\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Real-time collaboration: </strong>multiple users can now work on the same post. </li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Navigation overlays:</strong> Customizable mobile menus for more flexible styling. </li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Content focused pattern editing:</strong> Pattern editing now prioritizes the content editing experience with more available options when needed.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Visual revisions: </strong>A new revisions screen inside the block editor gives a visual preview of the changes with an easy-to-understand color-coded system.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>AI Foundation in WordPress: </strong>User can connect their site to an AI agent of choice to use the AI experiments plugin.  Plugin developers can use the Connectors API to register connections to external services.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Furthermore, WordPress 7.0, entails:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Two new blocks: </strong>the Icon block and the Breadcrumbs block.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Viewport-based block show/hide:</strong> Block visibility extended to customize display according to screen-sizes. </li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Gallery lightbox navigation:</strong> improved browsing through images placed in a gallery.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Font management</strong> for all themes: The screen to upload and manage fonts is now available in the <strong>Appearance</strong> menu for classic and block themes.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Many more quality of life changes for workflow and design tools made it into this release. You&#8217;ll find the complete list below. </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/7-0/\">WordPress 7.0</a> is <s>set to be released on April 9, 2026 at <a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2026/wordpress-7-0-release-on-contributor-day/\">Contributor Day of WordCamp Asia</a>.</s> <br />The new release date is soon to be announced. (see <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/31/extending-the-7-0-cycle/\">Ventura&#8217;s announcement</a>) </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of note, this release consists of features from the Gutenberg plugin version 22.0 &#8211; 22.6. Here are the release posts of those plugin releases: <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2025/11/05/whats-new-in-gutenberg-22-0-05-november/\">22.0</a> | <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2025/11/20/whats-new-in-gutenberg-22-1-18-november-2025/\"> 22.1</a> | <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2025/12/03/whats-new-in-gutenberg-22-2-dec3/\"> 22.2</a> | <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2025/12/17/gutenberg-22-3-december-17/\">22.3</a> | <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/01/22/whats-new-in-gutenberg-22-4-20-january/\">22.4</a> | <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/02/04/whats-new-in-gutenberg-22-5-04-february/\">22.5</a> | <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/02/25/whats-new-in-gutenberg-22-6-25-february/\">22.6</a>. Later Gutenberg releases contain bug fixes, backported to WordPress 7.0. release branches.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"important-links\">Important links:</h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2025/12/11/planning-for-7-0/\">Planning for 7.0</a> + <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2025/12/11/planning-for-7-0/#comment-48392\">update on Beta 1</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/7-0/\">WordPress 7.0 Development Cycle</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>What’s new for developers:</strong> <a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2025/12/whats-new-for-developers-december-2025/\">December</a>, <a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2026/01/whats-new-for-developers-january-2026/\">January</a>, <a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2026/02/whats-new-for-developers-february-2026/\">February</a>, <a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2026/03/whats-new-for-developers-march-2026/\">March</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>7.0 Field Guide</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"assets\">Assets </h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In this <a href=\"https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1s3vR7M60U7RcjKCu9Y5GHUo-SDA50jSP\">Google Drive folder</a> you can view all assets in this document.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"tags\">Tags</h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To make this document easier to navigate based on specific audiences, the following tags are used liberally: </p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>[end user]</strong>: end user focus. </li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>[theme builder]</strong>: block or classic theme author. </li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>[plugin author]</strong>: plugin author, whether block or otherwise.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>[developer]</strong>: catch-all term for more technical folks. </li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>[site admin]</strong>: this includes a “builder” type. </li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>[enterprise]</strong>: specific items that would be of interest to or particularly impact enterprise-level folks</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>[all]</strong>: broad impact to every kind of WordPress user. </li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How can you use these? Use your browser&#8217;s <strong>Find</strong> capability and search for the string including the brackets. Then use the arrows to navigate through the post from one result to the next. </p>\n\n\n\n<details class=\"wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow\">Short video on how to use the tags to navigate the post. \n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"></p>\n\n\n\n		<figure class=\"wp-block-jetpack-videopress jetpack-videopress-player\">\n			<div class=\"jetpack-videopress-player__wrapper\"> </div>\n			\n			\n		</figure>\n		</details>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"priority-items-for-wordpress-7-0\">Priority items for WordPress 7.0 </h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"real-time-collaboration-rtc-enterprise-site-admin\">Real-Time Collaboration (RTC) <sup>[enterprise][site admin]</sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Multiple users can now work on the same page at the same time, seeing each other&#8217;s changes as they happen. No more &#8220;someone else is editing this&#8221; warnings. Whether you&#8217;re co-writing a post, reviewing a layout, or making last-minute edits before publishing, everyone stays in sync without leaving the editor. </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It represents the biggest step toward achieving full collaborative editing, not only for newsrooms and big publishing houses.  It also simplifies working on a site editing for agencies and their clients as well as designers and writers working together on a post. </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A presence indicator in the editor header shows who’s currently editing. Under the hood, title, content, and excerpt now sync via <code>Y.text</code> for more granular conflict resolution, and numerous reliability fixes address disconnection handling, revision restores, and performance metrics. (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/75286\">75286</a>, <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/75398\">75398</a>, <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/75065\">75065</a>, <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/75448\">75448</a>, <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/75595\">75595</a>).</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You can enable the feature via <strong>Settings &gt; Writing</strong>. Check the box next to <strong>Enable early access to real-time collaboration</strong>, in the <strong>Collaboration</strong> section. </p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-44905\" height=\"221\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Collaboration-Settings-Writing.png?resize=652%2C221&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"652\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The infrastructure implementation uses HTTP polling for universal compatibility,  CRDT (Conflict-free Replicated Data Type) update data is stored persistently in post_meta on a special internal <code>wp_sync_storage</code> post type (one per &#8220;room&#8221;/document). </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The sync provider architecture is designed so that the storage and transport layer can be swapped out. Updates are batched and periodically compacted. WordPress code initially limits simultaneous collaborators to two to protect hosts. (<a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/64622\">64622</a>). </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hosting companies have the option to add a different provider. There will be a <code>wp-config</code> constant that can be used to change the defaults. </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Introduces JavaScript filters to allow third party developers to slow down or speed up polling via the RTC client. (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/76518\">76518</a>).</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For more details, check out the Dev Note <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/10/real-time-collaboration-in-the-block-editor/\"><strong>Real-Time Collaboration in the Block Editor</strong></a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Update:</strong> </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Since October, WordPress VIP beta participants — spanning newsrooms, research institutions, and enterprise publishers — tested the real-time collaboration against live editorial workflows, reporting back what worked, what broke, and what they couldn’t live without. Their voices didn’t just validate the feature — they shaped it.</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Matias Ventura explains why <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/31/extending-the-7-0-cycle/\">the WordPress 7.0 cycle is being extended by a few weeks</a>: the real-time collaboration feature needs more time to nail its data architecture. After Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress, expressed a preference to revisit the proposed custom table for syncing presence and content changes, the team is refining the design before committing. </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The proposal for custom table to keep a record of the changes to a post/page from each browser window, was discussed in the trac ticket (<a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/64696\">64696</a>) </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Plugin developers relying on metaboxes will want to take note — collaborative editing is disabled when metaboxes are present, making this cycle your window to migrate.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"></p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-44945\" height=\"397\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Real-time-collaboration.png?resize=652%2C397&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"652\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"navigation-overlays-and-more-theme-builder-plugin-author-site-admin\">Navigation Overlays and more <sup>[theme builder][plugin author] [site admin]</sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Navigation blocks now have customizable overlays and give user full control over mobile hamburger menus. A prominent <strong>Create overlay</strong> button in the side bar guides you through the setup, providing a selection of patterns to achieve various designs for your overlay. WordPress 7.0 comes with multiple built-in patterns including centered navigation, accent backgrounds, and black backgrounds. New blocks default to &#8220;always&#8221; showing overlays. The Navigation block sidebar section also shows a preview of the selected overlay template parts. You can also access the list of Navigation Overlays via <strong>Appearance &gt; Editor &gt; Patterns &gt; Template Parts.</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>On GitHub you&#8217;ll find a list of all the <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues?q=state%3Aclosed%20label%3A%22%5BFeature%5D%20Navigation%20Overlays%22%20label%3A%22%5BType%5D%20Enhancement%22\">Navigation Overlay enhancements</a>. </li>\n\n\n\n<li>The dev note <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/04/customisable-navigation-overlays-in-wordpress-7-0/\">Customizable Navigation Overlays in WordPress 7.0</a> has everything you need to know.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<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\"><div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\" id=\"block-697b3ef0-955a-4413-82a1-bf3bb5f25f68\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-45002\" height=\"607\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Create-Overlay.png?resize=589%2C607&#038;ssl=1\" style=\"width: 541px; height: auto;\" width=\"589\" /></figure>\n</div></div></div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To make it easier for users to create custom overlays for their mobile navigation, four new patterns are now available for the navigation overlay template parts:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74847\">Overlay with black background</a> </li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74849\">Overlay with accent background</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74862\">Centered navigation with info</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74861\">Centered navigation</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<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\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-45003\" height=\"979\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/navigation-overlay-patterns.png?resize=652%2C979&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"652\" /></figure>\n</div></div>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Submenus: Always visible option</strong>: Users can now add navigation blocks to their overlays and toggle if they’d like to have the submenus always visible or not. (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74653\">74653</a>)</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Page Creation in Navigation</strong>: Create pages directly from the Navigation block with helpful Snackbar notices and improved parent page search using relevance matching <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/72627\">(72627</a>, <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/73836\">73836</a>).</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"treating-patterns-like-a-single-block-all\">Treating patterns like a single block <sup>[all]</sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Get ready for a smoother, more intuitive experience when using patterns in WordPress 7.0.  It’s becoming much easier to customize your site&#8217;s design sections with a simplified editing workflow and an improved content-focused mode. </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Users naturally stay in the safe lane without accidentally breaking designs. Agencies can hand off a site knowing clients can&#8217;t wreck the layout by default — they&#8217;d have to deliberately choose to go deeper.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>What&#8217;s New for Patterns:</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Quick Content Edits:</strong> When you select a pattern, instead of seeing a list of individual blocks, you&#8217;ll see a clean, expanded inspector panel. This panel exposes all the editable text and image fields directly, organized for easy access. </li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Content-Only Focus:</strong> Patterns will now default to a <strong>Content-Only</strong> editing mode. This simplifies the experience by letting you quickly fill in the content without seeing all the underlying design tools.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Full Customization (If You Need It):</strong> If you <em>do</em> need to change the structure or design of a pattern, you can simply &#8220;detach&#8221; it. This gives you full access to all the individual blocks, just like before. Use the <strong>Edit Pattern</strong> button from the sidebar.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>A Unified Experience:</strong> This new approach makes patterns feel like single, smart design objects with easy-to-update attributes, whether you&#8217;re using a pattern, a design section, or a partially synced pattern.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n		<figure class=\"wp-block-jetpack-videopress jetpack-videopress-player\">\n			<div class=\"jetpack-videopress-player__wrapper\"> </div>\n			\n			\n		</figure>\n		\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Head over to the dev note <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/?p=122085&amp;preview=1&amp;_ppp=5a7fd37ffc\">Pattern Editing in WordPress 7.0</a> for the full picture. </p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"ai-in-wordpress-enterprise-developers-site-admin\">AI in WordPress <sup>[enterprise][developers][site admin]</sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WordPress 7.0 ships with a WP AI client API and a built-in Connectors screen — a centralized hub for managing all kinds of external service integrations, not just AI providers. Connect to OpenAI, Claude, or Gemini and WordPress automatically installs the right plugin and prompts you for your API key. Developers get a consistent framework to build on—enabling features like content generation, block building, and theme creation without reinventing the plumbing every time. </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The new Connectors page also sports a shout-out to the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/ai/\">AI Experiments plugin</a> if users want to see AI features, like title, excerpt, or alt-text generation, in action.</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-44916\" height=\"415\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Connectors-Page-WordPress-7-0.png?resize=652%2C415&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"652\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But the real value of this Connectors API is broader: any plugin that needs to connect to an outside service via API keys or other credentials can tap into this standardized connection management system. Users get one place to maintain all their integrations. And plugin developer a standardized way to tap into the plumbing.</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Read the dev note <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/18/introducing-the-connectors-api-in-wordpress-7-0/\"><strong>Introducing the Connectors API in WordPress 7.0</strong></a> for all the salient details. </li>\n\n\n\n<li>The Core AI team also published a <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/ai/2026/03/25/call-for-testing-community-ai-connector-plugins/\"><strong>Call for Testing: Community AI Connector Plugins</strong></a>.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"visual-revisions-all\">Visual Revisions<sup> [all]</sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How revisions work for the block editor was completely reimagined. The visual Revisions screen keeps you in the editor the entire time, activating a subtle revision mode right where you work, eliminating the need to jump to a separate screen. A timeline slider in the header allows you to browse through different versions, seeing content updates in real-time.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The system highlights visual differences, showing added and removed text, formatting changes, and outlining modified blocks instead of raw code. For long documents, a mini-map along the scrollbar indicates where changes exist, letting you jump directly to them, and the sidebar remains useful with a summary of the changes for the current revision. To simplify reverting, the &#8220;Update&#8221; or &#8220;Publish&#8221; button is replaced by a &#8220;Restore&#8221; button when you are browsing the history (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/74742\">74742</a>).</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yellow marks a changed section/block, in red you’ll find deletions and green are additions compared to the early version. </p>\n\n\n\n		<figure class=\"wp-block-jetpack-videopress jetpack-videopress-player\">\n			<div class=\"jetpack-videopress-player__wrapper\"> </div>\n			\n			\n		</figure>\n		\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Wes Theron</strong> has a short video on <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWN3d2KUNKk\">How to restore previous versions of a page or post in WordPress</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Anne McCarthy also gives a great walk through the screens on Youtube:</p>\n\n\n\n<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\">\n\n</div></figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"new-blocks\">New Blocks</h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"breadcrumbs-block-all\">Breadcrumbs Block <sup>[all]</sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The new native Breadcrumbs block in WordPress 7.0 provides dynamic navigational trails for the Site Editor. It automatically generates paths from the homepage to the current page, adapting to context.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The block handles hierarchical pages (e.g., &#8220;Home / Services / Web Design / Portfolio&#8221;) and includes taxonomy for blog posts (e.g., &#8220;Home / Technology / Your Post Title&#8221;). Beyond simple pages, it correctly constructs paths for archive pages (category, tag, author, date), search results, and 404 errors. For Custom Post Types, it includes the post type archive in the trail.</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img alt=\"Breadcrumbs block displaying post categories WordPress 7.0\" class=\"wp-image-44940\" height=\"227\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Breadcrumbs-flore-flowers.png?resize=652%2C227&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"652\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The block offers alignment options (left, center, right, wide/full), as well as other block design options. Additional settings are available for showing the last item as text or a link and consistent homepage handling (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/72649\">72649</a>).</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-44951\" height=\"898\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/gb-22-2-breadcrumb.png?resize=652%2C898&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"652\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The dev note <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/04/breadcrumb-block-filters/\">Breadcrumb block filters</a> has the details. </p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"icon-block-all\">Icon Block <sup>[all]</sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The new Icon block empowers users to add decorative icons from a curated collection to their content. It utilizes a new server-side SVG Icon Registration API, ensuring icon registry updates propagate without block validation errors. </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The initial release is limited as it doesn&#8217;t yet allow registering third-party icon collections. Extensibility for third-party icon registration is planned for future release in 7.1, following further development on the Icon registry API architecture. A REST endpoint at <code>/wp/v2/icons</code> supports searching and filtering. The initial set draws from the <code>wordpress/icons</code> package (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/71227\">71227</a>, <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/72215\">72215</a>, <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/75576\">75576</a>).</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"List of directions, illustrated with the icon block\" class=\"wp-image-44938\" height=\"192\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/icon-block.png?resize=652%2C192&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"652\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"block-editor-enhancements\">Block Editor enhancements</h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"custom-css-for-individual-blocks-enduser-site-admin-theme-builder\">Custom CSS for Individual Blocks <sup>[enduser][site admin] [theme builder]</sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Previously, applying custom CSS to a block instance required adding a custom class name and then writing a rule in the Site Editor’s global Custom CSS. This two-step process was complex for most users and inaccessible to content editors without Site Editor access.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A new custom CSS block support introduces a Custom CSS input to the <strong>Advanced</strong> panel within the block editor sidebar, conveniently placed next to the familiar &#8220;Additional CSS Class(es)&#8221; field. You only need to add the CSS declarations (no selectors!) If you do need to target nested elements, use the &amp; symbol (for example, &amp; a { color: red; }). This field is focused purely on styling and will reject any HTML input. The field is guarded by the <code>edit_css capability</code> to see and use this powerful new field. The editor automatically adds a has-custom-css class for styling consistency. <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/73959\">#73959</a>, <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74969\">#74969</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-44920\" height=\"412\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Block-level-custom-CSS.png?resize=652%2C412&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"652\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dive into the dev note <strong><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/15/custom-css-for-individual-block-instances-in-wordpress-7-0/\">Custom CSS for Individual Block Instances</a></strong> for the complete rundown.