will change our cadence from having two Gutenberg plugins in a show to one and do another. I hope we can go back to every other week instead of every month recording. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Gutenberg 21.6</h3>



<p>What we are talking about today is about Gutenberg 21.6 before I go in there. So release is going to be December 2nd, so everything you need and beta one is October 21st and in between are release candidates and release candidate one, I think is November 2nd or something like that. So by that time we hopefully have all the developer notes in there and Source of Truth will come out there at the same time or a week later. So just so you can prepare a plan or not. I&#8217;m a planning person, so I always need to know the dates. I always have. Most of the time I have a plan. So when something changes, I know what to change. Yeah. So. Well, let&#8217;s head into the Gutenberg 21.6. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Enhancements</h3>



<p>It has a few enhancements and we start with the Data Views enhancement. And one of them is. Seems to be a minor thing, but there is a card layout in the components for the Data Forms where you can support combined fields and show the description in there. And that&#8217;s fairly new. So there&#8217;s also a storybook documentation out for those plugin developers who all kind of want to try out the new Data Views and the Data Forms. Data form is really where people then can enter stuff, filtering and all that. That&#8217;s all in Data Forms. And then there&#8217;s also in the Data Views we have the grid layout is now a little bit more flexible. You can have it without a title and then you have the actions are available on Hover, which is quite nice.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> But yeah, I like that. That&#8217;s a wonderful enhancement. And of course it got me into another path of both grids and thinking about using the grid layout for the post template. So I started to play around with that. Got lost in that for about an hour. So far I don&#8217;t really see an advantage for using the grid over the default grouping with columns, but I&#8217;ll play around with it a bit more.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, there is actually a more interactive way of using the grid layout in the Gutenberg experiments. So that might be. So when you use the Gutenberg plugin, there&#8217;s one menu item under Gutenberg that says Experiments, and there are probably 10 different experiments, amongst them the new blocks that are in there, but they will come out of experiments hopefully soon. There&#8217;s also the data view usage for posts. Because right now it&#8217;s only a site editor with pages where you can use the data views but also use them for posts. And there are a ton of experiments and one of them is interactive grid layout where you can drag and drop things.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Oh really?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Use it. Yeah. For different kind of content as well. So you have pictures in there, you can have a cover in there and you can have just text in there and each grid and then you can also stretch it out over two rows.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Oh yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Or two columns or two rows kind of thing. And. And it. Oh, cool. Kind of merges all that. So it&#8217;s really cool. But it hasn&#8217;t gotten any updates for a while. It&#8217;s still an experiment because of our other priorities. But it&#8217;s definitely. You see what&#8217;s coming. That&#8217;s one thing. Also to kind of okay, how can we. How can this be improved? Yeah, and kind of. Yeah, let the developers know. That&#8217;s the. Yeah, I like the grid layout too.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Yeah, yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Do some interesting things with it.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Definitely.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. Yeah. There were updates to the core data packages but they are so developer oriented and so technical that if you&#8217;re interested that just check out the changelog of 21.6. But 21.6 has one new thing and that&#8217;s. Well, it was actually in 21.5, but that&#8217;s the accordion block and I cannot talk often about it. Often enough about it. I&#8217;m really happy that the accordion block made it into Gutenberg. Now it&#8217;s still under experiments, so you need to switch it on. I think it&#8217;s the second. The second from the top on that page. I had a plan to create a post about all the experiments that I Gutenberg. But yeah, that kind of fell to the website.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Well, it&#8217;s constantly changing I would think.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, that&#8217;s one thing, but it&#8217;s also kind of. Oh yeah, well, let&#8217;s do the other cool stuff too. Yeah, yeah.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>I&#8217;ve seen a lot of discussion about the new accordion features and I checked about. Of course, you know, I had to look at that. I still think the UI needs some tweaks. Although of course I. I think the add button is a no brainer. That&#8217;s a really good addition. So I was looking at the accordion from a user point of view. Not on the front end, but the back end. And those pan. What do they call them? Panes. They&#8217;re tucked right next to each other. I think just from a UI point of view it would be nice to add a little bit of space between them. Because I had trouble acclimating to how does this actually work and what&#8217;s going on. I hit this plus sign and then it opens up. So just a little bit more tweaking on that, I think would be.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, I think that&#8217;s also something to think about with block style variations, where you can actually put that in a style.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff</em>: Sure.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>And then I did some discovery on that because I wanted to figure out how many different designs can I come up with? My AI can come up with that. I can put a variation. How many did you discover? Right now, I did it all by hand and kind of do the discovery because I had the whole same thing. But I had too much white space. I did a background into the panel.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>That&#8217;s a good idea. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>And then I had a white space there. And so I needed to reduce the margin to get rid of that white space. But, yeah, I think that&#8217;s the design decisions. It&#8217;s so new that you&#8217;re. There are not all the supports are there. I think you can have some dimension support there with spacing and margins. So you can definitely see that in the side. In the inspector controls and the sidebar of the block. You just need to make sure that you select the right block, because there are four blocks. One is the accordion, that&#8217;s the wrapper, and then you have the header, and then you have the panel, and then you have the content. Yeah, there&#8217;s a. A lot of moving parts that if you create a style variation for that, people can just, with one click.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Oh, okay. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Change the design of things. Yeah. Kind of make it either an FAQ or pricing or whatever to do that. So style variations are really a cool feature. Yeah. So the next thing is. Well, the query loop block had a. Had a broken placeholder and it&#8217;s fixed now.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>And that&#8217;s on small screens, right?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, that&#8217;s from plus on mobile, pretty much the next one is. Or Core Commands. So Commands is the command palette where you do Control K and then you get a little. Like on a Mac, you get little things and you can say Open Site Editor or add a page or something like that. And now you can now return to the dashboard. Yeah. Because you&#8217;re five levels deep in the Site Editor and now you want to go back to your post. You just open up Control K and say return to Dashboard or just type in Dashboard. And then it kind of gets you to. To that place. It also has some permission checks, so if you are not allowed to go there, you&#8217;re not you&#8217;re not going to go there. So that was kind of missing before. It was kind of. Yeah. Wherever you go, you go.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Oh, so it was like a back door.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Access to.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Wow. But it&#8217;s all, all in the admin. There&#8217;s nothing on the front end, but it&#8217;s. I think it will. So the command palette has those in. In 28. So in the next one there will be additional commands. So command palette, you can register commands with code. So plugin can say, okay, if, if that&#8217;s a team, a team plugin with team members, you could say add a team or yeah. Update theme or something like that. And then because it&#8217;s just a one liner kind of thing, you could also then tap it into the Abilities API. That&#8217;s kind of the next step. It&#8217;s not going to be in 6.9 for sure, but it is something that you can kind of daisy chain some workflows or tab into an AI ability kind of API that then lets you also do some AI stuff there. So it&#8217;s kind of that interface that you will be in in the future more often if you so choose to. But I think that&#8217;s a really interesting development there because now, right now you always have to remember, okay, which menu is it in and where do I go and what&#8217;s the name of it? Yeah, is it template parts? Is it pattern? Is it templates? Is it pages? Yeah, what&#8217;s.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>I tend to click on my little picture icon to get back to the previous screens.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Okay.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Yeah, yeah, that&#8217;s what I tend to do because I don&#8217;t know how often.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, how often do you do it?</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. And now you can just do Control K and I like that. Then you&#8217;re back there and you don&#8217;t have to do 15 plus things. Yeah. So no, I really am quite. I like the command palette anyway. But now it has so much perspective in the future.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Yeah.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">New APIs</h3>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>The next thing is about global styles and we talked about. No, we didn&#8217;t talk about it. So you can now, in the theme JSON file, you can now have support for form elements like the inputs, all the inputs on your site, or the dropdowns and selects. So if you create forms and you can style them through the theme JSON file, you don&#8217;t have to do custom CSS for that anymore. Many, many theme builders ask for this too because it&#8217;s, well, what&#8217;s a website without a contact form? Yeah, what&#8217;s a website without a get me your quote or something like that? You need some forms and then you want to style it. You don&#8217;t want to kind of have another CSS file in there. If you have those tools for theme JSON and oh yeah, the developer blog, what&#8217;s New for Developers in September Edition that came out about two weeks ago had some code examples on how you can put that in your theme JSON. Yeah, how. How you phase it and all that. Yeah. So it&#8217;s okay. It&#8217;s really cool. It shows you how to. So you get into the elements section of your theme JSON and then you have text input and then you can do borders, colors, typography, or select and have the different colors for text and background, for instance. That&#8217;s the example in the developer blog.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> So more and more we can do things in theme JSON that will allow us to use additional CSS or custom CSS less and less.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yes, that&#8217;s one thing. And you could actually write CSS in a custom.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>That&#8217;s true.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, yeah. But yeah, it&#8217;s. It&#8217;s such a habit to go to additional CSS and just fix something. Yeah, yeah.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Or I have very little. Well, actually this comes up later in the changelog, so I won&#8217;t get too deep into it, but I have very little in my additional CSS these days.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>That&#8217;s good.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>It&#8217;s just those few instances where I just can&#8217;t do it in theme JSON.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, it&#8217;s still not particularly all covered there. Yeah. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Bug Fixes</h3>



<p>So now we come to the bug fixes. And one was the randomization of the gallery block doesn&#8217;t work when the lightbox is enabled. But you had a question there.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Yeah, I wasn&#8217;t thinking about that randomization. I didn&#8217;t know about that bug. But in the projects that I&#8217;ve been working on, I noticed the lack of navigation in the. The light box. So I know that that&#8217;s deep in the works now. And look, I. I just recently went to the PR and it looks like a lot of progress has been made. I think they&#8217;re about to say this is a done deal, or maybe they already have. So that&#8217;s really good because otherwise you would do all the things you needed to do to enlarge the image, but you couldn&#8217;t get to the next image in the gallery. Well, that&#8217;s not really a light box, is it?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, well, everybody Lightbox, I think they&#8217;re around for 15 years now, so everybody has a different idea. But yeah, it was.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Right.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> It was definitely missing navigation to. To just kind of use it as a slider that you can Slide exactly. Forward and backwards without having to. You click on the X and then you&#8217;re at the gallery and then you have to click on the next pictures and then go it up. So it was a little tedious. After the third one, everybody escaped. Yeah, that. Yeah. And PR that Anne is talking about is the 62906. If you want to go on. On the GitHub and check it out. 62906. And yeah, they&#8217;re pretty far with it. It&#8217;s some nice previous and next. And you get some. Yeah, I tested it too. Yeah. With Playground you cannot do Gutenberg and then the PR and then you can play around with it. And that was quite nicely done. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of people have given input not only from the developers or from the contributor, but also from other developers and from the accessibility. Because that was. I think the first part was the accessibility part was. It didn&#8217;t kind of pan out. So they. They did some interesting.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Oh, were the arrows too small or something?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Errors too small? No area label, no announcement. Yeah, there&#8217;s a lot of things that need to happen for accessibility there.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>I&#8217;m deep into accessibility these days. I mean, with this client&#8217;s site being redesigned, her brand colors don&#8217;t cut it for accessibility. And I don&#8217;t know how, but I somehow convinced her to tweak the web colors to meet the accessibility requirements. I think I was so happy.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Oh, my God. Yeah, so it&#8217;s.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>It&#8217;s a big thing.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. You don&#8217;t want to get them. Get them into trouble or. Yeah. Have a. The user less optimal experience.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Yeah, exactly.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>So I think we talked about it. A plated science and classes to the experimental form block. That&#8217;s part of the getting the element section into the theme JSON part. There is an experimental form block though. So if you have the Gutenberg plugin installed and go to experiments, One of the 15 choices there is form block. So you can actually create a form from those blocks in your editor. But most people actually have a separate plugin for their forms. I&#8217;m not sure how expanded that&#8217;s going to be used. Yeah, that&#8217;s pretty much. We are through the bug fixes and then there&#8217;s one fix. So much. So the zoom out. We had this in 6.8. There was a problem that when you have the show template, you couldn&#8217;t show the template when you were in zoom out, and now they actually put it out. It didn&#8217;t work. You just didn&#8217;t get it to it. And now they actually took the. They now fixed it that the zoom out is disabled when the show template is toggled off. You need both. You need to in zoom out because when the show template is off, the renderer doesn&#8217;t see the main section of the page because that&#8217;s all the content anyway. But zoom out needs to have that main section. So it&#8217;s all kind of. Wasn&#8217;t consistently kind of working. So now they finally fixed it. Anything else? No, I think we&#8217;re through with 21.6. Except there&#8217;s some block library. Image block.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Code Quality</h3>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Oh, yeah. And that got me thinking how useful it would be to have live updating with the alt text. Because if I change the alt text in the media library for an image, it doesn&#8217;t automatically sync to where it&#8217;s being used in a page or a post. Oh, I have to. I have to click on the image and the page or the post and replace it with the same image with the revised alt text. So I was thinking, wouldn&#8217;t it be nice if that was all synced together? And then that got me down another path. So maybe you have the answer to this question. So I noticed for, well, quite a long time, I&#8217;ve been noticing that when you&#8217;re in the image library and you click on an image, the fields differ depending on your media library mode. If it&#8217;s list and you click on an image, you get a different set of metadata or fields versus a grid. And I think it&#8217;s. With the grid. Yeah. There&#8217;s no alt text option from a list mode, but there is from a grid mode. And so why. Do you know why those fields differ?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>No, I have no idea.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> I don&#8217;t know either. Ladies and gentlemen.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yes. Well, it&#8217;s interesting that you actually notice that. Yeah, I. Yeah, I always have my media library on grid, so I&#8217;m not.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Yeah, me too.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>I don&#8217;t. I don&#8217;t see the difference, but you&#8217;re right. Yeah. I know that the contributors are working on the media library for the admin redesign and I think it would be good to talk to them about it because they also will have a grid view and a list view, because the data views actually support that. Yeah. So to make sure that definitely needs to be consistent, you know that all.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>The fields are available here, maybe in the outreach channel. I&#8217;ll put it out there and see if anyone.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. Yeah. Or we wait until 6.9. After 6.9. Yeah. Because I think. Yeah, that&#8217;s where it&#8217;s not. 4619. We are. We are all hoping for. For the data views coming into 6.9. But I&#8217;m. The data views will be in there, but I don&#8217;t think that the admin design will come in for 6.9. That&#8217;s just not enough time. Right. It&#8217;s now only four weeks. Okay, so you have question. Oh, you have another question in there?</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Do I know?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Okay.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Create Block Theme</h3>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> About the Create Block theme and style editing.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Create block theme. Oh, right. Create block theme. So it&#8217;s interesting. I haven&#8217;t looked at it in a month or so. It&#8217;s good to sometimes look at it with fresh eyes. And it looks like there used to be two paths to editing the styles and it looks like those have been eliminated. You were once able to edit via this path, Appearance editor, Design styles. When you get to design and you click on styles, there&#8217;s no longer the option to edit them from that point. And then the other way would be from a page or a post. I no longer see the cbt, the Create Block theme wrench. I see it only when on the side. Templates, template parts, sync patterns. And another interesting thing, I mean this is all. It&#8217;s a lot of information here, but let me try to slow down. So both of those previous paths gave access to that full featured. What I call the full featured Create Block Theme panel. It had all the things that you can do with the Create Block theme plugin. Now the other thing I noticed is if you click on a page as if you&#8217;re editing it like a normal person would edit. You know, regular person, not normal, but regular person, the wrench is no longer there. However, if I go through the full site editor path and click on a page, the wrench appears that way. So it&#8217;s just this inconsistency, and I&#8217;m a pretty well versed user and it was a little confusing. It&#8217;s like, well, why can I get to the full feature panel this way and not that way?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. So one is that the page post editor, when you go from WP admin posts and pages goes in a slightly different editor mode than go into the appearance and editor. When I first listened to you, I thought you might. It wouldn&#8217;t be related to the create block theme because with the site editor we also have two different path to access styles. Yeah. One is through editor and then styles. There&#8217;s no design anymore. It only says styles. It&#8217;s with the navigation styles, templates and patterns. When you click on styles there, you have access to the same thing that comes if you are in the edit mode on a. On A template or on a page. You also on the right hand side there&#8217;s a styles interface. Both are now kind of pretty much on par with the features. So before a couple of months ago or maybe even longer, there was a discrepancy between what you could do on the right hand side in the styles and if you come from the left hand side. But that is pretty much eliminated. The only difference now is only how the style book looks, but it&#8217;s really marginally. Yeah, but we have one thing that comes with the next plugin release that we&#8217;re going to talk about is the additional CSS you will only access on the right hand sidebar and not on the left hand side. And that has been fixed now. So you get to the additional CSS from both sides. But the Create block theme has changed. So the great Block theme theme plugin only works in the site editor. So if you come from the pages or from the posts on the WP admin, you don&#8217;t have access to it.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Right.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> So you only have it in the Site editor. And I think that makes sense because that&#8217;s. It does what you do with that. Yeah, because that&#8217;s the place where you actually would edit a theme component. So it also had changed the right hand side sidebar. When you click on save the changes to the theme, you get additional checkboxes. What exactly do you want in your theme? So that definitely was an improvement there because it also included some localization from text and you could also kind of eliminate the navigation IDs and all that.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>And I brought another issue up with the team several months ago, which is the cbt, which I&#8217;m calling it CBT Create Block Theme Plugin. That&#8217;s my shorthand, the page for it from the administration sidebar. When you go to it directly from the sidebar, those options differ from the full site editor pathway to it. In my mind, all of that should be the same. You should have the same access to the same features.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Well, on that settings page, the only thing that you get from there is actually what you want to do. Do you want a greater theme? Do you want to create a from scratch, do you want to clone it? Or do you want a child theme? All the other features are actually in the site editor.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Right.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Need to be connected with the site editor. So I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s a whole lot of benefit from it to put it in a settings page that you. That has no connection to any of the other features that are in there.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Yeah, I, I hear you. I understand that I just like consistency.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>I think it&#8217;s less confusing when you have the same. That&#8217;s a full page devoted to it. Why don&#8217;t I have access to everything that I can do with it? That&#8217;s my logic.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Because you need the editor too. The settings page doesn&#8217;t have access to the editor.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Yeah, yeah, I totally understand that. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> It&#8217;s like when. Why, why don&#8217;t you have the font or dimensions in a settings page? Yeah. Because it&#8217;s not the editor that has that sidebar. Yeah. Okay.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Fair enough. All right. This is why it&#8217;s good to talk.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, yeah. But I, I hear you. With all the questions that we have there. The inconsistency is definitely something inconsistent. User interfaces overall, the whole site editor. I think there have been great strides made in the last four months to make this all more consistent. Have all the support for all the blocks like the border and fonts and dimensions that every block. Who has. Who needs it, actually has it. Because there are really some inconsistencies that some. Why does the heading not have a font size or something like that? Yeah. When everybody else, every other block has it. But that&#8217;s. It takes a. A lot of perseverance to get through I don&#8217;t know, 60 blocks and kind of make them all consistent that have been built in the last three years. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Gutenberg 21.7</h3>



<p>Let&#8217;s get into 21.7. The release is going to be on Wednesday, tomorrow, September 24th. We are recording this on September 23rd. So the listeners. When you, when you listen to it, it will already be out because we are not publishing it until Sunday, our episode. So let&#8217;s get into it. We are doing that from the talking through the changelog from the release candidate one that was published last week. So just to. If there are changes on what we didn&#8217;t have in there from the final release next tomorrow. Okay. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Enhancements</h3>



<p>This release has quite a few additional updates on the block comment thing. So that&#8217;s part of the Gutenberg phase three collaboration phase. Where you have one is from the collaboration phase one is synchronized editing where multiple people are working on the same post at the same time, which is a bit scary, but it works in Google Docs. But we are not there yet. But what already is in the works and has been for a while is the block level commenting. So you can. You&#8217;re in your block editor and you click on. And anybody else who has access to it can go in there and say, okay, in this paragraph, change a comma, an acronym, a wording kind of thing, put it in a comment and then you can resolve it in a comment. So the comments show up in the right hand side in the sidebar and each block that has a comment has a little icon that there are comments in there.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Oh wow.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> And then you can add a comment by going to the block settings, block options drop down where you also have the grouping and the before and after. There&#8217;s also now comment on the block, and then you can start commenting on it, and then it shows up in the sidebar and then other people who are also come back tomorrow or something like that can answer that or you can also resolve it. So there are quite a few improvements on that. So first is that we only talk about two of them. One is to render the comment content. So it&#8217;s rendered in the comment the content completely. So it doesn&#8217;t. And it&#8217;s still. It&#8217;s a HTML kind of thing. So you can put in links in there without having all the HTML. Yeah. Kind of anchor links there. That&#8217;s one thing. And the other one is that the user text area auto size up until now you couldn&#8217;t. You could write in it, but it kind of would go underneath the box. You had to manually kind of increase it, but now it&#8217;s auto sized. That&#8217;s really cool. Yeah, yeah. So. And I know you are a single site producer so you probably might not have a whole lot of use case for that. But I can see, I can see.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>The use for it for sure.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Would you kind of work with your clients on that or rather with another coworker like a developer or something?</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>I think to educate my clients about the feature and then they could work together on content. It&#8217;s a nice collaboration tool but with any page or post only one person can edit at a time. So there&#8217;s that which is a useful barrier, unlike a simultaneous thing. So I can definitely share that with people, let them know about it.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>So there&#8217;s now the ability to reopen resolved comments to see enable inline comments for published posts. Yeah, so if you. Up until now when it was published, all the comments would go away. You wouldn&#8217;t see them. So there was a lot of thought going into that how it&#8217;s actually used from the previous versions.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>You know, actually my brother uses WordPress. He&#8217;s a writer and he works with a rather large company. So I&#8217;ll let him know about this upcoming feature because I don&#8217;t know how they manage the editing of content and it would be good if they could do it right there.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, it&#8217;s kind of. It could eliminate one step. So when you work with a team on a, on a content you normally go into, or we go with the developer blog and other blogs, we go into Google Docs, write the draft, have all the communication in there, including the comments there and then once all the things are resolved, you copy paste it over to WordPress and that sometimes gets you into trouble. And that copy paste step and the reformatting that is necessary kind of could be eliminated with something like that. Yeah, absolutely.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Exactly. Back in the day when I used, when I was a print Designer, we used InDesign. There is a plugin, so to speak, for InDesign where content writers could do all their magic, all their writing right in. It&#8217;s. I think it&#8217;s. It&#8217;s not in vision, I&#8217;m not remembering, but it doesn&#8217;t matter. Same concept.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> What I really like about it as a designer, they had no access to the styling, they couldn&#8217;t change the colors, size. Yeah, I really like that. You know, the head is. Just leave the head alone. It&#8217;s 24 pixels or.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Print design points.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I get this. Yeah. That is actually coming also to WordPress with the write mode. It&#8217;s kind of a content only mode that you can have patterns in content only and you can only change wording on that. But the rest of it is. Even the, the structure of the pattern is locked. So there is a design mode and a write mode. It also streamlines kind of the process because you&#8217;re not distracting by all the design features you could do. Yeah, so I really like that. But that. That&#8217;s coming.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Same idea.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, yeah. It&#8217;s also. Yeah. So yeah, in 21.7 there&#8217;s also quite a few updates to the data form, especially data forms, also data views. But it has to be kind of to make the form handling kind of bringing up to par to what actually other forms are doing. So the form component has quite a few additional updates in there. So it&#8217;s the radio control, be it the Boolean field types with a toggle, you know, being. Having a URL field that can be in the field control, having a phone field. So it kind of is a build out of what you actually expect when you do forms. But it&#8217;s all in the data view. So it will be in the admin section, not on the front end. So think about when you have a post or page where you have a quick edit. Yeah. Where you can change a few things. That is the form that this is working on. Yeah. Or what the people are working on is kind of. Okay. In the admin we have a user putting data in what can. What controls do we have available for that? Not on the front end or something.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Right.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Or in the edit in the block editor. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Okay, so this is just for quick view.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Well, it has a better panel for that. The whole data views has. I think Matthias talked about that in one of his blog posts on the Make Core blog about the different building blocks of the new admin design. And one of them was the infrastructure and what&#8217;s on the panel. So thinking about what are the rooms in the house. You have a kitchen that is differently furniture than the living room and you need the different tools in there. And the form is. Is in a tool you can actually create a form that is then triggered through a modal. Yeah. Or you can add. Open up another panel on the right hand side kind of the data. So those are decisions that the developer is gonna. Is going to make. So plugin developers for most of our plugin developers or core developers. And then you have different tools available for different use cases. Yeah. And. But you always need a form. Right. If a user is going to change something. So depending on how much space you need, quick is only Quick edit is just a very limited. Yeah, yeah yeah. This is going to be a little bit more comfortable to do. Yeah it&#8217;s really interesting to. To see it all come to together and how. How granular the whole development process is. Yeah. So the next ones are kind of navigation pieces. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> I noticed the changing add page to create page and it seems like such a small thing, but it&#8217;s, you know, it&#8217;s significant. I like that one. That&#8217;s a good change.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. And it reminds me, I did some. Some support in. In the forums of WordPress forums and there was one person who had trouble distinguishing between creating a pattern. Yeah. Adding a pattern.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Oh yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. It&#8217;s it for. For mere mortals, I would say. Yeah, it&#8217;s the same. Yeah. I add a page. Yeah. Let me put the count. Or. But the pattern is you create a pattern that you can reuse or. Or you add an existing pattern to the page.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Exactly.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>It&#8217;s kind of that. Yeah. And this is pretty much similar to add a page or create a page. So add a page would be a page link that you add from your existing page and create a page as okay, I want that link, but I don&#8217;t have the page yet. And now you get a button that says create the page. And of course in the write mode it&#8217;s going to be hidden.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>And you were asking me to check on the status with the navigation block and I don&#8217;t see anything that&#8217;s changed. If you edit the navigate via the navigation area. So you go appearance, design, navigation, the UI seems to be the same as it has been for months, which is in my opinion, ugly and confusing. But if you edit via the design area. So if you just stop at appearance design and click on the navigation there, the. It&#8217;s so much more aesthetically pleasing. It just makes for a more enjoyable experience. It&#8217;s attractive and intuitive. So I know this has been on their plate for a while and when I say them, I mean all these wonderful WordPress team developers. Maybe a good place to start improving this UX is to somehow merge what we&#8217;re seeing in the design UI with the navigation UI.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, yeah, no, I get you. Yeah. I. When I was creating my theme demo, I had the same. I couldn&#8217;t do anything with the. Well, I saw the dark side of the site editor. It&#8217;s the dark side menu and on the right hand side. So when I go into a template header and just click on the navigation, it opens up the sidebar on the right hand side and there you can add blocks or add another page link and it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s very pleasing to kind of add to that. That part. You don&#8217;t have on the right hand side or on the left hand side in the dark area of navigation or all you can do is I think click on edit and then you go somewhere. But it&#8217;s the isolated navigation and it&#8217;s kind of plucked on top of the. This.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Yeah, exactly. It&#8217;s just this.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>You don&#8217;t see very nondescript piece of navigation plopped the top of the screen.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>On top of the content design it. You can&#8217;t, you can&#8217;t. You don&#8217;t see it in context. Yeah, so exactly. It&#8217;s definitely something to think about in, in the. In the next few versions to come. Yeah, yeah. And there was this big or that issue that Matthias wrote about. What other new blocks do we need?</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Oh, yes, yes.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>And Justin Tadlock kind of reversed his stance on what needs to be in Core and he wrote of the Gutenberg Times on why we need new blocks, and that is so theme developers can actually prepare for that out of the box. They don&#8217;t have to check. Is an accordion available from. I don&#8217;t know, the other 15 plugins that have accordions and how to style it. There is one in Core and that&#8217;s what my theme is styling the same with a table of contents block. Or there will be. So they are working on grading the table of content ready for coming out of the experimental stage, which it has been for I think three years now. Yeah. So. But there were no resources to kind of attribute to the table of content block.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> So would this be something you could use in a blog post to identify the sections of the blog post itself and they would be anchor links to that section. Oh, nice.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. That&#8217;s a table of content block. Yeah. And if you.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>I know a use of that.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Several of my own blog posts.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. Yeah. And if you don&#8217;t have Gutenberg installed, the plugin installed, you don&#8217;t have that block. Yeah. Because it&#8217;s. It&#8217;s only available in Gutenberg and it&#8217;s not yet in Core. But there&#8217;s a big push to hopefully get it into Core. The implementation had some accessibility issues and then some usability issues, but there was kind of. The first version was in there, but then every so. And then the other contributors tried to change it, but then they couldn&#8217;t follow through on this because. Yeah. And now maybe this time is the right time. And then there is a new block. It&#8217;s called the terms query block. It&#8217;s like the query block for post, but it also is for terms. So that&#8217;s the categories and the tags. So you can list them in a rolling block in a post. So I need to see it, how it works to kind of find a good use case for it. But we probably have that. It&#8217;s already in Gutenberg and it has an order by. And with a single drop down and. And these kinds of things. So.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> So it&#8217;s almost like integrating. Could you integrate that on the same page as a. A category?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. With the descriptions and all that. Because it has the tone blocks in there. Yeah. So you can kind of. So if you. For instance, if you have a parent category and you have a blog post in that category, you can say, okay, I want. Underneath every single post, I want a list of all the categories for that parent category or the children category. So people can navigate a little bit deeper into my content forest.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> I bet that would impact SEO positively, right?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Well, yeah, if you don&#8217;t have too many. Too many categories and too many terms. Yeah, because that definitely. If you have too many terms, you get into the duplicate content issues when multiple terms of the same content in there, but that&#8217;s a different story. So. But it gives you more flexibility on how you can link deeper. That definitely. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And then we mentioned that before that in Site Editor always show the additional CSS button is now finally available in and it will come to 6.9 is what we talked about before that you did we talk about it. Well, with the Site editor you have a place where you can add additional CSS for your site. That what you, you know also from the customizer from classic themes where you had additional CSS. CSS that wasn&#8217;t in the theme. It was on the right hand side on the styles. Yeah, you could add that. But when you were on the left hand side of the styles you didn&#8217;t have a way to add the additional CSS.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>See now this really. This threw me for a loop because I never noticed that, and I can&#8217;t reconstruct the sequence of events from. I have a tutorial site using the 2024 theme and it has just a little bit of additional CSS in it. So yesterday when I noticed this and I explored and I saw my additional CSS field disappear when I deleted its contents and I was like, oh, that&#8217;s not good. And it really threw me for a loop because I always have a backup. So I uploaded my theme backup and thinking it would be in theme JSON and reinstate itself, but it wasn&#8217;t reinstated. So then I had to look at my revision history and find the spot where I was before I deleted really unsettled me.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, I imagine. I imagine. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>So now if you&#8217;re saying the additional CSS in the right sidebar is the same as what shows up in the. Okay.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. So if you said okay, there must be another way to get to the additional css.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Exactly.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Clone to the right hand side. But that, that is such a. Yeah, it kind of really threw quite a few people. Oh yeah, yeah.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> So but why didn&#8217;t it show up in my theme JSON? That&#8217;s what I was.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>It&#8217;s not, it&#8217;s not routed through theme JSON. It&#8217;s user content. So it&#8217;s in the database and when it, when that renders, it renders the last item before the in the head with the styles. That&#8217;s the last thing that is going to pull in. So it overrides everything else what you had in theme JSON in the default. So that&#8217;s why it kind of doesn&#8217;t show up in theme JSON because it&#8217;s a different level of customization. Yeah, it&#8217;s the last defense, so to speak is the user oriented stuff. I&#8217;m glad you pointed this point in pulled in last. Yeah. You will see it so if you go to View Source, you see your additional CSS, the last style tag before you start with the content tags. All that.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Okay.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> All it takes. Okay.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Thank you.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>You&#8217;re welcome.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>I can breathe now.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. But it shows you that it&#8217;s really hard to kind of keep it all straight when you have multiple places where you can change styles. Because the same thing will happen when you change. So you could change your. This appearance of a block for the whole site in the styles styles and then you go further down this typography layout and then you have blocks there. You change how each block, how a block appears every time you use it. But there&#8217;s also a place when you have a paragraph on one page and you change the look and feel of that paragraph through the right hand side with the. With the tools there.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Sure.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>That&#8217;s two places. And the other places theme JSON also kind of controls how a block looks. Yeah. So if something is not right, you have to look at multiple places to find the place where you can change it or where you can. Where it actually was controlled. So that&#8217;s why the additional CSS is just another place to look and to kind of control this. But I think to eliminate the cognitive load, I think learning how to put custom CSS in the theme JSON is probably a good additional skill set to have kind of take away think about not doing the additional CSS right because the advantage is also it only will be loaded. So the additional CSS is always loaded on each page even if the block or whatever you have is not on the page. But if you do it in theme JSON, it will only pulled in when that particular element or block is actually on page. So it&#8217;s actually a performance issues as well. But not a whole lot of people put a whole lot of in additional CSS. So I think it&#8217;s negligent. But just a cognitive load that kind of eliminate another place to.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Right. And that ties into a whole other subject. Not for now, not for today. But CSS specificity, that&#8217;s a whole other thing.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Oh yeah, yeah.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Gets very complicated.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Volumes of books have been written about that. So the command palette is getting another update with 21.7 that is made the navigation commands available on all screens. So you can now go into your Tools menu on WP admin, hit Control K and say go to Site Editor. Then you can kind of jump like that. You don&#8217;t have to be in the editor to use the command palette. We talked about it before, but it&#8217;s getting more and more in there. Oh, there is a nice template API change that it reads really non-ecstatic. This kind of allows template duplication plus the concept of active templates. That&#8217;s something I would ask anybody who does works with template to test out. Because what it helps you is that you can have multiple single post templates on your site and only one is active. So if you have a plugin that kind of adds templates to your site. So through the template hierarchy that WordPress has, there are certain templates need to have a certain slug to be pulled automatically. So the single post or the archive pages or that. But if you want to test out different kinds of templates, right now what you do is use patterns for a certain template and you&#8217;re not adding them to templates, but you&#8217;re adding them to patterns.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>But if you can do, okay, I have a single post template. Oh, and I also want to know how it looks without the featured image to add another single post template and then you can activate each one of them. And that makes it for a much clearer proposition on what templates do and what patterns do. And that also when you have a plugin that adds a template, because plugins now can suggest. Oh, push templates into the template editor. Yeah. Like woocommerce. Yeah. Is going to do that.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Right.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Or when you have a theme, a team plugin or a business directory plugin, you can get the templates into your template editor. So you can modify them. Yeah. As a user, but you already have a team member custom post type template, so the plugin would overwrite it. But if you can have multiple template duplication, deplete duplication or multiple, not only two, but more, you can just. With the activation flag, you can say which one is the one that&#8217;s going to be rendered on front page. Does it make sense?</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Okay, cool. So. And I&#8217;m totally excited about that. Yeah, I can&#8217;t.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>This is. It&#8217;ll take me down so many different paths. I won&#8217;t get any work done for a month. I&#8217;ll be busy exploring and testing. That&#8217;s all good.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. But Ela Vandorp, one of the Goodmoor developers, has been working on that for so long. Yeah. And when you go to the PR, it has, I don&#8217;t know, 150 comments or something like that. Yeah. But it&#8217;s. It finally made it into the Gutenberg plugin release. Yeah. Now we can test it before it goes into WordPress core in a month. So go and test it, please. Okay, everybody here on the Gutenberg Changelog Podcast needs to test this. And Aki Hamano, he&#8217;s a contributor from Japan.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Oh, sure. Yeah.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">New API</h3>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. He has a few things that really he contributed quite a lot to Gutenberg in the last year and he introduced a new function called Use Commands. So you can register more than one command for the command palette, which is good, especially when you kind of think about kind of getting the abilities API kind of connected with the commands palette. So yeah, for developers it&#8217;s definitely something to check out how you can add additional commands to the command palette for your users. Your agencies probably can change some of the workflow hiccups that some of the clients have. Yeah. If you can add a command to it and you teach them to control K and you something, that&#8217;s definitely good. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Bug Fixes</h3>



<p>A lot of bug fixes, bug fixes, data form fixes. Yeah, I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s anything I wanted to point out except the global styles bug fix was. Is that the border radius presets kind of had a little bug in there that it generated the wrong variable name in pattern code. And that is definitely fixed. It works. Thank goodness it works good for them. In the block library accordion now has a block gap support. I think that&#8217;s what you are kind of thinking about.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Oh sure. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>That is now in 21.7 and then you also have a term list drop down.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Oh, there was a limit. What is. What is the new limit?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>I think it&#8217;s now 100.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Oh, I was just thinking yeah, 100 would be good and I would never get to 100 but someone might.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> It takes 10 to 100. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>So okay, that&#8217;s quite a limit. 10.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Well, you shouldn&#8217;t use too many terms because each term creates another page. A page that needs to be indexed and doesn&#8217;t have a unique thing there.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Content only pattern patterns.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. Yeah, that&#8217;s definitely something to test. Is kind of added content in.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>So the purple icon was taken away.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>I think so, yeah. Well, in the right mode. Yeah. It&#8217;s kind of that mode where you only can change certain things and not do design. So unsync patterns are actually content only by default. So when you add them to the page you only kind of change content if. If it&#8217;s in the write mode. Yeah. So you don&#8217;t get distracted by certain things like edit. Yeah. If you want the pattern to be. It&#8217;s unsynced so it doesn&#8217;t propagate the design over every usage. But you still want to have a consistent layout. And then editors who use that in on the page shouldn&#8217;t change the composition of the pattern, only the content that&#8217;s. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Experiments</h3>



<p>And then there&#8217;s a pattern content only experiment that makes the template parts section blocks. Yeah, that was one thing that came out of section styles that&#8217;s in 6.6. IIn WordPress 6.6 is that you have patterns that are actually sections and you could style them through JSON files. And then you only get in the style section of the right hand side. You get, I don&#8217;t know, two or three styles and every. The pattern changes its look and feel according to their styles. But it was hard to figure out what makes a pattern a section and whatnot. So it ended up that every group block was actually a section. So the styles would apply to other group box as well that were not meant to do. But there was no way to say okay, only for section styles. I want these. So this call for action or call for call for action block or book kind of things. So it was a little confusing for the users to apply that and some of the features. So in zoom mode when you added a pattern you had a little, little drop, kind of a. A fluid drop that would. You could toggle through. Not toggle, browse through. All the styles that are. Can be attached to that pattern. Oh yeah. And those also needed to be sections. But it wasn&#8217;t clear what does one pattern distinguish. The other pattern is a section. And now they are trying to do that in an experiment and see how far it gets with also the styling part. I don&#8217;t know if all that makes sense what I&#8217;m saying, but.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> No, no, I understand.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>I think that was it for 21.7 that I kind of saw. Yes, that&#8217;s it. Yeah. So now we&#8217;re coming to. I think we&#8217;re really out of time today with our. With our episode here. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">What’s in Active Development or Discussed</h3>



<p>So I wanted to talk about tabs, we need to kind of have it in front of us. Yeah. So it. They are not. So one of the new blocks that are. Is worked on is the tabs block. Okay. And the other one is the modal block or the pop up block is kind of when you. So you have a trigger, you have a block for a trigger and then when a user clicks on it, then a modal comes up and you can fill out something. That&#8217;s also in an HTML standard, but there&#8217;s no blocks there. And it definitely is a common use case for certain things. And those things are. And the same as tabs. So you have not as an Accordion where you have one header and then the panel opens and then the next header is. You have multiple tabs on top and then the panel changes. That is also in the works. I hope it makes it.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff</em>: Oh, nice.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Makes it to the 6.9, but I&#8217;m not quite sure it actually goes there because I haven&#8217;t seen anything in the last week that kind of contributes to that. But I&#8217;m also. I might have been out of the loop there because there are so many things that going on at the same time. And I&#8217;m. I&#8217;m waiting. I know that Anne McCarthy, she&#8217;s working on the kind of what&#8217;s the state of the development now? But I hope that it comes out next week or something like that and then we have it for the next episode.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Good timing.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. So WordPress 6.9 comes with really a lot of good features and also quality of life changes for. For the editor and for the flow of things. So I&#8217;m really excited about that. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> And wasn&#8217;t there a reduction in the number of releases that was decided to condense?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yes. So in January there were initiatives when Automattic said, okay, we are going to stop contributing for a while. And then the core committers then decided, okay, if it&#8217;s not that we have one more release, that was 6.8 and that would be the only release in 2025. And then in May, Automattic decided to contribute again and kind of push everything further and then said, okay, then we can also have one more release this year.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Okay.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> And that&#8217;s 6.9. And that&#8217;s what we are building up to. That&#8217;s also why there are so many and Gutenberg releases kind of put together into one of the. Into the major WordPress release. Normally it was kind of between 7 and 10, but now we have 15.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Okay.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, so yeah, yeah, but that was a good question. Yeah. Not everybody kind of know they stopped, but did we start again contributing to Core? You know. Yes, we did. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Excellent. Well, I look forward to the next release.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>We do, yeah. So we are at the end of the show. Thank you so much for going through that with me, Ann. It was great to talk to you again.</p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>I know. It was great to talk with you.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. As always, dear listeners, the show notes will be published on <a href="http://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast">GutenbergTimes.com/podcast</a>. This is episode 121, 121. And if you have questions, suggestions or news you want us to include next time, send them to <a href="http://changelogutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a> that&#8217;s <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a> and the show notes will have all the contact information for Anne and it will be on, as I said, Gutenbergtimes.com. </p>



<p>So thank you, everybody. </p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Thank you for thank you, Birgit. </p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Thank you, Anne, for your time. And I hope you have a wonderful time in fall. Take care. Bye bye. </p>



<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Bye. Bye.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sun, 28 Sep 2025 20:07:25 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:8;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21:"Matt: Saturday Shares";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=150000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:38:"https://ma.tt/2025/09/saturday-shares/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2724:"<p>A few links for you:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>From Kirschblütenboogie to Khruangbin (from Houston!), here&#8217;s a <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/27gcPbqPTfnjS1xnfq9jFe?si=lF1sBoR1R3SyrPOEu3c3aQ">Saturday chill Spotify playlist I made for you to have good vibes this weekend</a>. Perfect for sunsets. Hat tip: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielgruneberg/">Daniel Gruneberg</a> who first introduced me to Hermanos Gutiérrez.</li>



<li><a href="https://openssf.org/blog/2025/09/23/open-infrastructure-is-not-free-a-joint-statement-on-sustainable-stewardship/">Open Infrastructure is Not Free: A Joint Statement on Sustainable Stewardship</a>. &#8220;Billion-dollar ecosystems cannot stand on foundations built of goodwill and unpaid weekends.&#8221;</li>



<li>Chat-based photo editing is one of the most magical uses of AI right now, and <a href="https://blog.google/products/photos/android-conversational-editing-google-photos/">Google Photos just made it available to everybody</a>.</li>



<li>Did you know <a href="https://automattic.com/expectations/anti-glossary/">Automattic has an anti-glossary</a>?</li>



<li>It&#8217;s cool to see <a href="https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2025/07/07/copyleft.html">Vitalik Buterin come around to copyleft licenses</a>.</li>



<li>I&#8217;m going to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQDNgy774sg">re-link the Grit interview, some people are saying it is their favorite they&#8217;ve seen of me in years</a>.</li>



<li>BCG has an annoyingly-good rundown of <a href="https://www.bcg.com/publications/2023/corporate-development-finance-function-excellence-art-of-capital-allocation">The Art of Capital Allocation</a>.</li>



<li><a href="https://siliconangle.com/2025/06/26/linux-foundation-open-source-ai-opensourcesummit/">The Linux Foundation thinks open source contributes $9 Trillion in global value</a>. Really what we&#8217;re doing is sharing the technological phylogenetic branches for humanity&#8217;s progress.</li>



<li><a href="https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/08/study-social-media-probably-cant-be-fixed/">A great interview with Petter Törnberg on his paper about how social media might be structually dysfunctional</a>. &#8220;Rather than bringing us together into one utopian public square and fostering a healthy exchange of ideas, these platforms too often create filter bubbles or echo chambers.&#8221;</li>



<li>See <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4JxqES_Gzk">Harry Mack meet Will Smith and Martin Lawrence</a>.</li>
</ul>



<p>Fun fact: this post has the ID of &#8220;150,000&#8221; in <a href="https://codex.wordpress.org/Database_Description#Table:_wp_posts">my wp_posts table</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sun, 28 Sep 2025 01:31:04 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:9;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:99:"Gutenberg Times: WordPress 6.9 is coming, moar plugins, Query block and fonts—Weekend Edition 342";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=41984";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:106:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/wordpress-6-9-is-coming-moar-plugins-query-block-and-fonts-weekend-edition-342/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:19184:"<p>Hi there, </p>



<p>I send you greetings from Gdynia, a polish port city on the East Sea, with some pirate roots, maybe. My only clues are pirate theme of the WordCamp Gdynia, with the Wapuu, the harbor cruise on a pirate ship, and the branding assets of the WordCamp. For one of my slides, I had Gemini create a background image to celebrate the Site Editor the pirate way. </p>





<p>Enjoy the weekend edition and have a fantastic weekend!</p>



<p>Yours, <img alt="💕" class="wp-smiley" src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f495.png" style="height: 1em;" /><br /><em>Birgit</em></p>


<section class="wp-block-newsletterglue-group" style="padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;">
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<p><strong>Table of Contents</strong></p>



<nav class="wp-block-table-of-contents"><ol><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/wordpress-6-9-is-coming-moar-plugins-query-block-and-fonts-weekend-edition-342/#wordpress-6-9-is-coming-into-focus">WordPress 6.9 is coming into focus. </a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/wordpress-6-9-is-coming-moar-plugins-query-block-and-fonts-weekend-edition-342/#0-p">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/wordpress-6-9-is-coming-moar-plugins-query-block-and-fonts-weekend-edition-342/#2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/wordpress-6-9-is-coming-moar-plugins-query-block-and-fonts-weekend-edition-342/#3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.</a></li></ol></nav>
</div></div>
</section>


<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="wordpress-6-9-is-coming-into-focus">WordPress 6.9 is coming into focus. </h2>



<p>I almost missed it; <strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2025/07/28/roadmap-to-6-9/#comment-47884">commented</a> on the Roadmap post that some priorities changed for WordPress 6.9:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list has-light-background-background-color has-background">
<li>&#8220;Added in a “New blocks<strong>” section</strong> under “Refining Content Creation” after there’s been a shift in momentum there.</li>



<li>Removed “An initial experimental version is planned in the Gutenberg plugin, where contributors can opt-in and offer feedback” under “New WordPress Admin experience” as that’s no longer planned based on the current state of work.&#8221; </li>
</ul>



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<p><strong>McCarthy</strong> is also <a href="https://nomad.blog/2025/09/24/exploring-work-in-progress-for-wordpress-6-9-v2/"><strong>Exploring work in progress for WordPress 6.9 v2</strong></a> on her personal blog. You&#8217;ll find videos and links to all the pertinent information. It&#8217;s a lot; you probably have to be selective to digest it all. She updates us all about:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Ability to hide blocks</strong>: The first version will just be a hide/show menu item. Don&#8217;t get rid of the Block Visibility plugin just yet.  </li>



<li><strong>Command Palette everywhere</strong>: It is already available in GB 21.5. Additional work is done on the back end to solidify the API. </li>



<li><strong>Block commenting</strong> has received a myriad of updates, and the UI is still refined. </li>



<li><strong>New block</strong>: summarizes work around already merged Accordion and Post Term query blocks and work on the way for the Page breakcrumbs, Icons, Stretchy, Tabs, Time to read, and Table of Contents blocks.</li>



<li><strong>Simplified site editing</strong>: Two different experiments are pursued, one more Write/Design mode and the other is a Pattern ContentOnly idea. Videos and more details are in the post. </li>



<li><strong>Expanded template management</strong>: work around duplicate templates, switch which one’s active, disable theme templates &amp; keep your custom ones, and use the new “Active templates” view.</li>



<li><strong>Various dev updates</strong>—standardized UTF-8 support, Abilities API, Interactivity API, Block bindings. </li>
</ul>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Jamie Marsland </strong>gave a sneak peak on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSXUfsECVFI"><strong>WordPress 6.9 in 250 seconds</strong></a> and covers <a href="https://www.youtube.com/"></a>Block-level commenting, improved template management and portability across themes, block hiding, and more powerful editing controls.</p>


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<p>Last month, <strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> already published a tutorial on how to <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2025/08/registering-custom-social-icons-in-wordpress-6-9/"><strong>register custom social icons in WordPress 6.9</strong></a> on the WordPress Developer Blog. With the new WordPress version to be released on December 2, 2025, developers will be able to create block variations using JavaScript for editor registration and filter the block_core_social_link_get_services hook for frontend display. The tutorial demonstrates building a plugin that adds Ko-fi, IMDB, Letterboxd, Signal, and YouTube Music icons, including proper brand color styling for both logos-only and standard variations, making social media integration more flexible and customizable.</p>



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<p><img alt="🎙" class="wp-smiley" src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f399.png" style="height: 1em;" /> The latest episode is <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-120-wordcamp-us-telex-gutenberg-21-4-and-21-5/">Gutenberg Changelog 120—WordCamp US, Automattic Telex, Gutenberg 21.4 and 21.5, and the need for more blocks</a> with special guest <strong>Sarah Norris. </strong></p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-style-no-vertical-margin"><img alt="" class="wp-image-41771" height="207" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-05-at-14.12.23-edited.png?resize=652%2C207&#038;ssl=1" width="652" /></figure>



<p class="has-small-font-size"><em>If you are listening via Spotify, please leave a comment. If you listen via other podcast apps, please leave a review. It&#8217;ll help with the distribution.</em></p>
</div></div>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="0-p">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</h2>



<p>During their latest <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28VenSxzTZs"><strong>WPCafe #128 </strong></a>show, <strong>Keith Devon</strong> and <strong>Mark Wilkinson</strong> of Highrise Digital shared how they use the block editor to support their sales effort.</p>


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<p><strong>Ajit Bohra</strong>, Lubus, released the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/blablablocks-formats/"><strong>BlaBlaBlocks Formats</strong></a> plugin that adds custom RichText formats, like highlights and tooltips, to your WordPress site. You can review the <a href="https://github.com/lubusIN/blablablocks-formats/wiki">documentation</a> on GitHub.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/blablablocks-formats/"><img alt="" class="wp-image-42037" height="326" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/BlaBlaBlocksFormats.png?resize=652%2C326&#038;ssl=1" width="652" /></a></figure>



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<p><strong>Justin Tadlock</strong>, developer advocate at Automattic, announced the release of a new <strong><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/x3p0-breadcrumbs/">Breadcrumbs Block </a></strong>plugin version. It now supports the built-in Layout and Block Gap (Spacing) features, and developers can extend the block with custom code.  Checkout the <a href="https://github.com/x3p0-dev/x3p0-breadcrumbs/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md">Changelog notes</a> for information on styling this block in your themes. </p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-42046" height="353" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-27-at-10.17.50.png?resize=652%2C353&#038;ssl=1" width="652" /></figure>



<p><strong>Troy Chaplin</strong> updated his <strong><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/block-accessibility-checks/">Block Accessibility Checks plugin</a></strong>. Version 2.1 brings a mix of accessibility improvements, developer-focused enhancements, and a much cleaner user experience. Chaplin recorded a short demo video walking through the plugin in action, including validation of both core and custom blocks right in the editor, as well as a tour of the brand-new settings page. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvunSl2j1CU">A demo of version 2.1 of the Block Accessibility Checks plugin for WordPress</a></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</h2>



<p><strong>Mitch Canter</strong> just wrapped up an awesome online workshop for the WordPress training team on <a href="https://wordpress.tv/2025/09/26/mastering-the-query-loop-block-in-wordpress/"><strong>Mastering the Query Loop block in WordPress.</strong></a> The recording is now up for you to check out! You&#8217;ll dive into how the Query Loop block works and turn it from something that seems super complicated into your new best friend for creating dynamic and eye-catching content. You’ll discover how to tell WordPress exactly what content to grab and how to make it look good… all without having to write a single line of code. </p>



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<p><strong>Bud Kraus</strong> looked into <strong><a href="https://kinsta.com/blog/variable-fonts/">variable fonts in WordPress themes</a></strong>, explaining how these fonts can hold different weights and styles all in one file, making them faster than regular web fonts. With the update in WordPress 6.1 that adds <code>theme.json</code> support, variable fonts can load quicker, offer more design options with custom weights, and adjust nicely for different screen sizes. Kraus shows how to use fonts like Vollkorn in child themes, create simple plugins for controlling weights, and add fonts through the Font Library, highlighting how variable fonts are both efficient and versatile in design.</p>


<section class="wp-block-newsletterglue-callout undefined not-color-set" style="border-color: #f9f9e5; border-radius: 22px; border-style: solid; border-width: 0; padding-top: 20px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; text-align: left; margin-left: 0; margin-right: 0; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; background-color: #f9f9e5;">
<p><strong> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index 2025&#8221;</a> </strong><br />A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test, and Meta team from Jan. 2024 on. Updated by yours truly. The previous years are also available: <strong><strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/">2020</a> | <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2021/">2021</a></strong> | <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2022/">2022</a></strong></strong> | <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/gutenberg-index-2023">2023</a></strong> | <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/gutenberg-index-2024/"><strong>2024</strong></a></p>
</section>


<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.</h2>



<p><br />In his post, <a href="https://wordpress.com/blog/2025/09/23/telex-turns-everyone-into-a-wordpress-block-developer/"><strong>Telex Turns Everyone into a WordPress Block Developer</strong></a>, <strong>Nick Diego</strong> explores Telex, Automattic&#8217;s experimental AI tool that converts natural language prompts into functional WordPress blocks. Unlike traditional block development requiring React, JavaScript, and PHP expertise, Telex democratizes the process for site owners, agencies, and developers. Users simply describe desired functionality, and Telex generates working blocks within minutes using WordPress Playground. The tool supports iterative refinement through follow-up prompts or direct code editing, making WordPress block creation accessible to everyone regardless of technical background.</p>



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<p>You can also review the discussion on Reddit r/WordPress space: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1nozn1k/did_you_try_wordpress_telex_its_awesome/">Did you try WordPress Telex? it&#8217;s awesome!</a></p>



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<p><strong>Ryan Welcher</strong> continues his Blockdevelopment Cook Book series on YouTube with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIMbcHF-g3M"><strong>Customizing the WordPress Build Process Made Easy!</strong></a> He explained how to customize the @wordpress/scripts build process to bundle a plugin with a single custom block, a JavaScript file that registers a block variation, and a CSS file to style it. &#8220;We’ll keep things neat by organizing the block code in a blocks directory and the JS/CSS in a resources directory—a clean and tasty setup for your project! &#8221; he wrote. </p>


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<section class="wp-block-newsletterglue-callout undefined not-color-set" style="border-color: #eeeeee; border-radius: 26px; border-style: solid; border-width: 0; padding-top: 20px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; text-align: left; margin-left: 0; margin-right: 0; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; background-color: #f3efe9;">
<p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. </p>



<p>Now also available via <a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/?blueprint-url=https://gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/playnightly.json">WordPress Playground</a>. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">Email me </a>with your experience</p>



<p><img alt="GitHub all releases" src="https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total?style=for-the-badge" /></p>
</section>


<p class="has-text-align-center has-small-font-size"><em>Questions? Suggestions? Ideas? </em><br /><em>Don&#8217;t hesitate to send <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">them via email</a> or</em><br /><em> send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph</em>.</p>



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<p class="has-text-align-center has-small-font-size">For questions to be answered on the <a href="http://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast">Gutenberg Changelog</a>, <br />send them to <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a></p>



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<p>Featured Image: </p>



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<p class="has-text-align-left"><strong>Don&#8217;t want to miss the next Weekend Edition? </strong></p>


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</section>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 27 Sep 2025 09:29:48 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:10;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:47:"Matt: Five Publications I’d Love on WordPress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:22:"https://ma.tt/?p=51331";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"https://ma.tt/2025/09/big-five/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1808:"<p>When WordPress started in 2003, I never dreamed it would power over 40% of websites, nine times the number two CMS, but I wrote on a notecard a list of five publications I admired and respected so much I wanted them to run on WP someday. In the interest of sharing your dreams to help them come true, here they are:</p>



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/">Atlantic</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.economist.com/">Economist</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/">New Yorker</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/">New York Times</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.wsj.com/">Wall Street Journal</a></li>
</ol>



<p>And one bonus: <a href="https://www.chron.com/">Houston Chronicle</a>. (Gotta root for the hometown.)</p>



<p>There has been uneven progress toward this over the years; we&#8217;ve gotten some of the NYT and all of the New Yorker at one point, only to have them revert under new CTOs. Also, there have been some unexpected huge wins, like when <a href="https://ma.tt/2023/07/chorus-and-wordpress/">Vox Media retired its proprietary CMS Chorus and brought over amazing publications like The Verge and New York Magazine</a>. For any projects related to these publications, including trials or micro-sites, I&#8217;d be happy to provide my feedback on architecture, design, and opportunities, and contribute <a href="https://automattic.com/">Automattic</a> and <a href="https://wpvip.com/">VIP</a> resources wherever they could be helpful. </p>



<p>I believe the most crucial aspect to get right for these customers is real-time co-editing, which is on the <a href="https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/">Gutenberg</a> roadmap and shipping soon. If I were writing this list today I might choose some different targets.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 27 Sep 2025 03:28:52 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:11;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:16:"Matt: Harry Mack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=149863";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"https://ma.tt/2025/09/harry-mack/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1480:"<p>I love the culture of freestyle rap, it&#8217;s so inspiring to see how people can create such rich poetry riddled with allusions and puns on command. Last week <a href="https://matt.blog/2025/09/19/with-harry-mack/">I got to meet Harry Mack</a> and see him improvise live and it totally makes sense that he has a jazz drums background. If you&#8217;re not familiar with <a href="https://www.harrymackofficial.com/">Harry Mack</a>, this is a good example of him taking three words: Imported, Lurking, <a href="https://automatic.com/">Automatic</a> and freestyling with them. (BTW, if you noticed, we finally got the domain spelled correctly.) </p>



<figure class="wp-block-embed alignwide is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">

</div></figure>



<p>There is a video chat site called <a href="https://www.omegle.fun/">Omegle</a> that paired you with random people, and Harry would record these encounters, such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mccIi2YOFgQ">this cute one with girls from Sweden who gave him the words Cartoon, Titan, Death</a>. It&#8217;s awesome to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4JxqES_Gzk">see him meet Will Smith and Martin Lawrence</a>.</p>



<p>For some fun WordPress rap history, check out when <a href="https://youtu.be/KG5vJKOwsjw?t=195">Childish Gambino referenced me in a rap he performed on Tim Westwood back in 2012</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 26 Sep 2025 06:38:37 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:12;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:91:"Open Channels FM: 12 Tips for WordPress Businesses Navigating the WordPress Media Landscape";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=109514";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:98:"https://openchannels.fm/12-tips-for-wordpress-businesses-navigating-the-wordpress-media-landscape/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:211:"To enhance your business visibility in the WordPress ecosystem, employ strategies like mapping channels, collaborating with influencers, sponsoring newsletters, and tailoring content to different audience needs.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 25 Sep 2025 10:44:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:13;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:97:"Open Channels FM: How a Global Cake Brand Was Built Using WooCommerce and Open Source Communities";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=110411";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:104:"https://openchannels.fm/how-a-global-cake-brand-was-built-using-woocommerce-and-open-source-communities/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:184:"In this episode, nurse-turned-baker Precious shares her journey of launching "Cakes in a Jar" with WordPress and WooCommerce, blending her Zimbabwean roots with a vibrant online brand.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 25 Sep 2025 09:38:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:14;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:19:"Matt: Telex Remixes";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=149897";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:36:"https://ma.tt/2025/09/telex-remixes/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2093:"<p><a href="https://telex.automattic.ai/">Telex has launched a new design and a gallery of some interesting examples</a>. It&#8217;s really cool to see what people are starting to do with Telex, it really gets back at the fun of hacking and coding at the beginning, when a computer does something for you that makes you gasp.</p>



<p>My colleague <a href="https://eduardo.blog/">Eduardo Villuendas</a> has <a href="https://telex.automattic.ai/MTc1ODc1MjQ3OTpmYzVkOWQ2YWRkNWVhN2UwYWM5MQ==~NjU4NTk0OjIzNjA5YWIzLTE3OGQtNDRjZS1iYzc5LThjMGI1OGFiMTUwZDo3NTZiZTdjYTEwNzMyM2EyNjAyZg=="> been making some cool music with it</a>.</p>



		<figure class="wp-block-jetpack-videopress jetpack-videopress-player">
			<div class="jetpack-videopress-player__wrapper"> </div>
			
			
		</figure>
		


<p>This really gets to my vision for Gutenberg to be a builder that anyone can use to create an incredible website, like legos anyone can assemble anything they imagine on the web. This is why I said <a href="https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/">Gutenberg</a> is bigger than WordPress.</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://jeffpaul.com/2025/09/pong-block/">Jeff Paul made a game of Pong</a>.</li>



<li><a href="https://juanma.codes/2025/09/19/playing-with-telex-building-a-mermaid-diagram-block-in-just-a-few-prompts/">JuanMa Garrido made a mermaid diagram</a>. (Which I have never heard of before.)</li>



<li><a href="https://ivanovicmarko.com/2025/09/17/space-dots/">Marko Ivanović did a beautiful dot art thing</a>.</li>
</ul>



<p>Hat tip to the <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/">Gutenberg Times</a>. As I said in 2022, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeigCZuxnfY">you need to learn AI deeply</a>, there is so much fun stuff happening. They even <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1nozn1k/did_you_try_wordpress_telex_its_awesome/">like it on Reddit</a>.</p>



<p>Nick Diego writes <a href="https://wordpress.com/blog/2025/09/23/telex-turns-everyone-into-a-wordpress-block-developer/">how Telex Turns Everyone into a WordPress Block developer</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 25 Sep 2025 06:23:06 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:15;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:88:"BuddyPress: BuddyPress 14.4.0, 12.6.0 &amp;amp; 11.5.2 Maintenance and Security Releases";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://buddypress.org/?p=338169";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:97:"https://buddypress.org/2025/09/buddypress-14-4-0-12-6-0-11-5-1-maintenance-and-security-releases/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1916:"<p id="block-f32b73e5-6b93-4d6d-bd23-61aefd49fc8d"><a href="https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/buddypress.14.4.0.zip">BuddyPress 14.4.0</a>, <a href="https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/buddypress.12.6.0.zip">BuddyPress 12.6.0</a>, and <a href="https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/buddypress.11.5.2.zip">BuddyPress 11.5.2</a> are all now available. This is a security release. Please update as soon as possible.</p>



<p id="block-9cfb5de9-d8ba-42e2-b91c-4a75b3e6b832">14.4.0, 12.6.0 &amp; 11.5.1 fixed one bug and one security issue:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list" id="block-2fb851f4-045c-4a07-a303-ca6033780916">
<li>The BP REST API signups endpoint could leak signup data, including user email addresses, because of a too-lenient lookup function. Thanks to Asim Alshaya for responsibly reporting this issue.</li>



<li>Improve behavior of <code>bp_email_unsubscribe_handler()</code>. After the changes in the &#8220;Improve security of status update messages&#8221; changeset, non-logged-in users clicking an unsubscribe link received no feedback on the success of their action.</li>
</ul>



<p>Note: 11.5.2 contains the same code changes as 11.5.1 but has been repackaged to hopefully resolve some SVN oddities.</p>



<p id="block-4e4b201c-6d17-4a66-8eec-d472dfdec7ac">For complete details, visit the <a href="https://codex.buddypress.org/releases/version-14-4-0/">14.4.0 changelog</a>.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="block-8935e1e5-ef63-42ee-8c08-67fad827159a">Many thanks to our 14.4.0 contributors </h2>



<p id="block-a8b36bfc-7855-4e99-ba54-508a3776b715"><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/emaralive">emaralive</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/jjj/">jjj</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/r-a-y/">r-a-y</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/vapvarun/">vapvarun</a>, and <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dcavins/">dcavins</a>.</p>



<p></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 24 Sep 2025 19:30:21 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:12:"David Cavins";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:16;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:80:"WPTavern: #186 – Dave Winer on Decentralisation, WordPress and Open Publishing";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"https://wptavern.com/?post_type=podcast&p=199649";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:93:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/186-dave-winer-on-decentralisation-wordpress-and-open-publishing";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:65469:"<details>Transcript<div>
<p>[00:00:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.</p>



<p>Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress, the people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case Decentralisation, WordPress and Open Publishing.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to wptavern.com/feed/podcast, and you can copy that URL into most podcast players.</p>



<p>If you have a topic that you&#8217;d like us to feature on the podcast, I&#8217;m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head to wptavern.com/contact/jukebox and use the form there.</p>



<p>So on the podcast today we have Dave Winer. Dave&#8217;s journey into the heart of Silicon Valley began in the 1980s when he left Wisconsin and moved to California with two products and a dream to achieve fame and fortune in the world of technology. Driven by a deep belief that real communication involves people truly connecting, he set out to make his mark.</p>



<p>Early on, he found himself in a memorable meeting with Steve Jobs. Both were in their early twenties, bursting with ambition and self-assurance. Their encounter was fiery and competitive, yet it marked the start of Dave&#8217;s lifelong mission to wire the world together, not just with technology, but by bringing people closer through it.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;ve ever subscribed to a blog, listened to a podcast, or shared your thoughts online, chances are you&#8217;ve benefited from Dave&#8217;s pioneering work. He&#8217;s the developer behind influential technologies like RSS, and a longtime advocate for open, user owned, publishing platforms.</p>



<p>He describes himself as someone who wrote the first versions of lots of software, wants to work with everyone, still has big ideas, he likes things to be open from top to bottom and doesn&#8217;t care for greedy people.</p>



<p>Today we&#8217;re talking about the vision, history, and future of the open web. Dave reminisces about the origins of today&#8217;s internet, the early days when idealism and collaboration were at the web&#8217;s core. He shares stories from his career, the rise and fall of early software startups, and how the initial spirit of community slowly gave way to the walled gardens of big tech giants like Facebook, Google, and Twitter.</p>