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"control-viewport-based-block-visibility-all\">Control viewport-based block visibility <sup>[all]</sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When you&#8217;re editing a post or page, you can now choose to show or hide any block depending on the visitor&#8217;s screen size. Select a block, click <strong>Show</strong> in the toolbar, and pick which devices — desktop, tablet, or mobile — should display it. You can also hide a block from the document entirely through the same modal. </p>\n\n\n\n<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\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized wp-duotone-unset-1\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-44980\" height=\"282\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/note-on-visibility.png?resize=573%2C282&#038;ssl=1\" style=\"width: 519px; height: auto;\" width=\"573\" /></figure>\n</div></div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-44944\" height=\"429\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Block-visiblity.png?resize=652%2C429&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"652\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For the nitty-gritty, see the dev note <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/15/block-visibility-in-wordpress-7-0/\">Block Visibility in WordPress 7.0</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Anne McCarthy walks you through the feature: </p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n\n</div></figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"anchor-support-for-dynamic-blocks-developer-plugin-author\">Anchor support for dynamic blocks <sup>[developer][plugin author]</sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dynamic blocks now support Anchor (id attribute) functionality. The anchor reference is consistently stored within the block comment delimiter, enabling dynamic rendering on the front end. (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74183\">74183</a>)</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"paste-color-values-in-the-color-picker-end-user-theme-builder-site-admin\">Paste color values in the color picker <sup>[end user][theme builder] [site admin]</sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Color pickers throughout the block styles sidebar, now offer support for pasting complete color values. You can now copy/paste the brand colors from a design document or website into the color picker box and don&#8217;t have to go through the process of selecting the right color and hue<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/73166\"> (73166</a>).</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"dimension-support-for-width-and-height-theme-builder-site-admin\">Dimension support for width and height <sup>[theme builder][site admin]</sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WordPress 7.0 expands the Dimensions block supports system with three significant improvements: <strong>width</strong> and <strong>height</strong> are now available as standard block supports under dimensions, and themes can now define <strong>dimension size presets</strong> to give users a consistent set of size options across their site.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Dev Note <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/15/dimensions-support-enhancements-in-wordpress-7-0/\">Dimensions Support Enhancements in WordPress 7.0</a> has the details for block.development and theme builders.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"email-notifications-for-notes-all\">Email notifications for Notes <sup>[all]</sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Collaborators can now get notified when someone leaves a note on their content. No more checking back constantly (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/73645\">73645</a>).</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"block-attributions-groups-in-the-sidebar-all\">Block Attributions Groups in the sidebar <sup>[all]</sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The block editor sidebar is being reorganized to make controls easier to find. Block settings will be grouped into four clear sections: </p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Content</strong> (text, images, captions), </li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>List</strong> (reordering and nesting for blocks like Lists and Social Icons), </li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Settings</strong> (block-specific options), and </li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Styles</strong> (typography, colors, spacing). </li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This means you won&#8217;t need to hunt through toolbars or scattered panels — everything will live in a predictable place in the sidebar. Connected data sources will also appear directly next to the attributes they affect, so you can see at a glance what&#8217;s linked and where. It also means that for the transition a reordering of the sidebar and controls to be in different place than before. For instance. For an image block that includes the “Alt” text setting is now to be found in the content tab rather than the settings tab.  (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/73845\">73845</a>)</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here&#8217;s an example of the implementation for Patterns:</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-44943\" height=\"399\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Pattern-Attributes-in-Sidebar.png?resize=652%2C399&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"652\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"link-control-validation-end-user-site-admin\">Link Control validation <sup>[end user] [site admin]</sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Link Control component in Gutenberg now validates the URLs, you enter helping to avoid broken links (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/73486\">73486</a>).</p>\n\n\n\n<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\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-44950\" height=\"181\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Link-control-variation.png?resize=531%2C181&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"531\" /></figure>\n</div></div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"improved-blocks-and-block-handling\">Improved Blocks and Block handling</h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"pseudo-styles-for-button-blocks-theme-builder-site-admin\">Pseudo Styles for Button Blocks <sup>[theme builder][site admin] </sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Theme designers and developers can now style button states (hover, focus, active, and focus visible) directly within the theme.json, making it much easier to keep all design controls centralized and consistent. This reduces the reliance on custom CSS for things like button hover states (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/71418\">71418</a>). </p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-kevinbatdorf-code-block-pro cbp-has-line-numbers\"><span>JSON</span><span class=\"code-block-pro-copy-button\" style=\"color: #575279; display: none;\" tabindex=\"0\"><pre class=\"code-block-pro-copy-button-pre\"><textarea class=\"code-block-pro-copy-button-textarea\" readonly=\"readonly\" tabindex=\"-1\">{\n    \"styles\": {\n        \"blocks\":{\n                \"core/button\":{\n                    \"color\":{\n                        \"background\":\"blue\"\n                    },\n                    \":hover\":{\n                        \"color\":{\n                        \"background\":\"green\"\n                        }\n                    },\n                    \":focus\":{\n                        \"color\":{\n                        \"background\":\"purple\"\n                        }\n                    }\n                }\n            }\n    }\n}\n</textarea></pre><svg fill=\"none\" stroke=\"currentColor\" stroke-width=\"2\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\"><path class=\"with-check\" d=\"M9 5H7a2 2 0 00-2 2v12a2 2 0 002 2h10a2 2 0 002-2V7a2 2 0 00-2-2h-2M9 5a2 2 0 002 2h2a2 2 0 002-2M9 5a2 2 0 012-2h2a2 2 0 012 2m-6 9l2 2 4-4\" stroke-linecap=\"round\" stroke-linejoin=\"round\"></path><path class=\"without-check\" d=\"M9 5H7a2 2 0 00-2 2v12a2 2 0 002 2h10a2 2 0 002-2V7a2 2 0 00-2-2h-2M9 5a2 2 0 002 2h2a2 2 0 002-2M9 5a2 2 0 012-2h2a2 2 0 012 2\" stroke-linecap=\"round\" stroke-linejoin=\"round\"></path></svg></span><pre class=\"shiki rose-pine-dawn\" style=\"background-color: #faf4ed;\" tabindex=\"0\"><code><span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #797593;\">{</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">    </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #56949F;\">styles</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">:</span><span style=\"color: #575279;\"> </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">{</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">        </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #56949F;\">blocks</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">:{</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">                </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #56949F;\">core/button</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">:{</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">                    </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #56949F;\">color</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">:{</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">                        </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #56949F;\">background</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">:</span><span style=\"color: #EA9D34;\">&quot;blue&quot;</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">                    </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">},</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">                    </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #56949F;\">:hover</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">:{</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">                        </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #56949F;\">color</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">:{</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">                        </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #56949F;\">background</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">:</span><span style=\"color: #EA9D34;\">&quot;green&quot;</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">                        </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">}</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">                    </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">},</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">                    </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #56949F;\">:focus</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">:{</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">                        </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #56949F;\">color</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">:{</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">                        </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #56949F;\">background</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">:</span><span style=\"color: #EA9D34;\">&quot;purple&quot;</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">                        </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">}</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">                    </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">}</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">                </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">}</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">            </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">}</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">    </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">}</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #797593;\">}</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"></span></code></pre></div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">More details are available in the Dev Note: <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/09/pseudo-element-support-for-blocks-and-their-variations-in-theme-json/\">Pseudo-element support for blocks and their variations in theme.json</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"extra-divs-removed-from-blocks-in-the-editor-theme-builder-developer-site-admin\">Extra divs removed from blocks in the editor <sup>[theme builder][developer][site admin] </sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WordPress 7.0 introduced a new <code>HtmlRenderer</code> component, which renders HTML content as React elements with optional wrapper props. For theme authors, this means that several blocks will no longer have an extra wrapping <code>&lt;div&gt;</code> in the editor, allowing for consistent styling with the front end (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74228\">74228</a>).</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Blocks that have been fixed are:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74255\">Archives</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74271\">Calendar</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74277\">Latest Comments</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74272\">RSS</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74228\">Tag Cloud</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"universal-text-alignment-all\">Universal Text Alignment <sup>[all]</sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nearly all text blocks now support the standardized text-align block support system, including Paragraph, Button, Comment blocks, Heading, and Verse. Plus, text justify alignment is now available. See <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/60763\">tracking issue</a> to follow along on the progress (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/60763\">60763</a>).</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"cover-block-video-embeds-site-admin-end-user\">Cover Block Video Embeds <sup>[site admin][end user]</sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For the Cover block this release comes with the ability to use embedded videos (like YouTube or Vimeo) as background videos in the Cover block, rather than being restricted to locally uploaded files. Offloading video to 3rd-party services helps reduce hosting and bandwidth costs. Also, the focal pointer is now available for fixed background. (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/73023\">#73023</a>, <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74600\">#74600</a>).</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-44953\" height=\"416\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/gb-22-2-embed-1.png?resize=652%2C416&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"652\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"gallery-block\">Gallery Block </h3>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"lightbox-navigation-site-admin-end-user\">Lightbox navigation <sup>[site admin][end user]</sup></h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Gallery block’s “Enlarge on click” lightbox now lets you navigate between images. When you click a gallery image, back/next buttons appear so you can browse through the rest of the gallery without closing the lightbox. Keyboard navigation (arrow keys) and screen reader announcements are fully supported. It also works with swiping on mobile, however the swiping isn’t yet visual/animated.  (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/62906\">62906</a>) and lightbox items still miss captions.</p>\n\n\n\n		<figure class=\"wp-block-jetpack-videopress jetpack-videopress-player\">\n			<div class=\"jetpack-videopress-player__wrapper\"> </div>\n			\n			\n		</figure>\n		\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"content-tab-in-sidebar-site-admin-end-user\">Content Tab in sidebar <sup>[site admin][end user]</sup></h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For fast access to Alt text box the sidebar of the Gallery block shows a new content tab in the sidebar. </p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-44958\" height=\"340\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Gallery-content-sidebar-edited.png?resize=652%2C340&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"652\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"responsive-grid-block-site-admin-end-user-theme-builder\">Responsive Grid Block <sup>[site admin][end user][theme builder]</sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Grid block is now responsive even when you set a column count. Previously, you had to choose between setting a minimum column width (responsive, Auto mode) or a fixed column count (Manual mode)—a binary toggle that confused many users. Now you can set both: when you do, the column count becomes a <em>maximum</em>, and the grid scales down responsively based on your minimum column width. </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You can set neither, either, or both—the block handles all combinations gracefully. The confusing Auto/Manual toggle is gone entirely, replaced by clearer &#8220;minimum width&#8221; and &#8220;columns&#8221; labels with a plain-language description explaining the relationship between the two controls.. (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/73662\">73662</a>)</p>\n\n\n\n		<figure class=\"wp-block-jetpack-videopress jetpack-videopress-player\">\n			<div class=\"jetpack-videopress-player__wrapper\"> </div>\n			\n			\n		</figure>\n		\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"heading-block-variations-site-admin-end-user\">Heading block variations <sup>[site admin][end user]</sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Each heading level (H1-H6) is now registered as a block variation on the Heading block. These do not appear in the inserter, but the change does add icons to the block’s sidebar for transforming it between variations (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/73823\">73823</a>).</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-44963\" height=\"334\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Heading-handling.png?resize=652%2C334&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"652\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"html-block-enhancement-site-admin-themebuilder-end-user\">HTML Block Enhancement <sup>[site admin] [themebuilder] [end user]</sup> </h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The HTML block was redesigned to work now as a modal-based editor featuring separate tabs for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Admin can now use it for more powerful customizations, when HTML JS and CSS work on a single block. (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/73108\">73108</a>).  </p>\n\n\n\n		<figure class=\"wp-block-jetpack-videopress jetpack-videopress-player\">\n			<div class=\"jetpack-videopress-player__wrapper\"> </div>\n			\n			\n		</figure>\n		\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"image-block-inline-editing-and-controls-site-admin-end-user\">Image block inline editing and controls <sup>[site admin][end user]</sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WordPress 7.0 comes with a revamp of the image editing feature in the editor. It’s now easier to crop, rotate or zoom in on a particular image corner. (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/72414\">#72414</a>) (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/73277\">#73277</a>).</p>\n\n\n\n		<figure class=\"wp-block-jetpack-videopress jetpack-videopress-player\">\n			<div class=\"jetpack-videopress-player__wrapper\"> </div>\n			\n			\n		</figure>\n		\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"advanced-image-controlsimage-block-now-supports-the-focal-point-control-and-aspect-ratio-adjustments-for-wide-and-full-alignments-plus-reorganized-inspector-controls-with-a-dedicated-content-tab-73115-74519-74201\">Advanced Image Controls <sup>[site admin][end user]</sup></h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"advanced-image-controlsimage-block-now-supports-the-focal-point-control-and-aspect-ratio-adjustments-for-wide-and-full-alignments-plus-reorganized-inspector-controls-with-a-dedicated-content-tab-73115-74519-74201\">Image block now supports the focal point control and aspect ratio adjustments for wide and full alignments, plus reorganized inspector controls with a dedicated content tab. <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/73115\">#73115</a>, <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74519\">#74519</a>, <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74201\">#74201</a></p>\n\n\n\n		<figure class=\"wp-block-jetpack-videopress jetpack-videopress-player\">\n			\n			\n			\n		</figure>\n		\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"math-block-improvements-end-users-site-admin\">Math Block Improvements <sup>[end users][site admin]</sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">LaTeX input now uses a monospaced font, and style options are available for better mathematical expression editing (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/72557\">72557</a>, <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/73544\">73544</a>).</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-44972\" height=\"425\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Mathblock-updates-wp70.png?resize=652%2C425&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"652\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"paragraph-all\">Paragraph <sup>[all]</sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A new typography tool has been added for specifying the line indent of paragraph blocks (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/73114\">73114</a>, <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74889\">74889</a>). Users and theme creators can specify line indentation rules for a single paragraph block and also at global styles / theme.json level for all paragraph blocks. For global styles and theme.json, it’s possible to choose whether all paragraphs or only subsequent paragraphs are indented, which accounts for different indentation standards around the world.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The dev note on <strong><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/15/new-block-support-text-indent-textindent/\">the new <code>textIndent</code> block support</a> </strong>has all the details for developers working on blocks or themes.</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-44985\" height=\"525\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/TextIndent-standard.png?resize=652%2C525&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"652\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The example code sets a default indent value of 1.5em globally for paragraphs:</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-kevinbatdorf-code-block-pro cbp-has-line-numbers\"><span>JSON</span><span class=\"code-block-pro-copy-button\" style=\"color: #575279; display: none;\" tabindex=\"0\"><pre class=\"code-block-pro-copy-button-pre\"><textarea class=\"code-block-pro-copy-button-textarea\" readonly=\"readonly\" tabindex=\"-1\">{\n  \"settings\": {\n    \"typography\": {\n      \"textIndent\": \"true\"\n    }\n  },\n  \"styles\": {\n    \"blocks\": {\n      \"core/paragraph\": {\n        \"typography\": {\n          \"textIndent\": \"1.5em\"\n        }\n      }\n    }\n  }\n}\n</textarea></pre><svg fill=\"none\" stroke=\"currentColor\" stroke-width=\"2\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\"><path class=\"with-check\" d=\"M9 5H7a2 2 0 00-2 2v12a2 2 0 002 2h10a2 2 0 002-2V7a2 2 0 00-2-2h-2M9 5a2 2 0 002 2h2a2 2 0 002-2M9 5a2 2 0 012-2h2a2 2 0 012 2m-6 9l2 2 4-4\" stroke-linecap=\"round\" stroke-linejoin=\"round\"></path><path class=\"without-check\" d=\"M9 5H7a2 2 0 00-2 2v12a2 2 0 002 2h10a2 2 0 002-2V7a2 2 0 00-2-2h-2M9 5a2 2 0 002 2h2a2 2 0 002-2M9 5a2 2 0 012-2h2a2 2 0 012 2\" stroke-linecap=\"round\" stroke-linejoin=\"round\"></path></svg></span><pre class=\"shiki rose-pine-dawn\" style=\"background-color: #faf4ed;\" tabindex=\"0\"><code><span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #797593;\">{</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">  </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #56949F;\">settings</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">:</span><span style=\"color: #575279;\"> </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">{</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">    </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #56949F;\">typography</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">:</span><span style=\"color: #575279;\"> </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">{</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">      </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #56949F;\">textIndent</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">:</span><span style=\"color: #575279;\"> </span><span style=\"color: #EA9D34;\">&quot;true&quot;</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">    </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">}</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">  </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">},</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">  </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #56949F;\">styles</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">:</span><span style=\"color: #575279;\"> </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">{</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">    </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #56949F;\">blocks</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">:</span><span style=\"color: #575279;\"> </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">{</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">      </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #56949F;\">core/paragraph</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">:</span><span style=\"color: #575279;\"> </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">{</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">        </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #56949F;\">typography</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">:</span><span style=\"color: #575279;\"> </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">{</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">          </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #56949F;\">textIndent</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">&quot;</span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">:</span><span style=\"color: #575279;\"> </span><span style=\"color: #EA9D34;\">&quot;1.5em&quot;</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">        </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">}</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">      </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">}</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">    </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">}</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #575279;\">  </span><span style=\"color: #797593;\">}</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"><span style=\"color: #797593;\">}</span></span>\n<span class=\"line\"></span></code></pre></div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">More details can be learned in the Dev Note: <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/?p=121744&amp;preview=1&amp;_ppp=b05f93cb55\">New Block Support: Text Indent (textIndent) </a></p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"columns-in-paragraph-blocks-all\">Columns in Paragraph blocks <sup>[all]</sup></h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now that there is block support for typographical columns, the paragraph block can now handle text columns by default (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74656\">74656</a>).