<p>But the conversation isn&#8217;t just about nostalgia. It&#8217;s a call to action for reclaiming the internet&#8217;s potential. Dave explains what went wrong with the evolution of the social web, why he thinks blogging tech like RSS just need more love, and how the influx of money and centralisation stifled the creativity and interoperability the web was built for.</p>



<p>You&#8217;ll also get to hear about Dave&#8217;s latest efforts to reignite those original web ideals. He reveals the thinking behind Wordland, a minimalist and powerful writing tool for WordPress users that puts freedom, portability, and open protocols front and centre.</p>



<p>Dave also lays out his Textcasting manifesto, challenging platforms to truly support writers with features like unlimited length, markdown support, and true ownership of content, without the need for permission or platform lock-in.</p>



<p>Dave truly is a pioneer of the internet, and is certainly not finished yet. He&#8217;s putting WordPress at the centre of many of his future endeavors.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;re passionate about owning your content, deeply curious about web history, or looking for inspiration on how technology can empower rather than control, this episode is for you.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast, where you&#8217;ll find all the other episodes.</p>



<p>And so without further delay, I bring you Dave Winer.</p>



<p>I am joined on the podcast today by Dave Winer. Hello Dave.</p>



<p>[00:04:26] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> Hey, how you doing?</p>



<p>[00:04:27] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I confess, I&#8217;m going to get this out the way and I&#8217;m going to put it on the record because Dave Winer has been in my brain for about 20 years or more. And I&#8217;m going to allow Dave the opportunity to do a bio. He may lean into that and tell us many, many things, or he may not. But I would just like to offer my profound congratulations for many of the things that I literally have as the foundational bits of my working life.</p>



<p>Many of those bits are because of you, and I would like to express my enormous thanks for the way that you&#8217;ve done that, the stuff that you&#8217;ve built, the method in which you deployed that, and the way that you didn&#8217;t tie it up to a subscription model.</p>



<p>And, with that out of the way, I would just like to offer you the opportunity to introduce yourself. So do you mind just little potted bio, two or three minutes tops, something like that.</p>



<p>[00:05:18] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> Wow. I didn&#8217;t realize I was gonna be doing this. Well, I&#8217;m a software developer and a blogger. I started software development when I was a grad student in the 1970s, at the University of Wisconsin. And I immediately knew that this is what I was going to do in my whole career. Up to that point, I didn&#8217;t know.</p>



<p>It just fit. Everything about developing software, and communication with software. I used to call it communication with a big C. So you talk about communication with a little C is like wiring everything together. But the big C, its people getting connected. And that was going back to the, I guess the early eighties.</p>



<p>I moved from Wisconsin to California to Silicon Valley, and I had two products. My goal was to go to California and achieve fame and fortune, and it didn&#8217;t happen all at once at least. One of my first meetings was with Steve Jobs, and we were both exactly the same age, 23 or something like that, and very arrogant and full of ourselves, and we ended up insulting each other, and I have a lot of regrets about that because I had the two products and he wanted the wrong one. And I told him, man, that&#8217;s the wrong one. You should want the other one.</p>



<p>And anyway, so I ended up hooking up with a company that eventually became the biggest software company in the valley and then exploded. And then I started my own company. And that was a pretty long haul. But we got there. We made software for the Apple 2, the IBM PC, the Macintosh.</p>



<p>We had a really big hit in 1986, product called MORE. It was a really good product, but it also hit the market at exactly the right time. And then I sold the company and then I started developing software on my own, because that&#8217;s really what I always wanted to do. I was a CEO because I had to be, because nobody else understood the idea, that we were doing there.</p>



<p>And that&#8217;s actually been the story of my life, is like when I start something, I tell everybody how great it&#8217;s gonna be, and then they look at me like, what are you talking about? I have no idea. Or, that&#8217;s not useful. Or AI, this is what they say today. Oh, AI is gonna do that for us. And I go, no, I actually, I don&#8217;t think it is.</p>



<p>And so one thing led to another. I started making software on the web. I saw the web as complete liberation. Because the tech industry had gotten so congested with the power of the big companies. This happens periodically by the way. You end up, they get, they lock themselves in, and then they just protect their lock in. And then nothing happens for a while, and then an explosion happens, usually. A new company comes along with a big idea, and the big companies don&#8217;t understand it, and all of a sudden. And that was the web.</p>



<p>And there were things before that. The PC was like that to some extent. The Mac was. Rock and roll was like that for sure. The Beatles fit into that pattern of things that fundamentally changed everything. And the web was one of those things too.</p>



<p>And it blew the doors off the tech industry. Whenever a big tech company tried to dominate the web, it just didn&#8217;t work. It didn&#8217;t work. Until eventually it did work, and now we&#8217;re pretty thoroughly dominated. We got dominated by Facebook, by Google. Twitter, very influential company, and a few others, and now it&#8217;s Bluesky. They&#8217;re out there telling them that everybody, that they&#8217;re decentralized and whatever. They say they&#8217;re on the web, they&#8217;re not on the web.</p>



<p>The web means something. It means that I can add a feature that hooks into your product and I don&#8217;t need your permission to do it. That&#8217;s what you have to have for the web.</p>



<p>You also have to have links. If you don&#8217;t give the person writing in your environment the ability to put hyperlinks in their text, you can&#8217;t say you&#8217;re the web. Because you&#8217;ve deprived the writers of the one most essential thing that they need, the ability to defer to somebody else as the expert on this topic, and build these structures. Twitter, took that out. They just said, we don&#8217;t need that. Or put character limits on it. Or they said no titles. Or you can&#8217;t edit your post, or you can&#8217;t put a podcast, you can&#8217;t put an audio on there, on a post. And they add an API and that&#8217;s really nice, but it&#8217;s still, you don&#8217;t get that freedom. There&#8217;s nothing like that there.</p>



<p>[00:09:40] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I watched the internet develop in much the same way as I might watch a game of, we call it football, you may call it soccer, in that I&#8217;d be in the crowd and all of these characters are moving around on the field and doing important things and it just develops.</p>



<p>The game is afoot and it develops and it&#8217;s like evolution. Curiously, you were one of the people on the field kind of making these decisions. And so with the benefit of hindsight, looking back, it sounds like there&#8217;s a part of you which, not just a part of you, I feel like it might be a big part, which regrets a lot of the way that it has developed. The beginnings of the internet, there seem to be more, I don&#8217;t know, blue sky thinking, let&#8217;s put it that way.</p>



<p>[00:10:19] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> We actually called it that. We actually called it that, believe it or not, a piece of blue sky. The clouds, sky is overcast and then there&#8217;s a little bit of blue sky and we&#8217;re all gonna go there. Yeah, it was like that, but what was wrong was my model was wrong. My model for humanity.</p>



<p>Our model, the early web people. We had this very idealistic idea of what humanity was, and how they would take advantage of the opportunity. And that includes the entrepreneurs, because they create structures where people can be very abusive to each other, and they don&#8217;t do anything really about that.</p>



<p>And then the people, and we still live with this, in fact, well this comes up sometimes people say, you&#8217;re being altruistic. I&#8217;ve heard that said, and I reject that. I&#8217;m not being altruistic. If anything trying to set an example for what we have to do collectively in order to have freedom.</p>



<p>If you don&#8217;t, if you don&#8217;t enable your competitors, you don&#8217;t deserve users, is my feeling. And in fact, you can see that playing out in the WordPress community right now, right? That is what the big controversy seems to be. I&#8217;m gonna step back from it. I&#8217;m not part of the WordPress community. It&#8217;s not that I&#8217;m not really, I&#8217;m not. And I&#8217;m an observer of all of this, and I see it all playing out in a sort of predictable way.</p>



<p>But as I think you said earlier, we end up in a pretty good place and I put this in one of the pieces I wrote recently about the whole why I am betting so heavy on WordPress, is that whatever you can say about Automattic and Matt and whatever, he didn&#8217;t lock you in. You have freedom of movement. All your data can move with you wherever you want. Anybody can add a feature to WordPress if they want. It probably won&#8217;t get into the main distribution, but you can build on it.</p>



<p>And I have proven that by building on it. I never hit any dead ends. What I also see there, this is another plus for this platform is, whoever it is that&#8217;s building this, and I know there&#8217;s some contention about that, it really believes in not breaking developers, and that is super important.</p>



<p>That&#8217;s one of the basic, also fundamental principles of the web, is that a website that you built in 1995, you should still be able to read it in 2025. And you can, except Google doesn&#8217;t think you should. Google as recently as 2014, that&#8217;s when HTTPS came along and became something that people wanted to use. Up until that point, HTTP was perfectly fine. And then one day Google and the EFF decided no more of this. It was very bad development. It set a bad precedent, but that&#8217;s a sidebar. That&#8217;s not the real thing.</p>



<p>What&#8217;s really going on here is, I think there is now an opportunity in the, what we call, I call the Twitter, like world, I won&#8217;t call it the social web, because it isn&#8217;t the web. That&#8217;s not fair, they can&#8217;t. They should support the web before they get to call themselves the web. And they&#8217;ve just inherited all the limits that Twitter put on there.</p>



<p>They had the opportunity to relax those limits, but they have no incentive to do it. I could sit there, like you said, as an observer. See, that&#8217;s what I&#8217;ve been too, for the last, whatever, 16 years. 2006, it&#8217;s 2025, 19 years, sorry, for the last 19 years. With all due humility. I&#8217;m a pretty freaking good developer, and I really work very energetically, and I love making products for users, and I&#8217;m stuck. There&#8217;s no place for me to go. And I can&#8217;t accept that. That&#8217;s all I want to say, is I don&#8217;t accept that, and I found a way to work around it, that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m doing. And WordPress is key to it, central to it.</p>



<p>[00:14:11] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> We&#8217;ll come onto that whole project in a minute, which is really fascinating. But I&#8217;m just gonna rewind the clock and go back to the very beginnings of what we might now call the internet.</p>



<p>An academic enterprise, really, it felt like. A bunch of academics. Maybe you&#8217;ll go back as far as CERN and have those discussions about just wanting to send academic documentation to one another, and, then the hyperlink came along, and then all of a sudden this world of possibility opened up, and it felt as if there was so much positive potential there.</p>



<p>I remember the beginnings of the internet, the burgeoning of it, people beginning to talk about it, people starting to use it on desktops and things like that. And there was this real sense positivity that it was, like it was, it was this blue sky thing. For the first time in humanity&#8217;s history everybody had a way to interconnect.</p>



<p>We don&#8217;t need to go into what happened, but at some point, through a whole series of dominoes falling, we get all these walled gardens, and now the internet seems like anything other than blue sky. It feels like there&#8217;s just these silos everywhere. You&#8217;ve got a Meta silo, and you&#8217;ve got an X silo, and you&#8217;ve got a TikTok silo, and a YouTube silo.</p>



<p>And I think, with hand on heart, almost everybody would be able to point to at least some downside to that. Sure, you might enjoy consuming YouTube videos, but there may be a flip side to that. You end up doing it at the wrong time of the day. I think anybody could agree that people&#8217;s passions get inflamed to the point of getting a bit out of hand on the internet.</p>



<p>This was never what it was supposed to be. And so going back to my question from a minute ago, where I was implying that maybe there&#8217;s some sense of regret. If you could go back and move the jigsaw pieces, or move the chess pieces differently, I expect you would. I&#8217;d expect you&#8217;d be shouting a bit louder about the need for things to be not walled in, and maybe things would be different.</p>



<p>[00:15:58] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> I don&#8217;t think anybody hears that. I think I shouted it pretty loud. I repeated it over and over. I don&#8217;t have any regret about that, I think I did a tremendous amount of that, but the problem is, I can&#8217;t call it regret. I think that collectively there was a blogging community prior to WordPress. There was. There were competitive products. And then in 1999, it all clicked with RSS, and that gave us a way, we had ways, by the way, to find the updates on blogs before that.</p>



<p>We had a site called weblogs.com, and it would go looking around the blogosphere, had a list. There weren&#8217;t that many blogs, okay. So it would look at all of them, see if they updated, and if they updated it would put it at the top of the list. And so bloggers were just reloading that page all day long. And it worked. You still had to find the new post, but that wasn&#8217;t too hard because they were at the top of the page, right.</p>



<p>And then after that, with Netscape, we got RSS going. And that led to a whole other generation of that kind of stuff. We had it, it was going. But what killed it. Killed is too strong a word. What put a limit on it, what said that what you described would happen is that, do you remember the .com boom, right?</p>



<p>All of a sudden it wasn&#8217;t just a place for idealists to screw around and try out new ideas and everything. It was a place to come and get rich, and so it attracted all those people who wanted to get rich. That&#8217;s all they wanted. They didn&#8217;t care about what they had to do to get rich, and that attracted the professional investors, the venture capitalists. They want to get rich, it&#8217;s totally okay to do whatever they have to do to get rich. It just simply, it is their business to get rich, and it&#8217;s hard to blame them for that. And then, here&#8217;s the key point, they wouldn&#8217;t work with each other.</p>



<p>[00:17:49] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay.</p>



<p>[00:17:50] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> They would not work with each other. And I just wrote a piece this morning, on my blog, and it said in retrospect, it was a retrospective thing about RSS, because that&#8217;s becoming an issue again, and it said what RSS needed was love. It needed to be loved and nurtured, and fed and taken care of, and the users had to be given features that were collective across all the products. So that if you wanted to subscribe to a feed, you didn&#8217;t have to memorize a complicated process, involving pasting URLs or reading the HTML source, or all the crazy stuff that became, until Twitter, what choice was there, right? So people had to do it, but it was tremendous weakness.</p>



<p>And Twitter came in and just completely blew it out. Because in Twitter subscribing was a single click. And we&#8217;re gonna hit that again now. If I&#8217;m successful in what I do, we&#8217;re gonna hit it again, and we&#8217;re gonna have to answer that question differently.</p>



<p>[00:18:49] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, I was just gonna say, so many of the underpinnings that could have made the internet into a different place never went away, they just got ignored. Maybe that&#8217;s the wrong word, but they just got forgotten about. And so we wholeheartedly subscribed to X, formally Twitter. We wholeheartedly jumped in on Facebook, because they offered this amazing level of convenience. And of course, with the benefit of hindsight, it&#8217;s easy to see how maybe that was a catastrophic failure, but the time.</p>



<p>[00:19:18] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> I have no regrets about that either, Twitter was amazing.</p>



<p>[00:19:21] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It was so revolutionary, you could suddenly connect with people that you&#8217;d lost touch with many years ago.</p>



<p>[00:19:26] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> There you go. You put your finger right on it. It wasn&#8217;t that Twitter was so great. It&#8217;s that look at all the people. One of the first experiences I had on Twitter that really, really showed me what the difference is, is that there was just this random guy. I would meet him. We had our own community too, by the way. And so we would go to conferences and, I watched the WordCamp conference from afar, right? And I said, oh, I know all those people. Because in our community we had people like that. Only there only about 30 years younger than I was, than we were, but I recognize it.</p>



<p>And, meet somebody at a conference that&#8217;s, now I know what he&#8217;s doing with his family. I know what his sports are, who his team is, what&#8217;s the weather like where they live. And how does he describe it? There&#8217;s all these inputs that you simply don&#8217;t get from seeing somebody couple of times a year. It&#8217;s nice and everything, but this was a different thing altogether.</p>



<p>And I still use Facebook. I don&#8217;t use Twitter very much anymore. But, I still have my account. I didn&#8217;t delete it. But I use Facebook. I will never stop using Facebook because my friends from childhood are there. Where am I gonna get new friends from childhood? That&#8217;s not happening, right. They have their advantages. But they&#8217;re a really good example of people that refuse to do anything to help anything other than their mission to make more money. I&#8217;ve had these conversations with executives at Facebook, and we&#8217;ve had a couple of, fits and starts a couple of them, twice.</p>



<p>They were gonna add RSS support in and out, to Facebook. Kind of like what they&#8217;re doing with Threads and ActivityPub, right? Or the Fediverse. Yeah, I&#8217;m trying to forget that because I don&#8217;t believe in it, to be honest with you, but I do believe in Mastodon. I think that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re really doing here. And I think they blow a lot of smoke at these things, and they, make them seem like, they shouldn&#8217;t make them appear to be more than they are because we need to have both of those things. There&#8217;s no reason we can&#8217;t have both, but that means you have to be a little bit altruistic to use that word. You may feel like you&#8217;re being an altruist, but then look at the times we live in.</p>



<p>In the United States, we are very worried about what&#8217;s coming or what&#8217;s here right now. And we&#8217;re all asking, what can we do? What can we do? One of the things you can do is let down, open up to your inner altruist, start doing things that aren&#8217;t just about putting food on the table or getting ahead in your career.</p>



<p>Do things that make connecting with other people a lot easier, and more free. Because those services are now owned by people that go to dinner with the government of the United States. You&#8217;ve never seen a more clear picture of what we&#8217;re up against. You think that somebody from the White House calls Mark Zuckerberg and says, get Dave Winer off of Facebook. I guarantee you I&#8217;m off Facebook in 10 seconds. That&#8217;s who we are, depending on their honor, I think that&#8217;s a really bad bet. We&#8217;re all gonna have that choice.</p>



<p>And at the same time, people who know how to work with WordPress are gonna have an amazing advantage, because I see WordPress as being comparable to the Mastodon server and the Bluesky server, and Bluesky doesn&#8217;t give you a server to install yet, but Mastodon does. And, I didn&#8217;t install it. I had a friend because I tried and I couldn&#8217;t get it to go. That is what it&#8217;s gonna take. And WordPress is a lot easier to install, and it&#8217;s a lot more mature, and it really works and the APIs aren&#8217;t gonna break. So we got a much better foundation to build on.</p>



<p>[00:23:04] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Going back to what you said a moment ago about, it&#8217;s not either or. What we&#8217;re imagining here, I think is, you keep your Facebook, and you keep your X, and all of those things can go. Fine, carry on using those, but there&#8217;s an alternative, which many people may prefer. There&#8217;s a whole kind of ethos behind that, and a whole philosophy behind that. But underpinning it all, things like Mastodon, and potentially WordPress, and we&#8217;ll get into that, are a bunch of APIs and protocols and things like that, many of which you were very much involved in the creation of things like RSS, and thank you for that.</p>



<p>[00:23:38] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> More altruism there, huh?</p>



<p>[00:23:39] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> This entire whole podcast thing sits right on top of it. It feels like we&#8217;re going back to those things to try and, not compete, but be alongside of these other walled gardens, if you like.</p>



<p>[00:23:51] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> Oh, I think we&#8217;re competing. I&#8217;m not scared of competition. Let&#8217;s do it. There will be differences, however. There will be. There&#8217;ll be things that you can do in this world that you couldn&#8217;t do over there. But the opposite is true as well.</p>



<p>But the thing that we&#8217;re gonna do, if we&#8217;re successful, is we&#8217;re gonna influence those networks. And we&#8217;re going to get them to support markdown. That&#8217;s very specific. Just let me put markdown in my posts on Bluesky and get rid of the character limits and let me edit. And then we&#8217;re, we&#8217;re fine.</p>



<p>You have to support inbound RSS as well, not just outbound. I have to be able to stay in my space, and contribute, and write, and have anybody read it wherever they are. That&#8217;s it. It&#8217;s saying basically, let&#8217;s actually live up to the promise of the web. And that&#8217;s what the web promised. And if you&#8217;re confident in your users will find value in your network, and there&#8217;s no reason they won&#8217;t. I&#8217;m talking about Bluesky and Mastodon, then why wouldn&#8217;t you do it?</p>



<p>I think then we&#8217;ve outed you. If you don&#8217;t want to do it. Okay, they don&#8217;t want to do it now because they don&#8217;t see it as a way of attracting new users, or keeping the users they have. They don&#8217;t see it that way because it&#8217;s true. It&#8217;s not, and that&#8217;s what we have to do. We have to make it that. They have to be hearing it all the time. You have to support markdown, that&#8217;s what Textcasting was all about. I think markdown is the mp3 of text. We did podcasting too.</p>



<p>That was a fall out of all this stuff. I want to do radio. I love radio. I always have. And I always thought at some point I&#8217;m gonna do audio blogs. That&#8217;s what I was doing, getting ready to do that. And there we were, and one thing led to another and did I ever think about using something other than mp3? That would be crazy. It was a gift. They gave me the answer. Of course I&#8217;m going to use mp3. Why would I screw around with that? We&#8217;re gonna make it just as obvious that the other networks, if they&#8217;re gonna pretend to deal with text, they have to support a basic set of features, which are simply defined by the web. That&#8217;s it.</p>



<p>And WordPress does all that. WordPress documents are web documents, and that&#8217;s super important. That&#8217;s everything.</p>



<p>[00:26:15] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It feels like in the last few months you&#8217;ve very much planted a flag in the sand and it feels like you&#8217;ve committed to following through on the promise that we&#8217;re about to get into. And the underpinnings of it, I&#8217;m gonna link in the show notes to this, so you want to head to wptavern.com, search for the episode with Dave Winer, and in there will be a whole list of things. Anything that discuss, I&#8217;ll basically link to.</p>



<p>But there&#8217;s a couple of pieces which Dave has penned. One of them was in 2024, November, 2024, called Textcasting. And the URL for that is textcasting.org, and we&#8217;ll go into that in a minute. But then much more recently over on scripting.com, published on 28th of August, 2025, so very recently, was a piece which kind of built a top of that called Think Differently About WordPress.</p>



<p>I&#8217;m gonna return to the Textcasting one &#8217;cause this feels like the foundational technological underpinnings of what you are proposing here, this thing which would be a competitor to all of these walled gardens. It sits outside of WordPress.</p>



<p>[00:27:14] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> It&#8217;s more of a, okay, for me, this is when I was planning this product. I hadn&#8217;t even begun to develop it yet. But I wanted to write down in one place, these are all the things we&#8217;re gonna do. And that&#8217;s it. That&#8217;s all it was. I keep going on and on about all the different things that I wanted that I wasn&#8217;t getting, as a writer. I am a writer and I feel like Twitter was the original one, said you can&#8217;t have all your writing tools. It&#8217;s like I&#8217;m designing a guitar. And I&#8217;m saying, you can have three strings if you want. You can play music on three strings, right?</p>



<p>The ultimate insult is the people who made this decision are not guitar players. They&#8217;re not musicians. They don&#8217;t have the slightest clue what the f they&#8217;re doing, and I&#8217;ve been told that even getting a new generation of products isn&#8217;t gonna solve this problem, because they are just as clueless about what writers need. And so at least I feel like upfront I ought to tell them exactly what I want from them. And that&#8217;s what textcasting.org is.</p>



<p>So when we give it to the people, they can say, they might say, why didn&#8217;t you tell us that&#8217;s all you want? Yeah, look at textcasting.org, and look at the creation date. I was very clear about what I wanted, but understand that I needed this for myself as the requirements document for the product I was making. I&#8217;m a blogger, so when I write a requirements document, I put it in the public, because that&#8217;s what bloggers do. It is just the knee jerk. I do write some private documents, I do, it&#8217;s true. But my impulse is to write them publicly. So that&#8217;s really all that it is. It&#8217;s just saying, this is what we&#8217;re gonna do.</p>



<p>[00:28:58] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So right at the top, the goal is very simply encapsulated and it goes like this. It&#8217;s easy to get in your head and parse. Interop between social media apps based on the features writers needs, specifically the services of the social web, and there&#8217;s a link there, support these basic features.</p>



<p>And then you go on to describe the ethics behind the movement is. But then you list out the things that you would like as a writer. It&#8217;s surprisingly a short list. There&#8217;s only six things, titles, optional. Links, de rigueur, you&#8217;ve gotta have links. Simple styling, bold, italics, that&#8217;s probably enough. Enclosures making it possible to do other things like, I don&#8217;t know, podcasting and things like that. Unlimited length, that&#8217;s the big differentiator, isn&#8217;t it? Because more or less all the platforms that have gained success have stifled that in some way. And then the, this is important, I think maybe this is the bit that I think is most enjoyable, editable. Go back, modify it because why not? You wrote it, it&#8217;s yours. And markdown. That basically is textcasting encapsulated in just a few sentences. I&#8217;ve probably missed a lot of the nuance there, but that&#8217;s kind of how I see it.</p>



<p>[00:30:04] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> No, I don&#8217;t think so. Actually. Notice what&#8217;s not there? You&#8217;ll kick yourself. Comments. I don&#8217;t give a damn about comments.</p>



<p>[00:30:12] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Presumably the comments could be handled elsewhere.</p>



<p>[00:30:15] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> Absolutely, and I have a new idea for how comments should work. I wrote that up. I did a podcast about that, I think it was yesterday or the day before. I&#8217;ve had this design for many years, but I think there&#8217;s a way around all the abuse, and all the spamming that goes on these networks. I think it&#8217;s time for another look, first of all. I mean, I had a look, okay.</p>



<p>But, second of all, it&#8217;s time to open it up so everybody can play in this game so we can try out lots of different ways of doing it. Which by the way is also part of what I&#8217;m doing. I&#8217;m making a, the thing Wordland. If you go to wordland.social. Go there and try it out.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s there. It works with your WordPress sites. And so you might think, okay, it is actually my business to make a new writing tool for WordPress. I made the writing tool I would like to use. The idea is that you focus all your attention on writing, so it has all the functionality that you need to write and nothing else.</p>



<p>Everything else that it does that&#8217;s in the WordPress, their command structure. And it was what I felt was in the way for me to be a writer using WordPress. Because what WordPress, I don&#8217;t want to call it a mistake, it&#8217;s just how it evolved, is that the writing functionality is intermixed with everything else. And it makes it a very intimidating thing to get started with.</p>



<p>And so if you look at the people that are the insiders in the WordPress community, that&#8217;s a very small number compared to the number of people who have tried to use WordPress. That&#8217;s a huge number because WordPress is it, right?</p>



<p>And the number of people who use it, but they might prefer a better tool because this isn&#8217;t really what they think about. The things that are in the WordPress command structure are things that most people never need to go to. It&#8217;s too complicated. Look at the feature set of Twitter, for example. And it does a lot more than Twitter does, but most people aren&#8217;t interested in that. That&#8217;s one.</p>



<p>Number two is, there are modes of working and writing requires severe focus. I don&#8217;t want to have to jump. Every time I have to go some random other place in the, that I have to devote my brain power to that, what I&#8217;m not doing, I&#8217;m not focused on the plan for writing. When I write something, I&#8217;m thinking three paragraphs ahead. And I&#8217;m trying to remember that because I don&#8217;t want to stop writing to take a note. I want to just go down the page and get my first draft out. But if in order to do this I have to go somewhere far away, that requires me to think, now I&#8217;ve lost my place.</p>



<p>And it creates a certain stress and programmers, if you say this to a programmer, most programmers go, oh, you&#8217;re just being weird. That&#8217;s not the way it works. Let me tell you how it works. I am also myself a programmer, so I understand the thought process, but you have to play. You have to have both roles in there. And that&#8217;s one of the things that makes me a fairly unique developer, is that I&#8217;m both a writer and a developer.</p>



<p>So I play on both sides of that fence. And so if I want a writer to test my code, I don&#8217;t do it right after I wrote the code. I come back a couple of days later, now that I&#8217;ve got a fresh way of looking at things and then I try to use it, and then I see the problems right off the bat.</p>



<p>[00:33:26] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I&#8217;ll link to Wordland. I&#8217;ve had a good long look at the pages that you&#8217;ve offered up. I confess, I haven&#8217;t actually tried it out, but it&#8217;s a, it&#8217;s a very different take on a fairly minimal editing interface in WordPress. So I&#8217;ll make sure to link out to that.</p>



<p>[00:33:37] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> It&#8217;s fairly minimal, but it does everything on the Textcasting page. It doesn&#8217;t have the limits that all the Twitter like products have. It&#8217;s all supported, you get to do all of that stuff. And plus you get categories. And I think categories are huge. I really do. And it has a very nice, simple interface for it, but a very powerful one for categories. So, have a look at that.</p>



<p>[00:33:58] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you.</p>



<p>[00:33:59] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> And bookmarks. It&#8217;s very important for a writer. I have, I don&#8217;t know how many hundreds of documents that I&#8217;ve written over the years. I pretty much need quick access to all of them. Because I never know when I&#8217;m gonna have to make a change, and that&#8217;s in there too.</p>



<p>[00:34:12] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Nice.</p>



<p>[00:34:12] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> Oh wait, I forgot the actual main point. The main point I was gonna make is that I&#8217;ve also, all the work I had to do on the server side to set this up, I&#8217;m not gonna make anybody have to do. That&#8217;s all open source, and I&#8217;ll even run the server for you.</p>



<p>Yeah, because what I want is a development community to pop up here. And so if somebody looks at Wordland, says that&#8217;s not the way to do it, here&#8217;s how you should do it. Say, great, go ahead, do it. And what they&#8217;ll find is, just like with WordPress, okay, there&#8217;s nothing in your way. You get to do that.</p>



<p>And there&#8217;s more from that too, is that the user owns the documents, and all the documents are in markdown format. And so if you want to use a different editor on a document, just to work on it for whatever purpose, go ahead and it&#8217;ll still work in the place it came from.</p>



<p>And this is going back to the IBM PC and the Macintosh, where when you had those machines, you owned the documents and you could have any editor you want edit it. And this led to file format standards, because if you come along three years after Microsoft Word comes along in the Macintosh, you better read Word format documents.</p>



<p>Since I get to go first here, if this, if something happens, okay, that I have to say, maybe nothing will happen here, you never know. But because I got to go first, I chose markdown. Because markdown is the mp3 of text. It&#8217;s the obvious answer. And tell me why they don&#8217;t support markdown. Anything that works with text should support markdown in my opinion.</p>



<p>[00:36:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s just a nice, easy to access. The keyboard does everything.</p>



<p>[00:36:03] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> There&#8217;s more. I&#8217;ve written feed readers. All along have been writing feed readers, and we have to sterilize the content because people put all kinds of garbage. And so you basically strip everything out. I&#8217;m tired of doing that. What I want to do is give the writers the ability to put some bold face and italics, and put some links in there, and give it, all the things that are on the Textcasting thing.</p>



<p>So I don&#8217;t want to strip that out anymore. And so in Feedland and in Wordland, markdown is fully supported everywhere, and in RSS. It&#8217;s a key point. If I had that to do over again. I can&#8217;t do that one. I&#8217;m sorry, I&#8217;m going on about this but I really believe in it. I couldn&#8217;t do it over again. If I had to do over again in the beginning, I would&#8217;ve made markdown the text format in RSS, totally. I couldn&#8217;t do it &#8217;cause it didn&#8217;t exist. RSS came first but I&#8217;ve taken care of it.</p>



<p>Now, Wordland produces its own RSS feed for every document, along with the one that WordPress produces. And the feed we produce has the markdown in it. And it has a couple of other things, and it, we will have more. As we think of more features to add. I&#8217;ve now got a place where I can add features. These are in a namespace, it&#8217;s totally non-controversial. I&#8217;m not modifying RSS, I have something called the source namespace.</p>



<p>And then at some point, again, it&#8217;s all prefixed by if it catches on, then I&#8217;ll go to the guys that do the feeds inside of WordPress and say, here&#8217;s some suggestions for features to your feed. And at that point we&#8217;ll be friends, I hope. And they&#8217;ll, love me and I&#8217;ll love them. It&#8217;s not impossible. There are people on the team that are helping us. That&#8217;s nice, I really love that.</p>



<p>[00:37:47] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So taking it back a little bit, we&#8217;ve got the Textcasting framework that we described a little bit, a few moments ago. That kind of feels like the underpinnings to this other piece that I mentioned. And again, links in the show notes. Think Different About WordPress. Now, I confess, I&#8217;ve been following you for many years. really, in my head, collided you with WordPress.</p>



<p>[00:38:08] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> I wasn&#8217;t, you interpreted</p>



<p>[00:38:10] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> And then suddenly you pop up with this piece about Wordland for start, which is a, an editor, which binds to WordPress. And then this whole piece about think differently about WordPress. Now this is really curious because, well you tell me what you&#8217;re proposing. I could try, try to interpret it.</p>



<p>[00:38:26] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> I tried put the key idea upfront, okay. When I say Think Different About WordPress, I can tell you exactly what that is, what you&#8217;re supposed to think. I used the grammatically incorrect version that Apple uses.</p>



<p>[00:38:42] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Think different.</p>



<p>[00:38:43] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> Yeah, it was cute. I thought, what the heck, let&#8217;s do it. That&#8217;s the point, really. And it is just think of WordPress as the equivalent of the Bluesky service and the Mastodon service. And the reason you can do that is because it&#8217;s really comparable. They&#8217;re all text databases, that&#8217;s what they are. They have some different structures. That&#8217;s okay, we can add structures too. But it&#8217;s how good are they at doing that, and how mature is their code, this is very technical stuff, right? But what does the API look like, and how stable is the API? These are all the concerns that limit what people can develop on the platform. And if you do the check boxes, I probably should do that, but WordPress wins on every one of them.</p>