</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On the front-end only, the Paragraph block now has a <code>.wp-block-paragraph</code> class. This change doesn’t affect global styles, which still use the <code>p</code> selector.(<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/71207\">71207</a>)</p>\n\n\n\n		<figure class=\"wp-block-jetpack-videopress jetpack-videopress-player\">\n			<div class=\"jetpack-videopress-player__wrapper\"> </div>\n			\n			\n		</figure>\n		\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"query-loop-enhancements-all\">Query Loop Enhancements <sup>[all]</sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Query loops now support excluding terms. When the block is locked it now hides design change and choose pattern options. <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/73790\">#73790</a>, <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74160\">#74160</a></p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-44986\" height=\"527\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Exclude-Terms-Query-block.png?resize=652%2C527&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"652\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"verse-block-renamed-to-poetry-all\">Verse Block, renamed to Poetry <sup>[all]</sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Verse Block has been renamed to Poetry block (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74722\">74722</a>) Also it now utilizes <code>border-box</code> for its <code>box-sizing</code>, which guards against overflow issues and should make it easier to style without additional custom CSS.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"admin-workflow-updates\">Admin / Workflow updates </h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"manage-fonts-for-all-themes-in-a-dedicated-page-site-admin-theme-builder-enterprise\">Manage fonts for all themes in a dedicated page <sup>[site admin][theme builder] [enterprise]</sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A dedicated Fonts page is now available under the Appearance menu for all themes. Until now, font management has lived deep inside Global Styles, requiring navigation through several panels to install or preview a font. This new standalone page lets block theme users browse, install, and manage their typography collection in one dedicated space. </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Under the hood, this page is built on a new routing infrastructure for the Site Editor, designed to improve navigation and support new top-level pages in wp-admin. View transitions are now wired into this routing layer, providing early zoom/slide animations when navigating between pages (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/73630\">73630</a>, <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/73876\">73876</a>, <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/73586\">73586</a>).</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Font Library and Global Styles also work with classic themes (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/73971\">#73971</a>,<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/73876\"> #73876</a>). Like the Media Library, you can access the Font Library as a modal or through a dedicated admin section—regardless of your theme type.</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"blob:https://gutenbergtimes.com/e8865866-45a0-4807-94ac-02a8257ce1dd\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"command-palette-in-adminbar-all\">Command Palette in Adminbar <sup>[all]</sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Instantly access all the tools you need with a single click using the <strong>new Command Palette shortcut in the Omnibar</strong>! In 7.0 Beta 5, logged-in editors will see a field with a ⌘K or Ctrl+K symbol in the upper admin bar that unfurls the command palette when clicked. The new command palette entry point streamlines navigation and customization, giving you full control from anywhere on your site – whether you’re editing, designing or just browsing plugins.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"view-transitions-all\">View Transitions  <sup>[all]</sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">View transitions have been integrated into the WordPress admin in 7.0, enabling smooth transitions between screens.  The implementation for the front end is slated for the next WordPress 7.1 (<a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/64470\">64470</a>) The result is a smoother page-to-page transitions using the CSS <a href=\"https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/View_Transition_API\">View Transitions API </a>— no markup or JavaScript changes required, just a progressive enhancement you&#8217;ll notice immediately when navigating between admin screens.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"improved-screens-across-wp-admin-all\">Improved screens across WP-Admin  <sup>[all]</sup></h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WordPress 7.0 is getting a CSS-only &#8220;coat-of-paint&#8221; visual reskin of the wp-admin, bringing the classic admin screens closer to the visual language of the block and site editors — no markup changes, no JavaScript, no functional changes, and all existing CSS class names and admin color schemes preserved. (<a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/64308\">64308</a>)</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>New default color scheme: &#8220;Modern&#8221; replaces &#8220;Fresh&#8221; as the default admin color scheme (#<a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/64546\">64546</a>)</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Updated buttons and input fields: primary, secondary, and link buttons, plus text inputs, selects, checkboxes, and radio buttons, now align with the WordPress Design System (#<a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/64547\">64547</a>)</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Updated notices: info, warning, success, and error notices refreshed for clarity and consistency (#<a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/64548\">64548</a>), including on the login screen</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Updated cards and metaboxes: dashboard widgets and metaboxes get modernized styling (#<a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/64549\">64549</a>)</li>\n\n\n\n<li>New <code>wp-base-styles</code> stylesheet handle: consolidates admin color scheme CSS custom properties into a single reusable stylesheet, available across the admin and the block editor content iframe</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Login and registration screens: the WordPress logo updated from blue to gray to match the new design, and scheme styles now apply to login, install, database repair, and upgrade screens</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-44993\" height=\"459\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Admin-new-coat-of-paint.png?resize=652%2C459&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"652\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"developer-goodies-developer-enterprise\">Developer Goodies <sup>[developer][enterprise]</sup></h2>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"client-side-abilities-api\">Client-side Abilities API </h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WordPress 7.0 ships a JavaScript counterpart to the server-side Abilities API introduced in 6.9. The <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/24/client-side-abilities-api-in-wordpress-7-0/\">Client-Side Abilities API</a> arrives as two packages: <code>@wordpress/abilities</code> for pure state management usable in any project, and <code>@wordpress/core-abilities</code>, which auto-fetches server-registered abilities via the REST API. You can now register browser-only abilities — navigation, block insertion, and more — opening the door to browser agents, extensions, and WebMCP integrations directly in the client. </p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"wp-ai-client\">WP AI Client</h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WordPress 7.0 ships a built-in <strong><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/24/introducing-the-ai-client-in-wordpress-7-0/\">AI Client</a>,</strong> that gives your plugin a single, provider-agnostic PHP entry point — <code>wp_ai_client_prompt()</code> — for text, image, speech, and video generation. You describe what you need; WordPress routes it to whichever AI provider the site owner has configured via Settings &gt; Connectors. Official provider plugins cover Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI. No credential handling, no provider lock-in, and graceful feature detection before any UI is shown.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"php-only-block-registration\">PHP-only block registration</h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Developers can now create simple blocks using only PHP. This is meant for blocks that only need server-side rendering and aren’t meant to be highly interactive. When possible this feature also auto-generates sidebars for user input for suitable attributes and design tools. </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To do so, call <code>register_block_type</code> with the new <code>autoRegister</code> flag. A <code>render_callback</code> function must also be provided. (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/71792\">71792</a>)</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dev note with all the details. <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/03/php-only-block-registration/\">PHP-only block registration</a></p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"pattern-overrides-for-custom-blocks\">Pattern Overrides for custom blocks</h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Since WordPress 6.5, <a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2024/06/an-introduction-to-overrides-in-synced-patterns/\">Pattern Overrides</a> let you create synced patterns where the layout stays consistent but specific content can change per instance. The catch? Only four core blocks supported it: Heading, Paragraph, Button, and Image.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Not anymore. Any block attribute that supports Block Bindings now supports Pattern Overrides by default. Block authors can opt in through the server-side <a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/reference-guides/block-api/block-bindings/#extending-supported-attributes\"><code>block_bindings_supported_attributes</code></a> filter. This closes <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/64870\">a long-requested enhancement</a> and opens up synced patterns to custom blocks (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/73889\">73889</a>).</p>\n\n\n\n		<figure class=\"wp-block-jetpack-videopress jetpack-videopress-player\">\n			<div class=\"jetpack-videopress-player__wrapper\"> </div>\n			\n			\n		</figure>\n		\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"dataviews-data-form-components-and-fields-api\">DataViews, Data Form components and Fields API </h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A substantial API update introduces new layouts, validation rules, grouping options, and picker improvements affecting plugins using <code>wordpress/dataviews</code>. The Dev Note has all the pertinent details: <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/04/dataviews-dataform-et-al-in-wordpress-7-0/\">DataViews, DataForm, et al. in WordPress 7.0</a></p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"ui-primitives-and-components\">UI Primitives and Components</h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The WordPress UI package just got a significant update, adding multiple new components and tools to help developers create more polished and accessible interfaces for WordPress users. </p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>A new dropdown menu for creating <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74661\">standardized select controls</a>.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>A <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74625\">tooltip component</a> for displaying helpful hints when users hover over elements.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>The building blocks for <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74190\">creating form fields</a> with consistent styling and behavior.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>A component that hides content <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74189\">from visual display</a> while keeping it accessible to assistive technologies.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>A <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74415\">standardized button component</a> for creating consistent interactive elements.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Building blocks for grouping <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74296\">related form controls</a> together (fieldsets).</li>\n\n\n\n<li>A component for <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74311\">displaying icons</a> consistently throughout your WordPress interface.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>A building block for creating consistent <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74313\">layouts around input fields</a> with standardized appearance and functionality.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A list of <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/dev-notes+7-0/\">all the dev notes can be reviewed from the Make Core blog</a> </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"></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, 27 Mar 2026 16:37:11 +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: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:23;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s: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:66:\"Open Channels FM: Shaping Data Sovereignty and Internet Resilience\";s: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:34:\"https://openchannels.fm/?p=2550900\";s: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:76:\"https://openchannels.fm/navigating-data-sovereignty-and-internet-resilience/\";s: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:388:\"In recent years, the concept of data sovereignty has become increasingly important. As more countries introduce or tighten regulations around where and how data must be stored and protected, companies serving the global internet community face a unique set of challenges. These regulatory requirements force hosting providers and infrastructure companies to think not just about [&#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:\"Fri, 27 Mar 2026 11:19:00 +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:8:\"Bob Dunn\";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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s: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:53:\"WordPress.org blog: WordPress 7.0 Release Candidate 2\";s: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=20324\";s: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:69:\"https://wordpress.org/news/2026/03/wordpress-7-0-release-candidate-2/\";s: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:8700:\"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The second Release Candidate (“RC2”) for WordPress 7.0 is ready for download and testing!</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>This version of the WordPress software is under development</strong>.<strong> Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites.</strong> Instead, it’s recommended that you evaluate RC2 on a test server and site.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Reaching this phase of the release cycle is an important milestone. While release candidates are considered ready for release, testing remains crucial to ensure that everything in WordPress 7.0 is the best it can be.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You can test WordPress 7.0 RC2 in four ways:</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table class=\"has-fixed-layout\"><tbody><tr><td><strong>Plugin</strong></td><td>Install and activate the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/\">WordPress Beta Tester</a> plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream.)</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Direct Download</strong></td><td>Download the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/wordpress-7.0-RC2.zip\">RC2 version (zip)</a> and install it on a WordPress website.</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Command Line</strong></td><td>Use this <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/cli/\">WP-CLI</a> command: <br /><code>wp core update --version=7.0-RC2</code></td></tr><tr><td><strong>WordPress Playground</strong></td><td>Use the <a href=\"https://playground.wordpress.net/?php=8.0&amp;wp=beta&amp;networking=no&amp;language=&amp;multisite=no&amp;random=y4q1rn88xn\">WordPress Playground instance</a> to test the software directly in your browser.  No setup required – just click and go! </td></tr></tbody></table></figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The scheduled final release date for WordPress 7.0 is <strong>April 9, 2026</strong>. The full <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/02/12/wordpress-7-0-release-party-schedule/\">release schedule can be found here</a>. Your help testing Beta and RC versions is vital to making this release as stable and powerful as possible. Thank you to everyone who helps with testing!</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Please continue checking the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/\">Make WordPress Core blog</a> for <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/7-0\">7.0-related posts</a> in the coming weeks for more information.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What’s in WordPress 7.0 RC2?</h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>What’s new in WordPress 7.0</strong>? Check out the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2026/02/wordpress-7-0-beta-1/\">Beta 1 announcement</a> and <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/dev-notes+7-0/\">7.0 Developer Notes</a> for details and highlights. For technical information related to issues addressed since <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2026/03/wordpress-7-0-release-candidate-1/\">RC1</a>, you can browse the following links:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/commits/wp/7.0?since=2026-03-24&amp;until=2026-03-26\">GitHub commits</a> since March 24, 2026</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=closed&amp;changetime=03%2F24%2F2026..03%2F26%2F2026&amp;milestone=7.0&amp;group=component&amp;col=id&amp;col=milestone&amp;col=owner&amp;col=type&amp;col=priority&amp;order=id\">Closed Trac tickets</a> since March 24, 2026</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How you can contribute</h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WordPress is open source software made possible by a passionate community of people collaborating on and contributing to its development. The resources below outline various ways you can help the world’s most popular open source web platform, regardless of your technical expertise.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Get involved in testing</h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Testing for issues is crucial to the development of any software. It’s also a meaningful way for anyone to contribute. </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Your help testing the WordPress 7.0 RC1 version is key to ensuring that the final release is the best it can be. While testing the upgrade process is essential, trying out new features is equally important. This <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/test/2026/02/20/help-test-wordpress-7-0/\">detailed guide</a> will walk you through testing features in WordPress 7.0. For those new to testing, follow <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/test/handbook/get-setup-for-testing/\">this general testing guide</a> for more details on getting set up.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What else to test:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/test/2026/03/11/its-time-to-test-real-time-collaboration/\">Real Time Collaboration</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/test/2026/02/27/call-for-testing-pattern-editing-and-content-only-interactivity-in-wordpress-7-0/\">Pattern Editing and content-only Interactivity</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you encounter an issue, please report it to the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/support/forum/alphabeta/\">Alpha/Beta area</a> of the support forums or directly to <a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/newticket\">WordPress Trac</a> if you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report.  You can also check your issue against a list of <a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/tickets/major\">known bugs</a>. </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Curious about testing releases in general?  Follow along with the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/test/\">testing initiatives in Make Core</a> and join the <a href=\"https://wordpress.slack.com/messages/core-test/\">#core-test channel</a> on <a href=\"https://wordpress.slack.com/\">Making WordPress Slack</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Test on your hosting platforms</h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Web hosts provide vital infrastructure for supporting WordPress and its users. Testing on hosting systems helps inform the development process while ensuring that WordPress and hosting platforms are fully compatible, free of errors, optimized for the best possible user experience, and that updates roll out to customer sites without issue.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Want to test WordPress on your hosting system? <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/hosting/test-results-getting-started/\">Get started with configuring distributed hosting tests here</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Update your theme or plugin</h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For plugin and theme authors, your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for all users.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thanks for continuing to test your themes and plugins with the WordPress 7.0 beta releases. If you haven’t yet, make sure to conclude your testing and update the <em>&#8220;Tested up to”</em> version in your <a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-org/how-your-readme-txt-works/\">plugin’s readme file</a> to <code>7.0</code>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/support/forum/alphabeta/\">support forum</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Help translate WordPress</h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Do you speak a language other than English? ¿Español? Français? Русский? 日本語? हिन्दी? বাংলা? मराठी? ಕನ್ನಡ?  You can <a href=\"https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp/dev/\">help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages</a>. This release milestone (RC2) also marks the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/handbook/glossary/#hard-freeze\">hard string freeze</a> point of the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/25/wordpress-7-0-release-candidate-phase/\">7.0 release cycle</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">An RC2 haiku</h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>At first just a dream</em>,</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>RC2 flows like a stream</em></p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>with seven-oh gleam.</em></p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Props to <a class=\"mention\" href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/amykamala/\"><span class=\"mentions-prefix\">@</span>amykamala</a> </em><a class=\"mention\" href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/annezazu/\"><span class=\"mentions-prefix\">@</span>annezazu</a> <em>for proofreading and review.</em></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, 26 Mar 2026 18:37:28 +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:\"Mary Hubbard\";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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s: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: How AI and Cloud Tools Are Transforming WooCommerce Development and Testing\";s: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:34:\"https://openchannels.fm/?p=2551142\";s: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/how-ai-and-cloud-tools-are-transforming-woocommerce-development-and-testing/\";s: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, Derek talks with WooCommerce\'s Brian Coords about how AI is reshaping e-commerce, from automating tasks to enhancing flexibility for developers and merchants. Brian shares insights on using AI for better workflows 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:\"Thu, 26 Mar 2026 11:41:22 +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:8:\"Bob Dunn\";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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s: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:27:\"Gary: Embed All The Things!\";s: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:25:\"https://pento.net/?p=5677\";s: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:50:\"https://pento.net/2026/03/26/embed-all-the-things/\";s: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:3361:\"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Over 10 years ago, we <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2015/09/30/feature-plugin-merge-proposal-oembed/\">introduced the oEmbed API to WordPress</a>, expanding how WordPress handled embedding to cover all WordPress sites. It was an intentional decision to focus on oEmbed at the time: we wanted to focus on the embedding mechanism that would give site owners maximum control over what their embeds looked like. The code we wrote back then still runs on tens of millions of WordPress sites every day.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There was something extra that continued to bug me, however. What about all the other sites? oEmbed provides rich embed experiences, but not every site needs that. Sometimes, you just need a card with an image and a description, which is where OpenGraph has similarly stood the test of time. It provides a straightforward method for both site owners to create simple, rich embeds, and for service providers like Slack, Discord, or even Apple Messages to safely create a rich card to place alongside links.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WordPress has grown since then, too. The big change is Gutenberg, of course, which really brought forward the idea that the editor should be a rich content experience, that shouldn&#8217;t just be reserved for the front end. </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With that in mind, I build a plugin to handle embedding all the other sites.</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-plugin-directory wp-block-embed-plugin-directory has-custom-css wp-custom-css-6d0daac5\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\"><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/opengraph-fallback-embed/\">OpenGraph Fallback Embed</a></blockquote>\n</div></figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is a block plugin that tries to avoid you using the block it provides if at all possible! Instead, it hooks into the end of the Embed block rendering process &#8211; if the URL you pasted couldn&#8217;t be embedded all the normal ways, this plugin will try a few more fall back options: OpenGraph, Twitter Card tags, or even just a plain description in the meta tags. It&#8217;s the kind of plugin that you can install, and never have to think about again.</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-jetpack-tiled-gallery aligncenter is-style-rectangular\"><div class=\"\"><div class=\"tiled-gallery__gallery\"><div class=\"tiled-gallery__row\"><div class=\"tiled-gallery__col\"><figure class=\"tiled-gallery__item\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/pento.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/screenshot-3-1008x1024.png?ssl=1\" /></figure></div><div class=\"tiled-gallery__col\"><figure class=\"tiled-gallery__item\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/pento.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/screenshot-1-1008x1024.png?ssl=1\" /></figure><figure class=\"tiled-gallery__item\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/pento.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/screenshot-2-1008x1024.png?ssl=1\" /></figure></div></div></div></div></div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One of the nicest things about WordPress is how pluggable it is. Even as a long time WordPress Core developer, I don&#8217;t think everything needs to land in Core, sometimes a feature can live as handy little plugin. If you like everything just magically embedding, give this plugin a try!</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, 26 Mar 2026 03:12:58 +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:\"Gary\";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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s: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: Ari &amp;amp; X\";s: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=151640\";s: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/2026/03/ari-x/\";s: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:3274:\"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m in NYC for the <a href=\"https://luma.com/yb2jnbho\">Stephan Wolfram dev/ai/nyc conversation tomorrow</a> at the <a href=\"https://automattic.space/\">Automattic Noho space</a>. While walking back from the Apple Store in Soho where I had picked up a new Studio Display XDR to try out, ran into one of my favorite <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/ariathome\">YouTube accounts to follow right now, Ari at Home</a>! I ran into him <a href=\"https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2731606952\">around 32 minutes into this Twitch stream</a>. <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQLl7fZ9YxI\">Here&#8217;s how he set up his rig</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"embed-twitter\"><blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Ran into <a href=\"https://twitter.com/ARIatTWIT?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@ARIatTWIT</a> walking back from <a href=\"https://twitter.com/Apple?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@Apple</a> store with new Studio XDR. ? Offered to get him set up on <a href=\"https://twitter.com/WordPress?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@WordPress</a> or <a href=\"https://twitter.com/tumblr?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@Tumblr</a>. <img alt=\"🙂\" class=\"wp-smiley\" src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/72x72/1f642.png\" style=\"height: 1em;\" /> Carrying the display was my workout for the day. <a href=\"https://t.co/q3vgAG7Hxm\">pic.twitter.com/q3vgAG7Hxm</a></p>&mdash; Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt) <a href=\"https://twitter.com/photomatt/status/2036910052074819932?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 25, 2026</a></blockquote></div>\n</div></figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A video I&#8217;ve shared with friends recently is <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmFwGQyBVsc\">when Harry Mack ran into Ari</a>, which was fun for me because they&#8217;re two of my favorite accounts to follow. Sorry I didn&#8217;t freestyle! I had to get back to do some work, which is why I got the monitor.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In other cool X/Twitter news, they launched an awesome feature today that lets you restrict replies not just to people you follow, but to people they follow as well. <a href=\"https://x.com/nikitabier\">Nikita</a> gave a hat tip to the conversation I had with <a href=\"https://x.com/levelsio\">Peter Levels / @levelsio</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"embed-twitter\"><blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Credit to <a href=\"https://twitter.com/rsrbk123?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@rsrbk123</a> <a href=\"https://twitter.com/striedinger?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@striedinger</a> <a href=\"https://twitter.com/x_belous?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@x_belous</a> <a href=\"https://twitter.com/singhai?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@singhai</a> for their work on this. <br /><br />And thanks <a href=\"https://twitter.com/photomatt?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@photomatt</a> for the suggestion <a href=\"https://t.co/Gr2iD1O73Y\">https://t.co/Gr2iD1O73Y</a></p>&mdash; Nikita Bier (@nikitabier) <a href=\"https://twitter.com/nikitabier/status/2036869177173303398?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 25, 2026</a></blockquote></div>\n</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, 25 Mar 2026 23:48:04 +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:28;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s: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:69:\"WordPress.org blog: WP Packages is Working the Way Open Source Should\";s: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=20214\";s: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:47:\"https://wordpress.org/news/2026/03/wp-packages/\";s: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:8246:\"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When WP Engine acquired WPackagist on March 12, the WordPress developer community faced a familiar question: what happens when critical open source infrastructure ends up under corporate control? The community already had an answer in progress. Four days later, <a href=\"https://wp-packages.org/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">WP Packages</a> (<a href=\"https://roots.io/wp-composer-is-now-wp-packages/\">formerly WP Composer</a>) launched as a fully independent, community-funded alternative, with some neat additional features.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Built by <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/retlehs/\">Ben Words</a> from <a href=\"https://roots.io/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Roots</a>, the team behind Bedrock, Sage, and Trellis, WP Packages is a new open source Composer repository for WordPress plugins and themes. <a href=\"https://getcomposer.org/\">Composer</a> is PHP&#8217;s dependency manager, and it is how many professional WordPress developers install and update plugins and themes in their projects. Every free plugin and theme in the WordPress.org directory is available through WP Packages. <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/feed/#switch\">Migrating from WPackagist</a> can be done via a single script or a few terminal commands.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>What Happened and Why It Matters</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WPackagist was created in 2013 by Outlandish, a UK-based digital cooperative, and it served the WordPress Composer ecosystem for over a decade. In its later years the project suffered from deferred maintenance, slow update cycles, and little to no community input. When WP Engine announced the acquisition, developers raised immediate concerns about a private-equity-backed corporation controlling infrastructure this foundational to the WordPress developer workflow. WP Engine immediately updated the Composer <code>info</code> field to display a &#8220;WPackagist is now maintained by WP Engine&#8221; notice in every developer&#8217;s terminal. A small thing, but telling. That&#8217;s how corporate ownership changes the relationship between a tool and its users.</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-c1abb2c1 wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed aligncenter is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"embed-twitter\"><blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">And it only took less than 24h for this to pop up on every composer run:<br />&quot;Info from <a href=\"https://t.co/1EEb4PZ9N2\">https://t.co/1EEb4PZ9N2</a>: WPackagist is now maintained by WP Engine. Learn more at <a href=\"https://t.co/89b2hBWxd9\">https://t.co/89b2hBWxd9</a>&quot;<br />Which I\'m sure is a permanent message that will just shift to marketing. Prove me wrong<img alt=\"🤡\" class=\"wp-smiley\" src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/72x72/1f921.png\" style=\"height: 1em;\" /> <a href=\"https://t.co/HdcuQPkUqV\">https://t.co/HdcuQPkUqV</a></p>&mdash; Jonathan de Jong (@jonathan_dejong) <a href=\"https://twitter.com/jonathan_dejong/status/2032389680415625239?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 13, 2026</a></blockquote></div>\n</div></figure>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ben had already started building a WPackagist replacement last August, long before the acquisition made headlines. When WP Engine&#8217;s deal landed, he accelerated the launch, <a href=\"https://roots.io/introducing-wp-composer-as-a-wpackagist-replacement/\">going live on March 16</a> with a fully <a href=\"https://github.com/roots/wp-composer\">open source repository on GitHub</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Open source repo ≠ transparent system. WP Packages makes everything public, including infrastructure and build process.</em> &#8211; <a href=\"https://x.com/retlehs/status/2034277432241385727?s=20\">Ben Word on X</a></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s also just a better tool. WP Packages supports Composer v2&#8217;s metadata-url protocol, which lets Composer fetch metadata only for the packages a project actually needs. WPackagist still relies on the older provider-includes approach, forcing Composer to download large index files before resolving dependencies. Cold dependency resolves on WP Packages are roughly 17x faster: 0.7 seconds for 10 plugins compared to 12.3 seconds on WPackagist.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WP Packages also uses CDN caching with public cache headers and serves immutable, content-addressed per-package files. Package naming is cleaner (<code>wp-plugin/</code> and <code>wp-theme/</code> instead of <code>wpackagist-plugin/</code> and <code>wpackagist-theme/</code>), metadata includes plugin and theme authors, descriptions, and homepage URLs that WPackagist has been missing for years, and updates sync every five minutes rather than WPackagist&#8217;s roughly 90-minute cycle.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"switch\"><strong>How to Switch</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Switching from WPackagist to WP Packages requires just a few terminal commands.</p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Remove your existing WPackagist packages:</li>\n</ol>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code class=\"\"><code>composer remove wpackagist-theme/twentytwentyfive</code></code></pre>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\" start=\"2\">\n<li>Remove the WPackagist repository and add WP Packages:</li>\n</ol>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code class=\"\"><code>composer config --unset repositories.wpackagist &amp;&amp; composer config repositories.wp-composer composer https://repo.wp-packages.org</code></code></pre>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\" start=\"3\">\n<li>Require packages with the new naming:</li>\n</ol>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code class=\"\"><code>composer require wp-theme/twentytwentyfive</code></code></pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Alternatively, use the <a href=\"https://github.com/roots/wp-composer/blob/main/scripts/migrate-from-wpackagist.sh\">migration script</a> to automatically update your <code>composer.json</code>:</p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code class=\"\">curl -sO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/roots/wp-packages/main/scripts/migrate-from-wpackagist.sh &amp;&amp; bash migrate-from-wpackagist.sh</code></pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Roots also provides a <a href=\"https://github.com/roots/wp-packages-changelog-action\">WP Packages Changelog Action</a> for GitHub workflows that tracks dependency updates using the new naming format. Projects using <a href=\"https://roots.io/bedrock/\">Bedrock</a> already ship with WP Packages configured out of the box.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Open Source Wins</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The entire WP Packages project is public. The application code, documentation, and even the full Ansible deployment configuration are available on GitHub. Anyone can fork the repository and run their own WordPress Composer registry. Ben has also committed publicly that WP Packages will never use the Composer <code>info</code> field to push messages, ads, or upsells into developer terminals. That kind of restraint is easier to promise when a project answers to its community rather than to a corporate parent.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WP Packages is funded through <a href=\"https://github.com/sponsors/roots\">GitHub Sponsors</a>. Current sponsors include <a href=\"https://carrot.com/\">Carrot</a>, <a href=\"https://kinsta.com/\">Kinsta</a>, <a href=\"https://wordpress.com/\">WordPress.com</a>, and <a href=\"https://www.itineris.co.uk/\">Itineris</a>. The WordPress ecosystem has always been at its strongest when the community builds the tools it needs in the open. Ben saw a gap forming months before anyone else was paying attention, built something better than what existed, and released it for everyone. No acquisition required. No boardroom decisions about availability or pricing. Just developers solving a problem for other developers and sharing the result. Open source wins.</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, 25 Mar 2026 15:27:24 +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:\"Jonathan Bossenger\";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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s: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: #210 – Zach Stepek on the Interconnected WordPress Ecosystem, Partnerships and Trust\";s: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=203274\";s: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:109:\"https://wptavern.com/podcast/210-zach-stepek-on-the-interconnected-wordpress-ecosystem-partnerships-and-trust\";s: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:58169:\"<details>Transcript<div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:00:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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 interconnected WordPress ecosystem and how to build partnerships and trust.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So on the podcast today, we have Zach Stepek. Zach is what you might call a unicorn in the tech world, having held roles in design development, and much more. His experience spans everything from Cold Fusion and Flash, to JavaScript, WordPress, and WooCommerce. He&#8217;s worked with brands like IBM and MTV, in varied industries from medical records to e-commerce, and has spoken at WordCamps, WooConf, and contributed to the WordPress community through both agencies and product companies.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You might know about WordPress, agencies, product companies and hosting, but might not have thought about how partnerships actually work in this ecosystem, or why they matter right now. Zach is here to explain just that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He starts off by sharing his journey into WordPress, his early challenges, and how an unexpected viral moment led him deeper into the ecosystem.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He describes the three interconnected pillars of WordPress success, agencies or individuals, product companies, think plugins and themes, and hosting or infrastructure, and how each depends on the other to thrive.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We discuss the current state of partnerships, how companies collaborate, why trust and values driven approaches are essential, and why the rapid rise of ROI driven, transactional thinking, is at odds with WordPress&#8217; open source routes. Zach explores the perils of short-term wins, and the value of nurturing long-term, mutually beneficial, relationships especially as economic uncertainty and the changes in the broader world are beginning to reshape how companies interact.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then we talk about the challenges faced by hosting companies, the role of product companies in innovation, and how agencies often bridge these worlds. Zach makes the case for cultivating relationship equity, not just revenue, and how a rising tide can lift all boats, if the community keeps its collective focus.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Towards the end, we discuss how the landscape has changed. Why community contributions matter more than ever, and what the future might hold as WordPress partnerships reach an inflexion point.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you&#8217;re curious about how these invisible partnership threads bind the WordPress ecosystem together, and how true partnership drives success, this episode is for you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so without further delay, I bring you Zach Stepek.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I am joined on the podcast by Zach Stepek. Hello Zach.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:04:00] <strong>Zach Stepek:</strong> Hey Nathan, how you?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:04:01] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Zach and I have been talking for a fairly lengthy period of time, probably close to an hour or something like that. And we&#8217;ve strayed into a variety of subjects, none of which have been related to this podcast, but it&#8217;s been very enjoyable. He&#8217;s a thoroughly sociable and humorous chap, let&#8217;s put it that way. So I&#8217;ve appreciated the last hour. It&#8217;s been an absolute bonus. You&#8217;ve cheered me up no end.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">However, the listeners to this podcast, they may not know about you. They may not know what you do, or what you have done or whatever it may be related to WordPress. It&#8217;s a banal question, but I always like to introduce the podcast with it. Will you just tell us about yourself?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:04:36] <strong>Zach Stepek:</strong> Yeah, so I am what you would hear referred to in the industry as a unicorn. I&#8217;ve been in multiple roles, from design to development. I started my career as a Cold Fusion developer, moved into Flash back in the day. Taught the Flex Framework everywhere from IBM to MTV. Spent time doing the teaching thing for about five or six years as an Adobe Certified Instructor. And then the bottom fell out of that industry, because of a letter that was written about Flash that you may remember.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">All of my contracts disappeared overnight. Within a week almost a million dollars worth of potential revenue had been cancelled. Back then I was very nice with my out clauses in my contracts, and I learned a very harsh lesson. Spent a year working support at a company that may have had something to do with the collapse of my industry, working for their care division and learned about the support industry there while learning new things. And one of those new things was WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I worked as an Experience Designer at a medical, an electronic medical records company, working on the design of their EMR software for a while. And then worked at a company called Comply365, where I dove deep into JavaScript and did a lot of demos of their forms platform, which is used by airlines all over the world to do the submission of service forms for aeroplanes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The company actually started as a way to get rid of the giant binders that pilots used to carry that had the manuals. The company started as a digitiser of that material into a tablet application that pilots could carry in the pocket of a briefcase rather than it being a briefcase itself. So worked there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Throughout the years I was working on WordPress. I had been involved in bringing a record label back to Rockford that had folded. Rockford, Illinois is where I live. And we built a WooCommerce site to sell digital music. And that was my first exposure to WooCommerce.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Went on from there to work at a company and organisation called Oscar Mike and the Oscar Mike Foundation, which helps injured veterans participate in adaptive sporting events. They are a great organisation that had a WooCommerce website that was failing under traffic. In fact, the way I got that job was I knew the founder, Noah. And Noah had called me on Thanksgiving during dinner with my family. And he said, hey, I need your help. My website is down. And I said, okay, where is it hosted? And he said, I&#8217;m not sure.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So four and a half, five hours later, we got the site back up. The problem is, he had been featured in an interview during an American football game. The interview was aired during the Thanksgiving Day game between the Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Bears. And so, you know, classic rivalry, the interview had happened in the Chicago Bears Locker room set, and was aired on TV all over Chicago. And so they were getting hit by a ton of traffic, and they got 14 orders before the hosting that was supporting their site died.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:08:29] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It went viral. One of the first examples of going viral.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:08:32] <strong>Zach Stepek:</strong> Exactly. And so they got 14 orders and then the server just stopped. And so I had to do root cause analysis, and figure out what had happened. And we determined that it was because the email spool, because there was an email server on the same server as the web server, had filled with the new product order emails from WooCommerce. And because the server didn&#8217;t have a lot of power to begin with, it was a small VPS that had been donated to the organisation. Very grateful that that had happened because that was what got them started. But it was never designed for the level of traffic that they had received. And so after those 14 orders, delivering three emails a piece, the server ran out of memory because the email spool ran the server out of memory.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And when a server runs out of memory, it causes a cascading effect that basically took down the website and everything related to it and hard crashed the VPS so that it could not recover. We didn&#8217;t have a login to go in and reset the VPS until four and a half hours later. So the window of opportunity had already closed by the time I had the login information, could reset the server, and we figured out what was going on. That led to me working there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Worked there for a little over a year and a half. And I fell in love with WooCommerce and WordPress through that process, and ended up talking about that site at WordCamp, Milwaukee, 2015. And at the time Patrick Rauland was the Product Manager for WooCommerce at WooThemes, and he flew from Denver to Milwaukee to see my talk. And that led to a relationship with the WooCommerce team that has not stopped since.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So it was really, really cool. I got to speak at WooConf as a keynote speaker in 2017. I had started an agency that started out small and became a force to be reckoned with in the three years that I was with it. Pivoted out of that for reasons that we don&#8217;t need to get into. And then moved into the hosting space, and I&#8217;ve been there since.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And in that space I&#8217;ve been focused on partnerships. So as of today, I am a freelancer who is doing fractional work in the partnership space and also doing some work on WordPress websites again, so WooCommerce sites and the like. Making recommendations for hosting infrastructure and stability for scaling those sites.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:11:17] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> That is such an interesting story. I mean, you&#8217;ve run the gamut of all of it really. And dear listener, there are so many other stories that could be filled in in between those things because Zach&#8217;s got a lot going on outside of the day job and the things that he&#8217;s just described, there&#8217;s an awful lot of other things going on as well. So what a rich and interesting life you have had.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I hate to drag it back in a way to what we&#8217;re going to talk about, because given all of that exciting stuff, this may seem, you know, a little bit dry. But we&#8217;re going to get there because Zach wants to talk to us today about partnerships basically.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Just for the listeners Zach, this isn&#8217;t for your benefit, this is for the listener&#8217;s benefit, I think it&#8217;s fair to say that a lot of the people listening to this podcast, we&#8217;ve got developers, we&#8217;ve got people who have been in the space for years and years and years, but I get quite a bit of email and a lot of it says, you know, I&#8217;m new to WordPress and that kind of thing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And they really don&#8217;t know that events take place, that there&#8217;s this whole tapestry of people interconnecting, and hanging out in the real world. And that some of the companies that they may have heard of, they partner up with other companies. So plugin companies might partner up with hosting companies that then do other different things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Do you just want to paint a bit of a picture of what a partnership is in the WordPress space in 2026? Now I know that&#8217;s a very open-ended question, because there&#8217;s no two that&#8217;ll be alike, but just give us an idea.