<p>[00:39:31] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s a lot of life behind it and a lot of commitment to backwards compatibility.</p>



<p>[00:39:35] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> It&#8217;s very simple actually. The reason it is that way is that whoever made the calls, they had a philosophy for the whole 22 years of the web will tell us what to do, and they did it. What else?</p>



<p>I know, I felt Rip Van Winkle, you know what I&#8217;m saying? It&#8217;s like, I was not paying attention to WordPress because I had all the wrong ideas. Now, they didn&#8217;t market to me. They never told me in 2017 they had a new API never. It. They didn&#8217;t tell me that they had a Node.js package for that API. They never told me. I was working in Node.js at that point. So I could have tried it out right away. They never told me. And all of a sudden, like I&#8217;m looking around, I need to add WordPress login to Feedland, because that&#8217;s running, we have a, at feedland.com people should try that too. Okay, because that&#8217;s a big part.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s the feed backend for the system that we&#8217;re talking about. And Feedland runs on the Automattic VIP server. So that thing scales. Okay. I learned how to write, I didn&#8217;t know how to write scalable software before I hooked up with them, in I guess it was like three years ago or something.</p>



<p>And the first thing we did is, and they were very generous about this in teaching me, and I kept finding things I had to change to make it so that you could support millions of users, right? It&#8217;s not mysterious once you learn how to do it, but there&#8217;s an art to it.</p>



<p>The bigger project is imagine Twitter with an editor that could support. Twitter has what I call a tiny little text box, okay? You get to type something in there and they&#8217;ve extended their limit, if you pay them money, 10,000 characters, that&#8217;s a pretty good character limit. I say in Textcasting, unlimited. 10,000 is unlimited, okay. For all practical purposes, if you&#8217;re writing more than 10,000 characters, there shouldn&#8217;t be a limit, but, okay.</p>



<p>So you got a text editor. Twitter has a text editor. We have a text editor. Our text editor does the web the way I want it to do the web. And it has timelines where you see messages in reverse chronological order. So imagine if that was RSS, instead of their server. That timeline. You could make a timeline in RSS look just like it came from Twitter. There&#8217;s no problem with that, and that&#8217;s what I&#8217;ve done. When you subscribe to feeds, what you get.</p>



<p>So anything that supports RSS plugs into this system, and guess what? RSS is totally replaceable. Everything that I do, you can come up with another one and it works just as well, because RSS is an open format. Yeah, it&#8217;s got a protocol with it too. There&#8217;s a RSS cloud, which I mentioned in that piece, which does the real time component of it. It worked great.</p>



<p>WordPress supports it in every one of the instances they do it, and so it may be more limited than the one, but I don&#8217;t know the one that&#8217;s in Bluesky or Mastodon. It may have features that are hard to do, but like I said, then it will do features. It&#8217;ll have things that they can&#8217;t do either.</p>



<p>One thing it&#8217;ll do is it&#8217;ll be very, very, very, very, simple. That&#8217;s the point.</p>



<p>[00:42:48] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> What I&#8217;m thinking here is, I think that the typical listener listening to this will be thinking, how does this differ from, let&#8217;s say, going to Twitter, but it&#8217;s got a different interface and it&#8217;s got a different character limit.</p>



<p>[00:42:59] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> Not that different. whole idea is that it won&#8217;t be that different. I&#8217;m not actually running your server. Go, you could pick and choose. You don&#8217;t like my timeline, fine. Go get Joe&#8217;s timeline or Mary&#8217;s timeline or, Google might have a timeline or OpenAI might have one or. Do you need a license to create an RSS reader? No, that&#8217;s the point. The point is you get innovation, you get the doors blown off. You don&#8217;t have a silo. There&#8217;s no silo anywhere in sight.</p>



<p>If you want the users, you have to give them features, performance or price. They don&#8217;t have to stay with you if they don&#8217;t want to. There&#8217;s no import or export. It&#8217;s just there. It&#8217;s the feeds you subscribe to. That&#8217;s really, there&#8217;s not a whole lot of technology there.</p>



<p>[00:43:49] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. I mean, it&#8217;s a fairly nice, simple, basic proposition. It sounds from what you were saying in the Think Different About WordPress, it sounds like, well I said you planted your flag in the sand a little bit before. It sounds like you are committing yourself to do.</p>



<p>[00:44:03] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> I&#8217;ve already done the work. I&#8217;ll be demoing this at WordCamp Canada in October, hopefully that will all be webcast so everybody can watch it. And it&#8217;ll be archived and it probably will crash, because that&#8217;s the way these things work, right? And, but I will stay with it.</p>



<p>I will get the bugs out. It&#8217;s gonna be a process. It&#8217;s not gonna be done, on October, whatever, 17th I think it is. It&#8217;s not gonna be done. All I ask is have a look then, and then when there&#8217;s a new version, please come have a look then too, and I&#8217;ll come back on your podcast if you want. We can talk about it as it develops. Remember the things that we&#8217;re puzzling, and don&#8217;t mistake for a minute that I&#8217;m not confused too. I am.</p>



<p>I&#8217;m gonna tell you a little self-aggrandizing anecdote. Once in, I think it was high school or something, teachers said, somebody like to come up and solve this problem, it was a math class, solve this problem on the whiteboard?</p>



<p>I said, okay, I&#8217;ll go. And I go up there and I&#8217;m doing it, and I got the answer, and the teacher said, you didn&#8217;t know the answer when you raised your hand, did you? No. I, it&#8217;s like, I&#8217;m an old guy now, that was when I was young. What the hell have I got to lose? Nothing. Nothing. I&#8217;m giving you software, an approach to software that I believe in. And, I&#8217;m testing the idea of the assumption.</p>



<p>I was always told that RSS can&#8217;t do what Twitter does, and because I had not mastered server side scaled software, and remember until a couple of years ago, I had never done that. So I said, I have no way of testing that. They say you can&#8217;t do it. They know. I have my doubts about what they said, but I have no way of doing anything about it. And then I got the skill, and then I think now that it&#8217;s not true, I think that you absolutely can do it, and that they had a reason for telling me that, is that they didn&#8217;t want me to do it. Okay, that&#8217;s an invitation, a great invitation if I&#8217;ve ever seen one, right.</p>



<p>I mean go for it. Let&#8217;s go for it, but let&#8217;s all go for it together. You see, that&#8217;s the point. It&#8217;s no fun if I&#8217;m just sitting here going, oh, please, I beg you, would you please try my software so I can be a billionaire too?</p>



<p>[00:46:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I was just gonna say, if you&#8217;re going into WordCamp Canada, and you&#8217;re demoing it all there, but at the moment, I&#8217;m guessing you&#8217;re doing all of the work, or you have done all of the work, by yourself. Are you hoping to create a community around this?</p>



<p>[00:46:31] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> Yeah. I want a developer community, but in order to have a developer community, there better be some users, &#8217;cause the developers don&#8217;t come until there are users. So this is something, if a user says, what can I do to help? I&#8217;m just a user. The answer is you could do a lot to help. You can use the damn thing. Your product, your content, the stuff that you write will be a magnet for other people. They&#8217;ll see the reality of it and they&#8217;ll say, oh wow, I guess you can use stuff like this.</p>



<p>[00:47:03] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So the next question I have then is how does what you wish to do, how does that stand in relation to some of the currently existing things out there? So for example, the Fediverse, I know maybe that term&#8217;s not something you like to use, but let&#8217;s say Mastodon for want of a better word or ActivityPub, let&#8217;s go with that.</p>



<p>ActivityPub has a plugin which is under the custodianship of Automattic, so we&#8217;re obviously trying to bind our WordPress websites with the Fedi verse and being able to communicate in that way.</p>



<p>[00:47:31] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> No, that&#8217;s good. That&#8217;s very good.</p>



<p>[00:47:33] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> How does yours stand in contrast to that? How, will yours differ from that familiar thing?</p>



<p>[00:47:39] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> What that does is it&#8217;s wonderful. First, let me tell you why it&#8217;s wonderful, and then I&#8217;ll tell you, I don&#8217;t even know how to begin telling you what the difference is. But, it&#8217;s wonderful because it accomplishes at least part of the goal of bringing the Textcasting vision into Mastodon. So if I have a blog called daveverse.org, which is a WordPress blog, and when I post something there, it&#8217;s also cross posted to Mastodon. And as far as I can tell, there&#8217;s no character limit. And it has styling, and it supports links, and it has images, and block quotes. It&#8217;s got a lot of the stuff. It even has titles. That&#8217;s right, it has titles too. If you go look at the Textcasting list, that&#8217;s pretty good coverage, right? It&#8217;s a major innovation, it&#8217;s a major step forward.</p>



<p>So what that does, hopefully it gets it onto the radar of the developers of Mastodon. The more people want that, okay, they have to make that clear. And right now, I don&#8217;t think people even know it exists. There&#8217;s not a lot of awareness of it. I&#8217;ve tried the best I can to, and I&#8217;ll keep pumping it for this reason. And the more successful it is, the more it puts pressure on Bluesky to do the same thing.</p>



<p>So it&#8217;s having the same effect that I&#8217;m hoping to have and, so I like it. Remember, I&#8217;m wearing a lot of hats here, but one of the hats I wear is, as a writer who wants the freedom to use all the writing tools, I don&#8217;t want to be given three strings, I want all five strings, using the guitar anology.</p>



<p>So this, what I&#8217;ve done is create something that has the potential of playing the role that, the core of Mastodon does. The whole thing. The whole thing, right? It&#8217;s not comparable to a plugin that connects WordPress to Mastodon because that&#8217;s a plugin, and what they&#8217;re doing is heroic, that&#8217;s the word I use for it, Matthias and his team are doing at Automattic, are doing is heroic, because it&#8217;s a hard problem to solve. It&#8217;s taking &#8217;em a lot of time and they&#8217;re working really hard, but those guys really believe, they&#8217;re really committed. And I, love that. It&#8217;s both heroic and love inspiring. These guys are great. And they won&#8217;t have to do that for my system. They won&#8217;t, it&#8217;ll just come for free.</p>



<p>[00:50:04] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> With the Mastodon system, obviously the ActivityPub protocol will bind to a server of your choice. So many people go with mastodon.social as the sort of the default. Presumably there&#8217;s gotta be some part of the architecture for your system, which in that way, some central place.</p>



<p>[00:50:20] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> There is a server component to what I&#8217;m doing. Okay. It doesn&#8217;t matter where that server is running. You can run it anywhere, somebody has to run it, and it&#8217;s open source, and it&#8217;s not even a GPL license, it&#8217;s MIT licensed. So go have fun with this thing.</p>



<p>And it&#8217;s on GitHub right now. I&#8217;m not asking people to install it yet because I want to get a chance to like lock it down before we start cloning it. It&#8217;s going to, it is designed to be no lock-in. It is, does, require somebody to run a server</p>



<p>[00:51:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So the bit that I&#8217;m reading off the scripting.com website where, you know the piece entitled Think Different About WordPress. You have this sentence where it says, a storage service and it says, I&#8217;m going to run the server for you to get the bootstrap going, my treat. That was the bit.</p>



<p>[00:51:14] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> That raised the alarms, right? It should raise the alarms.</p>



<p>[00:51:17] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Exactly. It made me think Twitter in a way, it made me think there&#8217;s this central bit.</p>



<p>[00:51:21] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> No, it&#8217;s not, because I have the answer that Twitter never had, which is I&#8217;m giving you all the code you need to run your own server. I&#8217;m giving that to you. I&#8217;m not making you write it. In Twitter you can&#8217;t even write it. If I wrote a server that did what Twitter&#8217;s server does, that&#8217;s great, but it wouldn&#8217;t be part of Twitter. It wouldn&#8217;t be available to everyone. The availability here is the same availability as RSS. So can I subscribe to your RSS feed, even if your thing is on another server? Of course.</p>



<p>That&#8217;s all you need to know. Ultimately, that&#8217;s all you&#8217;re going to need is to be able to. It&#8217;s just RSS, that&#8217;s all it is.</p>



<p>[00:52:01] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s RSS all the way down.</p>



<p>[00:52:03] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> But let me just say this, is that&#8217;s also a strength of the WordPress community, the skepticism. You&#8217;re always, you guys are always watching for the lock in.</p>



<p>[00:52:13] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> We&#8217;ve spent trying to encourage the world that you need to own your own data, or at least have. </p>



<p>[00:52:17] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> Right.</p>



<p>[00:52:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Unfortunately the world, on the whole, didn&#8217;t listen, so we keep banging that gong.</p>



<p>[00:52:24] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> Yes. But let me point out that you are the distillation of the people. You&#8217;re the group of people who care deeply about that stuff. So keep it up because, and that&#8217;s why I&#8217;m ready to answer those questions because, and here&#8217;s the punchline. Even though I&#8217;m not part of your community, we share that religion.</p>



<p>[00:52:42] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Oh, that&#8217;s nice.</p>



<p>[00:52:43] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> Why do we share the religion? Because it&#8217;s the web. Because that&#8217;s what the web taught us. Maybe we believed, maybe we were very naive in the nineties and the early two thousands. We were, we&#8217;re not naive anymore. I think the last, the very last sentence in the Think Different, go read that, right now.</p>



<p>[00:53:02] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> They lied to the users all the time, over and over. No, I don&#8217;t object to you making money, but I&#8217;m putting it out there. You can compete with me. I want you to compete with me, as long as you don&#8217;t try to cut off the interop. I&#8217;m not naive. Believe me, I expect that will happen.</p>



<p>[00:53:16] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> That&#8217;s just all the credentials I need to be in your community, right? Not all the credentials. I don&#8217;t know half the stuff any of you guys know about the how to do. I don&#8217;t do PHP for example. I don&#8217;t know how to set up a WordPress server. I have somebody that helps me with that. So I&#8217;m not qualified to be a member of the WordPress community, but that&#8217;s the beauty of the web. I don&#8217;t have to be to connect with that community, because that&#8217;s what the web gives. And that&#8217;s pretty awesome, don&#8217;t you think? And the other thing is that makes it even more awesome is that all the other people like me will be able to do it too. Why? Because in the end they played straight with you.</p>



<p>[00:54:01] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Depending on when this podcast is released, it may well be that you&#8217;ve done your presentation. If that is in fact the case, then I will make sure to link to the WordPress TV, the video that will have been captured. I&#8217;ll link that into this post. But also I&#8217;ll link to the Textcasting document and, also the Think Different About WordPress document. And encourage you, if you&#8217;ve got any interesting kind of, I&#8217;m gonna say rewinding the clock and returning the world to a different era where the blue sky was there, and there was less cloud, than go and explore those different bits and pieces.</p>



<p>And I will definitely be coming back to you, Dave Winer, to figure out exactly how it&#8217;s gone and maybe call it months or something like that. And we&#8217;ll see where you&#8217;ve got with the WordPress community.</p>



<p>[00:54:40] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> If we&#8217;re still here.</p>



<p>[00:54:41] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. But we will, we&#8217;ll leave it there. And, I will say thank you for chatting to me today about this really important subject. Thank you.</p>



<p>[00:54:48] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> Thank you much, it was great. Have a good day.</p>
</div></details>



<p>On the podcast today we have <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/scripting.com">Dave Winer.</a> </p>



<p>Dave’s journey into the heart of Silicon Valley began in the early 1980s, when he left Wisconsin and moved to California with two products and a dream: to achieve fame and fortune in the world of technology. Driven by a deep belief that real communication involves people truly connecting, he set out to make his mark.</p>



<p>Early on, he found himself in a memorable meeting with Steve Jobs, both were in their early 20s, bursting with ambition and self-assurance. Their encounter was fiery and competitive, yet it marked the start of Dave’s lifelong mission to wire the world together, not just with technology, but by bringing people closer through it.</p>



<p>If you’ve ever subscribed to a blog, listened to a podcast, or shared your thoughts online, chances are you’ve benefitted from Dave’s pioneering work, he’s the developer behind influential technologies like RSS, and a long-time advocate for open, user-owned, publishing platforms.</p>



<p>He describes himself as someone who wrote the first versions of lots of software, wants to work with everyone, still has big ideas, he likes things to be open from top to bottom, and doesn&#8217;t care for greedy people.</p>



<p>Today we’re talking about the vision, history, and future of the open web. Dave reminisces about the origins of today’s internet, the early days when idealism and collaboration were at the web’s core. He shares stories from his career, the rise and fall of early software startups, and how the initial spirit of community slowly gave way to the “walled gardens” of big tech giants like Facebook, Google, and Twitter.</p>



<p>But the conversation isn’t just about nostalgia, it’s a call to action for reclaiming the internet’s potential. Dave explains what went wrong with the evolution of the social web, why he thinks blogging tech like RSS just needed “more love”, and how the influx of money and centralisation stifled the creativity and interoperability the web was built for.</p>



<p>You’ll also get to hear about Dave’s latest efforts to reignite those original web ideals, he reveals the thinking behind Wordland, a minimalist and powerful writing tool for WordPress users that puts freedom, portability, and open protocols front and centre.</p>



<p>Dave also lays out his “Textcasting” manifesto, challenging platforms to truly support writers with features like unlimited length, markdown support, and true ownership of content, without the need for permission or platform lock-in.</p>



<p>Dave truly is a pioneer of the internet, and is certainly not finished yet. He’s putting WordPress at the centre of many of his future endeavours. </p>



<p>If you’re passionate about owning your content, deeply curious about web history, or looking for inspiration on how technology can empower rather than control, this episode is for you.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Useful links</h2>



<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MORE_(application)">Dave&#8217;s MORE product</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.eff.org/">EFF</a></p>



<p><a href="https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web">The birth of the Web</a> &#8211; CERN</p>



<p><a href="http://scripting.com/">scripting.com</a></p>



<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub">ActivityPub</a> on Wikipedia</p>



<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse">Fediverse</a> on Wikipedia</p>



<p>Dave&#8217;s <a href="https://textcasting.org/">textcasting.org</a> website</p>



<p><a href="http://scripting.com/2025/08/28/140604.html">Think Different about WordPress</a> post on scripting.com</p>



<p><a href="https://this.how/wordland/">About Wordland</a></p>



<p>Access to <a href="https://wordland.social/">Wordland</a></p>



<p>Access to<a href="https://feedland.org/"> Feedland</a></p>



<p><a href="https://canada.wordcamp.org/2025/session/wordpress-and-the-open-social-web/">WordPress and the open social web</a>, Dave&#8217;s presentation at WordCamp Canada 2025</p>



<p><a href="https://daveverse.org/">Daveverse</a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 24 Sep 2025 14:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Nathan Wrigley";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:17;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:84:"Open Channels FM: Discovering the Future of AI and Customer Success at CloudFest USA";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=110347";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:91:"https://openchannels.fm/discovering-the-future-of-ai-and-customer-success-at-cloudfest-usa/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:219:"In this episode, Adam talks with Jess Frick and Jeff Paul about their panels at CloudFest USA 2025. They discuss customer success in WordPress hosting, AI integrations, and the event's highlights, offering fun insights.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 24 Sep 2025 13:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:18;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:71:"Open Channels FM: 5 Real-World Ways to Build Consistent Creation Habits";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=109528";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:78:"https://openchannels.fm/5-real-world-ways-to-build-consistent-creation-habits/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:131:"To build a daily creative habit, just hit record and embrace the chaos. Simplify, connect to routines, and stop chasing perfection!";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 24 Sep 2025 11:54:43 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:19;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:16:"Matt: Ruby Drama";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=149923";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"https://ma.tt/2025/09/ruby-drama/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1035:"<p>There is some riveting drama in the Ruby community around company sponsorships, and directory nudging similar to what happened with Advanced Custom Fields and <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/secure-custom-fields/">Secure Custom Fields</a>. This post does the best summary: <a href="https://joel.drapper.me/p/rubygems-takeover/">Shopify, pulling strings at Ruby Central, forces Bundler and RubyGems takeover</a>.</p>



<p>I will only add that Automattic attempted to sponsor RailsConf and have a booth for our open web apps, such as Pocket Casts, Day One, and Beeper, which we thought would be relevant to the open source and open web audience there; however, we were denied. We&#8217;ve <a href="https://ma.tt/2024/12/drupalcon-singapore/">sponsored other </a><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://ma.tt/2024/12/drupalcon-singapore/" target="_blank">open-source events like DrupalCon before</a> and did so in a tasteful way that wasn&#8217;t in conflict with the organization&#8217;s mission</span>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 24 Sep 2025 00:31:32 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:20;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:55:"Open Channels FM: Why Open Source Matters in Podcasting";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=108690";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:62:"https://openchannels.fm/why-open-source-matters-in-podcasting/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:156:"Podcasters face limitations with closed platforms. But there are those who do advocate for tools  to boost data ownership and customization in the industry.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 23 Sep 2025 12:29:21 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:21;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:74:"Open Channels FM: Exploring WordPress, Textcasting, and Open Web Standards";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=110341";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:79:"https://openchannels.fm/exploring-wordpress-textcasting-and-open-web-standards/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:256:"In this episode of Fediverse Flows, Matthias Pfefferle chats with Dave Winer about the open web's evolution, emphasizing interoperability, linking, and decentralized publishing through WordPress, while discussing challenges faced by contemporary platforms.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 23 Sep 2025 09:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:22;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"Matt: Post-Earthquake Tea Grit";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=149908";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:26:"https://ma.tt/2025/09/tea/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1551:"<p>The 4.7 earthquake definitely disturbed my sleep last night, so it&#8217;s nice to have a <a href="https://cuzenmatcha.com/">Cuzen Matcha</a> shot and some <a href="https://www.harney.com/products/paris-tea">Harney &amp; Sons Paris tea</a> to wake up and get me through the day.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image alignwide size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-149909" height="453" src="https://i0.wp.com/ma.tt/files/2025/09/IMG_0007-1024x768.jpeg?resize=604%2C453&#038;quality=89&#038;ssl=1" width="604" /></figure>



<p>Speaking of spilling tea, I had a great conversation with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/joubin-mirzadegan-66186854/">Joubin Mirzadegan</a> of the storied VC firm <a href="https://www.kleinerperkins.com/">Kleiner Perkins</a> where we got to chat about the hero&#8217;s journey of entrepreneurship, my earliest &#8220;Hot Nacho&#8221; WordPress scandal and the context of current battles, 996 work, jazz clubs in San Francisco, and more. Kleiner never invested in Automattic (I don&#8217;t think we ever pitched) but I have always had huge respect for John Doerr, Brook Byers, Bing Gordon, Mary Meeker, Ilya Fushman, and Mamoon Hamid, so many of the people at KPCB.  You can <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQDNgy774sg">watch on YouTube</a> or <a href="https://pca.st/mggq43pb">listen in Pocket Casts</a>.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-embed alignwide is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">

</div></figure>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 23 Sep 2025 01:17:50 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:23;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21:"Matt: Work With Music";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=149893";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:38:"https://ma.tt/2025/09/work-with-music/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:908:"<p>If you&#8217;re not playing music while you&#8217;re working, you&#8217;re missing out. It&#8217;s incredible how sounds can transform how our brain works. You can, on tap, put yourself into a different mode of being with music; you can change your drive, motivation, mood, and more. There are some apps that have started to hack this, such as <a href="https://endel.io/">Endel</a>, which can generate music programmatically in a very <a href="https://www.brian-eno.net/">Brian Eno</a>-like way. I&#8217;ve been a fan and user of theirs since 2020. I also love the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/LofiGirl">Lofi Girl</a>. On your <a href="https://www.sonos.com/">Sonos</a> you can actually stream <a href="https://www.focusatwill.com/">Focus @ Will</a>, which is another attempt, and I have a subscription there. My favorite is Endel, though, so if you&#8217;re only going to try one, try that one.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 22 Sep 2025 04:34:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:24;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:54:"Peter Wilson: I’m speaking at Web Directions Enqueue";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://peterwilson.cc/?p=6715";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:61:"https://peterwilson.cc/im-speaking-at-web-directions-enqueue/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1744:"<p>I’m thrilled to be part of the line up for <a href="https://webdirections.org/enqueue/">Web Directions Enqueue</a>, co presented by The Code Company, on November 28, 2025. Enqueue is to be one of the first engineering focused WordPress conferences in Australia, and the line up includes some of the best engineering minds in WordPress today, including <a href="https://www.jonoalderson.com/">Jono Alderson</a>, <a href="https://tammielister.com/">Tammie Lister</a>, <a href="https://isabelbrison.com/">Isabel Brison</a>, <a href="https://cameronjonesweb.com.au/">Cameron Jones</a> and too many more to mention.</p>



<p>I’ll be doing a deep dive into the performance improvements WordPress Contributors have added to the Query classes in recent years. </p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p>The WordPress Performance team was established in 2021 with the goal of improving the performance of WordPress Core. As a fundamental part of rendering each and every page of a WordPress site, the <code>WP_Query</code> class has received a lot of attention.</p>



<p>In this talk, Peter will discuss how the performance of <code>WP_Query</code> and the WordPress Query component have been improved with increased caching, and how that can be taken full advantage of when building WordPress sites at scale.</p>
</blockquote>



<p>There will also be talks about integrating WordPress with LLMs, accessibility and developer workflows.</p>



<p>Enqueue is taking place in Sydney on November 28, 2025 in the beautiful Dr Chau Chak Wing Building at UTS (the paper bag building). It will also be streamed via <a href="https://conffab.com/">Conffab</a> if you’re unable to make it in person.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sun, 21 Sep 2025 10:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:12:"Peter Wilson";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:25;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"Matt: Books on Grieving";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=149866";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:40:"https://ma.tt/2025/09/books-on-grieving/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:844:"<p>When my father passed unexpectedly, I was despondent. One thing I remember was the Amazon lovebomb I got from my high school girlfriend Sunaina Sondhi, five books to help me deal with the pain. Even a decade after we dated, books were her love language; in fact, she had given me my very first book about meditation when we were teenagers. I don&#8217;t recall what all the books were, but the two that really made a difference for me were Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s and David Kessler&#8217;s posthumous book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Grief-Grieving-Finding-Meaning-Through/dp/1476775559">On Grief and Grieving</a>, and the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Tibetan-Book-Living-Dying-International-ebook/dp/B000FC147G/">Tibetan Book of Living and Dying</a>. Each allowed me to process and understand the emotions I was going through.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sun, 21 Sep 2025 02:28:10 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:26;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:20:"Matt: MCP Everywhere";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=149849";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:37:"https://ma.tt/2025/09/mcp-everywhere/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1917:"<p>MCP stands for <a href="https://modelcontextprotocol.io/">Model Context Protocol</a>. (The joke is the S in MCP stands for security, but that&#8217;s another post.) They say to think of it like &#8220;like a USB-C port for AI applications&#8221; because it allows interoperability between AI chatbots and other tools. Here&#8217;s some of the MCP stuff happening across the <a href="https://automattic.com/">Automattic</a> solar system:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Core WordPress now has <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/mcp-adapter/">an MCP Adapter</a> that uses a new <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/ai/2025/07/17/abilities-api/">Abilities API</a> to do <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Create,_read,_update_and_delete">CRUD</a> and more operations across WordPress.</li>



<li>Woo&#8217;s core MCP is coming in version 10.3 in early October, though <a href="https://github.com/techspawn/woocommerce-mcp-server">Lawrence Sinclair already spun one up on Github</a>.</li>



<li><a href="https://library.clay.earth/hc/en-us/articles/36405339564315-Clay-MCP-live-Make-integration-improved-Library-and-more">Here&#8217;s how to set up Clay&#8217;s MCP</a> so your AI can ask things like &#8220;Who are my contacts at Google that I haven&#8217;t spoken to in 6 months?&#8221;</li>



<li><a href="https://www.beeper.com/desktop-api">Beeper&#8217;s MCP implementation</a> lets you query your entire message history across iMessage (on MacOS), WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Instagram, and many more with natural language.</li>



<li>Day One has a <a href="https://github.com/Quevin/mcp-dayone/">community MCP implementation from Kevin Davinson</a>.</li>
</ul>



<p>When nerds start connecting things, interesting stuff happens; that&#8217;s been my entire career, so while none of these have made it into a critical daily workflow for me, I&#8217;m curious to see what people come up with.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 20 Sep 2025 01:41:21 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:27;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:100:"Gutenberg Times: Block commenting, fun with Telex, from classic to block theme—Weekend Edition 341";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=41913";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:107:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/block-commenting-fun-with-telex-from-classic-to-block-theme-weekend-edition-341/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21347:"<p>Hi there,</p>



<p>A month before Beta, is the time I get excited about a major release. Many new features—I see it all coming together via GitHub and Trac. The Source of Truth is in the works, but it will take a few more weeks to be published, as only when Release candidate 2 comes out I can be sure about what actually made it into the release. </p>



<p>Until then, check out <a href="https://telex.automattic.ai/"><strong>Automattic Telex</strong></a> for your personal block-building needs. Below you learn from others who went before you. </p>



<p>Today the 190th <a href="https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/oktoberfest-munich-2025-its-tapped-live-with-english-commentary,Ux8oig2">Oktoberfest 2025 started in Munich</a>. Should you be in town, give serendipity a chance and let me know. We could meet up. </p>



<p>Enjoy the weekend regardless of where you are. </p>



<p>Yours, <img alt="💕" class="wp-smiley" src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f495.png" style="height: 1em;" /><br /><em>Birgit</em></p>


<section class="wp-block-newsletterglue-group" style="padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;">
<div class="wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>Table of Contents</strong></p>



<nav class="wp-block-table-of-contents"><ol><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/block-commenting-fun-with-telex-from-classic-to-block-theme-weekend-edition-341/#0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/block-commenting-fun-with-telex-from-classic-to-block-theme-weekend-edition-341/#0-p">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</a><ol><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/block-commenting-fun-with-telex-from-classic-to-block-theme-weekend-edition-341/#building-blocks-with-telex">Building blocks with Telex</a></li></ol></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/block-commenting-fun-with-telex-from-classic-to-block-theme-weekend-edition-341/#2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/block-commenting-fun-with-telex-from-classic-to-block-theme-weekend-edition-341/#3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.</a></li></ol></nav>
</div></div>
</section>

<div class="wp-block-newsletterglue-showhide ng-block" width="100%"></div>


<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</h2>



<div class="wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
<p><img alt="🎙" class="wp-smiley" src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f399.png" style="height: 1em;" /> The latest episode is <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-120-wordcamp-us-telex-gutenberg-21-4-and-21-5/">Gutenberg Changelog 120—WordCamp US, Automattic Telex, Gutenberg 21.4 and 21.5, and the need for more blocks</a> with special guest <strong>Sarah Norris. </strong></p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-style-no-vertical-margin"><img alt="" class="wp-image-41771" height="207" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-05-at-14.12.23-edited.png?resize=652%2C207&#038;ssl=1" width="652" /></figure>



<p class="has-small-font-size"><em>If you are listening via Spotify, please leave a comment. If you listen via other podcast apps, please leave a review. It&#8217;ll help with the distribution.</em></p>
</div></div>



<p>Block-level commenting is Gutenberg Phase 3 feature and in very active development. Although still experimental, it is worth testing now, as it heads to WordPress 6.9. </p>



<p><strong>Aki Hamano</strong>, core contributor to Gutenberg, has created the <a href="https://github.com/t-hamano/block-commenting-data-generator"><strong>Block Commenting Data generator</strong></a> plugin to help him streamline his testing process for this feature. The plugin is available on GitHub, and it is not for use in a production environment. On activation it creates users, comments, and other data. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/releases/tag/v21.7.0-rc.1"><strong>Gutenberg 21.7 Release candidate</strong></a> is now available for testing. It&#8217;ll be released on September 23, 2025. Block Commenting is a big part, as are DataForms improvements and write mode updates. </p>



<p>As a side note: You don&#8217;t have to wait for the next Gutenberg release to test things. You can use the <a href="https://bit.ly/playground-nightly"><strong>Gutenberg Nightly with Playground</strong></a></p>


<section class="wp-block-newsletterglue-callout undefined not-color-set" style="border-color: #eeeeee; border-radius: 26px; border-style: solid; border-width: 0; padding-top: 20px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; text-align: left; margin-left: 0; margin-right: 0; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; background-color: #f3efe9;">
<p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. </p>



<p>Now also available via <a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/?blueprint-url=https://gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/playnightly.json">WordPress Playground</a>. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">Email me </a>with your experience</p>
</section>


<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="0-p">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</h2>



<p>Check out <strong>Wes Theron&#8217;</strong>s latest video where he shows you <strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Lut6UcS5Fg">how to build one-of-a-kind page layouts in WordPress.</a></strong> He dives into crafting a clean, distraction-free landing page, promoting a special event, and even how to give a specific page its own unique header and footer. Custom templates are totally where it&#8217;s at!</p>


<div class="wp-block-newsletterglue-showhide ng-block" width="100%">
<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">