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:12:37] <strong>Zach Stepek:</strong> So I like to divide partnerships into two types. One is the relationship between creators or builders or agency owners, and the hosting companies that they use to host the websites for their customers.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And the other, well there&#8217;s two forms of the other, and that is product companies that build products around WordPress who partner with either agencies or hosts.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;ve been writing a lot on LinkedIn lately about how I feel about partnerships, and part of it was this pivot into thinking in terms of ecosystems. And I&#8217;m not the first one to say that. Jonathan Wold has been saying that for a few years now, how WordPress is an ecosystem.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But there are basically these three layers that are interconnected and work together, right? And so for most successful site builds, you have either an individual or an agency who&#8217;s building the site. You have the product companies that build the software that is layered into WordPress that powers the site, whether that&#8217;s a theme like Ollie or Kadence, or a plugin for anything like Gravity Forms for forms or for Formidable Forms, or any of the other forum companies who will be really upset I didn&#8217;t mention them by name. Or an SEO plugin or any of these other ancillary tools that make WordPress more capable.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so those two things, the agency and then the products need to work in harmony because the agency needs to understand the products well enough to implement them, and the product companies need to understand the agency&#8217;s needs well enough to serve them through their products and through support for those products.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And then there&#8217;s a third layer, and it&#8217;s a layer that a lot of people think about in terms of more a vendor relationship than a partnership. And that is the hosting side, the infrastructure. When you start a company and you&#8217;re a retail company, one of the first things that you do is you go out and you look for where you&#8217;re going to put your retail store, right? And so you look for real estate.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You want a couple of things. You want high traffic areas that can handle bringing you people, and that can also handle the amount of people you&#8217;re going to just get naturally, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So you&#8217;re looking at things like traffic numbers that are going to go past your retail space. You&#8217;re looking at, population density, all of these other things. And where are you going to advertise in town? How are you going to be bringing people to you?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And the internet is very similar in its structure to what we do for a physical retail store. So your infrastructure, your hosting is like the address that you&#8217;re putting your retail store at. And so if you skimp on hosting and you go for somebody who offers $3 a month for unlimited websites, you&#8217;re putting yourself in the cheapest rent you can possibly pay for your storefront. And by doing so, you&#8217;re not going to have the ability to handle the same traffic as say, a location on Madison Avenue in New York might be able to. It&#8217;s different, right? It is a different setup. You could be on, in the Miracle Mile in Chicago. That&#8217;s great retail space. It&#8217;s incredibly expensive, but if your business can support it, that&#8217;s the place to be.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are some other parallels we can talk about with some of the SaaS companies like Shopify that have created almost a mall. Because they&#8217;ve created this payments platform that allows them to expose stores to people, right? So shop pay will give you suggestions of other things that you can buy if you open the shop app on your mobile device. So it has a built in kind of discoverability, but that discoverability comes with a price. And that price is a percentage of your business forever. Even on their high end tiers, they still are getting a percentage of your business on Shopify Plus. That&#8217;s just how they make money.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So all of that to say, there are parallels between how we host a website and how we might position a retail space, right? So premium hosting is a big deal. It&#8217;s a huge deal, especially in e-commerce where scale matters because every visitor is a potential sale. Every sale is the only way your company makes money, right? The impetus of e-commerce is transactional. It is, somebody comes to your store, buys a product, you ship it to them, they receive it, and you have completed your contract with them to deliver the product that they asked for.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Because of that, if they come to your website and your site fails because you&#8217;re getting too much traffic, for example, it&#8217;s akin to if you were walking through a Best Buy and as you&#8217;re walking through the store, things around you just start to deteriorate. If you were walking through a store where the products you were looking at just stopped existing for fractions of time, like how long would you stay in that store?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:18:12] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Or you couldn&#8217;t quite pick the box up. You could get your hands on it, but then everything just stopped. You couldn&#8217;t lift it off the shelf. Yeah, that&#8217;s, you wouldn&#8217;t stay long is the answer.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:18:22] <strong>Zach Stepek:</strong> No. No. And that&#8217;s the same thing that happens with bad infrastructure for e-commerce sites. So that&#8217;s that third pillar of partnership and what makes a successful WordPress site.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:18:33] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Can I just ask a quick question around that? So before we penetrate deeper into that. So you mentioned these three things and you&#8217;ve got the, and you did them in that order. So we had agency, or that could be an individual, I guess, but let&#8217;s go with the agency word because it&#8217;s easier. Which then has some kind of relationship with the product companies. So themes, plugins, whatever that may be. So that&#8217;s the second tier, if you like. And then there&#8217;s the third tier, which is hosting, stroke, infrastructure. But let&#8217;s, again, let&#8217;s just call it hosting.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So you listed those things in order, but I&#8217;m imagining, and I could be wrong, that instead of it being like a layer cake, it&#8217;s more of a kind of an overlapping Venn diagram. The three things are in concert with each other. So a triangle if you like. So the agency, whilst in your description, it&#8217;s kind of next to the product company, well it&#8217;s also next to the hosting and infrastructure side of things as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In other words, the partnerships that we&#8217;ll get into, it&#8217;s not bound from layer one to layer two, and layer two to layer three. Three goes to one, two goes to three, and so on. Have I encapsulated that right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:19:35] <strong>Zach Stepek:</strong> Yeah, think of it almost as a Celtic knot, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:19:38] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, okay. Go Google that, dear listener.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:19:41] <strong>Zach Stepek:</strong> It&#8217;s this never ending connection of multiple pieces all forming a whole. And the interconnected nature of it doesn&#8217;t end, at least when things are working well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are product companies that have terrible support. There are infrastructure companies, hosting companies, that have terrible support. So those things, there are agencies that have terrible support, I mean this is not something that is only relegated to the product and hosting companies. Every layer has the potential for having pieces fall apart. The strength of the whole is only as strong as the weakest of the parts in the partnership.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:20:22] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> That&#8217;s fascinating. So we&#8217;re imagining that these things are not just overlapping, they&#8217;re holding each other together. And at this point I&#8217;m kind of imagining almost like a bubble that you blow with those bubble kits that you get as a child. The whole thing is, those three things are holding that bubble together, but it just takes one of them, the little pop with the needle and doop, the whole thing sort of comes apart because, they are the underpinnings of each other. That&#8217;s really interesting.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Can I just make an observation at this point? And again, you can rail against it or agree. I don&#8217;t know where you&#8217;re going to go. It feels like the revenue side of those things, the giant if you like, in the room there, the one that traditionally seems to make the money, all the money, most of the money, lots of money, is the hosting infrastructure side of things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And then the two other layers, you know, the product companies, the theme companies, the plugin companies, whatever. There are a few examples that escape velocity and managed to pull away from the earth&#8217;s gravity, you know, Gravity Forms might be a good example in fact, who have that trajectory, but they&#8217;re big. But the rest of it is just lots and lots of much smaller entities. So thousands, many, many thousands of smaller entities with a single theme, or a collection of plugins, or what have you. And the same, I think would be true for the agencies. Just lots and lots of that spread out.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So in terms of demographics, the hosting companies, that seems to be a small number, but they make lots of revenue. Whereas the other two, the agency and the product companies, large numbers, all making less revenue individually, potentially. I know I&#8217;m drawing a lot of parallels that maybe are not necessarily going to hold up to scrutiny, but you get what I mean. That&#8217;s quite an interesting dynamic, because they&#8217;re relying upon each other and yet in some situations, you have a few players which might be able to punch above their weight because of their bank balance and the size of their business.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:22:11] <strong>Zach Stepek:</strong> No, absolutely. I mean we&#8217;re all familiar with the larger WordPress VIP level agencies, right? They&#8217;re the people who are out there in the community giving back the most frequently a lot of the times. So, you know, you see companies like Fueled who now has 10up as its WordPress practise within Fueled, right? And Fueled gives back a ton of open source technology just to the community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s stuff that they built to serve their customers that they&#8217;ve given back to the community, because Jake has always been a good steward of the WordPress community in general. So he understands and recognises that the true benefit of an open source platform like WordPress is not only the things we can create on top of it because we have access to the code, but the community that can be created on top of the solutions we create.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So look at something like ElasticPress as an example. ElasticPress is an open source tool that also has been commercialised into a hosted product by Fueled. And it replaces search in WordPress with something that is much, much better, right? ElasticSearch is much better at searching indexed content than SQL is at searching a relational database for anything within it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It replaces something that is a bit of a hole in what WordPress can do with something that is better. And they gave it to the community. They gave it to the community, because it&#8217;s based on open source server software. So it made sense for the plugin that enables the use of this open source server with this open source CMS to also be an open source plugin. And because of that, they have community members that contribute back to the ElasticPress product when there are bugs that they find, and solutions to things that they find. And they have a constant feedback loop of how to improve their product.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And that all happens because they decided to be good stewards within the WordPress community. They&#8217;re not the only ones. There are many. WebDevStudios just released Theme Switcher Pro. If you haven&#8217;t heard Brad talking about Theme Switcher Pro yet, you haven&#8217;t been on the internet around WordPress, because are absolutely right to be marketing what they built.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was, again, something that was built around a need. They saw a need for an easier way for people to move from where they were with classic themes, to block-based themes more gradually. So in large enterprises, it&#8217;s sometimes hard to just wholesale replace the theme of a website. So they built a solution that allowed you to replace parts of it, a little bit at a time and move to a block-based architecture over time rather than all at once.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so these companies are building tools around what WordPress can do to fit needs that they&#8217;ve found working with their customers. So in these cases, the agencies become the product companies, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And then there are product companies that, they were built around solving a need. Things like Gravity Forms, or other form plugins, that were built to solve the problem with form submissions in WordPress. And all of these things are all participating in the same ecosystem, right? But if you build a site that has 75 plugins installed and one of them doesn&#8217;t play well with others, the whole thing comes tumbling down.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:26:01] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Oh, that&#8217;s a good analogy.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:26:02] <strong>Zach Stepek:</strong> You look at that, and the reason we&#8217;re, that I&#8217;m focused right now on ecosystem building and on building this, a network of people who want to work together is because a rising tide lifts all ships, right? We want WordPress to continue growing as an ecosystem. And like you mentioned, hosting companies tend to be the ones with the most money in the room. That&#8217;s not always the case, but they make a good amount of money on hosting.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I think that hosting companies have a responsibility to be good stewards to the community in the same way that I just talked about WebDevStudios and Fueled being good stewards of the community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so hosting companies are in a unique position where they can drive these values based partnerships that allow for agencies to meet product owners and product owners to meet agencies who are all part of their partner programmes, right? They all can invest together in their mutual success.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Values driven partnership is a long game, right? It&#8217;s kind of the difference between planting a forest and picking apples off of a tree. If all you want is the apples, you just strip the branches of all the apples and you move on. But if you&#8217;re planting a forest together, you&#8217;re thinking about ecosystem, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So in the best partnerships, both sides are invested in that mutual success. You care about your partner&#8217;s customers, their teams, the reputation they carry in the community. Revenue matters, but the revenue is just the result of doing all the other things well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:27:45] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> There&#8217;s so much to unpick here and I&#8217;m going to try and do some of that. So you&#8217;ve got this rising tide carries all boats thing, which I think is so important. We forget that at our peril.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But also I want to use the word synergy, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. You know, WordPress is so impressive because all these three layers, the agency, the product, the hosting company, because they&#8217;ve got overlapping concerns and it&#8217;s just over the last 20 odd years, it&#8217;s worked somehow.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Often on this podcast I say, I want to rewind, and that&#8217;s what I want to do. I just want to rewind back 22 odd years. There was no playbook for how this would turn out. We didn&#8217;t know that any of those three layers would exist. We didn&#8217;t know that there would be a thing like an agency, that there would be a freelance web developer, that that would be a thing. These industries didn&#8217;t exist.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We didn&#8217;t know that product companies would pop up because the plugin architecture and the theme architecture in WordPress would enable that, and it was okay to exchange money for those things. It turned out that was a thing with WordPress that you could do that other CMSs kind of pushed back upon. And then that hosting would become the bedrock of that whole thing as well. We didn&#8217;t know that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And 22 years later, with a lot of agreement, but a fair level of disagreement, I imagine along the way, those three pillars, for want of a better word, they&#8217;ve evolved and they&#8217;ve become what they are now. We are recording this in the year 2026, and I feel like there&#8217;s a change that&#8217;s happened at some point. I don&#8217;t know when it was, but it feels like that synergy, that unwritten, and yet completely understood by the WordPress community, that unwritten, unspoken, contract, in many ways. It feels like that&#8217;s maybe disappearing a little bit.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m probably overemphasising that, but do you sense that a bit? That the maker taker thing is kind of skewing it. That money has become such an integral part of the WordPress project, so many lives bound up with the money, the revenue that&#8217;s generated by the company that they work for and what have you, that it&#8217;s so easy to lose sight of that bigger piece. The rising tide carries all boats.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And instead of the rising tide, what we&#8217;ve got is circling the wagons. You know, looking out for ourselves, and making sure we&#8217;ve got what we need to survive. And of course, just forgetting, wait, the very fabric, the foundations upon which our business is built, we must maintain that in the next year, in the next two years, in the next five and ten years, otherwise we&#8217;re just, well we&#8217;re standing on sand, we don&#8217;t have a firm foundation. There was a lot there and there certainly was no question, but discuss.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:30:26] <strong>Zach Stepek:</strong> No, so what we&#8217;re seeing is this move toward, it&#8217;s unfortunate because I see it happening in a lot of companies right now. Where they&#8217;ve taken on investment. They no longer are fully in charge of their own destinies, because they now have people to answer to that want to get a return out of the money they&#8217;ve injected into the WordPress community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And the only thing that private equity generally sees is the dollar, or the pound, or the whatever your local currency is, right? That&#8217;s all they see. That&#8217;s all they see. And when you talk about an ecosystem of interrelated, interlocking pieces that all have to work in harmony, and then you have a force that&#8217;s in an industry that is interested only in transaction, that is at odds with how an open source community is built, right? So taking things to a transactional level only chases short term wins, because that relationship only lasts as long as you can continue to squeeze money out of it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:31:37] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It is such an interesting juxtaposition with broader society. So you live in the US I live in the UK. We&#8217;re both democracies, and we&#8217;re both capitalist democracies. And from a very early age, the subliminal message being delivered to all of us is, work hard, produce things and just see what you can get out of it all. Charge what the market will bear, and the rest of society will figure all of that out. The market is the thing, and somehow it&#8217;ll all beautifully work and balance.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is so different to that. This is something else. It&#8217;s some, there&#8217;s a philanthropic outside to it which, it&#8217;s very hard to encapsulate, but the whole 22 year history of it is built upon the shoulders of many, many thousands, tens of thousands of people who didn&#8217;t necessarily have that as the basis upon which they were working.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You know, there was a lot of philanthropy, a lot of volunteer time, for want of a better word. And so projects like WordPress, it feels like, if the only metric for success by a WordPress company is going to be ROI for whatever reason, you mentioned having to repay the venture capitalists or what have you. But if ROI is the only metric upon which anything is based, you aren&#8217;t thinking about the rising tide carrying all boats. You are just thinking what&#8217;s the next month going to do, and what&#8217;s the next month going to do?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And again, I haven&#8217;t got a question in there, there&#8217;s just an observation. But there&#8217;s something intangible there. There&#8217;s something that our ecosystem requires in order to survive that it feels is harder to, conjure up in the real world in 2026 than it was say in, I don&#8217;t know, 2017 or something like that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:33:24] <strong>Zach Stepek:</strong> Yeah, well, and here&#8217;s the thing, okay. When you focus on these short-term wins only, and you ignore the potential of long-term partnership and of ecosystem building, you lose out on potential revenue because of shortsightedness, right? If all you&#8217;re trying to do is close the next sale as quickly as possible to make people who don&#8217;t really know your business happy, then you&#8217;re losing sight of the potential that comes from investing in long-term sales.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And agencies understand this, especially the more enterprise focused agencies who have sales cycles that are 12, 18, 24, sometimes even 36 months long. So when these companies start to put profit ahead of people, ahead of partnership. When profit is the priority, then anything they call a partnership programme is really just a house of cards. It might stand for a while, but it&#8217;s fragile. And when people get treated like line items instead of collaborators, that trust erodes very quickly.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When every conversation becomes transactional, everyone, every layer that we talked about starts to just focus on protecting their own interests. And the irony is that the strongest growth comes from the opposite approach, right? When partners focus on people, they focus on shared wins. Those successes create real social proof.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And then the community sees it. And the customers see it. And that reputation, that long-term investment in the community as a whole, in the ecosystem, is more powerful than any potential short-term revenue spike. Trust and reputation compound over time. It&#8217;s not something you develop in a single conversation.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And then the other thing that&#8217;s really important about this is what the community perceives, right? Love it or hate it, the WordPress community is very harsh to companies that they see as just trying to eek out profit without giving back, without doing the things that are required to support the very ecosystem that allows them to make money. And so community perception is hugely important, and that perception drives long-term growth. Short-term thinking damages your brand equity, long-term thinking builds it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Trust, in this case, is the durable asset, right? It&#8217;s not what your MRR is or your ARR is. Those things are important because they allow you to support the business and the livelihoods that you are supporting as a company. But trust is the most important asset a company has. And when that starts to erode because the company stops acting like it used to, before the injection of capital, and starts acting like a business that is focused on only its capitalistic pursuit, trust starts to degrade, and then eventually it&#8217;s just gone.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:36:43] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I&#8217;m imagining like a, I often like to kind of encapsulate things in my head and I&#8217;m kind of imagining a really tall skyscraper. And the scenario that you are describing is more death by a thousand paper cuts. It&#8217;s this slow erosion of that building. You know, imagine that building where the way that you&#8217;ve just described things, you might be removing one brick one day and then you come back another day and take a couple more. Before you know it, the whole thing starts to look shaky.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So it&#8217;s not that giant, swinging wrecking ball that&#8217;s coming and in one hit has just demolished the whole thing. This is a slow, but potentially with a certain critical momentum and enough steam behind it, enough erosion of the fabric of the whole thing that it&#8217;s inevitable. Unless the brakes are put on, that slow erosion, the building will fall down.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m wondering if that&#8217;s more a consequence of where we are at. And I don&#8217;t mean you and I or even the WordPress community. The confidence in economies worldwide, and the nature of what&#8217;s going on in the broader world, I wonder if those kind of concerns play in.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So you know more about the corporate side of WordPress businesses than I do. I don&#8217;t know what is happening at the top tier of a lot of those bigger businesses. The sort of third tier that you mentioned. I do wonder if there&#8217;s a more, how to describe it, bean countery kind of approach to businesses.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I wonder if the calculus is much more now, what is the ROI? If we don&#8217;t see ROI, it&#8217;s not happening. Whereas in the year 2017, it would be, what&#8217;s the ROI? Well, yeah, we&#8217;ve got things which we can say we&#8217;ll make a profit from that, but we&#8217;ve also got the long bets. We&#8217;ve got the community side. We&#8217;re going to fly people to that event. We&#8217;re going to sponsor that person over there, two days a month because we know that they&#8217;re contributing to Core, and that&#8217;s part of this bigger rising tide carries all boats metaphor that we&#8217;ve been using. I don&#8217;t know if it&#8217;s true, but I wonder if the state of the world that we&#8217;re in, I wonder if that contributes a bit to it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:38:42] <strong>Zach Stepek:</strong> I think it does. I think there&#8217;s a lot of fear right now because the economy has not been as strong as what it had been in the past. We all dealt with a period of extreme recession. And despite some governments not wanting to say the word, right? The COVID-19 pandemic caused a shrink in economic factors across the board. And it was inevitable that that was going to happen.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some countries were hit harder by inflation as a result of that than others. But it&#8217;s a reality that we&#8217;ve all had to deal with, because demand for things went up and the supply went down because the workers simply weren&#8217;t there to make the things. And that&#8217;s just basic economics in a capitalistic society, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, yes, there&#8217;s a lot of fear. There&#8217;s a lot of fear that is causing businesses to make decisions that they wouldn&#8217;t have, you know, as you mentioned, just eight years ago in 2017. And all you have to do is look at the sponsorship page on any WordCamp or any tech event. Even events as large as CloudFest. Look at the sponsor pages. Look at who&#8217;s there and compare it to what you&#8217;ve seen in the past.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The numbers are dwindling, right? The people who are willing to continue making those investments are dwindling. Companies, whether they are product companies or agencies or hosting companies, but especially hosting companies this year, are deciding not to send people to events. They&#8217;re just not. I have heard from multiple people that work at hosting companies that are not leaving their home countries this year. It&#8217;s a belt tightening across the board.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But I understand that there&#8217;s a desire to tighten the belt and make sure that the company can survive through this current economic shift. And for hosting companies that own their own infrastructure, and even those who are renting infrastructure from a hyperscaler like Google or AWS, there&#8217;s a very scary thing on the horizon that we&#8217;re seeing, and that is the shortage of components for building servers.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And there&#8217;s this little thing that is an artificial term called Artificial Intelligence. They&#8217;re large language models people, they&#8217;re not Artificial Intelligence. There&#8217;s no intelligence there. They&#8217;re just regurgitating things they have read and digested, right? But these AI companies, these large language models take a tremendous amount of processing power.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I&#8217;m reminded of the first time that I visited a data centre. And I was in the data centre and across the aisle from what I was there to see was an AI company. And they had their servers there and the data centre had to retrofit additional cooling for the area where those AI servers were running. Whereas you could probably just wear a T-shirt and be fine in a data centre, in most cases. If you were in that area without a coat, it was bitterly cold, because there was just so much air that was chilled air being shot at these machines that were filled with graphics processors that were generating massive amounts of heat.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so you think about that, and you think about the level of hardware required to generate that amount of heat out of a simple server, and the difference in the number of components, the amount of RAM, the amount of processors, the number of graphics cards at $2,000 a piece that have to go into these massive beasts of servers. And the component shortage has a lot of hosts scared too. Not a lot of them thought in advance to buy a ton of RAM and a ton of processors, because we&#8217;ve never had a true supply shortage in that area except during the pandemic.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And at that time, everybody was slowed down. Now, nobody has slowed down. Demand is higher than ever before for hosting, and the infrastructure just isn&#8217;t there to support it. So as the prices of things like a stick of memory have gone up, the cost, the raw cost of hosting will go up too. And we&#8217;re just starting to see the beginning of that effect. But I think that companies that were built on $3 hosting are going to very quickly find that their model is no longer supported by component cost.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So yeah, there&#8217;s fear. There&#8217;s fear that is causing people to make decisions that are focused on revenue rather than relationship. And I think it&#8217;s incredibly shortsighted. I understand it. I get why fear is such a motivating factor, especially when you have lives that you&#8217;re responsible for. I&#8217;ve been there. But the important thing is remembering that, in everything you do, there are real humans behind these brands, behind these products, behind these agencies.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s really easy to talk about a whole bunch of companies like their logos on a slide. And in fact, that&#8217;s what some of these partner programmes are designed to do, collect logos. But that&#8217;s transactional, right? And all of these people are people. All of these teams are created from people, founders, developers, support staff. They&#8217;re all people, and they care deeply about the work they&#8217;re doing. At least in most cases, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:44:55] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. Just sort of interjecting there as well. The fear aspect that you mentioned for all of the reasons you&#8217;ve just described is so understandable where we are right now in 2026. And so ROI, it feels like it&#8217;s becoming the thing. The thing instead of anything else. And I wonder if that&#8217;s because there&#8217;s a vacuum on the other side where anything philanthropic, so let&#8217;s say for example, I don&#8217;t know, you contribute something by giving somebody a day a week to work on Core.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The calculus there is, well, we could do the ROI thing, or we could do this other philanthropic thing, but nobody will know about it. Only we&#8217;ll know about it. And if we write a blog post, then a few people will know, but almost nobody will see that that&#8217;s happening. And so there&#8217;s no kind of quid pro quo on the other side. There isn&#8217;t the recognition.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But it feels like the wheels are beginning to turn, the cogs are starting to move around that. There seems to be some initiatives that are coming, which are going to try and address contributor hours, or badges, or whatever it is that you do. Some way of recognising, okay, that company did this, we need to lord that, and praise that, and recognise that, and write it down and keep a record of it so that we know in the future.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And maybe that will be something which will be put into the spreadsheet. There will be an ROI on that thing because it&#8217;s more tangible. It will never be as tangible as the ROI of the dollar that you get back from the dollar that you spent. But at least it will be something. It&#8217;s not just sort of shouting into the void, we give that person a day, a month. Nobody knows. Nobody knows give that person a day, a month to contribute to Core. And maybe if we get to the point where those kind of things are recognised.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I don&#8217;t know what that means. I don&#8217;t know how we make that and inflate that into something important. But maybe those kind of things start to need to matter in a way that they never did matter before, because they just didn&#8217;t need to matter. But now the landscape has changed. They now do need to matter, otherwise the revenue from these companies is going to dry up.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:47:03] <strong>Zach Stepek:</strong> Yeah, I think that&#8217;s, it&#8217;s really interesting because when you look at all of this, first of all, partnerships, what we started this whole conversation around. You mentioned the spreadsheet. Partnership success doesn&#8217;t often show up overnight on that spreadsheet, right? It&#8217;s like tending a garden. It&#8217;s not flipping a switch.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So every partnership you grow, see what I did there, it takes time. You have to build the trust. You have to learn how each other&#8217;s businesses work. If it&#8217;s a vendor relationship and it&#8217;s only built on affiliate income, right? The agency recommends you because you give them more money than another host to do so, well, are you going to learn about that agency&#8217;s business ever? No. But if you invest the time, you build that trust, you find out how each other&#8217;s businesses work. Over time, those relationships bear fruit. And the first casualty of fear is patience.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:48:07] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I like that. That sounds like the strap line from a movie.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:48:13] <strong>Zach Stepek:</strong> You know, revenue is just a signal. It&#8217;s one signal, right? It&#8217;s not the only signal.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:48:20] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s so interesting this, and it&#8217;s so difficult. So here we are, we&#8217;re doing this dance. It&#8217;s even difficult to describe even though we&#8217;ve poured the last, you know, hour into thinking about this, it&#8217;s very hard to get hold of. It&#8217;s really difficult to describe. It&#8217;s very difficult to work out, to calculate. And that maybe is it. Maybe that&#8217;s the problem where we&#8217;re at. We can&#8217;t calculate it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Like you said, it&#8217;s growing the garden, it&#8217;s turning up, doing things, things will blossom over time. It&#8217;s keeping the faith. It&#8217;s less circling of the wagons, more the rising tide carries all boats mentality.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Certainly this year feels like we&#8217;re going to go through something. And whatever comes out the other side, it will be interesting to see whether it was that wrecking ball, or whether it was people just taking a brick one at a time. Or whether it was adding stories to the building, you know, adding extra floors that didn&#8217;t exist before. It&#8217;ll be really interesting to see how this pans out because I think we&#8217;re at an inflexion point.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:49:23] <strong>Zach Stepek:</strong> We are. And I know, you said it&#8217;s hard to measure. And I do agree that it&#8217;s hard to measure the impact of something like partnerships. Revenue is the most common signal to use for that, right? It&#8217;s the thing that makes the most sense to a business mind. And the revenue is what fuels business growth, I get that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But I would posit that there are a few other metrics, a few other things we can start to look at to measure success beyond revenue. Now, like I said, revenue&#8217;s a signal. There are other signals too. What&#8217;s the trust between teams? How often are partners collaborating proactively? If you&#8217;re a hosting company, you see this pretty actively. How often are your customers having better outcomes because of the partnerships you&#8217;ve forged?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Relationship equity precedes the revenue. These outcomes matter. Partnerships compound slowly. And when you&#8217;re in an environment where patience is thin because fear is high, taking the time to develop true partnerships is hard. But it is always the people that do the hard work that succeed in the end.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:50:36] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I think that&#8217;s the perfect place to put a pin in it. That was such an interesting conversation. I don&#8217;t claim to understand the nuance of it still. I don&#8217;t, certainly don&#8217;t claim to have the answer but it was fascinating chatting that through with you. I think there&#8217;s things to be addressed in the year 2026, and that certainly was an interesting foray into that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As much as I don&#8217;t want to end the conversation, I think now is probably the moment to do that. I just want to give you an opportunity to tell people where you are. You obviously had your bio at the beginning, but I don&#8217;t think you dropped a website or anything like that. So if you want to drop a social handle or a particular URL that people can find you, if they want to get into this conversation more deeply, go for it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:51:18] <strong>Zach Stepek:</strong> Yeah, so all of my eCommerce consultancy is done through mightyswarm.com. That&#8217;s my agency. The fractional partnership stuff that I&#8217;m working on, the fractional help, it will also run through that. It&#8217;s not quite updated to include that yet. You can find me at zachstepek.com, which is my personal site, talks a little bit about what I do. I&#8217;m in the process of rebuilding that, so it also encapsulates the other part of my life which is my concert and music photography, which we&#8217;ll talk about it another time. And I&#8217;m zstepek pretty much everywhere. So Z S T E P E K on all the social platforms that matter.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:52:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I will make sure that I put whatever you&#8217;ve just said into the show notes. So if you go to wptavern.com and you search for the episode with Zach Stepek then you&#8217;ll be able to find it. If you scroll down to the bottom, it&#8217;ll be under the beginning blurb, and the transcription and things like that. Go to the bottom. There&#8217;s a useful link section so it will all be there. So Zach, what a fascinating conversation that was. I really appreciate that. Thank you so much for chatting to me today.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:52:25] <strong>Zach Stepek:</strong> Thanks for having me. It was a lot of fun. It&#8217;s always good to talk to you.</p>\n</div></details>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On the podcast today we have <a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachstepek/\">Zach Stepek</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Zach is what you might call a ‘unicorn’ in the tech world, having held roles in design, development, and much more. His experience spans everything from ColdFusion and Flash, to JavaScript, WordPress, and WooCommerce. He’s worked with brands like IBM and MTV, in varied industries from medical records to e-commerce, and has spoken at WordCamps, WooConf, and contributed to the WordPress community through both agencies and product companies.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You might know about WordPress, agencies, product companies, and hosting, but might not have thought about how partnerships actually work in this ecosystem, or why they matter right now. Zach is here to explain just that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He starts off by sharing his journey into WordPress, his early challenges, and how an unexpected ‘viral’ moment led him deeper into the ecosystem. He describes the three interconnected pillars of WordPress success: agencies (or individuals), product companies (think plugins, themes), and hosting / infrastructure, and how each depends on the other to thrive.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We discuss the current state of partnerships, how companies collaborate, why trust and values-driven approaches are essential, and why the rapid rise of ROI-driven, transactional thinking is at odds with WordPress’ open source roots. Zach explores the perils of short-term wins and the value of nurturing long-term, mutually beneficial relationships, especially as economic uncertainty and changes in the broader world are beginning to reshape how companies interact.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then we talk about the challenges faced by hosting companies, the role of product companies in innovation, and how agencies often bridge these worlds. Zach makes the case for cultivating relationship equity, not just revenue, and how a rising tide can lift all boats if the community keeps its collective focus.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Towards the end we discuss how the landscape has changed, why community contributions matter more than ever, and what the future might hold as WordPress partnerships reach an inflection point.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you’re curious about how these invisible partnership threads bind the WordPress ecosystem together, and how true partnership drives success, this episode is for you.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Useful links</h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https://www.elasticpress.io\">ElasticPress</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https://themeswitcher.com\">Theme Switcher Pro</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https://mightyswarm.com\">Mighty Swarm</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https://zachstepek.com\">zachstepek.com</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https://x.com/zstepek\">Zach on X</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachstepek/\">Zach on LinkedIn</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, 25 Mar 2026 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:30;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s: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:44:\"Open Channels FM: Pink, Pixels, and Progress\";s: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:34:\"https://openchannels.fm/?p=2551330\";s: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:49:\"https://openchannels.fm/pink-pixels-and-progress/\";s: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:164:\"In this clip Jessica Malamud chats with Adam Weeks about Elementor\'s brand evolution, focusing on the right pink shade and design details that emphasize 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:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Wed, 25 Mar 2026 13:15:00 +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:8:\"Bob Dunn\";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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s: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:48:\"HeroPress: An Eighth Grader’s Dream Comes True\";s: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:56:\"https://heropress.com/?post_type=heropress-essays&p=8545\";s: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:142:\"https://heropress.com/essays/an-eighth-graders-dream-comes-true/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=an-eighth-graders-dream-comes-true\";s: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:7323:\"<img alt=\"Pull Quote: The sense of community and belonging was strong.\" class=\"attachment-large size-large wp-post-image\" height=\"512\" src=\"https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/032426.webp\" width=\"1024\" /><figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls=\"controls\" src=\"https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/ray_mitchell_heropress.mp3\"></audio><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Here is Ray reading his own essay aloud.</figcaption></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>When I was in eighth grade, I wanted to be a commercial artist. It wasn’t common thinking at the time (and for some it still isn&#8217;t) for art or design to be considered a practical career path. The thinking was, within art there was fine art for the people who could really paint or draw, and commercial art for people whose skills were passable; neither of which would lead to a comfortable lifestyle.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was just OK and never would be a fine painter, I was good enough at design for screen-printing and designing the posters and programs for the Jr. High fashion show or laying out the school newspaper. I liked it a lot, though I eventually pursued other career aspirations.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I start the story this way because later in life, WordPress gave me the opportunity to have the career I wanted when I was 14.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today I run Made for You Media, a well-respected digital marketing agency specializing in WordPress for local businesses, but the path here took many turns and had many ups and downs.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-how-i-got-here\">How I Got Here</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>After attending college, the path I found myself on led me far from the world of art. I spent time working in a chemistry lab, in retail, then eventually to financial services. I spent almost twenty years working for the &#8220;Don&#8217;t leave home without it&#8221; credit card company, serving international markets in Asia and Latin America. During a stint in Canada, my wife grew tired of being away from family. With news that we would soon have a grandchild on the way, we started the process to move back home.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I knew that I wanted my own business. I planned to start a company to coach small business owners on how to build productive, high-functioning teams. Even though the dot.com bubble was long gone, I knew that even for a small, local company, I would need a good website.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>While closing out my days working in Canada, I would get home from the office around 7:30 in the evening, get something to eat, then from 9PM to about 1 or 2 in the morning, work on building, or trying to learn how to build, a business website. I repeated this routine for weeks until I had something professional looking.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I hand-coded this first website in 2009 and it received lots of complements. However, as good as it looked on the outside, it seemed that things were always breaking under the hood. I had heard about &#8220;this WordPress thing&#8221; and started looking into it. I recreated my HTML site using the &#8220;theme that cannot be mentioned&#8211;but had great typography&#8221; and haven&#8217;t looked back.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-pivoting-to-wordpress\">Pivoting To WordPress</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Ultimately, the coaching business I built that initial website for failed, but what I learned in building my first WordPress site enabled me to start building websites for other people. During the autumn of 2010, I built my first site for a paying client. It took me forever, but I got it launched. After building a few sites I needed to learn more than what I could on my own at the University of Google. I started attending WordCamps.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>WordCamp Raleigh was the first WordCamp I attended, and it was a great experience. In WordPress, we often talk about “the WordPress community” and that’s what it was. The same people whose blog posts I read were there in person. Experts, people who in my mind were the stars of the WordPress galaxy, were there, talking, teaching, and sharing with regular people like me. We ate barbecue, joked, and laughed together just like at a family or school reunion. The sense of community and belonging was strong, and something I still cherish.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I got hooked on WordPress through <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/chrisjean/\">Chris Jean</a>&#8216;s exuberant enthusiasm in talking about &#8220;the loop&#8221; and his new plugin. I bought the plugin even though at the time I didn&#8217;t understand what the loop was, I just knew from his excitement it had to be good. At another WordCamp <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/sabreuse/\">Amy Hendrix</a> talked about how important it was to contribute back to WordPress, and she sunk the hook deeper. Over time, I went from attending WordCamp, to folding up chairs at the end of the day, to filming other people’s presentations, to delivering my own. I&#8217;ve since had the opportunity to speak at several WordCamps including a couple of times at WCUS.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-what-we-ve-become\">What We&#8217;ve Become</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Over the years my company has built many websites using WordPress, mainly supporting local businesses in the US, but also internationally. We&#8217;ve been able to serve many non-profit organizations, allowing them to effectively and affordably serve their communities, leveraging the WordPress platform to attract volunteers and donations. I even had the opportunity to write my first book, Magical Websites for Coaches, an instructional text that showcases the power of WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I point this out because WordPress and the WordPress community enable someone who&#8217;s motivated to leverage their experience to start what can become a very profitable business at a very low cost. With the business lessons I&#8217;d learned over the years, a domain name and an affordable shared hosting plan (thanks <a href=\"https://dreamhost.com\">Dreamhost</a>) and a few business cards, I was able to launch my business. In the process, I&#8217;ve had the opportunity to make great friends and build lasting relationships, meet, and learn from some very smart and inspiring people, and after many years, have a successful career “doing commercial art&#8221; full-time at my own company.</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-background is-vertical is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-fc43baa9 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\" id=\"desktop\">\n<h2 class=\"kt-adv-heading8545_22364b-5e wp-block-kadence-advancedheading\" id=\"work-environment\">Ray&#8217;s Work Environment</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>We asked Ray for a view into his development life and this is what he sent!