</div></figure>
</div>


<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> updated his <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/x3p0-progress/"><strong>Progress Bar</strong></a> Block plugin to v 2.0. It now supports Core features like drop <code>shadow</code>, blockGap and layout controls. It&#8217;s a feature-rich block that feels at home in the block editor, using the known interface components in the sidebar.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img alt="Justin Tadlock's Progress Bar block plugin from the WordPress plugin repository. " class="wp-image-41943" height="351" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-20-at-09.55.32.png?resize=652%2C351&#038;ssl=1" width="652" /></figure>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Dennis Buchwald,</strong> founder of the <em>dbw-media</em> agency in Germany, released his first plugin into the WordPress plugin directory, <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/infinite-logo-carousel-block/"><strong>an infinite logo carousel block.</strong></a> You upload all the logos into the media library and into the block editor, and it displays a logo carousel with customizable speed, spacing, and hover-pause. A great way to display client, partner, or sponsor logos scrolling over your website. You can even control the overlay at the two sides. This one is a slight pink. It&#8217;s also on brand for <em>dbw-media.</em> </p>



<p>Welcome to the open-source community of WordPress plugin developers, Dennis Buchwald at <a href="https://dbw-media.de/">dbw-media.de</a> <img alt="🎉" class="wp-smiley" src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f389.png" style="height: 1em;" /></p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img alt="infinite logo carousel by Dennis Buckwald" class="wp-image-41952" height="95" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-20-at-11.04.40.png?resize=652%2C95&#038;ssl=1" width="652" /></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="building-blocks-with-telex">Building blocks with Telex</h3>



<p><a href="https://telex.automattic.ai/"><strong>Automattic Telex</strong></a> is like the next big thing in block building, all thanks to natural language! Just tell it what you’re dreaming up, and Telex will whip up the code, package it as a plugin, and you can test it out right away. It’s still experimental, but honestly, there’s no better time to start making your ideas into real WordPress blocks!</p>



<p>Not everyone who&#8217;s tried and shared their journey has hit the jackpot. <strong>Jamie Marsland</strong> totally had a blast, as he shared over on <a href="https://x.com/pootlepress/status/1965372076765970943">X (formerly Twitter)</a>!</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Jeff Paul </strong>also gave it whirl and shared his experience in <a href="https://jeffpaul.com/2025/09/pong-block/"><strong>Pong Block: A Fun New WordPress Plugin (and a Nod to Telex)</strong></a>. He wrote, &#8220;That simplicity is why I’d recommend Telex to anyone curious about experimenting with block plugin creation. It feels like a fast way to explore an idea and get it live.&#8221; His plugin already <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/pong-block/"><strong>landed in the WordPress repository,</strong></a> and you can add some playfulness to your site.</p>





<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>JuanMa Garrido</strong>, developer advocate at Automattic, also took Telex for a spin. You can read about this journey in his post <a href="https://juanma.codes/2025/09/19/playing-with-telex-building-a-mermaid-diagram-block-in-just-a-few-prompts/"><strong>Playing with Telex: Building a Mermaid Diagram Block in Just a Few Prompts.</strong></a> Mermaid Diagrams can be created via Markdown notation and then displayed on the front end. </p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img alt="Block editor view of JuanMa's Mermaid diagram block, built with Telex. " class="wp-image-41948" height="304" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-20-at-10.26.22.png?resize=643%2C304&#038;ssl=1" width="643" /></figure>



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<p><strong><a href="https://x.com/ivanovic_marco">Marco Ivanovic</a></strong>, designer at Automattic, built a plugin called <a href="https://ivanovicmarko.com/2025/09/17/space-dots/">Space Dots</a> with Telex. A fun block to display a bunch of moving dots that will react to your mouse movements. </p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img alt="" class="wp-image-41977" height="449" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-20-at-12.44.36-edited.png?resize=449%2C449&#038;ssl=1" style="width: 449px; height: auto;" width="449" /></figure>



<p><strong>Nick Hamze</strong> shared his Telex creations on X (formerly known as Twitter), like this <a href="https://x.com/sortaiconick/status/1968135209519550656"><strong>flash card block</strong></a>. He also promised to submit his best 10 creations to the WordPress repository. </p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://x.com/sortaiconick/status/1968135209519550656"><img alt="" class="wp-image-41978" height="416" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-20-at-12.54.23.png?resize=652%2C416&#038;ssl=1" width="652" /></a></figure>



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<p>Are you ready to try it too? In his post on <em>wp-content.co,</em> <a href="https://wp-content.co/automattic-telex-ai-tool-turns-prompts-to-blocks/"><strong>Automattic Launches Telex: An AI Tool That Turns Prompts into Custom WordPress Blocks,</strong></a> <a href="https://x.com/nithin_sreeraj"><strong>Nithin Sreeraj</strong> </a>shares some more voices around the community and then walks you through what to expect when engaging with the AI interface and what happens when the first version is available in the Playground-based interface. It&#8217;s well described. </p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</h2>



<p><strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner,</strong> <a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2025/session/moving-a-website-from-classic-to-a-block-theme/">first-time speaker</a> at WCUS 2025, was interviewed by <strong>Nathan Wrigley</strong> for the WPTavern podcast. <a href="https://wptavern.com/podcast/185-mary-ann-aschenbrenner-on-switching-clients-from-classic-to-block-themes" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank"><strong>#185 – Mary Ann Aschenbrenner on Switching Clients From Classic to Block Themes</strong></a>. They discussed the differences between classic and block themes, with Mary Ann offering practical advice for switching to modern block-based themes. She shared why to make the switch, potential challenges, and client conversion stories. Perfect for anyone wanting to understand how block themes make site building more accessible.</p>


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<section class="wp-block-newsletterglue-callout undefined not-color-set" style="border-color: #f9f9e5; border-radius: 22px; border-style: solid; border-width: 0; padding-top: 20px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; text-align: left; margin-left: 0; margin-right: 0; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; background-color: #f9f9e5;">
<p><strong> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index 2025&#8221;</a> </strong><br />A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test, and Meta team from Jan. 2024 on. Updated by yours truly. The previous years are also available: <strong><strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/">2020</a> | <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2021/">2021</a></strong> | <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2022/">2022</a></strong></strong> | <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/gutenberg-index-2023">2023</a></strong> | <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/gutenberg-index-2024/"><strong>2024</strong></a></p>
</section>


<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.</h2>



<p><br /><strong>Ryan Welcher </strong>has been on the quest to build the Core Icon block, inspired by Nick Diego&#8217;s Icon Block plugin and has been livestreaming his adventures with all kinds of tribulations. He dedicated two live stream sessions to this task. </p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voZwxC6uD3s"><strong>Building the new Icon Block for WordPress core</strong></a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogHfLLsbeYk"><strong>Building the new Icon Block for WordPress core: Part 2</strong></a></li>
</ul>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Brian Coords</strong>, developer advocate with WooCommerce, asked, <a href="https://www.briancoords.com/are-you-down-with-mcp/"><strong>Are you down with MCP?</strong></a> because he initially didn&#8217;t get the hype—why waste AI tokens on simple tasks you could do faster manually? But after building a custom WordPress plugin for his wife&#8217;s bakery to track ingredient costs, he realized MCP&#8217;s power isn&#8217;t just data connection; it&#8217;s combining that with AI&#8217;s natural language interface to replace clunky forms with conversational commands. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p>This week, <strong>JuanMa Garrido</strong> tackled in his livestream <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip8cISDQaYQ"><strong>REST API Authentication</strong></a>. Together with ChatGPT, he took a deep dive into WordPress REST API authentication methods, starting with the basics of how REST APIs work and setting up WordPress with proper permalinks. Then Garrido walked through WordPress&#8217;s core authentication systems, showing how cookie authentication works in the block editor by examining network requests and cookie headers. He explained WordPress&#8217;s built-in CSRF protection using nonces and demonstrated creating custom REST endpoints with permission callbacks. The tutorial also covers application passwords as an alternative to cookies, comparing them to JSON Web Tokens and discussing security considerations for token storage. Finally, Garrido explored more advanced topics like implementing JWT workflows with proxy servers and OAuth2 authentication for third-party apps.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p class="has-text-align-center has-small-font-size"><em>Questions? Suggestions? Ideas? </em><br /><em>Don&#8217;t hesitate to send <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">them via email</a> or</em><br /><em> send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph</em>.</p>



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<p class="has-text-align-center has-small-font-size">For questions to be answered on the <a href="http://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast">Gutenberg Changelog</a>, <br />send them to <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />


<section class="wp-block-newsletterglue-group" style="padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;">
<p>Featured Image: Oktoberfest Munich photo by Birgit Pauli-Haack</p>



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<p class="has-text-align-left"><strong>Don&#8217;t want to miss the next Weekend Edition? </strong></p>


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</section>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 19 Sep 2025 23:40:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:28;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:72:"Open Channels FM: Agentic AI: The Next Evolution for WordPress Websites?";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=109354";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:77:"https://openchannels.fm/agentic-ai-the-next-evolution-for-wordpress-websites/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:193:"In 2025, agentic AI revolutionizes WordPress, enabling context-aware automation and seamless integration across tools, enhancing workflows and empowering users without deep technical knowledge.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 19 Sep 2025 08:58:04 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:29;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:79:"Open Channels FM: Best Practices for Asynchronous Communication in Remote Teams";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=109619";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:86:"https://openchannels.fm/best-practices-for-asynchronous-communication-in-remote-teams/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:104:"Asynchronous communication. Over-communicate, use emojis cautiously, and know when to talk face-to-face.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 18 Sep 2025 12:10:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:30;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21:"Matt: Every 6 Minutes";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=149834";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:38:"https://ma.tt/2025/09/every-6-minutes/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1550:"<p>I&#8217;m at a dinner tonight and they have these old magazines on the table, including some old copies of <a href="https://www.wired.com/">WIRED</a>, which, if you can imagine, as a kid in Houston in the 90s, was a portal to the amazing world of the internet and technology. I flipped through, and there is an entire web hosting classifieds section! Hiway Technologies wants you to know that every 6 minutes, someone hosts with Hiway.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-149835" height="805" src="https://i0.wp.com/ma.tt/files/2025/09/IMG_4771-768x1024.jpeg?resize=604%2C805&#038;quality=89&#038;ssl=1" width="604" /></figure>



<p>Every six minutes, so they were doing 240 signups a day. 100,000 sites! Last month <a href="https://wordpress.com/">WordPress.com</a> created a new site about every 3 seconds. Hiway was founded by Scott Adams, same name but not the <a href="https://dilbert.com/">Dilbert</a> guy or the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Adams_(game_designer)">game designer</a>, who apparently played football in Florida and the company &#8220;<a href="https://www.fau.edu/research/magazine/2018/01/dor-adams-2018-01/">was sold in 1999 for $352 million. Adams was 35.</a>&#8221; </p>



<p>There was also this guy, who has a website, but do you?</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-149838" height="805" src="https://i0.wp.com/ma.tt/files/2025/09/IMG_4767-768x1024.jpeg?resize=604%2C805&#038;quality=89&#038;ssl=1" width="604" /></figure>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 18 Sep 2025 06:57:40 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:31;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:91:"WPTavern: #185 – Mary Ann Aschenbrenner on Switching Clients From Classic to Block Themes";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"https://wptavern.com/?post_type=podcast&p=199566";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:105:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/185-mary-ann-aschenbrenner-on-switching-clients-from-classic-to-block-themes";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:45586:"<details>Transcript<div>
<p>[00:00:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.</p>



<p>Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, switching clients from classic to block themes.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast, player of choice. Or by going to wptavern.com/feed/podcast, and you can copy that URL into most podcast players.</p>



<p>If you have a topic that you&#8217;d like us to feature on the podcast, I&#8217;m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head to wptavern.com/contact/jukebox, and use the form there.</p>



<p>So on the podcast today we have Mary Ann Aschenbrenner. Mary Ann has been the president of Waterlink Web, a digital agency specializing in WordPress web design, since 2014. Her experience includes e-commerce and membership websites, websites for local nonprofit organizations, and starter websites for small businesses As a lifelong learner, Mary Ann likes to keep pace with the latest innovations in WordPress. She is a fan of block themes, and particularly the WordPress default themes.</p>



<p>We start by discussing the differences between classic and block themes, with Mary Ann offering practical step-by-step advice for anyone considering a move from a classic theme to a modern block-based theme. She talks about why you might want to make the switch, potential challenges to look out for, and stories from her own experience converting client sites.</p>



<p>We also chat about the evolution of WordPress, the diminishing need for third party page builders, the importance of client education, and the ongoing improvements in the block editor. Plus Mary Ann shares insights from her WordCamp presentation, and her experiences collaborating with the WordPress community.</p>



<p>Whether you&#8217;re a seasoned WordPresser or just starting out and keen to know how block themes are making site building more accessible for everyone, this episode is for you.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast, where you&#8217;ll find all the other episodes as well.</p>



<p>And so without further delay, I bring you Mary Ann Aschenbrenner.</p>



<p>I am joined on the podcast by Mary Ann Aschenbrenner. Hello.</p>



<p>[00:02:54] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> Hello. Nice to be here.</p>



<p>[00:02:56] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Very nice to have you with us. Thank you so much. You are the first interview that I&#8217;m carrying out at WordCamp US in Portland in the year 2025.</p>



<p>The endeavour here is to talk about classic themes and block themes. You are doing a presentation. I don&#8217;t suppose you&#8217;ve done it yet, because we&#8217;re right at the beginning of the main conference.</p>



<p>[00:03:12] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> I do it this afternoon at 2:15pm, yes.</p>



<p>[00:03:15] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay. Good luck with that. Let&#8217;s just first of all find out a little bit about you. So if you don&#8217;t mind, would you just give us your biography, your potted biography, if you like. Who you are, what you do.</p>



<p>[00:03:24] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> I&#8217;m from Portland, born and raised here. And the reason I got into website design is kind of a fluke and kind of really related to my whole ethos as a citizen of this great city.</p>



<p>Well, Pier Park is a North Portland park and it&#8217;s where my kids learned to swim. It&#8217;s where a lot of kids learned to swim. It was in a fairly low income neighborhood. And in 2005, the City of Portland decided to close the outdoor pool that was open in the summers. Just funding issues. And I worked with some other North Portland people and we gathered 700 signatures, which I don&#8217;t know if you know this, it&#8217;s a lot of work to get 700 signatures. And we took them down to City Hall, and we presented them and we talked about why Pier Pool needed to stay open.</p>



<p>And Sam Adams at the time said, we can find money for these folks. He was on the city council. And lo and behold, they decided to keep Pier Pool open.</p>



<p>Well, about a month later, I&#8217;m at a City Bureau meeting and was told that the reason they decided to close Pier Pool at the time, instead of Buckman Pool was because Buckman had a website. This was 2000 and five. I was like, oh, it can&#8217;t be that hard to get a website. I&#8217;ve collected 700 signatures, websites have to be easier. So Friends of Pier Park has had a website ever since and we, of course, keep our pool open with it. And that&#8217;s the long story short of how I got into it.</p>



<p>[00:04:58] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> That&#8217;s nice. That&#8217;s a real sort of philanthropic community endeavour that got you started on the road to WordPress. I&#8217;m guessing you built that site with WordPress.</p>



<p>[00:05:05] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> I got someone else to do it because I knew nothing about building websites. In 2012, I had the opportunity to go back to school, and I actually went to PCC and studied web design. And I&#8217;ve been building websites, I started my own company shortly after that, and I&#8217;ve been doing it ever since with Water Link Web.</p>



<p>[00:05:21] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, you&#8217;ve been in the weeds for a fairly long time.</p>



<p>[00:05:24] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> Yeah, well over a decade. 14 years or something like that.</p>



<p>[00:05:27] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You&#8217;re obviously keeping up to date with all the different bits and pieces in the WordPress space, because the content of your presentation later today is, well, the title is Moving a Website from Classic to Block themes. Some examples, some live and learns. And so I&#8217;m guessing you&#8217;re going to be instructing people on, if they wish to make the move, how to go from what we call a classic theme.</p>



<p>[00:05:45] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> It will be like the real step by step. This is what you do this first, you do this second, this is what it&#8217;s going to look like, these are the problems you may come into, and this is how to fix them. And voila, it&#8217;s going to be great.</p>



<p>[00:05:58] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> And so from your perspective, what&#8217;s the sort of, the single, well, maybe not single, maybe there&#8217;s a few things that you can mention, what are the most compelling reasons that you would ever want to move away from a classic theme?</p>



<p>Let&#8217;s say that I&#8217;ve got a website, it&#8217;s working perfectly fine. There&#8217;s nothing wrong with it, but I&#8217;m kind of curious. I want to explore the option. What are the big ticket items why you would wish to move?</p>



<p>[00:06:19] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> Well, a couple of reasons. Often the plugins that might be associated with your old theme may no longer being maintained. So there&#8217;s one situation where I mentioned in the presentation, they&#8217;re not being maintained, you won&#8217;t be able to update the PHP on your server and you could have a site that&#8217;s open to hacking and be slower therefore, because it&#8217;s running on a lower grade PHP.</p>



<p>So that&#8217;s one reason to do it. Another is once you start using the block theme editor, you don&#8217;t want to go back. And so, you know, I&#8217;ve always maintained my skills with WordPress. I&#8217;ve been active in the WordPress community. I&#8217;ve continued to learn. And, yes, I&#8217;ll admit when the block editor first came out, I was a little trepidatious. I didn&#8217;t use it that first year. But the second year I did, and the third year I did. And I have been using the latest theme every year, ever since when I build my client&#8217;s websites.</p>



<p>So I just don&#8217;t like going back to the classic and then like, okay, how do we do this? It just isn&#8217;t as intuitive. And as well, it&#8217;s easy to maintain, you don&#8217;t have as much opportunity to make changes as you do in the new block editor. So I&#8217;m just gradually updating my clients.</p>



<p>[00:07:33] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Do you have a background in code or are you more of a kind of mouse driven builder?</p>



<p>[00:07:38] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> Do I have a background in code? I did a little HTML. I understand CSS and I certainly use that a lot with the classic theme, CSS especially. But that isn&#8217;t really where I trained in.</p>



<p>Really where my skill lies is working with my clients and creating a website that is unique to them. Every website I do is original. And I look at what colours they want, what values they want to display. And we design based on that.</p>



<p>And my clients love me. I mean, I&#8217;ve had clients over a decade. Still same clients, still working with me. And they trust me and I know it&#8217;s like, it&#8217;s time to upgrade your website and then we do that.</p>



<p>[00:08:20] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I think one of the things about the classic themes was that having a deep knowledge of the code and the templating hierarchy in WordPress and those kind of things meant that it was available to some, but not necessarily to everybody.</p>



<p>Whereas the block based themes, the more modern WordPress, if you like, there is much more opportunity to get into the weeds. To do your templates and template parts and things like that with a visual editor.</p>



<p>So long as you can understand the UI, and where to find the menus, and where to construct the different parts of your website. And that promise of democratising publishing seems to be something that is being delivered, despite the fact that, you know, it&#8217;s a bit of a jump to go from classic to full site.</p>



<p>[00:08:58] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> It is, absolutely. My daughter&#8217;s wedding photographer contacted me. She&#8217;d had a website on Squarespace, and she found out after 10 years of working as a wedding photographer in southern Oregon, she was only on page five of search results. And that&#8217;s ridiculous, but it&#8217;s because of where she had her website.</p>



<p>So she switched it over to WordPress and was confused, what do I do next? She had bought a photographer theme, and so it was going to work perfect for her. And I said, you know what? You see those three lines at the top of the page when you go to edit the page, hit them. And she did.</p>



<p>And then it was like, oh, the light went on. So she&#8217;s going to contact me again when she&#8217;s got that built out. But now she understands what to do. All she needed to learn was those three lines because then she knows she can edit every single block in there, and knows what to do.</p>



<p>[00:09:49] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> If you were to look at the growth of WordPress over the last, I&#8217;m going to say sort of 10 years, something like that, the uptick in WordPress usage up to kind of 40 plus percent, whatever it is now, I think there&#8217;s been a lot of page builders responsible for that uptick. So for example, the likes of Elementor or what have you.</p>



<p>And it was curious that in the blurb that went with your presentation, you particularly pointed out, I think the quote was, no page builder is needed, or something that. Is that a big part of it for you, that you don&#8217;t need to rely on any third party tool, often which have a fee attached to them for an annual or a recurring license or something like that? Is like that a big part of it?</p>



<p>[00:10:22] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> I&#8217;ve never used page builders. And I have friends in the industry who love page builders, rely on page builders, and I have happy clients and I&#8217;ve never used a page builder. And the site is unique to them. I don&#8217;t feel like adding on another layer.</p>



<p>I&#8217;ve had to change over websites where a page builder was used, and it was very heavy, and slow because there was so much code. And back in the day, an individual who was vision impaired couldn&#8217;t use it because the web reader that they were using couldn&#8217;t read through all this extra code. I just never used it for that reason.</p>



<p>But I&#8217;m sure they&#8217;re better now. I do believe that, but you don&#8217;t need them. When you have the block editor, you don&#8217;t need a page builder.</p>



<p>[00:11:06] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Are there any situations in which you wouldn&#8217;t ascribe the necessity to move over to a more modern, block based theme? In other words, is there any scenario where you look at somebody that&#8217;s on a classic theme and you say, you know what, just stay where you are, everything&#8217;s fine? Or are you always keen to promote people to move in this direction?</p>



<p>[00:11:25] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> I&#8217;m not always keen to promote people. So I have a client who, oh gosh, she was part of the second wave feminist movement, and has a really great website people love. I built it for her in like 2015 and it&#8217;s still working fine. She can stay on it. She&#8217;s comfortable with it. You know, there&#8217;s no reason really, if it starts being an issue with the PHP levels and so forth, then I&#8217;ll talk to her about it.</p>



<p>[00:11:51] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, I suppose there&#8217;s also, given the trends in graphic design and the way websites look, there&#8217;s always a moment in time where your website just begins to look stale on the front end.</p>



<p>[00:11:59] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> Or it looks retro, or it looks cool. And the others all look the same. So there&#8217;s always that.</p>



<p>[00:12:05] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So that, if you like, was more about the why of you may wish to move over to a, away from a classic theme.</p>



<p>So let&#8217;s move into the sort of the how then because that I think is the crux of your presentation really, how to do it and you need to demonstrate on the screen and what have you. So let&#8217;s go through that process. What is the first thing that you do when you are looking to transfer somebody over?</p>



<p>[00:12:25] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> Well, the first thing you do is you set up a staging site. I&#8217;m not saying doing this live. Bring up a staging site on your server. It&#8217;s your same website and all it is is the new URL that says staging, dot, blah, blah, whatever.</p>



<p>Then after your staging site is up, you activate your 2025 theme. You may want to use 2024. 2024 is a really good theme as well. I think the patterns in 2024 are maybe a little more geared toward business, and the patterns in 2025 may be a little more geared towards personal blogs and artists. But pick one.</p>



<p>So you have now have the 2025 theme, and it&#8217;s going to look very plain because it&#8217;s just plain until you fix it. And the next thing I usually do is I go through and start editing the pages. So a lot of my old themes, I put in the classic editor plugin. Remember the classic editor plugin?</p>



<p>[00:13:18] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I do, yeah.</p>



<p>[00:13:19] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> Yeah, we were afraid of block editor so we all put classic editor on. And so it kind of keeps it looking classic. And, well, you deactivate that. And then when you go to a page or a blog post, you&#8217;ll see a little greyed block on the top of that content that says classic editor. You click it, and then it&#8217;ll say, convert to blocks. And this is where you just do it. You say, yes, I&#8217;m going to convert to blocks. You click it, and you got blocks.</p>



<p>Now, where you are going to find problems? But first of all, most of it deploys really well. Paragraphs deploy, they&#8217;re still paragraphs. Headers deploy, they&#8217;re still headers, et cetera, et cetera. But where you have columns, your original theme may have used some sort of a short code for columns that&#8217;s different than a block editor. So that may not convert.</p>



<p>Where you have embedded YouTube videos or something, you may decide to do them differently using the YouTube embed plugin instead of whatever code comes up. And you&#8217;ll get a little, if a paragraph doesn&#8217;t convert well or a block doesn&#8217;t convert well, it&#8217;ll say, you&#8217;ll know that.</p>



<p>But you still have your live site. So you can go there and find the content and put it back in. You know, it would would be cut and paste if you may have to chase down a YouTube link to embed a YouTube video. But it is all very doable and it&#8217;s pretty fast. It doesn&#8217;t take that long. I had a website with 200, over 200 blog posts that I had to do that on. That took a little while. But it was 200 blog posts, more than that actually. But for just a standard website with a dozen or so pages, it&#8217;s not hugely time consuming.</p>



<p>[00:14:54] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I guess the only problems that may occur is if some part of the, well, let&#8217;s say theme, but it may be a plugin, but it may be part of the theme was injecting something somewhere. And in the classic editor you don&#8217;t see it, but it somehow surfaces on the front end. I don&#8217;t know, it may be the insertion of an ad or something like that. And then you may run into problems because you can&#8217;t see where that content&#8217;s coming from.</p>



<p>But I suppose in your scenario, you&#8217;re just flicking backwards and forwards between the current live site, which is the classic one, and then you&#8217;ve got your staging site, which is the block based one. I guess it&#8217;s just a jigsaw puzzle really. You&#8217;re trying to figure out, okay, why is that missing? Where does that come from? How can I deploy it in blocks and go through that process? And hopefully on each iteration you get more and more back to what the original content was.</p>



<p>[00:15:38] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> Right, exactly. That&#8217;s how you do it.</p>



<p>[00:15:40] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. And so it&#8217;s a process of going through it kind of one at a time.</p>



<p>Have you ever encountered something which you couldn&#8217;t solve in that scenario? Have you ever come across something where you just throw your hands in the air and think, what, where&#8217;s that?</p>



<p>[00:15:50] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> One time. So I had a website on a Studio Press theme, and I did the conversion. It all looked good to me. And then I realised when you were not logged into the site, the navigation didn&#8217;t show up properly. And I tried to figure that out and I redid the navigation. It looked good when you&#8217;re logged in, but when you&#8217;re just looking at the site not logged in, it wasn&#8217;t. So I ended up actually rebuilding that site entirely.</p>



<p>[00:16:16] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Oh, interesting.</p>



<p>[00:16:17] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> I just went ahead and brought up a whole new 2025 theme and copied and pasted content and brought it over.</p>



<p>[00:16:23] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay, so rather than having a staging site, well, you presumably did have a staging site, but it wasn&#8217;t a case of going into the posts or the pages and clicking the convert button. This more of a, okay, something&#8217;s broken here, I need to start from scratch.</p>



<p>[00:16:34] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> Something&#8217;s broken, I couldn&#8217;t figure it, I mean, I&#8217;m sure if I were a coder, I would&#8217;ve dug into the code. But it&#8217;s like, it&#8217;s going to take me hours, it&#8217;s going to be easier in this case. It didn&#8217;t have a ton of content. There was like six or eight pages and maybe four or five blog posts. So it wasn&#8217;t that hard to do. It was easier to just bring up the new 2025 theme and start fresh.</p>



<p>[00:16:54] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, in the scenario where you&#8217;ve only got a handful of pages, it probably is literally quicker to do it that way and copy and paste.</p>



<p>[00:16:58] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> Especially if you see an issue pop up immediately. It&#8217;s something, the navigation, I couldn&#8217;t figure out why that wasn&#8217;t working. But it was a Studio Press theme, so something was coming through from the old theme.</p>



<p>[00:17:09] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay. And you mentioned that this whole process where you, you go to your staging site and you go into a post or a page, and there&#8217;s this bar at the top. The content is missing essentially. And there&#8217;s this bar, it&#8217;s a grey bar and it looks.</p>



<p>[00:17:23] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> Well, the content is usually there.</p>



<p>[00:17:24] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, but it&#8217;s all in the wrong, it&#8217;s as it was essentially. So it&#8217;s not yet as blocks. And you click the button, wait a heartbeat, a moment, and the WordPress sort of process of migrating one to the other just sort of takes over. Paragraphs become paragraphs blocks, and on you go. I&#8217;ve yet to have that fail on me in a catastrophic way. It&#8217;s never done anything unexpected.</p>



<p>[00:17:45] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> It&#8217;s never failed catastrophically, not on me. And I&#8217;ve converted, even on that one website I just mentioned, the content converted great. It was just the navigation that was the issue. But I&#8217;ve used Canvas theme, which used to be produced by WooCommerce before it became a part of WordPress. And I&#8217;ve used, of course another theme on, that another website. So that content comes through actually, really easily.</p>



<p>[00:18:09] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You mentioned also that you are using the default theme in most cases. So you mentioned 2025, but also you said, I think perhaps try 2024 or something like that. Is that your kind of go-to? Do you explore the ecosystem of other themes that are out there in the environment, either the repo or possibly commercial themes, or you just heavily leaning into default themes?</p>



<p>[00:18:28] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> I just lean into the default theme.</p>



<p>[00:18:29] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Is there any particular reason for that? Because obviously, you know it&#8217;s going to be updated, which is really nice. You know that it&#8217;s a, well, it&#8217;s deployed on every WordPress website, a standard if you download a vanilla version of WordPress.</p>



<p>[00:18:39] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> It&#8217;ll be maintained for a long, long time. I know somebody who&#8217;s still in the 2015 theme and their site still works great.</p>



<p>[00:18:47] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, the backwards compatibility promise of WordPress is pretty remarkable.</p>



<p>[00:18:51] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> It&#8217;s pretty remarkable.</p>



<p>[00:18:52] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. Have you found limitations in those themes though? So one of the things that I think people wish were better would be, for example, things like navigation. You know, the options that you have in default blocks for navigation. Currently, there&#8217;s quite a lot of work going on to improve that as it happens. But are there any limitations that you&#8217;ve encountered where you thought, I wish it could do more?</p>



<p>[00:19:12] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> I haven&#8217;t with the 2025, not recently anyway. But with 2024, I used a little bit of CSS in the navigation block. So add a little CSS.</p>



<p>[00:19:21] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, just tweak it a little bit. There&#8217;s a lot of requirements for maybe, I don&#8217;t know, mega menus, things like that, adaptations to the mobile menu that are not available in the blocks. And as we&#8217;re leaning more into kind of like a no code environment with block based themes.</p>



<p>[00:19:35] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> I have used a plugin for mega menus on one of my clients.</p>



<p>[00:19:37] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay. So you take care of that in a different way by using plugins? Yeah, okay. That kind of makes sense.</p>



<p>Okay, so that&#8217;s the bits and pieces perhaps about the sort of how you do it.</p>



<p>[00:19:46] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> And the reason I used the mega menu plugin for that client was he had very specific ideas of how he wanted his navigation to look on cell phone.</p>



<p>[00:19:54] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, because it is fairly limited what you get out of the box. There&#8217;s not too many options and think the community is possibly moving towards having something a little bit better in the, yeah, a bit more full featured, let&#8217;s put it that way.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s a curious question, do you see any need for more than a single theme in the WordPress space anymore? So in other words, now that we&#8217;re leaning into an era where all of the bits and pieces that would&#8217;ve been handled by the theme is now handled by the interface of the block-based theme. So, for example, all of your templates is within the UI of full site editing and what have you. Do we even need a whole bunch of themes?</p>



<p>Could we just have a single theme which did the bare bones, maybe headers, footers, menus, that kind of thing. And then all of it is done by patterns or templates, which can be pointed on and clicked in, in the interface?</p>



<p>[00:20:44] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> Well, I think that it&#8217;s good to have themes, and I&#8217;ll tell you why. My daughter&#8217;s wedding photographer. She is not a website designer. You know, she was used to using Squarespace, realised that the SEO on it sucked and decided to go to WordPress and found a great photography theme from a good maker of themes. I had no problem with it. I looked at it. And all she needed was a little tip on how to see where her blocks were and what the block is. She&#8217;s just going to be able to go with that.</p>



<p>Now if she was starting from scratch with no theme to work with, and just trying to figure it out, I think it&#8217;d be a lot harder for her. But having a template that&#8217;s like, here&#8217;s your photography template, she can put her own pictures in there. She understands the concept, and she&#8217;ll be able to build her own website with it.</p>



<p>[00:21:36] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Do you find it&#8217;s easier for your clients then to work with the block based themes than it was with the classic themes?</p>



<p>[00:21:43] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> Yes.</p>



<p>[00:21:44] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I find sometimes it&#8217;s difficult to kind of work out where you are in the UI. You know, you&#8217;ve clicked on a bunch of things and you can&#8217;t figure out how to get back to where you were, things like that. But then if I weigh that up against how difficult it was with classic themes, where you had to basically have a code editor open at some point and be editing template, PHP files, and things like this. Although it&#8217;s a bit confusing navigating around the UI, I think even the people developing WordPress would say, yes, there&#8217;s a bit of work to be done on the UI. I think on the whole, it&#8217;s much easier, but I don&#8217;t know what your clients think.</p>



<p>[00:22:13] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> You know how I explained to my clients, I said, if you use Mac, can you put together a Pages document and maybe add some images, can you do that? And they say, yes. I said, well, if they&#8217;re using Microsoft, can you do the same thing? Yes, I can. Well, then you can use the block theme.</p>



<p>Because once it&#8217;s set up, I mean, I think that there&#8217;s certain areas that are a little more tricky and for our clients, I&#8217;ll say, look, don&#8217;t get into the editor. Do not do full site editing. Let me do that. If you want to add something to the navigation, just tell me, I&#8217;ll edit it. It&#8217;s not a big deal. It takes me five minutes. They&#8217;re going to have to figure it out, because it&#8217;s only something they&#8217;re going to do once in a while when they change their navigation.</p>