</p>\n\n\n	<div class=\"hotspots-image-container\">\n		<img alt=\"Ray Mitchell&#039;s Desktop\" class=\"hotspots-image skip-lazy\" height=\"1922\" src=\"https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/desktop-heropress-ray-mitchell-scaled-1.webp\" width=\"2560\" />\n	</div>\n\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has--font-size\">HeroPress would like to thank <a href=\"https://wpdrawattention.com/\">Draw Attention</a> for their donation of the plugin to make this interactive image!</p>\n</div>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https://heropress.com/essays/an-eighth-graders-dream-comes-true/\">An Eighth Grader&#8217;s Dream Comes True</a> appeared first on <a href=\"https://heropress.com\">HeroPress</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, 25 Mar 2026 12:00:00 +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:\"Ray Mitchell\";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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s: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: Beautiful Hack\";s: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=151627\";s: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/2026/03/beautiful-hack/\";s: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:542:\"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s bad, but it&#8217;s so good. <a href=\"https://snyk.io/articles/poisoned-security-scanner-backdooring-litellm/\">As you read this deep dive into the LiteLLM backdoor hack</a>, <a href=\"https://www.aikido.dev/blog/teampcp-deploys-worm-npm-trivy-compromise\">or this one</a>, it&#8217;s really just quite impressive. The use of <a href=\"https://docs.internetcomputer.org/building-apps/essentials/canisters\">ICP canisters</a>, wow. Just as an engineer, I&#8217;d love to meet the minds behind this code.</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, 25 Mar 2026 03:13:32 +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:33;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s: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:53:\"WordPress.org blog: WordPress 7.0 Release Candidate 1\";s: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=20229\";s: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:69:\"https://wordpress.org/news/2026/03/wordpress-7-0-release-candidate-1/\";s: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:11493:\"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The first Release Candidate (“RC1”) for WordPress 7.0 is ready for download and testing!</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>This version of the WordPress software is still under development</strong>. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it’s recommended to evaluate RC1 on a test server and site.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WordPress 7.0 RC1 can be tested using any of the following methods:</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table class=\"has-fixed-layout\"><tbody><tr><td><strong>Plugin</strong></td><td>Install and activate the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/\">WordPress Beta Tester</a> plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream.)</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Direct Download</strong></td><td>Download the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/wordpress-7.0-RC1.zip\">RC1 version (zip)</a> and install it on a WordPress website.</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Command Line</strong></td><td>Use this <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/cli/\">WP-CLI</a> command: <br /><code>wp core update --version=7.0-</code>RC1</td></tr><tr><td><strong>WordPress Playground</strong></td><td>Use the <a href=\"https://playground.wordpress.net/?php=8.0&amp;wp=beta&amp;networking=no&amp;language=&amp;multisite=no&amp;random=y4q1rn88xn\">WordPress Playground instance</a> to test the software directly in your browser.  No setup required – just click and go! </td></tr></tbody></table></figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The scheduled final release date for WordPress 7.0 is <strong>April 9, 2026</strong>. The full <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/02/12/wordpress-7-0-release-party-schedule/\">release schedule can be found here</a>. Your help testing Beta and RC versions is vital to making this release as stable and powerful as possible. Thank you to everyone who helps with testing!</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Please continue checking the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/\">Make WordPress Core blog</a> for <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/7-0\">7.0-related posts</a> in the coming weeks for more information.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What’s in WordPress 7.0 RC1?</h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>What’s new in WordPress 7.0</strong>? Check out the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2026/02/wordpress-7-0-beta-1/\">Beta 1 announcement</a> and <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/dev-notes+7-0/\">WordPress 7.0 Developer Notes</a> for details and highlights.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">RC1 contains more than 134 updates and fixes since the Beta 5 release. You can browse the technical details for all issues addressed since Beta 5 using these links:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/commits/wp/7.0?since=2026-03-12&amp;until=2026-03-24\">GitHub commits</a> since March 12, 2026</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=closed&amp;changetime=03%2F12%2F2026..03%2F24%2F2026&amp;milestone=7.0&amp;group=component&amp;col=id&amp;col=summary&amp;col=owner&amp;col=type&amp;col=priority&amp;order=id\">Closed Trac tickets</a> since March 12, 2026</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">New Features since Beta 1</h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The release squad in conjunction with project leadership identified additional features that were not ready for beta 1 but are included in RC1 as supporting requirements for flagship features of the release.</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/64730\">AI Connectors Screen</a> &#8211; A new admin screen for connecting AI providers to your site and an <a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/64791\">API for registering additional ones</a>.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/75757\">The Command Palette</a> is now available via a <code>⌘K</code> or <code>Ctrl+K</code> shortcut in the admin bar.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Want to look deeper into the details and technical notes for this release? These tickets and pull requests are just some of the latest updates:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/76700\">#GB-76700</a>: Client Side Media as plugin only</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/76722\">#GB-76722</a>: Add support for non-AI providers on Connector&#8217;s Screen</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/76736\">#GB-76736</a>: New activation hook to enable RTC by default</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/64904\">#64904</a>: <code>WP_ALLOW_COLLABORATION</code> constant for RTC</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/76704\">#</a><a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/76643\">GB-76704</a>: Increased polling intervals for RTC</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/76643\">#GB-76643</a>: Real Time Collaboration is opt-in by default</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/76460\">#GB-76460</a>: Toggle to turn RTC session notifications on/off</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/62046\">#62046</a>: Update PHP AI Client package to 1.3.1</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/76550\">#GB-76550</a>: Revisions: Show changed block attributes in sidebar</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/62067\">#62067</a>: Single config option to disable all LLM related features</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/63697\">#63697</a>: OPCache added to <code>Site Health &gt; Info &gt; Server</code></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The final release is on track for April 9, 2026.</strong> As always, a successful release depends on your confirmation during testing. So please download and test!</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How you can contribute</h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WordPress is open source software made possible by a passionate community of people collaborating on and contributing to its development. The resources below outline various ways you can help the world’s most popular open source web platform, regardless of your technical expertise.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Help test this release</h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Testing for issues is crucial to the development of any software. It’s also a meaningful way for anyone to contribute. Your help testing the WordPress 7.0 RC1 version is key to ensuring that the final release is the best it can be. While testing the upgrade process is essential, trying out new features is equally important. This <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/test/2026/02/20/help-test-wordpress-7-0/\">detailed guide</a> will walk you through testing features in WordPress 7.0.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What to test:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/test/2026/03/11/its-time-to-test-real-time-collaboration/\">Real Time Collaboration</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/test/2026/02/27/call-for-testing-pattern-editing-and-content-only-interactivity-in-wordpress-7-0/\">Pattern Editing and content-only Interactivity</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you encounter an issue, please report it to the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/support/forum/alphabeta/\">Alpha/Beta area</a> of the support forums or directly to <a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/newticket\">Trac</a> if you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report. You can also check your issue against a list of <a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/tickets/major\">known bugs</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Test on your hosting platforms</h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hosting systems provide vital infrastructure for supporting WordPress and its users. Testing on hosting infrastructure ensures that WordPress and hosting systems are fully compatible, free of errors, optimized for the best possible user experience, and that updates roll out to customer sites without issue. Thank you to all <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/hosting/test-results/\">web hosts who test WordPress</a>!</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Want to set up testing on your hosting system? <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/hosting/test-results-getting-started/\">Get started with configuring distributed hosting tests here</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Update your theme or plugin</h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For plugin and theme authors, your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for all users.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thanks for continuing to test your themes and plugins with the WordPress 7.0 beta releases. With RC1, you’ll want to conclude your testing and update the <em>“Tested up to”</em> version in your <a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-org/how-your-readme-txt-works/\">plugin’s readme file</a> to <code>7.0</code>. If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/support/forum/alphabeta/\">support forum</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/test/\">testing initiatives</a> and join the <a href=\"https://wordpress.slack.com/messages/core-test/\">#core-test channel</a> on <a href=\"https://wordpress.slack.com/\">Making WordPress Slack</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Help translate WordPress</h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Do you speak a language other than English? ¿Español? Français? Русский? 日本語? हिन्दी? বাংলা? मराठी? ಕನ್ನಡ?  You can <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/handbook/translating/\">help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages</a>. This release milestone (RC1) marks the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/handbook/glossary/#hard-freeze\">hard string freeze</a> point of the 7.0 release cycle. However, strings will not be available for translation until RC2 later this week.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">An RC1 haiku</h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>RC1 arrives</em></p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>with momentum, sped up time</em></p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>and jazz on the mind.</em></p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Props to <a class=\"mention\" href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/4thhubbard/\"><span class=\"mentions-prefix\">@</span>4thhubbard</a>, <a class=\"mention\" href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/desrosj/\"><span class=\"mentions-prefix\">@</span>desrosj</a>, <a class=\"mention\" href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/jeffpaul/\"><span class=\"mentions-prefix\">@</span>jeffpaul</a>, <a class=\"mention\" href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/chaion07/\"><span class=\"mentions-prefix\">@</span>chaion07</a>, <a class=\"mention\" href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/audrasjb/\"><span class=\"mentions-prefix\">@</span>audrasjb</a>, <a class=\"mention\" href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/jorbin/\"><span class=\"mentions-prefix\">@</span>jorbin</a> for collaboration and review.</em></p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"></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, 24 Mar 2026 19:32:15 +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:10:\"Amy Kamala\";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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s: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:\"Open Channels FM: Bridging the Gaps: Why Multiple Decentralized Social Protocols Are Still Necessary\";s: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:34:\"https://openchannels.fm/?p=2551031\";s: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://openchannels.fm/bridging-the-gaps-why-multiple-decentralized-social-protocols-are-still-necessary/\";s: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:168:\"In decentralized social networks, hope for one universal protocol is unrealistic; instead, building bridges and embracing diversity fosters innovation and connectivity.\";s: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, 24 Mar 2026 14:03:17 +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:8:\"Bob Dunn\";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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s: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:83:\"Open Channels FM: How to Prepare, Network, and Recharge During Business Conferences\";s: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:34:\"https://openchannels.fm/?p=2551163\";s: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:88:\"https://openchannels.fm/how-to-prepare-network-and-recharge-during-business-conferences/\";s: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:215:\"In this episode, Bob and Cami chat about maximizing conference experiences, sharing tips on client communication, essential gear, avoiding burnout, and the importance of balance—plus some hilarious travel stories.\";s: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, 24 Mar 2026 13:45:57 +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:8:\"Bob Dunn\";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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s: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: WP.com MCP\";s: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=151570\";s: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/2026/03/wp-com-mcp/\";s: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:395:\"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you host your WordPress on <a href=\"https://wordpress.com/blog/2026/03/20/ai-agent-manage-content/\">WordPress.com your AI agent can now manage your entire site</a>, including updating posts or pages, making drafts, pretty much all the things you normally do with WordPress. Hook this up to your OpenClaw, Hermes, ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, whatever and have fun!</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, 23 Mar 2026 21:57:15 +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:37;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s: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:27:\"Matt: Miriam’s Sweet Site\";s: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=151598\";s: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:29:\"https://ma.tt/2026/03/miriam/\";s: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:570:\"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Long-time WordPresser <a href=\"https://miriamschwab.me/\">Miriam Schwab just rebuilt her WordPress site with Claude Code and it looks amazing</a>. Go check it out, this is what is possible now with proper prompting. I&#8217;d love to see a WordCamp keynote from Miriam on her process in this. (And she&#8217;s doing this while missiles are flying overhead. Wow.)</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Update: <a href=\"https://miriamschwab.me/i-didnt-think-this-site-would-get-much-attention-ever/\">She blogged a bit about the process</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, 22 Mar 2026 21:41:25 +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:38;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s: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:26:\"Matt: Bay Lights are Back!\";s: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=151572\";s: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/2026/03/bay-relighting/\";s: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:3092:\"<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-151574\" height=\"340\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/ma.tt/files/2026/03/TBL_Longview-1024x576.jpg?resize=604%2C340&#038;quality=89&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"604\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Tonight, a project very near and dear to my heart, the <a href=\"https://illuminate.org/projects/thebaylights/\">Bay Lights in San Francisco</a>, are officially re-lighting after a three-year hiatus. It&#8217;s been an incredible journey getting here. I literally mortgaged my apartment in 2013 to help fund them the first time around, and it&#8217;s such an honor to see them relit now with better technology and new programming from the amazing artist <a href=\"https://villareal.net/\">Leo Villareal</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Whether you&#8217;re looking down at the lights from a penthouse or top office, or up at them from the water along the Embarcadero, this is truly an art project that illuminates the soul of everyone in San Francisco, radically accessible and open.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;ve heard they&#8217;re still raising around 500k to close out the project. You <a href=\"https://sif.illuminate.org/\">can dedicate a light here for someone special</a>. I&#8217;m going to do one to <a href=\"https://ma.tt/2016/04/in-memoriam-chuck-mullenweg/\">honor my father, who passed in 2016</a>. If you&#8217;d like to be part of San Francisco&#8217;s boom loop and have a pleasant twinkle of enlightenment every time you see the bridge, I encourage you to donate as well!</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you live somewhere with a view of the bridge, think of it as buying a piece of art you&#8217;ll enjoy every night, and also having that warm feeling of being part of making San Francisco more beautiful for everyone.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m on the board of Illuminate, which only has two full-time employees, and I&#8217;ve never seen another non-profit generate so much public joy and benefit with so few people. They&#8217;re also behind <a href=\"https://illuminate.org/projects/golden-mile-project/\">the Golden Mile</a> and the <a href=\"https://illuminate.org/venues/golden-gate-bandshell/\">live music at the Golden Gate Bandshell</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Please consider <a href=\"https://sif.illuminate.org/\">making a one-time donation of a light, which is anywhere from $100 to $2,500</a>, or <a href=\"https://illuminate.org/donate/#donate\">become a recurring member of the Illuminate Tribe</a>, or if you are really part of making San Francisco better consider <a href=\"https://illuminate.org/donate/#illuminary\">being an Illuminary at 50k/yr</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Also, thank you to all the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/\">WordPress</a> community members who have done so much to support this project and help them fundraise and improve their website. It&#8217;s such a great example of the WordPress open source spirit and ethos.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">San Francisco is so back! Let&#8217;s go!</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, 21 Mar 2026 02:08:55 +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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s: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: Introducing Me.sh\";s: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=151564\";s: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:27:\"https://ma.tt/2026/03/mesh/\";s: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:662:\"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Very excited to share that the <a href=\"https://ma.tt/2025/06/clay/\">Clay.earth team that joined Automattic last year</a> is re-launching under a new, <a href=\"https://me.sh/stories/mesh\">very cool name and brand: Mesh</a>. Imagine something that joins you (me) to everyone you&#8217;re connected to. It&#8217;s going to be a very important layer of the distributed identity and social work we&#8217;re doing. It&#8217;s an amazing app <a href=\"https://me.sh/\">you should try out if you haven&#8217;t yet</a>. Available on the web, <a href=\"https://me.sh/start\">MacOS, Windows, iOS, and even the Vision Pro</a>. Stunning design.</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, 20 Mar 2026 21:32:34 +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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s: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:40:\"Gary: Introducing claudaborative-editing\";s: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:25:\"https://pento.net/?p=5656\";s: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:64:\"https://pento.net/2026/03/20/introducing-claudaborative-editing/\";s: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:5159:\"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Human editor&#8217;s note: The post below was written by Claude Code. I personally don&#8217;t use LLMs to write for me, but I figured I&#8217;d make an exception just this once. Using entirely LLM-generated content isn&#8217;t a workable approach to writing good copy, but I&#8217;m interested in seeing how we can use these tools to interact with and improve the writing process!</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" />\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;ve been using Claude Code for more and more of my daily work, and one thing that&#8217;s been bugging me is the gap between &#8220;Claude wrote some text&#8221; and &#8220;that text is on my blog.&#8221; There&#8217;s always a manual copy-paste step, formatting fixups, and the general friction of moving content between two worlds. So I built a bridge.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https://github.com/pento/claudaborative-editing\">claudaborative-editing</a> is an MCP server that lets Claude Code collaboratively edit WordPress posts in real time, right alongside you in the Gutenberg block editor. You open a post in your browser, Claude opens the same post from the terminal, and you both edit together — changes sync live via WordPress&#8217;s collaborative editing protocol.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In fact, this very post is being written by Claude, using the tool. It&#8217;s claudaborative-editing all the way down.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How it works</h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WordPress 7.0 introduced real-time collaborative editing, built on <a href=\"https://yjs.dev/\">Yjs</a> — the same CRDT technology that powers tools like Figma and Notion. claudaborative-editing speaks this protocol natively: it maintains a Yjs document that mirrors your post, syncing changes back and forth with WordPress via HTTP polling. The CRDT handles merging, so simultaneous edits from you and Claude just work — no conflicts, no overwrites.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Getting started takes about 30 seconds:</p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>npx claudaborative-editing setup</code></pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The setup wizard validates your WordPress credentials and gives you the <code>claude mcp add</code> command to register the server. After that, Claude Code can connect to your site and start editing.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What Claude can do</h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The server exposes a full set of block-editing tools. Claude can list and open posts, read the current block structure, insert and remove blocks, update text content and attributes, move blocks around, and save. It works at the block level — the same granularity Gutenberg uses — so edits are precise and merge-safe.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There&#8217;s a nice touch, too: when Claude writes or updates text, the changes stream into the editor character by character, like watching someone type. It&#8217;s a small thing, but it makes the collaboration feel real.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You can also see Claude show up in the collaborators list — it registers its presence through the same awareness protocol that shows human editors, so you know when it&#8217;s active on a post.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What&#8217;s next</h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While writing this post, I ran into a few things I wished the tool could do — so I filed some issues to track them:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/pento/claudaborative-editing/issues/1\">Media upload and image insertion</a> — I can write the text for a blog post, but I can&#8217;t include screenshots or diagrams yet. Being able to upload and insert images would make for much more complete drafts.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/pento/claudaborative-editing/issues/2\">Post metadata</a> — categories, tags, excerpts, featured images, and publication status. Right now a human still needs to handle all of that before hitting publish.