<p>But for any of their pages, you know, they know how to hit the three lines, see what block they&#8217;re in, click it, it lights up the block on the right hand side, and then they can do the editing to the right of that. They can do it.</p>



<p>[00:23:03] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Do you lean into the feature of locking blocks? Because it sounds like you&#8217;ve got a fairly close relationship with your clients. You&#8217;re probably able to get on the phone with them and things like that, have that communication. So you can just say, don&#8217;t touch that, leave that alone, and that&#8217;s fine.</p>



<p>But obviously in different scenarios where, I don&#8217;t know, it might be more corporate, that kind of thing, the capacity within native WordPress to exclude the client from being able to edit that.</p>



<p>So as an example, yeah, you can change the text on that block, but it&#8217;s a cover block, but we&#8217;re not going to allow you to change the background image. Or conversely, you can change the background image, but you can&#8217;t change the text, those kind of things. So these are sort of new features which have crept in over time, and I&#8217;m not sure how many people use those, whether or not that would be of interest to you and your clients.</p>



<p>[00:23:45] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> You know, it&#8217;s their website. They may be on my servers that I&#8217;m hosting, but it&#8217;s their website and if they really want to mess it up, they can. And I can fix it. But really, it&#8217;s not a problem.</p>



<p>There&#8217;s been a few times, I have one client who adds content and he happened to add it all in tables. I don&#8217;t know why or how. I had to fix it on one of his pages. But, you know, I fixed it and the content is there down and it&#8217;s not in a table.</p>



<p>[00:24:10] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Do you build into your process, when you have converted something from classic to block base, do you have like an education piece in the middle there somewhere?</p>



<p>[00:24:18] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> Oh, yes.</p>



<p>[00:24:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So time to show the client how to use it. Because obviously they may be very familiar with classic editing, or it may be something that they&#8217;re not really dabbling in that much. Either way, it&#8217;s not at all like the new thing. And how do you do that? Do you allocate time? Do you have videos prepared or just sit next to them in their offices?</p>



<p>[00:24:35] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> You know, we usually do it as like a Zoom call. They share their screen. Well, actually, during the process, there&#8217;ll be times when I&#8217;m on the phone in a Zoom call with the client or a Google Meet call with the client, and I&#8217;m showing them what I&#8217;m doing on my end. So that&#8217;s part of the education process.</p>



<p>And we talk about, okay, do you like this font? No, I don&#8217;t like this one. Okay, well, how about this one? They see me change things back and forth. I put up content and they say, oh, we want to edit that. We want to rephrase it like this.</p>



<p>So if we&#8217;re doing it on a Zoom call, it&#8217;s going back and forth, they see how I&#8217;m working. And I make a point, oh, see how I hit these three lines, and we can edit this paragraph block, let&#8217;s put a background on this paragraph block. Here&#8217;s how you do it. So they learn how to do that, just kind of as we&#8217;re building it.</p>



<p>And then when it&#8217;s done, I will definitely show them how, anything they want to change. And I&#8217;ll walk through them how to add a blog post, for example. Usually the pages are pretty dialed in by the time we go live, it&#8217;s exactly where they want. So they might need to learn how to add blog posts. And I&#8217;ll introduce them to the blocks I think they&#8217;re going to use. They don&#8217;t need to know how to do every single block because there&#8217;s so many blocks.</p>



<p>[00:25:46] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. Do you switch some of them off, make them unavailable? I don&#8217;t know, there&#8217;s things like the Animoto Block, which goodness knows whoever was using that, I don&#8217;t know. But it&#8217;s there. I think most clients don&#8217;t need them. And having the capacity to switch some blocks off, quite a nice idea.</p>



<p>[00:26:00] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> You can. I haven&#8217;t done that.</p>



<p>[00:26:01] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> No, okay. And are there any common gotchas? When you&#8217;ve gone through this process multiple times, is there anything which comes out the other end which is reliably strange to the client? You know, okay every client&#8217;s reporting back either, nothing, this is brilliant, it&#8217;s a hundred percent, I&#8217;m all on board. Or do you have common things which you have to explain over and over again to the different clients because it&#8217;s just quirky?</p>



<p>[00:26:21] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> There&#8217;s a couple clients that are boards, nonprofit boards, and so then I have to explain it over and over again.</p>



<p>[00:26:29] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> And is that because of the nature of.</p>



<p>[00:26:31] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> Because the person I&#8217;m talking to changes.</p>



<p>[00:26:33] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Oh, okay.</p>



<p>[00:26:34] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> Sometimes clients will want something I don&#8217;t really feel like I can deliver. So I have a client who wants full with image, with content on top of it, and wants it to be a slider. So there&#8217;ll be a full width image with content and a button, and then another full width image with content and a button. It&#8217;s a slider. So I created this.</p>



<p>And then when it was done, they were like, well, I want the whole image to show on a cell phone. I had to explain, if that entire image gets so narrow that it shows on a cell phone and it&#8217;s not very tall, your content won&#8217;t fit in it. And it was really hard to accept. So that kind of thing can occur.</p>



<p>[00:27:12] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, I mean, it&#8217;s not for everybody, but I feel at this point, this is the future of WordPress. This is the way it&#8217;s going to go. This is what most people are talking about and what have you. Just getting into your presentation later, firstly, good luck with it. I hope it goes well.</p>



<p>[00:27:26] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> Thank you.</p>



<p>[00:27:27] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> How are you tackling this subject? Are you going to be doing slides? Because it&#8217;ll be curious, the audience, presumably in front of you are, well, we&#8217;re at WordCamp. Presumably they are a bunch of WordPressers. I&#8217;m curious to know at what level you are pitching it.</p>



<p>[00:27:39] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> You know, I think somebody who&#8217;s fairly new to WordPress will be able to get a lot out of this. I think it&#8217;s geared towards somebody with a little bit of experience, not a lot.</p>



<p>I&#8217;m going to talk about three different websites. One of them was actually built in 2006 on Blogger. I wasn&#8217;t the one that built it. And two other websites. And I&#8217;m going to talk a little bit about the City of Portland, so people who come to this, even if they know everything I&#8217;m talking about will learn a little bit about the City of Portland.</p>



<p>[00:28:05] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> And this is all filmed as well, which is kind of nice. And these days those videos tend to get turned around pretty quickly. Long gone is the day that you would attend a WordCamp and then six months, a year later, the video would still be stuck in somebody&#8217;s hard disk.</p>



<p>Hopefully by the time this podcast episode drops, that will be out and we&#8217;ll be able to watch your presentation. I think I&#8217;ve asked everything that I wish to ask. Is there anything that you think that we didn&#8217;t touch during our conversation?</p>



<p>[00:28:31] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> There is.</p>



<p>[00:28:31] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Go for it.</p>



<p>[00:28:32] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> While I was building the site with 200 blog posts, I discovered a little, what I thought was a glitch. And it turns out it&#8217;s a feature. But if you were a developer, you think it&#8217;s a feature. So in the 2025 theme, when you go to templates, you go to your website editor and you go to patterns, and then you have the header, the footer, and the page templates.</p>



<p>For the blog page, I pick a page template for the blog page, just that one. And then I can go in and I can select the style of my query loop. So if I want a query loop that&#8217;s just a picture on the left and content on the right for that blog page, and then people can scroll through and see all the different blog posts.</p>



<p>I picked one that was different than that. So I picked it, and then I deployed it, and then I went to the blog page and looked at it and it looked great. Except when I hit next page, it returned to the same page. It never was advancing to all these other 200 blog posts. And I was like, what happened here?</p>



<p>So I went back to the template, page, templates, blog page, picked a different query loop. Same thing. Picked a third query loop. Ah, this one worked. I could advance to the next pages. So then I was curious, why is this?</p>



<p>So I went back to that template, hit the three line dropdown arrow, looked at every single block in there and saw a pagination block that had not been in the others at the bottom of the group. So then I copied that and I put it in. And voila, my original one worked, I was very happy with it.</p>



<p>So I went yesterday to the Contributor Day and I sat at the Core Performance table, and normally not where I would belong, and said, this is your issue, it&#8217;s got to be fixed. And they looked at it, and a couple more people looked at it, and then they explained to me that not all query loops are used on the blog page. Some might be used on a landing page. And you may not want a next pages on every one of your query loops, so it&#8217;s not there on everyone.</p>



<p>[00:30:53] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s kind of interesting that it got there on one of them. And I think this is something that can be quite confusing, things like that, which in the old world, you would&#8217;ve dropped in as a short code. And in order to get that short code, you would&#8217;ve gone into some other UI and configured it all, and then the short code would&#8217;ve been spat out with the correct parameters to do what you wanted. So there might have been a toggle for show pagination, take pagination off, and what have you. And then the short code would ultimately do that.</p>



<p>In the block editor, this kind of thing happens fairly frequently in that there are nested blocks. And if you don&#8217;t deploy the nested blocks, so for example, if you didn&#8217;t know that pagination was a separate block, which usually sits outside of the query loop, usually below it in the same group or something like that, it&#8217;s easy to think, well, it ought to be there. Why isn&#8217;t it there? And sometimes you have to go find that pagination block, insert it in the right place and what have you.</p>



<p>Yeah, so things like that, if you don&#8217;t see it, you don&#8217;t see it. It&#8217;s not intuitive to think that it ought to be there. And I can think of probably dozens of examples of that kind of thing where blocks that you may rely on are in fact nested blocks of other blocks, and they may not come in automatically.</p>



<p>So, yeah, it&#8217;s a process of figuring that out, and maybe a toggle inside the query loop block saying, just enable pagination, turn it off, or something like that.</p>



<p>[00:32:11] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> That might be helpful. But I was able to fix it, and I realise now that it actually is a feature because they can, you can go to those query loops and look at all sorts of query loops that you might use elsewhere on your website. So I thought it was great to go to Contributor Day. I contributed and I learned.</p>



<p>[00:32:28] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, that&#8217;s really nice. And people were able to explain it to you. Yeah, definitely a thing if you come to a WordCamp, certainly of this magnitude, attend the Contributor Day. And it&#8217;s not just a process of contributing, it can be a process of sitting next to people who are working and asking them questions and thereby upping your own knowledge.</p>



<p>[00:32:44] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> And I don&#8217;t think that they were aware of it until I pointed it out.</p>



<p>[00:32:47] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, they&#8217;re in the weeds of deploying it, and they may not consider all the use cases. And in this case, you had one in which it didn&#8217;t work as expected. I guess from their point of view, everything that they said is probably true. You know, it may be deployed in this way, it may not, and so we built it in such a way that you can have the pagination or not, but nevertheless, you kind of needed it right away.</p>



<p>Well, that&#8217;s brilliant. Thank you so much Mary. Appreciate you chatting to me today.</p>



<p>Where can we find you if people would like to reach out about anything you&#8217;ve talked about? Where&#8217;s the best places?</p>



<p>[00:33:14] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> On my website is waterlinkweb.com. You can find me there. I&#8217;m on Instagram at Water Link Web. I have a LinkedIn, Mary Ann Aschenbrenner at LinkedIn. And I think that does it.</p>



<p>[00:33:28] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Well, thank you very much. I&#8217;ll make sure all those bits and pieces get into the show notes. So head to wptavern.com, search for the episode with Mary Ann Aschenbrenner. I will hopefully speak to you another time. Thank you very much for chatting to me.</p>



<p>[00:33:40] <strong>Mary Ann Aschenbrenner:</strong> Thank you very much, Nathan.</p>
</div></details>



<p>On the podcast today we have <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/maryannaschenbrenner/">Mary Ann Aschenbrenner</a>.</p>



<p>Mary Ann has been the President of Waterlink Web, a digital agency specialising in WordPress web design since 2014. Her experience includes e-Commerce and membership websites, websites for local nonprofit organisations, and starter websites for small businesses. As a life-long learner, Mary Ann likes to keep pace with the latest innovations in WordPress. She is a fan of block themes and particularly the WordPress default themes.</p>



<p>We start by discussing the differences between classic and block themes, with Mary Ann offering practical, step-by-step advice for anyone considering a move from a classic theme to a modern block-based theme. She talks about why you might want to make the switch, potential challenges to look out for, and stories from her own experience converting client sites.</p>



<p>We also chat about the evolution of WordPress, the diminishing need for third-party page builders, the importance of client education, and the ongoing improvements in the block editor. Plus, Mary Ann shares insights from her WordCamp presentation, and her experiences collaborating with the WordPress community.</p>



<p>Whether you’re a seasoned WordPresser, or are just starting out, and keen to know how block themes are making site building more accessible for everyone, this episode is for you.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Useful links</h2>



<p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/maryannaschenbrenner/overlay/about-this-profile/">Mary Ann Aschenbrenner</a> on LinkedIn</p>



<p><a href="https://waterlinkweb.com/">Waterlink Web</a></p>



<p><a href="https://friendsofpierpark.org/">Friends of Pier Park website</a></p>



<p><a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2025/session/moving-a-website-from-classic-to-a-block-theme/">Moving a Website from Classic to a Block Theme</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.studiopress.com/"> StudioPress</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.blogger.com/">Blogger</a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 17 Sep 2025 14:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Nathan Wrigley";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:32;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:113:"Open Channels FM: How to Make Your Open Web Content Last Forever: Effortless, Permanent Backups and Media Storage";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=108637";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:118:"https://openchannels.fm/how-to-make-your-open-web-content-last-forever-effortless-permanent-backups-and-media-storage/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:360:"The open web is a patchwork of ideas, creativity, and discovery that thrives on its openness and diversity. But what happens when websites go offline, hosting bills lapse, or platforms disappear? The reality is that content is lost every day to link rot, expired services, and vanished archives while silently erasing important stories and knowledge. [&#8230;]";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 17 Sep 2025 13:29:01 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:33;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:90:"Open Channels FM: GoDaddy’s New AI Site Designer: From Idea to WordPress Site in Minutes";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=109724";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:93:"https://openchannels.fm/godaddys-new-ai-site-designer-from-idea-to-wordpress-site-in-minutes/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:157:"Our sponsor GoDaddy's Airo Site Designer is an AI tool that quickly creates WordPress sites from simple prompts, making it easy for anyone to go online fast.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 17 Sep 2025 09:36:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:34;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21:"Matt: United Starlink";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:38:"https://ma.tt/2025/09/united-starlink/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:38:"https://ma.tt/2025/09/united-starlink/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:978:"<p>I’m on my first United flight with Starlink, and wow! I ran a <a href="https://fast.com/">fast.com</a> test and got 110 mbps down and 38 mbps up, which is insane.  28ms ping times. While flying! When you think of all of the engineering and technology coming together to let me blog this it’s really incredible.</p>



<p>Update 2025-09-16: United actually responded to my tweet about this. <img alt="😂" class="wp-smiley" src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f602.png" style="height: 1em;" /></p>



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<div class="embed-twitter"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Entertainment at 35,000 feet has never been better (or faster)! ?</p>&mdash; United Airlines (@united) <a href="https://twitter.com/united/status/1968318805018632648?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 17, 2025</a></blockquote></div>
</div></figure>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 17 Sep 2025 00:05:41 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:35;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:92:"Open Channels FM: How WordPress Playground Is Opening Doors to Inclusive Learning Everywhere";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=108627";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:99:"https://openchannels.fm/how-wordpress-playground-is-opening-doors-to-inclusive-learning-everywhere/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:204:"WordPress Playground revolutionizes web development by providing a browser-based platform for learning and experimentation, making it accessible globally, particularly for users in resource-limited areas.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 16 Sep 2025 12:55:08 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:36;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:81:"Open Channels FM: From Print Design to Podcasting, the Scenic Route to Creativity";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=109666";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:87:"https://openchannels.fm/from-print-design-to-podcasting-the-scenic-route-to-creativity/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:156:"In this episode, BobWP shares the launching his blog and podcast, Bob's Wild Pathways, filled with honest stories and insights from his creative adventures.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 16 Sep 2025 10:11:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:37;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:15:"Matt: Retention";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=149819";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://ma.tt/2025/09/retention/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:120:"<p>Andrew Chen <a href="https://x.com/andrewchen/status/1965419750525431873?s=46">has a great post on retention</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 16 Sep 2025 04:40:11 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:38;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:22:"Matt: Weekend YouTubes";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=149801";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:39:"https://ma.tt/2025/09/weekend-youtubes/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3290:"<p>One of my favorite YouTubers is <a href="https://charlescornellstudios.com/">Charles Cornell</a> (WordPress-powered!), who <span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">creates great videos </span>that break down the music theory of various things you’ve heard, such as this adorable one featuring <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-fv_oyYhqc">SNES soundtracks</a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRRSWmZrJGs">The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild</a>. I first came across him <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Popdt3NYgU">reacting to Jacob Collier in 2020</a>. Once I got super-into Severance, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQg1TMEEPnQ">his breakdown of the spooky music is great</a>. It’s also interesting to see that the YouTube community is going through its own version of fair use and copyright, trademark, etc., enforcement, which he discusses <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GrLFQ26jFs">here</a>.</p>



<p><a href="https://blog.samaltman.com/">Sam Altman</a> is always interesting to follow, and it&#8217;s interesting to contrast this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pxmdmlJCG0">great interview he did with David Perell on writing</a> with this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KmpT-BoVf4">very direct and awkward one with Tucker Carlson</a>. I have immense respect for anyone who enters the arena and engages directly with journalists or critics, rather than hiding behind PR agents or lawyers. Given the current blood feud, it&#8217;s fun to go back eight years and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnBQmEqBCY0">see Sam Altman interview Elon Musk</a>, long before any of the AI stuff blew up they were both terribly prescient.</p>



<p>Ray Dalio is always a gem and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49RT6SQ8n0Y">he went on Diary of a CEO</a>. Theo Browne <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TMPWvPG5GA">has a good take on what it means to vibe code</a>. Kishan Bagaria <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwsfdRY-K2s">discusses how Beeper is going to reach 100  million users</a>. The story of how Atlassian took a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SKUw3w2FEg">non-traditional enterprise path with Jay Simons is great</a>. Not a YouTube, but don&#8217;t miss <a href="https://www.theverge.com/decoder-podcast-with-nilay-patel/773904/sierra-ceo-bret-taylor-ai-agents-openai-bubble-interview">Bret Taylor on The Verge</a>. Check out <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N7XvGaQ72E">Adam D&#8217;Angelo at South Park Commons</a>.</p>



<p>And finally, I&#8217;ll say that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/premium">YouTube Premium</a>, which turns off all the ads, is probably one of the highest value subscriptions you can have. <span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Many of these are essentially like podcasts, and from a product perspective, I think we need to figure out how to sync and allow seamless movement between watching, listening, or reading transcripts</span> in <a href="https://pocketcasts.com/">Pocket Casts</a> (Automattic&#8217;s open-source podcasting app). We support video podcasts, but there&#8217;s no good way yet to have a <a href="https://www.audible.com/ep/wfs">Whispersync-like</a> experience between video, audio, and a transcript.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sun, 14 Sep 2025 23:23:42 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:39;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:24:"Matt: Old Business Cards";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=149786";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:41:"https://ma.tt/2025/09/old-business-cards/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2624:"<p><br />I recently came across a few old business cards I designed back in 1999. The first ones were for my services as a saxophone player:</p>



<figure class="wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex">
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-149788" height="336" src="https://i0.wp.com/ma.tt/files/2025/09/business-card-blue-1024x569.jpg?resize=604%2C336&#038;quality=89&#038;ssl=1" width="604" /></figure>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-149787" height="345" src="https://i0.wp.com/ma.tt/files/2025/09/business-card-yellow-1024x585.jpg?resize=604%2C345&#038;quality=89&#038;ssl=1" width="604" /></figure>
</figure>



<p>A few notes:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>I went mostly by “Matthew” then.</li>



<li>At some point I decided to remove the home address and say that I was available to play not just alto saxophone but baritone, tenor, and soprano as well.</li>



<li>The number was the home shared house number, not a cell phone.</li>



<li>The email was an email address the entire family shared, under my dad’s name.</li>



<li><a href="https://www.hal-pc.org/">HAL-PC</a> was an amazing non-profit local to Houston that stood for the “Houston Area League of PC users.” There was a pretty reasonable annual membership fee, and they hosted a monthly general meeting which had hundreds of attendees, always with a presentation or two and a raffle giveaway at the end. They were a dial-up ISP and BBS/newsgroup host. I volunteered for them by going in on Saturdays where they had a room people could bring their broken computers to and get free tech support, and by hosting a SIG, or special-interest group, around PalmOS called <a href="https://hpug.org/">HPUG</a>, the Houston Palm Users Group. This was a big part of the inspiration for WordCamps.</li>
</ul>



<p>This was for my “design” business:</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-149789" height="345" src="https://i0.wp.com/ma.tt/files/2025/09/business-card-design-1024x585.jpg?resize=604%2C345&#038;quality=89&#038;ssl=1" width="604" /></figure>



<p><br />I would also design business cards for friends, here’s one for my friend who was a percussionist and vibraphonist, Chase Jordan: </p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img alt="" class="wp-image-149790" height="362" src="https://i0.wp.com/ma.tt/files/2025/09/business-card-chase-jordan.jpg?resize=604%2C362&#038;quality=89&#038;ssl=1" width="604" /></figure>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sun, 14 Sep 2025 02:50:47 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:40;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:107:"Gutenberg Times: Licensing for AI, Patterns, Gutenberg 21.6, and future of WordPress—Weekend Edition #340";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=41777";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:112:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/licensing-for-ai-patterns-gutenberg-21-6-and-future-of-wordpress-weekend-edition-340/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:26136:"<p>Hi there,</p>





<p>Welcome to the WCUS Part 2. The workshop recordings are online, and my chat with other dev advocates has also been published. You can read about it in this article, which includes the video: <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/wordpress-ai-and-the-generational-shift-insights-from-wcus-creators-studio/">WordPress, AI, and the generational shift: insights from #WCUS Creators Studio</a>. </p>


<div class="ng-block-7d538ee849f98017 wp-block-newsletterglue-image ng-block size-large is-resized" width="100%"><div><div><div align="center" class="ng-block-td" style="padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px;"><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/wordpress-ai-and-the-generational-shift-insights-from-wcus-creators-studio/"><img alt="In the WCUS Creators Studio: Brian Coords, Jonathan Bossenger, Birgit Pauli-Haack, Ryan Welcher" class="wp-image-41835 ng-image" height="337" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-10-at-15.46.21.jpg?resize=600%2C337&#038;ssl=1" style="border-style: none; border-color: transparent;" width="600" /></a></div></div></div></div>


<div class="wp-block-spacer" style="height: 20px;"></div>



<p>A few publishers assembled to come up with a <a href="https://rslstandard.org/">license standard for machines</a>, aka AI. As site builders, or owners, you&#8217;ll be interested that there has been some work on the way. More below.</p>



<p>Have a splendid weekend ahead! </p>



<p>Yours, <img alt="💕" class="wp-smiley" src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f495.png" style="height: 1em;" /><br /><em>Birgit</em></p>


<section class="wp-block-newsletterglue-group" style="padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;">
<div class="wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>Table of Contents</strong></p>



<nav class="wp-block-table-of-contents"><ol><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/licensing-for-ai-patterns-gutenberg-21-6-and-future-of-wordpress-weekend-edition-340/#wordcamp-us">WordCamp US </a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/licensing-for-ai-patterns-gutenberg-21-6-and-future-of-wordpress-weekend-edition-340/#0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/licensing-for-ai-patterns-gutenberg-21-6-and-future-of-wordpress-weekend-edition-340/#0-p">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/licensing-for-ai-patterns-gutenberg-21-6-and-future-of-wordpress-weekend-edition-340/#2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/licensing-for-ai-patterns-gutenberg-21-6-and-future-of-wordpress-weekend-edition-340/#3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.</a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/licensing-for-ai-patterns-gutenberg-21-6-and-future-of-wordpress-weekend-edition-340/#new-in-the-playground-world">New in the Playground world</a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/licensing-for-ai-patterns-gutenberg-21-6-and-future-of-wordpress-weekend-edition-340/#ai-news">AI News</a></li></ol></nav>
</div></div>
</section>


<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="wordcamp-us">WordCamp US </h2>



<p>As mentioned, the recordings of the Workshop are now online. The block and site editor related ones are: </p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://wordpress.tv/2025/09/05/the-block-developer-cookbook/">The Block Developer Cookbook</a> with Ryan Welcher</li>



<li><a href="https://wordpress.tv/2025/09/05/launch-your-personal-portfolio-a-hands-on-wordpress-workshop/">Launch Your Personal Portfolio — A Hands-On WordPress Workshop</a> w/ Jamie Marsland. </li>
</ul>



<p>If you are more interested in AI and development, these might be for you: </p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://wordpress.tv/2025/09/05/turn-your-local-wordpress-install-into-your-ai-coding-assistant/">Turn Your Local WordPress Install Into Your AI Coding Assistant</a> with Jonathan Bossenger</li>



<li><a href="https://wordpress.tv/2025/09/05/scalable-ethical-ai-how-to-own-your-content-and-your-ai-with-wordpress/">Scalable, Ethical AI: How to Own Your Content and Your AI with WordPress</a> with Jeff Paul </li>



<li><a href="https://wordpress.tv/2025/09/03/unlock-developer-superpowers-with-ai/">Unlock Developer Superpowers with AI</a> with Adam Silverstein</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</h2>



<p>It was <strong>Ryan Welcher</strong>&#8216;s turn to publish this month&#8217;s <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2025/09/whats-new-for-developers-september-2025/"><strong>What’s new for developers? (September 2025</strong>)</a>. The updates include: </p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Composer package for the Abilities API now available for early testing ahead of WordPress 6.9</li>



<li>Four experimental Accordion blocks (Accordion, Accordion Item, Accordion Header, Accordion Panel) powered by the Interactivity API. </li>



<li>Theme.json now supports styling form elements, including text inputs and select dropdowns. </li>



<li>Data Views received multiple enhancements, including infinite scroll and card layouts. </li>



<li>The Date block now supports custom dates and block bindings </li>



<li>A new Query Loop Title block variation displays post type labels. </li>



<li>WordPress Playground added support for multiple theme installations and new CLI flags, plus PHP debugging improvements through XDebug Bridge. </li>



<li>The AI team released stable versions of core libraries and introduced new development tools. </li>
</ul>



<p>For details and more, you need to <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2025/09/whats-new-for-developers-september-2025/">read the post</a>. <img alt="🤗" class="wp-smiley" src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f917.png" style="height: 1em;" /> </p>



<p class="has-accent-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d65ff08da66da2d111d02250490fde35">Don&#8217;t miss a new article on the WordPress developer blog again. <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/subscribe/">Subscribe! </a></p>



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<p><a href="https://x.com/cbravobernal"><strong>Carlos Bravo</strong></a> managed the release of Gutenberg 21.6 and highlights in his post <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2025/09/10/whats-new-in-gutenberg-21-6-10-september/"><strong>What’s new in Gutenberg 21.6? (10 September)</strong></a>: </p>



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2025/09/10/whats-new-in-gutenberg-21-6-10-september/#new-accordion-button">New add accordion button</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2025/09/10/whats-new-in-gutenberg-21-6-10-september/#improved-dataviews-grid">Improved DataViews grid interface.</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2025/09/10/whats-new-in-gutenberg-21-6-10-september/#inputs">Form elements  now support global styles</a></li>
</ol>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-41891" height="291" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-13-at-14.03.46.png?resize=652%2C291&#038;ssl=1" width="652" /></figure>



<div class="wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
<p><img alt="🎙" class="wp-smiley" src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f399.png" style="height: 1em;" /> The latest episode is <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-120-wordcamp-us-telex-gutenberg-21-4-and-21-5/">Gutenberg Changelog 120—WordCamp US, Automattic Telex, Gutenberg 21.4 and 21.5, and the need for more blocks</a> with special guest <strong>Sarah Norris. </strong></p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-style-no-vertical-margin"><img alt="" class="wp-image-41771" height="207" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-05-at-14.12.23-edited.png?resize=652%2C207&#038;ssl=1" width="652" /></figure>



<p class="has-small-font-size"><em>If you are listening via Spotify, please leave a comment. If you listen via other podcast apps, please leave a review. It&#8217;ll help with the distribution.</em></p>
</div></div>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="0-p">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</h2>



<p>In her latest post, <a href="https://wordpress.com/blog/2025/09/10/pattern-system-wordpress-publishing-workflow/"><strong>The Pattern System: Publish Faster with Reusable WordPress Layouts</strong></a>, <strong>Anam Hassan</strong> breaks down how WordPress Patterns can save you tons of time by letting you reuse the same layouts over and over instead of rebuilding them from scratch. She explains three types: synced patterns that automatically update everywhere when you change them once, unsynced patterns that give you the same starting template but let you customize each one differently, and locked patterns that keep your design safe when other people are writing content. </p>



<p><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2024/06/an-introduction-to-overrides-in-synced-patterns/">Synced pattern overrides</a> are however missing from the post.  </p>



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<p>Tune in to the latest episode of the <em>WP Behind the Builds</em> podcast on Open Channels. <a href="https://openchannels.fm/the-founders-of-podcaster-plus-share-product-development-experiences-and-community-insights/"><strong>The Founders of Podcaster Plus Share Product Development Experiences and Community Insights</strong></a>. Host <strong>Mark Westguard</strong> speaks with <strong>Dan Maby</strong> and <strong>Nathan Wrigley</strong>, founders of Podcaster Plus, about their new WordPress plugin designed to simplify podcast publishing and customize audio players. The plugin uses the Interactivity API for modular blocks like play buttons and volume controls, enabling users to create personalized audio players. Podcaster Plus automates publishing by generating posts for new episodes in RSS feeds and offers add-ons for custom post types, SEO, and automation. </p>



<p><em>You can sign up for the beta of the new plugin at the website <a href="https://www.podcasterplus.com/">PodcasterPlus.</a></em></p>



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<p>At WordCamp Sofia last year, <strong>Jordan Hlebarov</strong> explored in his talk <a href="https://wordpress.tv/2025/08/15/gutenberg-in-action-how-the-block-editor-simplifies-client-workflows-and-boosts-agency-efficiency/"><strong>how the Gutenberg block editor simplifies the workflow for both agencies and clients</strong></a>, by making content management more intuitive and efficient, as well as how it benefits both clients and streamlines agency operations. The <a href="https://wordpress.tv/2025/08/15/gutenberg-in-action-how-the-block-editor-simplifies-client-workflows-and-boosts-agency-efficiency/">video</a> is now available on WordPressTV and also offers <a href="https://sofia.wordcamp.org/2024/files/2025/05/hlebarov-WordCamp-Sofia-2024-1.pdf">a link to the slides</a>.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</h2>



<p>On the <em>WordPress Developer Blog</em>, Justin Tadlock published an in-depth tutorial on <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2025/09/building-a-light-dark-toggle-with-the-interactivity-api/"><strong>Building a light/dark toggle with the Interactivity API</strong></a>. He demonstrates creating a toggle that works without custom blocks using modern CSS techniques and WordPress APIs. The tutorial covers theme setup, color scheme storage using user meta and cookies, implementing the toggle button with interactivity directives, adding JavaScript functionality, styling with icons, and registering a block variation for easy editor insertion, resulting in a complete light/dark mode toggle for block themes. <em>You can <a href="https://blockdevelopercookbook.com/recipes/block-transforms/">follow along on the Block Developer Cook Book website. </a></em></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p><a href="https://x.com/RinodeBoer"><strong>Rino de Boer</strong></a> normally uses Elementor to build sites. Recently he explored Block themes and the 2025 default theme. You can follow along via his YouTube video <strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl-YZtMZsTc">Exploring WordPress Block Themes (Spectra, Raft, Ollie, TT5 &amp; more) — Live Test</a></strong></p>


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<p><strong>Jason Crist</strong> published a new plugin: <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/synced-patterns-for-themes/"><strong>Synced Patterns for Themes.</strong></a> He writes in the description, &#8220;This plugin enables theme developers to ship patterns that behave as synced patterns (reusable blocks) while maintaining the benefits of theme-bundled patterns. When a theme pattern is marked as synced, it automatically becomes available as a reusable block that updates across all instances when modified.&#8221; The plugin description also elaborates on the features and how to use it. </p>



<p>Crist also authored the <strong><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/pattern-builder/">Pattern Builder</a></strong> plugin, you can also find in the repository. &#8220;Pattern Builder transforms how you work with WordPress block patterns, providing a comprehensive solution for creating, managing, and organizing patterns right from your WordPress admin.&#8221; </p>



<p><em>I have not tested these plugins. Use at your own risk!</em></p>



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<p><strong>Bud Kraus </strong>again has a great tutorial to unregister all kinds of core block features, i.e., block styles, blocks, or theme style variations. He shows you example code and also what happens when things are unregistered that were already in use. Check out his blog post on Kinsta: <a href="https://kinsta.com/blog/unregister-style-variations/"><strong>Unregistering style variations in a WordPress block theme.</strong></a></p>


<section class="wp-block-newsletterglue-callout undefined not-color-set" style="border-color: #f9f9e5; border-radius: 22px; border-style: solid; border-width: 0; padding-top: 20px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; text-align: left; margin-left: 0; margin-right: 0; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; background-color: #f9f9e5;">
<p><strong> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index 2025&#8221;</a> </strong><br />A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test, and Meta team from Jan. 2024 on. Updated by yours truly. The previous years are also available: <strong><strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/">2020</a> | <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2021/">2021</a></strong> | <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2022/">2022</a></strong></strong> | <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/gutenberg-index-2023">2023</a></strong> | <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/gutenberg-index-2024/"><strong>2024</strong></a></p>
</section>


<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.</h2>



<p><strong>Ryan Welcher</strong> chips away at his Block Development Cookbook series on YouTube. In the video <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBORsxDzwu0"><strong>How To Convert WordPress Blocks Into (Almost) Anything!</strong></a>, you learn how to enable transforms for your blocks, a way to migrate a current block into a different block. The block editor has a few transforms out of the box, like changing the content of a paragraph block into a list block. Or a into a Quote block without losing the content. Ryan helps you solve this using the transform API for your custom blocks.</p>


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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="new-in-the-playground-world">New in the Playground world</h2>



<p>In his post, <a href="https://www.pootlepress.com/2025/08/no-servers-no-installs-just-a-link-and-a-complete-wordpress-site-appears/"><strong>The future of WordPress? A complete website from nothing but a link, </strong></a> <strong>Jamie Marsland</strong> explores how WordPress Playground runs entirely in your browser without servers or setup, and Blueprints transform it from a demo into a powerful tool. Blueprints are recipes that create complete professional websites with one click, benefiting agencies, educators, freelancers, and developers. Marsland built <a href="https://pootleplayground.com/">PootlePlayground.com</a> and <a href="https://PootleSites.com">PootleSites.com</a> to expand Blueprint creation capabilities. The future roadmap aims to push these temporary browser sites into permanent hosting.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="ai-news">AI News</h2>



<p>In his post, <a href="https://sethrubenstein.info/2025/09/12/boosting-wordpress-development-with-github-copilot/"><strong>Boosting WordPress Development with GitHub Copilot</strong></a>, <strong>Seth Rubenstein</strong> explains how GitHub Copilot, an AI coding assistant, helped his team quickly build four WordPress features that would have taken months to complete manually. The AI handled tasks like creating admin panels and fixing SEO titles with minimal human oversight. However, the AI couldn&#8217;t test its own work, so Rubenstein integrated WordPress Playground, a browser-based testing environment, allowing the AI to actually browse and check the websites it builds, making the development process more reliable and efficient. Rubenstein shared all the details of how he accomplished it. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Matt Mullenweg</strong> <a href="https://ma.tt/2025/09/really-simple-licensing/">shared</a> on his blog, &#8220;one of the more interesting things to launch.&#8221; this week: </p>



<p><a href="https://rslstandard.org/"><strong>RSL (Really Simple Licensing)</strong></a> is an open standard that helps content publishers protect their rights in the AI era by embedding machine-readable licensing terms directly into web pages using XML markup. </p>



<p>The system supports various compensation models, including attribution-based licensing, pay-per-crawl, and pay-per-inference arrangements. Publishers can specify different terms for different usage types, particularly for AI training applications. </p>



<p>The standard addresses challenges content creators face with AI systems using their work without clear compensation or attribution by providing a structured format that automated tools can understand and respect, giving creators standardized control over their content usage. </p>



<p>The founders are <strong>Eckart Walther</strong>, who is also the co-creator of the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) standard, and <strong>Doug Leeds</strong>, former CEO of Ask.com and former CEO of IAC Publishing. </p>



<p>The RSL team has established a collective licensing organization, the <a href="https://rslcollective.org/">RSL Collective,</a> that can negotiate terms and collect royalties, similar to ASCAP for musicians or MPLC for films. </p>



<p><strong>Russell Brandom</strong> at TechCrunch has the whole story. <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/10/rss-co-creator-launches-new-protocol-for-ai-data-licensing/"><strong>RSS co-creator launches new protocol for AI data licensing. </strong></a></p>



<p><strong>James Le Page</strong>, team rep on the WordPress AI team, built a first version of a plugin for publishers using WordPress: <a href="https://github.com/Jameswlepage/rsl-wp"><strong>RSL Licensing for WordPress</strong></a>. </p>



<p>And I am left to wonder how public LLMs adhere to this standard and more interestingly, if they will pay licensing fees. Brandom wrote, &#8220;Without some kind of licensing system, AI companies could face an avalanche of copyright lawsuits that <a href="https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/anthropic-s-settlement-shows-the-u.s.-can-t-afford-ai-copyright-lawsuits" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">some worry</a> will set the industry back permanently.&#8221; </p>


<section class="wp-block-newsletterglue-callout undefined not-color-set" style="border-color: #eeeeee; border-radius: 26px; border-style: solid; border-width: 0; padding-top: 20px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; text-align: left; margin-left: 0; margin-right: 0; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; background-color: #f3efe9;">
<p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. </p>



<p>Now also available via <a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/?blueprint-url=https://gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/playnightly.json">WordPress Playground</a>. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">Email me </a>with your experience</p>



<p><img alt="GitHub all releases" src="https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total?style=for-the-badge" /></p>
</section>


<p class="has-text-align-center has-small-font-size"><em>Questions? Suggestions? Ideas? </em><br /><em>Don&#8217;t hesitate to send <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">them via email</a> or</em><br /><em> send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph</em>.</p>



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<p class="has-text-align-center has-small-font-size">For questions to be answered on the <a href="http://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast">Gutenberg Changelog</a>, <br />send them to <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a></p>



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<section class="wp-block-newsletterglue-group" style="padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;">
<p>Featured Image: Photo by Cristina Gottardi on Unsplash</p>



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<p class="has-text-align-left"><strong>Don&#8217;t want to miss the next Weekend Edition? </strong></p>


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<hr class="wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-wide" />
</section>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 13 Sep 2025 12:07:50 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:41;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:15:"Matt: Legal Win";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=149776";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://ma.tt/2025/09/legal-win/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1032:"<p>Just got word that the<a href="https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69221176/169/wpengine-inc-v-automattic-inc/"> court dismissed several of WP Engine and Silver Lake’s most serious claims</a> — antitrust, monopolization, and extortion have been knocked out! These were by far the most significant and far-reaching allegations in the case and with today’s decision the case is narrowed significantly. This is a win not just for us but for all open source maintainers and contributors. Huge thanks to the folks at <a href="https://www.gibsondunn.com/">Gibson</a> and <a href="https://automattic.com/">Automattic</a> who have been working on this.</p>



<p>With respect to any remaining claims, we’re confident the facts will demonstrate that our actions were lawful and in the best interests of the WordPress community.</p>



<p>This ruling is a significant milestone, but our focus remains the same: building a free, open, and thriving WordPress ecosystem and supporting the millions of people who use it every day.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 13 Sep 2025 01:27:15 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:42;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:29:"Matt: Really Simple Licensing";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=149763";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:46:"https://ma.tt/2025/09/really-simple-licensing/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:675:"<p>It&#8217;s been a busy (and tragic) week but one of the more interesting things to launch was the <a href="https://rslstandard.org/">Really Simple Licensing standard</a>. I have a lot of scars from the web standards wars, so I&#8217;m hesitant to dive back in, but this is from a lot of the early Web 2.0 people, <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/10/rss-co-creator-launches-new-protocol-for-ai-data-licensing/">as TechCrunch writes about</a>.</p>



<p>As it happens, <a href="https://github.com/Jameswlepage/rsl-wp">James LePage of Automattic has spun up a WordPress plugin for it</a>, so that was fast. Now the thing to figure out is distribution and adoption.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 12 Sep 2025 05:18:26 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:43;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Matt: Account for Externalities";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=149759";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:36:"https://ma.tt/2025/09/externalities/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2454:"<p>When I studied economics, one of the concepts that struck me the most was the concept of externalities. <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/Series/Back-to-Basics/Externalities">This International Monetary Fund post explains it well</a>. In short, externalities are costs or benefits of an economic activity that affect third parties who did not choose to incur them, leading to a divergence between private and social costs or benefits. They’re spillover effects—positive or negative—that the market price fails to reflect. A classic example is air pollution from a factory, where nearby residents bear health and environmental costs not included in the price of the factory’s products.</p>



<p>Open source is full of externalities. On the positive side, adoption creates ecosystems of developers and provides many paths of distribution. On the negative side, there’s often underinvestment in the very projects that sustain the ecosystem. I have a lot of empathy for why, when open source meets finance and private equity, things can go sideways. You can look at a business built on open source and see seemingly amazing margins—efficient R&amp;D that compounds in a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discounted_cash_flow">DCF model</a>. A percent here or there over many years really adds up.</p>



<p>My plea to investors in open-source businesses is this: when a business is built on top of open source, incorporate a restorative investment percentage back into the projects critical to the end-user experience of what you’re offering customers. In WordPress, we call this <a href="https://wordpress.org/five-for-the-future/">Five for the Future</a>, but it doesn’t have to be five percent; it could be 0.1%. Plan for it when modeling your expected <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_rate_of_return">IRR</a> hurdle from an investment. Then, a few years down the line, when the small percentages start to add up, you won’t face a big catch-up or gap.</p>



<p>This underinvestment is itself an externality. It doesn’t appear on the balance sheet, but it can manifest in black swan events, such as security breaches or remote code exploits. Technical debt is one of the largest unaccounted-for externalities in the world today. Engineering, in the long run, is primarily a craft of maintenance rather than creation. The bulk of the cost of something comes from its upkeep over time.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:58:50 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:44;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Matt: PostHog";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=149753";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://ma.tt/2025/09/posthog/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1235:"<p>It&#8217;s always fun to see someone pushing the limits of the web experience, <a href="https://x.com/photomatt/status/1966026258837549485">as I reminisced about Flash and Dreamweaver the other day.</a> The new website for <a href="https://posthog.com/">Posthog</a> is a delightful rabbit hole to explore, akin to a <a href="https://meowwolf.com/">Meow Wolf</a>, with meticulous care and craft applied to every corner of the product in a way that is both fun and playful. They even have their own version of  pineapple on pizza.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-149755" height="322" src="https://i0.wp.com/ma.tt/files/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-11-at-10.50.28-1024x546.png?resize=604%2C322&#038;quality=80&#038;ssl=1" width="604" /></figure>



<p>What I want to enable with <a href="https://wordpress.org/">WordPress</a> is the ability with thousands of plugins and themes for people to have unique, funky experiences like this on their website, while still providing a content structure that&#8217;s legible for interoperability and hacking. Major kudos to <a href="https://watilo.com/">Cory Watilo</a> and <a href="https://x.com/james406">James Hawkins</a> for coming up with this.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:09:36 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:45;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:95:"Gutenberg Times: WordPress, AI, and the generational shift: insights from #WCUS Creators Studio";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=41824";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:102:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/wordpress-ai-and-the-generational-shift-insights-from-wcus-creators-studio/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:10736:"<p>Automattic&#8217;s Developer Advocates didn&#8217;t hold back at WordCamp US. <strong>Jonathan Bossenger,</strong> <strong>Brian Coords</strong>, <strong>Birgit Pauli-Haack</strong>, and <strong>Ryan Welcher</strong> sat down for a no-BS roundtable about WordPress&#8217;s future, AI&#8217;s actual role in the CMS world, and the big question: Is WordPress still cool enough for the next generation of developers?</p>



<p>This wasn&#8217;t your typical conference panel with rehearsed talking points. The conversation dug into how WordPress is evolving right now—messy bits, growing pains, and all.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">

</div></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Is WordPress headed for &#8220;Legacy&#8221; status?</h2>



<p>The episode opened with a gut-punch question from a ChatGPT impersonation of a 25-year-old YouTuber: Is WordPress becoming a &#8220;legacy CMS,&#8221; or does it still belong at the cutting edge of web development?</p>



<p>The panelists weren&#8217;t having it. Birgit jumped straight into the modernization happening right now—Gutenberg&#8217;s evolution, sophisticated admin interfaces, and the shift toward block-based design systems. This isn&#8217;t your grandfather&#8217;s WordPress dashboard.</p>



<p>Brian kept things grounded: Sure, newer technologies like React and Vite deliver flashy front-end experiences, but guess what? Most projects eventually need a solid content management foundation. WordPress still delivers out-of-the-box content modeling, user authentication, and integrations that would take months to build from scratch elsewhere.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">No-Code dreams or developer nightmares?</h2>



<p>The conversation shifted to whether Full Site Editing and block themes actually simplify web building or just create new headaches for developers.</p>



<p>Jonathan pushed back on the &#8220;things are getting messier&#8221; narrative. His take? Structured, scalable paradigms always require an adjustment period. It&#8217;s not messier—it&#8217;s different, and that learning curve is normal.</p>



<p>Birgit shared a telling example: features like custom block styles that once required developer intervention are now accessible to content creators. It&#8217;s empowering non-developers while maintaining professional guardrails—exactly what good tooling should do.</p>



<p>Brian&#8217;s perspective? The block paradigm creates consistency. More people can build and customize using standardized approaches instead of fighting with fragmented solutions.</p>



<p>The subtext here: WordPress isn&#8217;t dumbing down. It&#8217;s getting smarter about who can participate in the building process.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Winning over the next generation</h2>



<p>A big conversation centered on how WordPress stays relevant for younger developers swimming in a sea of shiny new options. Does WordPress still feel fresh? The team didn&#8217;t dodge the question.</p>



<p>It’s true: WordPress needs to meet new developers where they actually hang out—YouTube tutorials, TikTok quick hits, and mobile-first learning. Gone are the days when developers solely learned from documentation and forums.</p>



<p>Jonathan hit a key point: WordPress must keep demonstrating its power and possibilities, not just its legacy. Brian backed this up with market reality—there&#8217;s still solid demand for both PHP and React skills within the WordPress ecosystem. The work is there if developers want it.</p>



<p>But here&#8217;s the proof point that really landed: Birgit shared CERN&#8217;s story—yes, the global research powerhouse—migrating thousands of websites to WordPress. The kicker? Younger developers on their team were leading the charge.</p>



<p>That&#8217;s not a platform declining. That&#8217;s a platform adapting and attracting fresh talent where it matters most. The question isn&#8217;t whether WordPress can compete for the next generation—it&#8217;s whether we&#8217;re telling that story loud enough.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WordPress and Headless: the reality check</h2>



<p>Panelists were clear: WordPress has the headless chops with REST API and GraphQL support, but that doesn&#8217;t mean everyone should jump on the bandwagon. Despite the industry buzz, most sites simply don&#8217;t need headless architecture.</p>



<p>The sweet spot? Clients with significant budgets or organizations treating WordPress as a content hub that feeds multiple touchpoints—other applications, mobile experiences, or external APIs. For everyone else, traditional WordPress delivers faster launch times and simpler maintenance.</p>



<p>What&#8217;s interesting is the innovation happening on both fronts. Developers are not only exposing WordPress data through REST and GraphQL but also pulling external data sources like Airtable directly into the block editor. That&#8217;s where the real magic happens for most teams.</p>



<p>In reality, headless setups are complex beasts with multiple failure points and hefty price tags. Traditional WordPress wins the speed-to-market race and keeps maintenance headaches to a minimum.</p>



<p>The infrastructure is solid, and real projects are shipping, but headless remains the exception rather than the rule. The ecosystem continues doubling down on improving core WordPress while keeping headless as a powerful option when the benefits justify the investment.</p>



<p>The short version: headless WordPress is a tool, not a mandate. Choose wisely based on your actual needs, not the hype.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">AI integration—beyond the buzzword</h2>



<p>You knew AI would come up—it&#8217;s practically mandatory at every tech event these days. But the panel cut through the noise with some practical reality.</p>



<p>Here&#8217;s the thing: AI-powered plugins have been around for a while now. The real challenge isn&#8217;t adding more AI features—it&#8217;s creating unified standards and APIs at the Core level. Think image generation, content creation, and debugging tools that actually work together instead of operating in silos.</p>



<p>Brian nailed the infrastructure angle: WordPress needs to pick standards that balance extensibility with privacy. Not everyone wants their content shipped off to massive cloud-based LLMs, and rightfully so.</p>



<p>The smart play isn&#8217;t chasing every AI trend that pops up on Product Hunt. It&#8217;s building the foundation that lets developers integrate AI thoughtfully—whether that&#8217;s keeping processing local, giving users control over their data, or ensuring different AI tools can actually talk to each other.</p>



<p>AI in WordPress isn&#8217;t about being flashy. It&#8217;s about being useful secure and giving users real choice in how they want to leverage these tools. That&#8217;s the kind of AI integration that actually moves the needle.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Will AI replace developers?</h2>



<p>The panel didn&#8217;t dance around this one: AI makes developers more productive, not obsolete.</p>



<p>Jonathan kept it real about AI coding assistants like Copilot—they&#8217;re helpful, but they&#8217;re not magic. You still need actual developer expertise to review, modify, and debug what these tools spit out. Anyone who&#8217;s wrestled with AI-generated code knows it&#8217;s not exactly plug-and-play.</p>



<p>The bottom line? These tools change how we work, not whether we&#8217;re needed. Skilled, creative builders aren&#8217;t going anywhere.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The future: openness, community, and better storytelling</h2>



<p>As the conversation wound down, the focus shifted to what really drives WordPress forward—community and storytelling.</p>



<p>Ryan made a solid point: WordPress professionals need to share more of their &#8220;hidden&#8221; case studies and innovations. We&#8217;re not just talking about what&#8217;s happening in plugin repositories, but the real work happening in agencies and institutions worldwide. Those stories matter.</p>



<p>Both Birgit and Jonathan pushed for more global showcases, bar camps, and informal spaces where grassroots innovation can surface. Because that&#8217;s where the real magic happens—not in conference keynotes, but in the trenches where people are solving actual problems.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Conclusion</h2>



<p>The panel&#8217;s take? WordPress is agile, dynamic, and very much alive. With ongoing improvements, strong community engagement, and thoughtful AI integration, the platform looks ready to keep powering the web for the next generation—and beyond.</p>



<p>Not bad for a 22-year-old platform that some people keep writing off.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Resources: </h2>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4BGaP5aNuA">Video on YouTube</a></li>



<li><a href="https://react.dev/">React</a></li>



<li><a href="https://vite.dev/">Vite</a></li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/">Developer Handbook > Themes</a></li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/">Developer Handbook > Block Editor</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wordpress.com/blog/2025/05/07/custom-block-styles/">Mastering Custom Block Styles in WordPress: 6 Methods for Theme and Plugin Developers</a></li>



<li><a href="https://home.cern/news/announcement/computing/wordpress-now-available-cern-websites">WordPress now available for CERN websites</a></li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/">Developer Handbook > REST API</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.wpgraphql.com/">GraphQL API for WordPress</a></li>



<li><a href="https://remotedatablocks.com/">Remote Data Blocks</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/ai/2025/07/17/ai-building-blocks/">AI Building Blocks for WordPress</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/showcase/">WordPress Showcase </a></li>
</ul>



<figure class="wp-block-image alignfull size-large"><a href="https://wordpress.org/showcase/" rel=" noreferrer noopener" target="_blank"><img alt="" class="wp-image-41854" height="357" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-11-at-14.56.48.png?resize=652%2C357&#038;ssl=1" width="652" /></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Browse the <strong><a href="https://wordpress.org/showcase/">WordPress Showcase</a></strong></figcaption></figure>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 11 Sep 2025 12:41:16 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:19:"Gutenberg Changelog";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:46;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:93:"Open Channels FM: The Changing Face of the WordPress Media Landscape and Its Impact on Brands";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=109490";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:100:"https://openchannels.fm/the-changing-face-of-the-wordpress-media-landscape-and-its-impact-on-brands/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:210:"In this episode, Rae Morey and Adam Weeks dissect the intricate WordPress media landscape, discussing content types, monetization strategies, and effective marketing approaches for creators and companies alike.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 11 Sep 2025 08:22:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:47;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:24:"Matt: On WP Product Talk";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=149743";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://ma.tt/2025/09/product-talk/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:476:"<p>I had a great chat with <a href="https://www.mattcromwell.com/">Matt Cromwell</a> and <a href="https://www.gravitykit.com/">Zack Katz</a> on <a href="https://wpproducttalk.com/">WP Product Talk</a> today, mostly about the intersection of AI and WordPress, give it a watch!</p>



<figure class="wp-block-embed alignwide is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">

</div></figure>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 10 Sep 2025 20:59:16 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:48;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:96:"WPTavern: #184 – Rachel Cherry and Alex Aspinall on the State of WordPress in Higher Education";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"https://wptavern.com/?post_type=podcast&p=199424";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:110:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/184-rachel-cherry-and-alex-aspinall-on-the-state-of-wordpress-in-higher-education";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:58321:"<details>Transcript<div>
<p>[00:00:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.</p>



<p>Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, the state of WordPress in higher education.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to wptavern.com/feed/podcast, and you can copy that URL into most podcast players.</p>



<p>If you have a topic that you&#8217;d like us to feature on the podcast, I&#8217;m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head to wptavern.com/contact/jukebox, and use the form there.</p>



<p>So on the podcast today we have Rachel Cherry and Alex Aspinall.</p>



<p>Rachel is the founder of WP Campus, a nonprofit organization she launched a decade ago to support professionals using WordPress in higher education. Under her leadership, WP Campus has become a community hub, hosting conferences, and leading research projects tailored to the unique needs of its members. Currently, Rachel serves as the organization&#8217;s Director of Technology, and sits on its board of directors where she continues to drive innovative projects.</p>



<p>Alex is part of the globally distributed team at Human Made, an established WordPress Enterprise Agency founded in 2011. At Human Made, Alex helps deliver large scale web platforms for major organizations, including names like Harvard, Standard Chartered and PlayStation. In recent years, Alex has developed a strong interest in how WordPress can uniquely serve the higher education sector, and he&#8217;s become especially passionate about exploring and supporting this use case.</p>



<p>During the podcast, we get into the story behind WP Campus, which has for the past decade been empowering people who use WordPress in colleges and universities. We explore Human Made&#8217;s growing interest in the complexities of higher education projects, from large multi-site networks to the strict accessibility and governance requirements such projects increasingly require.</p>



<p>The heart of the conversation is the just released State of WordPress in Higher Education 2025 report. We dig into the reports key findings, such as the slow adoption of the block editor and full site editing, the challenges of managing hundreds of university websites with small teams, and why enterprise level tools are in such high demand.</p>



<p>Whether you&#8217;re a WordPress professional, agency, educator, or are just curious about the unique needs and opportunities the higher education space offers, this episode is for you.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast, where you&#8217;ll find all the other episodes as well.</p>



<p>And so without further delay, I bring you Rachel Cherry and Alex Aspinall.</p>



<p>I am joined on the podcast today by two fabulous guests. I have Rachel Cherry and Alex Aspinall. Hello both. How are you doing?</p>



<p>[00:03:36] <strong>Rachel Cherry:</strong> I&#8217;m lovely, Nathan. How are you?</p>



<p>[00:03:38] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Good, thank you. And Alex, you all right?</p>



<p>[00:03:40] <strong>Alex Aspinall:</strong> How are you doing? I&#8217;m great.</p>



<p>[00:03:41] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you so much. So we&#8217;re going to be talking today about the higher ed space, the higher education space, and WordPress. Specifically about WP Campus. In order to establish both of your credentials in this space, I wonder if we could get a little biography from you both, maybe 30 seconds, something like that, just explaining who you are, where you work, what your connection is to WordPress and specifically WP Campus.</p>



<p>So let&#8217;s go with Rachel first, if you don&#8217;t mind.</p>



<p>[00:04:05] <strong>Rachel Cherry:</strong> Hi, yes. So I am the founder of WP Campus, which has been around 10 years as of last month, which is kind of wild. And so we are a nonprofit organisation that supports people that use WordPress in higher education. And we host conferences, we host research projects like the one we&#8217;re going to discuss today.</p>



<p>So currently I am just one of a board of directors and I&#8217;m the director of technology specifically, but I was the lead for this project.</p>



<p>And then by day I am the accessibility developer at the University of Rochester. And so I&#8217;ve worked in higher ed and other enterprise organisations for the last 18 years.</p>



<p>[00:04:43] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you so much. That&#8217;s great. And Alex.</p>



<p>[00:04:46] <strong>Alex Aspinall:</strong> I mean, I have way less credentials in terms of my WP Campus presence. I work for Human Made, which is an enterprise WordPress agency. We&#8217;ve been around since 2011, I think.</p>



<p>We&#8217;re a globally distributed team, people across all continents. And we specialise in building larger scale web platforms for organisations such as Harvard, Standard Chartered, PlayStation, few other names I could throw in there.</p>



<p>We also have an enterprise hosting solution too. We, probably about a year, two years ago started, well, I personally started becoming really interested in the higher education use case for WordPress. I think it&#8217;s really interesting. I think it&#8217;s quite unique. And that&#8217;s really why Rachel and I started speaking, I don&#8217;t know, maybe 18 months or so ago, and that led us to I guess this podcast.</p>



<p>[00:05:32] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay, thank you. So the podcast is going to be framed around a freely available resource, and it&#8217;s called The State of WordPress in Higher Education. I will link in the show notes rather than try to butcher a URL in an audio podcast. I&#8217;ll link in the show notes over at WP Tavern to that and you can freely download it.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s billed as a research report in the year 2025. I confess, I don&#8217;t know if you did a 2024 version and beyond, but we&#8217;re going to concentrate on the 2025 version.</p>



<p>But I guess some more preamble, I&#8217;m afraid, but I guess we probably should establish what WP Campus is. And I just want to be clear, we recently released an episode about WP Campus Connect, and so I just want to draw a distinction there. These two things are not the same thing.</p>



<p>So I&#8217;m going to toss that one to Rachel. Will you just tell us what the endeavor is at WP Campus, why it was set up? What need is it trying to satisfy?</p>



<p>[00:06:22] <strong>Rachel Cherry:</strong> Yeah, so about 10 years ago I was working in higher education, building WordPress websites, and I wanted my own community. And I was going to a lot of WordCamps and no one was talking about the work that I was doing, the kind of work that I was doing. There wasn&#8217;t a space for my kind of work at camps at the time and so I started this organisation.</p>



<p>And so for the last 10 years we have worked to build a community of people, of like-minded people, that are using WordPress to support the mission of higher education. And we support each other with professional development, with resources, with connection, and every now and then some advocacy. Years ago we raised funds to do the audit of Gutenberg, accessibility audit to be more specific.</p>



<p>And so because accessibility is very important in our space, and here was this editor coming round going to cause a lot of change, as it has, and there was this huge unknown of whether or not it was accessible. And that was a very big deal to our group. A lot of our group has policies and such. And so every now and then we do work like that.</p>



<p>This type of research is very important to our mission as well, to provide data, to provide insight to our community members and our institutions.</p>



<p>And I think one of our kind of ideals that we stand on is that we want to give people data to inform their own decisions, kind of like with the editor audit. Like, we didn&#8217;t tell people it was inaccessible or accessible, we gave them data so that they can decide for themselves. And so this research, you know, is a big part of that as well.</p>



<p>There&#8217;s a lot going on in our community right now. And we wanted to pull out this data, and one of our objectives was to better understand the needs and challenges of people using WordPress in higher education.</p>



<p>[00:08:06] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay. Thank you for that, Rachel. I&#8217;m going to advise that everybody goes over to the following URL. In fact, pause the podcast right now. If you&#8217;re sitting at a computer or you&#8217;re on your phone, go to wpcampus.org and over there you&#8217;re going to be able to see more about the mission.</p>



<p>At the moment, the membership numbers are displayed on the website. Whether or not that&#8217;s true when you visit, I don&#8217;t know, but 1,763 members, 688 institutions. That is an impressive number, by the way. I mean, the membership is great, but the institutional count is utterly fabulous. That&#8217;s really impressive.</p>



<p>But the idea is to juxtapose WordPress and higher ed. We don&#8217;t really use that word in the UK too much. We just kind of generically call things, I think university, so I just want to clear that up. Does higher ed basically service the needs of anybody that&#8217;s left traditional school? So I don&#8217;t know, 18 plus who&#8217;s going through some degree program or something like that?</p>



<p>[00:08:58] <strong>Rachel Cherry:</strong> Yes. Our mission is really to support kind of that, and I apologise, I can&#8217;t think of the general term. There&#8217;s a kind of a general term that we do use across, that&#8217;s more of a global, because higher ed is very specific to the United States in a lot of ways.</p>



<p>So we do support kind of that further education. We do have a lot of UK institutions and universities that participate in the work that we do. I would say that our group is largely United States, a lot of UK, a lot of Canadians as well. But we do have folks from all around the world. So it&#8217;s really just that spirit of wanting to support that mission of education.</p>



<p>Over the years have had a lot of people, even in the kind of K through 12 or early education people, wanting to be involved. And a lot of the things that early education and higher, or later, education have in common, but they&#8217;re also very different. So we haven&#8217;t quite merged with the early education group in that way. But yes, we do support largely this kind of university, higher education context.</p>



<p>[00:09:59] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay, thank you. Yeah, that clears that up. I mean, you&#8217;re really busy over there. You&#8217;ve got loads of, I mean, an awful lot going on. There&#8217;s a whole thing about governance. You&#8217;ve got a newsletter, you put on real world events as well as online based events, and a Slack community. And there&#8217;s just a lot going on. It seems like, I don&#8217;t know if this has taken over your life, but it seems like it could well have done.</p>



<p>[00:10:17] <strong>Rachel Cherry:</strong> It did for a long time, and these days I have a lot more help. For a long time I was really the only director and then a few years back we did the work to implement more of a fleshed out kind of board of directors. And so I&#8217;m just a member of that board now. I am not the director in charge.</p>



<p>[00:10:34] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, all of that, again, is freely available on the website. You can see who the current custodians of the project are.</p>



<p>So where does Human Made, Alex, where does Human Made fit into this piece of the puzzle? How, have you become involved?</p>



<p>[00:10:45] <strong>Alex Aspinall:</strong> Yeah, I guess it goes back to what I was saying a little bit before about, I was just personally really interested in the higher ed use case of WordPress, and started digging around into learning a bit more about what kind of projects people had on the go, and what kind of platforms were being built in the space. They&#8217;re diverse, they&#8217;re complicated, they&#8217;re multi-site, you know, interesting, I guess is why I started getting involved.</p>



<p>Human Made is one of the agencies that builds complex, larger projects, so there&#8217;s a fit there as well. So we started looking around the space, seeing who it might be interesting to talk to, just in terms of learning a bit more. Obviously Rachel and WP Campus. We started talking informally about just the experience of being in WordPress in higher education.</p>



<p>I think the first thing we collaborated on over a year ago now was we did an online conference in the run up to WP Campus&#8217; IRL conference a couple of weeks later. And then after that we enjoyed working together, we thought there was a lot more material we could work on, and this research project, I suppose was the biggest idea that came out of those discussions following that.</p>



<p>[00:11:52] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay. So I&#8217;ve downloaded the report and I&#8217;ve had a thorough look through it. There&#8217;s an awful lot in here actually. It is available, like I said, I&#8217;ll link to it in the show notes. However, I have to say, it&#8217;s a very graphical thing that we&#8217;re going to be talking about. There&#8217;s loads of charts kind of explaining the percentages in many cases of one thing versus another. So you will probably get more out of this podcast if you have downloaded it, and had a little peruse.</p>



<p>It doesn&#8217;t really matter who wants to take this, but I&#8217;m going to ask one of you to sort of explain what are some of the curious findings that you&#8217;ve got? Maybe the one, two, or three top level items that you think might be of great interest, and then we can maybe dig into the weeds of those particular things. So anything that your intuition suggests as something our audience might be interested in.</p>



<p>[00:12:32] <strong>Rachel Cherry:</strong> I&#8217;ll start with like my key takeaways, which are very broad, and then dive into a few of the data points. But my two key takeaways that I reported on was that our higher ed teams need more resources, and a way to share more resources, and that higher education needs more enterprise features in the WordPress product. Those were kind of my two, like looking at the data, my two takeaways. And at our report presentation that we had recently, we talked about that with folks in the community.</p>



<p>But some of the really interesting questions that we asked were around usage of the block editor and full site editing. And so nothing super surprising. But let me pull up that particular chart really quick.</p>



<p>So we asked folks, how fully have you adopted the block editor and full site editing? And only 40% of the respondents are using it on all of their sites. And there was a range there. Like we asked, are you using it on all of them? Are you using it on like most of them? Alex touched on this earlier, higher ed is a very interesting space, and the thing that I, people used to hear me say frequently was that WordPress and higher ed is WordPress in the enterprise on a budget. And what that usually means is a lot of under-resourced teams having to use WordPress to solve these large scale enterprise, high user environments.</p>



<p>What comes out of that is very creative, very custom, very interesting, complex solutions. This is kind of tying back to my takeaway of people need more resources and they need ways to share them. Because something that is also interesting in our space is how much custom work there is. How much people are solving the same problems, but they&#8217;re solving them on their own, and they don&#8217;t have a way to really share them. It takes a lot of energy to like maintain a public plugin that gets used around. And so because these plugins are usually so custom that creates this whole challenge.</p>



<p>So anyway, back to the block editor. So when you&#8217;re trying to introduce new functionality in these complex enterprise environments, it can take a while. Higher ed is usually, it&#8217;s usually a pretty slow train of adoption, and there are reasons. And a big reason for that is resources. And you&#8217;re not just going to turn around and add the block editor on because you&#8217;re probably managing like 300 websites, and you can&#8217;t just change the editing experience without changing all of your training materials, and without changing your governance.</p>



<p>So yeah, so there&#8217;s context to why, and there&#8217;s lots of reasons. There&#8217;s other reasons that we don&#8217;t really dive into in these numbers, but there&#8217;s context that goes into why only 40% are actually using it on all their sites, even though Gutenberg came out in 2019.</p>



<p>[00:15:28] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Can I just ask you a quick question? You said something which took my breath away there. You said these people are managing probably 300 websites. I didn&#8217;t see that in the report anyway, and that seems like a really surprising number. How does that map to an institution? Is it because there&#8217;s a website for, I don&#8217;t know, the geography department, and then there&#8217;s another one for the sociology department? Is that what&#8217;s going on there? Because 300 seems like, well, I mean you could run your entire agency and not have 300 websites under your custodianship. So what&#8217;s going on there? You dropped that number and I was really surprised by it.</p>



<p>[00:16:01] <strong>Rachel Cherry:</strong> Yes, in higher ed, there is a website for everything. And there is the notion of, if you&#8217;re familiar with domain of one&#8217;s own, which is a concept actually introduced in, or invented in, higher education in the States. And what it really means in our context is that people will set up WordPress multi-sites and then let people create their own sites on it.</p>



<p>And they&#8217;re largely blogs, like a faculty member&#8217;s blog or a research lab&#8217;s blog. But it&#8217;s a way to allow the sharing and the spreading of information and research in higher ed with kind of a low service effort.</p>



<p>So like you can log on and you have like two template choices or two theme choices, and then you&#8217;re responsible for kind of managing a site on there. And then they try to, you know, build this domain in a way that&#8217;s kind of reusable code and plugins, like you do in WordPress. So yeah, you can get a lot of sites going.</p>



<p>[00:16:54] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, that&#8217;s absolutely fascinating. I hadn&#8217;t really thought about it as, well, for example, if I go to a university website here and I end up at the Department of Geography, I&#8217;m kind of thinking it&#8217;s the same website, but I imagine, you&#8217;re right, it&#8217;s a whole different team of staff that are logging in and doing the geography stuff than they would be elsewhere.</p>



<p>Okay, so that&#8217;s curious. Right, back to the points that you mentioned, the resources. When you say that universities, I&#8217;m just going to use the word university, when you say that these institutions have limited resources, it kind of feels like the funding model in the US is very different to one that we have in the UK, and possibly different parts of the world.</p>



<p>And it always feels as if the US institutions probably have more money, but I&#8217;m probably thinking of things like the Ivy League universities where the fees are very high, but that probably doesn&#8217;t map all over the place.</p>



<p>So when you say resources, are you talking about cash, them being strapped for cash, or are you talking about human beings? You know, there&#8217;s not enough boots on the ground, if you like, or maybe it&#8217;s a confection of both.</p>



<p>[00:17:50] <strong>Rachel Cherry:</strong> Probably both, but largely headcount. I mean every university or institution&#8217;s different and some might actually be more cash strapped than others. But it&#8217;s largely a headcount. It&#8217;s largely the fact that in a lot of these institutions, you&#8217;ll have a web team of like three people managing 300 websites. And what that means, how they have to kind of manage how they spend their time and what they do with it.</p>



<p>[00:18:12] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay, so it&#8217;s a bit of both. There&#8217;s less human beings than there might be in the corporate space, but also they&#8217;re probably fairly strapped for cash.</p>



<p>And then moving onto the block editor, I&#8217;ll come to you in a second, Alex, if that&#8217;s all right. But staying with Rachel for a moment. I&#8217;m looking at the chart now, 40% adoption of the block editor entirely, using them on all the websites, so point four, 40%. Then we drop down to 23% using it on some of them. 19% using on most, and then the last one really of interest here is 16% who are not using the block editor at all.</p>



<p>Has that adoption just sort of slowly ramped up, because 40% in higher ed feels like, to me, it doesn&#8217;t seem like a bad number in all honesty. I know that in the real world probably it is higher adoption than that, but I&#8217;m guessing that there are many more constraints on universities just switching out to the block editor. So is that number slowly but inexorably rising? It feels like it&#8217;s going in the right direction, but with the caveats that it has to happen slowly.</p>



<p>[00:19:11] <strong>Rachel Cherry:</strong> We don&#8217;t have data from the last, you know, four or five years to truly answer that question. But the vibe, or the sentiment, in our space is that, yes, it&#8217;s been slowly increasing. And part of that is just people, you know, there&#8217;s lots of factors, right? There&#8217;s people waiting for maturity. They&#8217;re waiting for it to grow more before they adopt. Or because of said resource discussion, people are waiting for the next redesign, for example.</p>



<p>In our space, I think we even asked, how often do you redesign? Is one of the questions that we asked in our survey. I think it&#8217;s on average like every three years or so, three to five years, something like that. And so people in our space tend to wait for that to really implement large scale changes because it&#8217;s just easier to do it then than it is, you&#8217;re already doing a bunch of work, you might as well do it then. And so that&#8217;s another factor involved.</p>



<p>[00:20:04] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, there&#8217;s a little corollary to the chart that I&#8217;ve just described, underneath it, where the question was asked, how long did you wait before implementing the block editor? And basically the data skews towards, we&#8217;re trying to wait as long as possible. You know, more than two years is 35%. So it feels like, because of the nature of the audience, and I guess accessibility is a really crucial part of this, you&#8217;ve got to put the brakes on. You can&#8217;t be all that agile in the same way that maybe a corporate would, because you&#8217;ve got lots of stakeholders, lots of editorial teams that need updating and so on and so forth. So that&#8217;s kind of interesting.</p>



<p>And then I know that you didn&#8217;t mention this, Rachel, but it&#8217;s tantalizingly underneath the question that has just been mentioned. We move on to full site editing and it feels like, whoa, the brakes are really on for that. 62% of respondents said that they&#8217;re not using full site editing at all, and the numbers are kind of into low single figures where they&#8217;re describing whether or not they&#8217;re using it on all their sites.</p>



<p>So the block editor, in terms of content creation is on the rise, but it would appear that full site editing, the ability to, you know, modify themes and customise that kind of thing inside of WordPress, not so much. It feels like the breaks are really on there, probably as a result of the resources that you mentioned earlier.</p>



<p>[00:21:15] <strong>Rachel Cherry:</strong> It&#8217;s probably following the same trajectory. Full site editing is newer and it will grow with time. But I think with full site editing, it&#8217;s very similar concerns to the block editor, but it&#8217;s more about governance and control. When you do set up these WordPress websites where you do have a lot of governance over accessibility or over branding, it&#8217;s really scary.</p>



<p>The full site editing without fully understanding what it does, and how you can control it and set boundaries, there&#8217;s that concern about governance of, we don&#8217;t actually want people using our websites to be able to customise the site. We want a lot of control over that, most of the time, not everyone, but most people. Because in our space, a lot of the users that are coming in and kind of admining their site, or editing their site, are not trained web professionals. They are biology professor who&#8217;s kind of doing job as needed.</p>



<p>And so we want them to have flexibility to go in and publish content. We want them to be able to share their research, share their information, but we don&#8217;t want them to be able to have free reign to kind of break our governance rules, and potentially create risk to our brand or to our accessibility and things like that. And so the full site editing, there&#8217;s a lot of people that are kind of hesitant and being patient for the full site editing implementation.</p>



<p>[00:22:43] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you for that. So we&#8217;ve got a picture then of how WordPress is deployed. It seems like it&#8217;s the CMS of choice over in the education, higher ed landscape anyway.</p>



<p>So moving over to Alex, I&#8217;m talking more about the implementation of this now. Presumably agencies such as yourself, Human Made, you are getting requests from these institutions to build these websites.</p>



<p>How does that process work? Do you generally tend to work with like the web team over there and you, you know, backwards and forwards with them? And then the bit that I&#8217;m most curious about, talking about what Rachel just said, how on earth do you get these people so that they can use the website that you&#8217;ve built? Because, in many institutions it may be one or two people have got their hands on this, but it sounds like there may be several hundred people who need to access the WordPress website. So training.</p>



<p>So there&#8217;s two parts to that question really. How are you interfacing in terms of building the things when you are approached by these institutions? And then how do you get to hand it off and provide a good level of support and training to them?</p>



<p>[00:23:37] <strong>Alex Aspinall:</strong> Yeah, it&#8217;s a good question. I think the main back and forth we have would be with, typically the web team of course, as you guessed there. I think each institution is set up differently. I think Rachel probably could testify to the fact that, you know, the challenges and benefits of being set up one way is not mirrored and how it&#8217;s done elsewhere. So I do think agencies generally have to be flexible, and work within the parameters that they&#8217;re asked to, you know, that&#8217;s kind of our job.</p>



<p>I think there are also, particularly with the biggest implementations in higher ed, there&#8217;s often other agencies involved or other specialists involved as well. You might be working with someone, you know, we might be bringing design and platform expertise and you might be working with someone that&#8217;s looking after the marketing and the wider brand of the university as well.</p>



<p>So I think there&#8217;s quite a lot of collaboration indeed, like the amount of time I&#8217;ve spent within higher ed, I think collaboration is a really big theme, and I think that the successful projects that we see getting delivered are very collaborative in nature.</p>



<p>And then yeah, in terms of training and handover, I imagine on the ground in the universities in question, they have a bigger challenge than perhaps we do, because we&#8217;ll be handing it over to a smaller percentage ultimately of the wider institution. We don&#8217;t run 300 separate training sessions or anything like that. We provide detailed documentation, videos, follow up sessions, and we make sure that the team that are receiving the product are fully versed in it.</p>



<p>I think a lot of the time those people are. I think it&#8217;s handing it over to the editors that then the work will have to be done on a one-to-one basis in terms of what they&#8217;re allowed to do, going back to the FSE point. Not everyone can edit everything.</p>



<p>[00:25:08] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s kind of curious because when I see a website for, again, I&#8217;m going to use the word university. When I see the website for university, I&#8217;m just seeing this kind of brochure site, really. In other words, here&#8217;s the university, look at all the magical things that we do. But my daughter has just been at university, and there&#8217;s so much more to it than that. So there&#8217;s like this portal where my daughter goes, logs in, and now the expectation is that much of the work will be carried out in that format. You know, you&#8217;ll submit content, there will be lesson plans and all of that kind of thing.</p>



<p>So essentially the question is leading me up to, what kind of things are being built into this website apart from the public facing bit, which we might call a prospectus, really? You&#8217;ve got this online prospectus, the world can see it, we can marvel at how great the university is, but it seems like there&#8217;s a heck of a lot more. Each department has its own stuff. Presumably the students, increasingly being expected to log in, especially post COVID, I imagine as well. So again, that one probably to Alex. What kind of curious things are built inside these WordPress websites, LMSs, brochure sites, and so on?</p>



<p>[00:26:10] <strong>Alex Aspinall:</strong> Yeah, I mean, no, you listed off a lot of the options there really. I mean, the main three or four pages you might think of as being the university site are very much that, just the brochure. But there&#8217;s all kinds of different requirements for different departments. We&#8217;ll have different kinds of products that they want to build in there. You&#8217;ve got archives of hundreds and thousands of different reports and pieces of information from the past that will be needed to be upheld.</p>



<p>We rebuilt Harvard Gazette, which is, you know, obviously part of the wider infrastructure at Harvard. So that&#8217;s a massive publishing site. That&#8217;s essentially the same as any magazine or newspaper would have. It&#8217;s what it is. As you say, the student logins, all the complexities of multi-site. Rachel, I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;ve probably got a list longer than that.</p>



<p>[00:26:53] <strong>Rachel Cherry:</strong> It&#8217;s a lot, right? In my role as an accessibility professional, do a lot of governance work and it&#8217;s trying to tie together all these different types because there&#8217;s WordPress at my university, but there&#8217;s tons of other stuff. There&#8217;s front end brochure websites, and there&#8217;s research lab sites, and there&#8217;s marketing websites, and then there&#8217;s all the academic focused, as Alex mentioned a few. There&#8217;s a lot of web applications. There&#8217;s a lot of people doing a lot of different types of content in different ways. And how does that all tie together?</p>



<p>We talk a lot about things like data sharing and a lot of the work that we do is also just trying to keep all this content in sync and trying to not have duplicates or not have outdated content, things like that. So when we talk about governance is like a big word that means a lot of things to different people. But a lot of it is really just kind of managing quality and the expectations of how websites are managed and how our mission as an institution is kind of presented to the world.</p>



<p>So it&#8217;s interesting, Nathan, that you say, like to you, it&#8217;s like you just see this brochure site, and that&#8217;s a common conversation about kind of the challenges of enterprise. We have all this internal knowledge and we also have, you know, there&#8217;s a funny common conversation in universities about acronyms. We have all this internal terminology that we use, but does that come across to the end user? Does the work that we do translate? And it&#8217;s a complicated question to solve.</p>



<p>[00:28:22] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I&#8217;m kind of curious as to whether or not WordPress can service the needs of the entire IT department, if you like, within a higher ed institution. So I&#8217;m imagining that the legacy is that there&#8217;s many, many pieces of software that are being used throughout the university. You know, there may be some sort of portal where people log in and check in that they&#8217;re actually at work. There may be other things where people log their essays that they supply to their tutors and things like that. Plus then there&#8217;s the brochure on the front end.</p>



<p>I&#8217;m curious as to whether or not WordPress in the future can handle most of those, and whether there&#8217;s an appetite from the higher ed institutions to have everything in one platform. They may see that as, you know, maybe that presents an Achilles heel to them. If there&#8217;s one systemic failure, then the whole thing goes down. But I&#8217;m curious as to whether or not WP Campus is trying to pitch WordPress as the answer to all the things, or is it a much more limited subset of things? You know, it&#8217;s the website, and it&#8217;s the LMS and that kind of thing. So that&#8217;s more of a kind of roadmap question, whether you&#8217;re trying to push WordPress as being the answer to everything.</p>



<p>[00:29:20] <strong>Rachel Cherry:</strong> As an organisation, we don&#8217;t really push for WordPress to be used. It&#8217;s not really our mission. That&#8217;s not how we think or how we work. It&#8217;s really more just to support people that have, that are using it, and to help each other in our roles.</p>



<p>To answer your broader question, I mean I kind of, it depends. Can WordPress be used for all these things? Sure. I&#8217;m sure you could finagle it to do a lot of things. Should it do all those things? Probably not. Not in its current state, no. It, in and of itself, is a database with programming and you can get it to do all kinds of things.</p>



<p>[00:29:54] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, there was one of the questions which I&#8217;ve just refound and it was, what challenges do you face with the WordPress plugin ecosystem? And bloat was one of the things that was mentioned. So yeah, this is specifically to do with WordPress plugins. It&#8217;s not WordPress Core. I thought that was kind of curious.</p>



<p>And then in second place, just by a whisker, was accessibility requirements as well. And you&#8217;ve touched on accessibility a lot, Rachel. You&#8217;ve mentioned the word tangentially, and obviously that&#8217;s your kind of area of expertise.</p>



<p>I&#8217;m guessing, but I&#8217;m not sure for certain, does the US compel certain things to be done in certain ways? You know, if you&#8217;re a university and you launch a website, does it have to comply with things? And do those things map across the globe? I know that we&#8217;ve got the European Accessibility Act, which just dropped earlier this year. So the question is pretty broad, but just tell us about the accessibility requirements and how stringent they are in higher ed as compared to just, I don&#8217;t know, if I&#8217;ve got a brochure site online selling widgets into the community.</p>



<p>[00:30:51] <strong>Rachel Cherry:</strong> So unfortunately the US does not have as strong accessibility laws as Europe does, or many countries in Europe, like the UK and others. We do have some though, and we do have something called section 508, which basically means that if you receive federal funding or federal service, you do have to meet certain accessibility requirements.</p>



<p>And so universities in the US largely fall under that. Not always. Universities are probably the only real kind of ecosystem in the US that does have more accessibility rules than other industries like general business. And so that&#8217;s why we did that accessibility audit of Gutenberg to help support our community in that time.</p>



<p>And so it is very important, accessibility is very important. And it kind of touches on something that I said earlier about, a lot of universities in the US especially build custom plugins because they have to meet accessibility guidelines and it&#8217;s really challenging sometimes to find general use plugins available in the ecosystem that meet those guidelines. And so a lot of teams just kind of build their own stuff.</p>



<p>And so I would say that those top two challenges, when it comes to bloat and accessibility are really, like that was not surprising in any way. That is the common struggle. It&#8217;s finding plugins that meet our accessibility requirements, especially with the front end. And then having plugins that do a lot of functionality that people don&#8217;t need. And so I think a lot of these times will lend people to kind of build their own plugins.</p>



<p>They won&#8217;t rebuild like complicated plugins, any kind of administrative plugins or like form builders and things like that. Like, people largely will use plugins from the ecosystem. But there&#8217;s a lot of custom functionality in the work that we do.</p>



<p>So once again, I think the common theme is it&#8217;s complex, and because of that complexity, there&#8217;s all kinds of interesting challenges. And so plugins are hard to kind of maintain. It feels like, I hear a lot of people expressing to me, you know, how often they have to kind of update them and keep them up to date, and manage and do all that. And so it&#8217;s not enough to stop people from using WordPress, like they&#8217;re using it, but having better solutions for some of these challenges would be an example of kind of supporting these higher ed institutions using WordPress.</p>



<p>[00:33:12] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you. Alex, back to you. A question around just higher ed in general, is this like an area which Human Made is drilling down on? Is this an endeavor that you are trying to grow the pie, if you like? There&#8217;s thousands, I would imagine, maybe tens of thousands of institutions which come under the banner of higher ed. And at the moment, I don&#8217;t know what percentage of them are using WordPress. If we were to ask every single one of them, I would imagine it&#8217;s a significant percentage.</p>



<p>But the idea of WP Campus, I guess, is to have a central place where people can go and learn about it. And Human Made being involved, presumably there&#8217;s some advantage to you as an enterprise agency. The question basically boils down to, is this an area that you are going to be working on, pitching towards, trying to grow in the near future?</p>



<p>[00:33:55] <strong>Alex Aspinall:</strong> Yeah, for sure. I think like I said at the start, we&#8217;re generally the kind of agency who works on larger platforms, maybe more complicated platforms. And I think we&#8217;re interested in, you know, a broad range of industries. Probably higher ed is one of four or five, probably publishing, finance, enterprise generally, entertainment, higher ed. I think those industries tend to provide very interesting use cases for WordPress. We&#8217;re interested in all of them.</p>



<p>I think we&#8217;ve seen, in the last couple of years, a lot of interesting higher ed projects being worked on by us and obviously by lots and lots of other people. And yeah, like we&#8217;re definitely part of that world, and really interested in it and, you know, yeah, definitely keen to continue being part of it, a hundred percent.</p>



<p>[00:34:45] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s kind of interesting, towards the bottom of the survey, so right near the bottom, probably nine tenths of the way through, there&#8217;s a whole series of kind of roadmap questions, if you like, things about the future of WordPress. And the fairly, I don&#8217;t know, blunt question, let&#8217;s put it that way, because it could have gone in the other direction it turns out, it&#8217;s hopefully gone in the right direction, but the question was asked, would you move to another CMS if you had time and resources?</p>



<p>And gosh, that could go the wrong way. The answer was a strong 49% no. Which, when you say it like that you think, hang on, only half of the people wouldn&#8217;t move. But then you ask, then the other bit was only 23% are looking to move at all, and 28% are unknown. So really you&#8217;re up into the sort of seventies really, who either are not sure or want to stick around.</p>



<p>That seems like an amazing statistic to me. And obviously, Human Made have kind of put their flag in the ground in higher ed, WP Campus, the same. It feels like you&#8217;ve got quite a lot of runway with these institutions in the future. Unless things go horribly wrong within WordPress, it looks like you&#8217;ve got an audience long into the future.</p>



<p>[00:35:43] <strong>Alex Aspinall:</strong> I think the report offers a really positive view of WordPress. As a technology choice, I think on the whole, most people are saying it was delivering what they needed it to. I can&#8217;t remember if it&#8217;s 70, 75%, something like that, it was said that it was either meeting or exceeding their expectations, which I think is a large number. Again, it&#8217;s not like 90, but if you think about the amount of ways you can complain about software, particularly people that know a lot about the software, I think 75% is pretty good.</p>



<p>And yeah, you&#8217;re right, whilst people are perhaps saying, oh, they&#8217;re looking around or they&#8217;re always considering alternatives, I think we&#8217;ve seen repeatedly that the platform, its security credentials, its extensibility, some of the core features, are all spoken about really, really favorably from the people that responded to the survey.</p>



<p>And I think really we saw a passionate group of people responding to a technology they know a lot about. There are a lot of ways it could improve, we all know that, and the people that completed the survey know that as well, and they&#8217;ve, you know, they weren&#8217;t shy about listing them out. But I think you&#8217;re right, overall, the level of satisfaction is good, and I think with further adoption and the adoption of newer features, I think that that satisfaction should continue to grow.</p>



<p>In fact, one of the things I was actually kind of wanting to ask Rachel actually was back to the point about FSE earlier on. I actually think WordPress needs to do a much better job of marketing itself, particularly around newer features, and particularly perhaps at the enterprise level, or where there&#8217;s complex use cases, or where a lot of the users aren&#8217;t developers. The benefits of FSE, for example, are numerous. And we&#8217;ve seen clients and indeed we&#8217;ve used it ourselves, and the people using it really like it, and I think that&#8217;s reflected in the report as well.</p>



<p>So I was going to ask Rachel, as well as the other examples of why adoption might have been slow in higher ed, do you think that there&#8217;s actually a case for people in, maybe agencies, maybe WordPress Core doing a better job of the selling and the pitching? Because I actually believe that there are worse solutions that do a better job of convincing people that they should work in a certain way.</p>



<p>[00:37:51] <strong>Rachel Cherry:</strong> I think there&#8217;s always room for more marketing and kind of communication about what&#8217;s going on, and there&#8217;s always improvement for that. And I do feel like Core could do more towards the enterprise ecosystem as well. That, you know, I don&#8217;t know what their primary use case that they&#8217;re focusing on is. But I would be surprised to find out that enterprise is higher up on that list. And so paying attention to our community and having open conversations with them, and there has been some efforts at that. There&#8217;s not like a non amount of effort on that.</p>



<p>But yeah there&#8217;s, I think a good way to kind of describe how a lot of our community works is just kind of, it&#8217;s cautiously optimistic, but cautious. And having to manage risk and having to manage their time and energy, and so they&#8217;re not going to jump into anything. They&#8217;re going to do a lot of research. They&#8217;re going to try to find out who else is doing it, and is it working well for them?</p>



<p>So there&#8217;s a lot of, we do a lot of case studies and try to encourage our community to share about the work they&#8217;re doing. Because really that goes a long way too. If a university sees another university using full site editing and that it&#8217;s successful, then that goes a long way.</p>



<p>And when you have an absence of that, when you have an absence of examples, then it&#8217;s a struggle, right? Because our environment is so complex that an article about full site editing and what it can do doesn&#8217;t really go super far. We need to understand, not just what it does, but the long-term implications. Because once we implement it, that&#8217;s it. It&#8217;s very hard to back up, especially in our, these 300 website multi-site instances where we&#8217;ve got to train people and do all these things. We can&#8217;t rush into it.</p>



<p>So there&#8217;s a lot of cautious waiting and seeing. So the more that universities can share about how they&#8217;re using the tools and how it&#8217;s working for them, and what&#8217;s not working for them. Being genuine in the reality of what we&#8217;re doing goes a long way. So there&#8217;s pros and cons, like, here&#8217;s how it worked, here&#8217;s the roadblocks we hit, here&#8217;s how it could be better. Having those kinds of conversations can really go a long way towards adoption.</p>



<p>[00:39:59] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I have a few things to add to this, and the first one would be that my expectation when a survey is put out is, broadly speaking, the expectation is that negativity is going to be the thing driving them to the survey. And that&#8217;s not what you find here. People who&#8217;ve got an axe to grind are frequently more likely to open up a survey and grind the axe, and that isn&#8217;t the case here.</p>



<p>You know, it&#8217;s remarkably sanguine. Everybody seems entirely optimistic. And even the data which may be not quite as favorable, is not unfavorable. It&#8217;s just maybe not as shiny as it could have been.</p>



<p>But then I&#8217;m looking at the second question here about what the favorite things are and it&#8217;s all the stuff that we lean into all the time. The extensibility, the fact that it&#8217;s free, otherwise known as cost, the fact that it&#8217;s multi-site capable, the fact that there&#8217;s plugins and what have you that you can extend it with.</p>



<p>And the editing experience, so we&#8217;re talking about full site editing, I guess there as well as the editor, is low on the list of priorities, which is quite interesting. Only 36% of respondents thought that that was their priority.</p>



<p>And then talking to the broader, I don&#8217;t know, the marketing piece, I think WordPress as a whole, it is really difficult to market something to the entire world. And that&#8217;s what WordPress is. So for the, like the Core community and things like that, to try and figure out where to put their best efforts, you know, how to convince people that WordPress is the solution for them, is really difficult, because it&#8217;s everybody. It&#8217;s literally anybody who might want a website.</p>



<p>And so I think that&#8217;s where endeavors like WP Campus really pull out all the stops. You know, you are out there shouting loudly that this is the credible solution, if you&#8217;ve got a need for a website in the higher ed space. You are making it so that, I guess if we were to Google higher ed CMS, WordPress is going to come up fairly high. So you are growing that pie.</p>



<p>But I guess the audience is fairly small, isn&#8217;t it? You know, at each institution, how many people are going to be making those searches? It&#8217;s not going to be the 300 people that you mentioned. It&#8217;s probably going to be the web team.</p>



<p>So I think you&#8217;re doing great work. You know, you&#8217;re definitely finding those people and the important decision makers are probably the people. that you need to find.</p>



<p>I keep coming back to the phrase, growing the pie. That&#8217;s what I think WP Campus is basically about. You know, of the 10,000 institutions out there that might use WordPress, it&#8217;s about making sure that a growing proportion of them know that it&#8217;s a credible alternative to whatever they&#8217;re using now. And from the numbers in the survey, it looks like once you&#8217;ve onboarded them, it&#8217;s easy to keep hold of them, which is pretty cool.</p>



<p>[00:42:21] <strong>Rachel Cherry:</strong> For WP Campus as an organisation, we wanted to use the survey to really surface the needs. And so there&#8217;s questions in this survey that talk about what plugin needs exist.</p>



<p>You know, one of my takeaways from this survey is how WordPress does need more enterprise functionality. And that&#8217;s covered a lot in the questions about plugin functionality. There is a big need and a gap for a lot of enterprise functionality in the WordPress ecosystem and higher ed needs it. So if there are people out there wanting to build it, we are ready for it.</p>



<p>And so, you know, I want to surface those needs to kind of help bring more resources to our community and to what they&#8217;re doing. And so anyone out there looking to help fill that gap, please check out the survey and I&#8217;m open to have a conversation at any time, and we&#8217;d love for you to join our Slack and ask us questions and get us involved.</p>



<p>[00:43:12] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay, that&#8217;s an interesting call to action because you know, if you&#8217;ve got space in your calendar to build a new thing, you now have a brand new audience potentially, if you&#8217;ve not considered the higher education space, there&#8217;s a ton of data in this report which you can download. So maybe this is a whole new audience that you didn&#8217;t realise that you could tap into. Alex, was there anything, it sounded like you had something.</p>



<p>[00:43:33] <strong>Alex Aspinall:</strong> Yeah, no, I was just going to echo really to what Rachel was saying there. I think the idea with this report was to, as Rachel said earlier on, provide data that has been missing. There&#8217;s no cynical play, it&#8217;s a collaborative report that&#8217;s designed to help other people understand how their peers are working, what their challenges are, how they&#8217;re trying to solve them, what kind of environment they&#8217;re doing it all in.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s a really fascinating area, as I said earlier on, and we are really excited to see it develop and help it develop. And, yeah, we will be certainly collaborating with WP Campus and Rachel going forward.</p>



<p>[00:44:06] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, so whether or not, it really doesn&#8217;t matter which bit of WordPress you are attached to, whether you&#8217;re a hosting company or a plugin or a theme developer or an agency, just building out websites, there really is a bit of this which will map to whatever it is that you are doing.</p>



<p>The website URL I mentioned earlier, wpcampus.org is where you&#8217;re going to find this out. I presume that they&#8217;re somewhere, if I was to explore, I would probably find a contact form. But beyond that, let&#8217;s go to Rachel first, how could people reach out to you if they&#8217;re curious about what you&#8217;ve said to today? Where would they best find you?</p>



<p>[00:44:36] <strong>Rachel Cherry:</strong> Yeah, so you can join our Slack, which is accessible from wpcampus.org. There is a Slack page and you fill out a form and you get an invite, and feel free to join and start some conversations. There is a contact form on wpcampus.org, and I do receive those emails along with other people in our organisation. So that&#8217;s another great way to get in touch with me as well.</p>



<p>[00:44:59] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you. And Alex, same question.</p>



<p>[00:45:01] <strong>Alex Aspinall:</strong> Yeah, for us, obviously website, humanmade.com. There&#8217;s a contact form on there. But also Twitter and LinkedIn tend to be our main sort of points of contact for people getting in touch with us.</p>



<p>Might also be worth flagging out, we&#8217;ve got a Word on the Future newsletter, which goes out once a month. You can sign up for that on the website. That generally has this kind of content, not always about higher education, but about the enterprise WordPress space in general. So that&#8217;s quite a nice touch point too.</p>



<p>[00:45:24] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I&#8217;ll just mention before we finish off that the WP Campus site not only links to, you know, the bits and pieces that are going on right now, but there&#8217;s the blog and there&#8217;s also links to the events as well as the Slack channel and things like that, oh, and a newsletter. There&#8217;s a whole load of opportunities to keep in touch with what&#8217;s going on over there.</p>



<p>So, yeah, what I would also say is it&#8217;s very hard in an audio podcast to do justice to a report, which is primarily graphics. So please, if you&#8217;ve any curiosity around what we&#8217;ve been talking about, go and download that and you&#8217;ll be able to get the full detail of what we&#8217;ve been talking about. You&#8217;re going to find that on the Human Made website, and I will link to it in the show notes.</p>



<p>Okay, Rachel Cherry, Alex Aspinall, thank you so much for chatting to me today. Really appreciate it.</p>



<p>[00:46:05] <strong>Alex Aspinall:</strong> Thanks for having us.</p>



<p>[00:46:06] <strong>Rachel Cherry:</strong> Yes, thank you.</p>
</div></details>



<p>On the podcast today we have <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelmcherry/">Rachel Cherry</a> and <a href="https://humanmade.com/who-we-are/alexaspinall/">Alex Aspinall</a>.</p>



<p>Rachel is the founder of <a href="https://wpcampus.org/">WP Campus</a>, a nonprofit organization she launched a decade ago to support professionals using WordPress in higher education. Under her leadership, WP Campus has become a community hub, hosting conferences and leading research projects tailored to the unique needs of its members. Currently, Rachel serves as the organization&#8217;s Director of Technology and sits on its board of directors, where she continues to drive innovative projects.</p>



<p>Alex Aspinall is part of the globally distributed team at Human Made, an established enterprise WordPress agency founded in 2011. At Human Made, Alex helps deliver large-scale web platforms for major organizations, including names like Harvard, Standard Chartered, and PlayStation. In recent years, Alex has developed a strong interest in how WordPress can uniquely serve the higher education sector, and he’s become especially passionate about exploring and supporting this use case.</p>



<p>During the podcast we get into the story behind WP Campus, which has, for the past decade, been empowering people who use WordPress in colleges and universities. We explore Human Made’s growing interest in the complexities of higher education projects, from large multisite networks to the strict accessibility and governance requirements such projects increasingly require.</p>



<p>The heart of the conversation is the just released ‘State of WordPress in Higher Education 2025’ report. We dig into the reports key findings such as the slow adoption of the block editor and full site editing, the challenges of managing hundreds of university websites with small web teams, and why enterprise-level tools are in such high demand.</p>



<p>Whether you’re a WordPress professional, agency, educator, or are just curious about the unique needs and opportunities the higher education space offers, this episode is for you.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Useful links</h2>



<p><a href="https://wpcampus.org/">WP Campus</a></p>



<p> <a href="https://humanmade.com/resources/the-state-of-wordpress-in-higher-education-research-report/">The State of WordPress in Higher Education</a> report</p>



<p><a href="https://humanmade.com/">Human Made</a></p>



<p><a href="https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/">Harvard Gazette</a></p>



<p><a href="https://wpcampus.org/community-3/slack/">WP Campus Slack</a></p>



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