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/pento/claudaborative-editing/issues/3\">Closing a post without disconnecting</a> — currently the only way to stop editing a post is to disconnect from WordPress entirely, which means you need to reconnect if you want to open a different post.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The tool is open source and available on <a href=\"https://github.com/pento/claudaborative-editing\">GitHub</a>, and you can install it right now from npm with <code>npx claudaborative-editing setup</code>. You&#8217;ll need WordPress 7.0 or later with collaborative editing enabled — flip the switch under Settings → Writing, create an application password, and you&#8217;re good to go.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m looking forward to seeing what people do with it. If you try it out, I&#8217;d love to hear how it goes — file issues, send PRs, or just let me know. Happy claudaborating! <img alt=\"🤝\" class=\"wp-smiley\" src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/72x72/1f91d.png\" style=\"height: 1em;\" /></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, 20 Mar 2026 05:41:37 +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:\"Gary\";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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s: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:68:\"Open Channels FM: Open Channels FM Announces the Launch of Channel 4\";s: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:34:\"https://openchannels.fm/?p=2551284\";s: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:75:\"https://openchannels.fm/open-channels-fm-announces-the-launch-of-channel-4/\";s: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:152:\"Open Channels FM introduces Channel 4, a new podcast platform for diverse discussions, fostering creativity and authenticity beyond existing categories.\";s: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, 19 Mar 2026 14:05:00 +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:8:\"Bob Dunn\";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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s: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:158:\"WordCamp Central: WordPress Campus Connect Jinja 2025 Recap: Piloting Africa’s First and Largest Campus Connect Program Across 12 Campuses in Eastern Uganda\";s: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:40:\"https://central.wordcamp.org/?p=13899712\";s: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:179:\"https://central.wordcamp.org/news/2026/03/wordpress-campus-connect-jinja-2025-recap-piloting-africas-first-and-largest-campus-connect-program-across-12-campuses-in-eastern-uganda/\";s: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:32575:\"<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Bringing WordPress and Web Design Skills to Over 1,200 Students Across Eastern Uganda</strong><br /></h1>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-356\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_5887-1024x545.jpg\" /><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">WPCC Jinja at Mpumudde High School Jinja</figcaption></figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Summary</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Over a five-month period (with a two-month holiday/national elections  break) the WordPress Jinja community successfully piloted <strong>Africa’s first and largest WordPress Campus Connect program</strong>, reaching <strong>12 schools and institutions across Eastern Uganda</strong>. Through hands-on workshops, mobile ICT labs, and student-led digital clubs, the initiative introduced <strong>1,293 students and 81 educators</strong> to WordPress, open source, and practical digital skills. Designed to bring technology education directly into classrooms where opportunities are often limited, the program empowers young people to explore digital careers, build online portfolios, and connect with the global WordPress community. Despite a two-month holiday and national election break, along with national exams and national teacher strikes, the first edition of Campus Connect Jinja demonstrated how open-source learning and imparting of WordPress and web design skills can grow sustainable student communities and inspire the next generation of digital creators.<br /><br /><strong>Why Campus Connect?</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<p>While WordCamps and meetups often bring together developers, designers, and professionals already working in technology, Campus Connect focuses on students who are just beginning their digital journeys. It creates opportunities for young people to encounter WordPress early, discover what open source means, and begin building skills that can shape their future.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The launch of Campus Connect in Jinja builds on years of student-centered initiatives already taking place within the local WordPress community. From <strong>free web design hackathons for students</strong> to <strong>youth-focused workshops held alongside WordCamps</strong>, our local organizers have steadily worked to make technology education more accessible.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Campus Connect represents the next step in that journey: a structured outreach program that connects schools directly with the global WordPress ecosystem while cultivating the next generation of open-source contributors.</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-360\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_5073-1024x768.jpg\" /><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">WPCC Jinja at Jinja Senior Secondary School</figcaption></figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Background</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>When our WordPress Jinja community concluded <strong>WordCamp Jinja 2025 (our 4th WordCamp)</strong> hosted at Jinja Senior Secondary School, one moment stood out clearly: the enthusiasm of the students who had attended and participated actively. Their curiosity about WordPress, web publishing, and open-source technology revealed a powerful opportunity. What we had witnessed should not remain a one-time experience. From that realization, the idea of bringing the <strong>WordPress Campus Connect initiative to Jinja</strong> was born.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Campus Connect is designed to bring WordPress directly into classrooms and learning spaces where opportunities in technology are often limited. The program focuses on introducing students to open source while equipping them with practical digital skills that can shape their future careers.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Through the initiative, the WordPress Jinja community set out to:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Introduce WordPress in classrooms where opportunities in technology are often limited</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Empower young people with hands-on digital skills that prepare them for careers</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Build sustainable student-led communities through clubs and ongoing activities</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Connect local talent with global contributors, creating new opportunities for mentorship and collaboration</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>By meeting students where they are on their campuses and within their schools, Campus Connect ensures that WordPress communities will continue to grow long after the first workshops are completed.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, the vision quickly revealed a significant challenge. Many schools in and around Jinja lack access to functioning computer laboratories or digital infrastructure. Without computers, students would have little chance to explore WordPress, learn web publishing, or participate in the open-source ecosystem.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Determined not to leave anyone behind, the WordPress Jinja community partnered with local ecosystem partners that could provide <strong>mobile ICT laboratories and laptops</strong>. With these resources, the community launched a five-month outreach program that brought WordPress training directly to schools across Eastern Uganda both with in-house labs and our mobile ICT labs from partners.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>By the end of the program, <strong>more than 1,200 students and educators across twelve institutions</strong> had participated, including schools serving learners with disabilities.</p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>The Jinja Campus Connect Model</strong></h1>\n\n\n\n<p>Each Campus Connect visit followed a structured learning model designed to combine <strong>technical training, digital literacy, and career exploration</strong>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>All sessions included:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Introduction to WordPress and the open-source ecosystem</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Hands-on website creation and content publishing</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Digital storytelling and blogging</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Responsible digital citizenship and online safety</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Career pathways including freelancing, entrepreneurship, and digital work</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Every visit concluded with the formation of a <strong>Student-Led WordPress and Digital Skills Club</strong> within the host institution.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>These clubs serve as satellite communities connected to the <strong>WordPress Jinja Meetup</strong>, ensuring that the learning continues long after the workshops end. Over time, the clubs will become fully integrated within their schools according to institutional guidelines and eventually organize their own student-led WordPress activities.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Through these clubs, Campus Connect plants the seeds of sustainable local communities that can continue learning, collaborating, and contributing to open source.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://photos.app.goo.gl/TJpYJJDtDVQC47dCA\">Google Photos Link:</a></p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Our Journey of Impact: Campus by Campus Highlights</strong></h1>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>1. Macedonian Vocational Institute</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-4 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-364\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_4594-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-365\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_4600-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-363\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_4813-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-362\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_5012-1024x441.jpg\" /></figure>\n<figcaption class=\"blocks-gallery-caption wp-element-caption\">Macedonian Vocational Institute, Jinja &#8211; 102 Students and 5 Teachers &#8211; 4th October 2025</figcaption></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>At Macedonian Vocational Institute, the session centered on the practical value of WordPress for vocational and entrepreneurial careers. Students explored how websites and online portfolios can help artisans, technicians, and young professionals present their skills, attract clients, and grow their businesses. Through hands-on demonstrations, participants were introduced to web design, content creation, and the basics of WordPress development, while also learning how open-source tools can create opportunities beyond the classroom. A student WordPress club was further strengthened during the visit to support continued practice and portfolio building.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>2. Jinja Senior Secondary School</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-4 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-2 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-371\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_5073-1-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-373\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_5118-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-374\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_5314-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-372\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_5601-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n<figcaption class=\"blocks-gallery-caption wp-element-caption\">Jinja SSS &#8211; 253 Students and 6 Teachers &#8211; 9th and 11th October 2025</figcaption></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Jinja Senior Secondary School, which hosts more than 5,000 students, served as the launch point for the Campus Connect outreach program. Across two engagement sessions, an introductory session and a deeper hands-on session, students were introduced to WordPress fundamentals, website creation, blogging, and the wider culture of open-source collaboration. They explored web design, digital storytelling, and creative publishing while also gaining exposure to WordPress development concepts. The visit concluded with the establishment of a student WordPress satellite community that will eventually become a student club, led by student coordinators from the school leadership and Science and ICT Club, who will guide blogging activities and peer learning within the school community.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>3. Mpumudde High School (Horizon Campus) Jinja</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-4 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-3 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-377\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_5805-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-379\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_5845-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-378\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_5864-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-376\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_5887-1-1024x545.jpg\" /></figure>\n<figcaption class=\"blocks-gallery-caption wp-element-caption\">MHS Jinja -169 Students and 8 Teachers &#8211; 23rd October 2025</figcaption></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The Campus Connect session at Mpumudde High School focused strongly on digital storytelling and youth expression. Students examined how WordPress can be used to publish ideas, document school activities, and amplify student voices in meaningful ways. Alongside practical work in creating blog posts and structuring pages, participants were introduced to the basics of website creation and open-source participation. The session encouraged students to see digital platforms not only as technical tools, but also as spaces for creativity, identity, and shared learning. A student club was formed to carry this momentum forward.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>4. Gloryland Christian College, Jinja</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-4 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-4 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-385\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_6219-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-382\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_6277-1024x589.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-383\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_6312-1024x618.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-384\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_6331-1024x545.jpg\" /></figure>\n<figcaption class=\"blocks-gallery-caption wp-element-caption\">GCC Jinja &#8211; 59 Students and 4 Teachers &#8211; 31st October 2025</figcaption></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Students at Gloryland Christian College engaged in a session that combined technical learning with conversations about responsible digital participation. Alongside hands-on website creation, they explored blogging, online publishing, and the importance of credibility, ethics, and thoughtful communication in digital spaces. The training introduced students to the possibilities of WordPress while also encouraging them to think critically about how content is created and shared. The visit concluded with the formation of a student WordPress club to guide continued learning and practice.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>5. Royal Secondary School, Buwenge</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-4 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-5 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-386\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_6407-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-388\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_6415-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-389\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_6442-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-387\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_6523-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n<figcaption class=\"blocks-gallery-caption wp-element-caption\">Royal SS Jinja 61 Students and 6 Teachers &#8211; 4th November 2025</figcaption></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>At Royal Secondary School, the workshop emphasized the role of WordPress in school communication and community storytelling. Students explored how websites can be used to highlight school initiatives, student clubs, and local projects while learning the foundations of web publishing and site structure. The session connected digital skills with the power of sharing local experiences and preserving community narratives online. By the end of the visit, students had begun to see WordPress as a practical tool for both expression and visibility, and a student WordPress club was established to continue the work.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>6. Jinja Tech Hub</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-4 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-6 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-394\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_6641-1024x538.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-392\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_6643-1024x638.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-393\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_6644-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-391\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_6776-1024x719.jpg\" /></figure>\n<figcaption class=\"blocks-gallery-caption wp-element-caption\">Jinja Tech Hub &#8211; 47 Students and 5 Instructors &#8211; 18th November 2025</figcaption></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The engagement at Jinja Tech Hub leaned into entrepreneurship, freelancing, and digital innovation. Participants explored how WordPress can be used to create business websites, showcase services, and build strong professional portfolios. The session also introduced broader ideas around WordPress development, site structure, and the value of open-source skills in the digital economy. For many participants, the training connected technical knowledge with real pathways into work, enterprise, and self-employment.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>7. Busoga Light College, Jinja</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-4 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-7 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-396\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_6803-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-397\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_6805-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-398\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_6815-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-399\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_6821-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n<figcaption class=\"blocks-gallery-caption wp-element-caption\">BLC Jinja &#8211; 63 Students and 10 Teachers &#8211; 6th December 2025 and follow up holiday visit on 11th January</figcaption></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Busoga Light College hosted an extended Campus Connect engagement that allowed students to move beyond introduction into deeper exploration. Participants learned how to organize content, build digital portfolios, and manage simple websites while strengthening their understanding of WordPress as both a technical and creative platform. Teachers took an active part in the sessions, reinforcing the school’s support for digital skills development. A follow-up visit in January created space for mentorship and helped the newly established WordPress club continue applying the skills students had begun to develop.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Phase Two</strong></h3>\n\n\n\n<p>After the holiday and national election break, the Campus Connect initiative resumed in February 2026, following a national mandate from the Government of Uganda for schools to re-open on 10th February due to elections in January. This second phase extended the program’s reach to additional institutions across Eastern Uganda and brought the WordPress learning experience to even more students.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>8. Nsuube SDA Secondary School</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-4 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-8 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-402\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_7312-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-403\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_7319-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-404\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_7367-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-401\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_7445-1024x886.jpg\" /></figure>\n<figcaption class=\"blocks-gallery-caption wp-element-caption\">Nsuube SDA Jinja &#8211; 126 Students and 6 Teachers &#8211; 12th February 2026</figcaption></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>At Nsuube SDA Secondary School, students were introduced to WordPress as both an educational and creative platform. The session highlighted how blogging, digital storytelling, and personal portfolios can support academic work while also helping students share their ideas with wider audiences. Through practical demonstrations, participants learned the basics of website creation and content publishing in ways that connected directly to school projects and self-expression. The visit concluded with the formation of a student club that will continue practicing and building on these foundations.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>9. Kaliro High School</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-4 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-9 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-405\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_7453-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-407\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_7458-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-408\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_7459-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-406\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_7472-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n<figcaption class=\"blocks-gallery-caption wp-element-caption\">Kaliro High School &#8211; 152 Students and 12 Teachers &#8211; 21st February 2026</figcaption></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Kaliro High School recorded one of the largest turnouts during the second phase of the program. Students showed strong enthusiasm for blogging and digital storytelling, especially around the idea of sharing school activities, community experiences, and student perspectives online. The workshop combined practical page-building exercises with broader discussions about digital literacy and the growing importance of online communication in education and everyday life. A student club was established to support continued collaboration and peer learning after the visit.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>10. Jinja North Secondary School (Butembe Heritage Campus)</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-4 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-10 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-409\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/2.RAW-01.COVER_-1024x771.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-411\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_7875-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-412\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_7900-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-410\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_8065-1024x460.jpg\" /></figure>\n<figcaption class=\"blocks-gallery-caption wp-element-caption\">JNOSS &#8211; 131 Students and 8 Teachers &#8211; 23rd February 2026</figcaption></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>At Jinja North Secondary School, the sessions focused on hands-on website creation and the wider opportunities that digital skills can unlock. Students explored how WordPress knowledge can connect to freelancing, online services, and entrepreneurship, while teachers participated actively in discussions about integrating digital learning into the school environment. The training positioned WordPress not just as a publishing tool, but as a gateway to practical and marketable skills. A student WordPress club was formed to sustain interest and continued engagement.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>11. H.E.L.P International Vocational Institute, Jinja</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-4 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-11 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-414\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_8098-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-418\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_8375-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-417\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_8418-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-415\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_8648-1024x683.jpg\" /></figure>\n<figcaption class=\"blocks-gallery-caption wp-element-caption\">HELP Jinja &#8211; 53 Students and 8 Teachers &#8211; 25th February 2026</figcaption></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>At H.E.L.P International Vocational Institute, the training highlighted WordPress as a professional tool for vocational graduates and young entrepreneurs. Students explored how websites can be used to present technical skills, market services, and create portfolios that speak to real-world opportunities. The session blended practical exercises with discussions about visibility, client outreach, and digital professionalism, helping participants connect their vocational training with the demands of an increasingly online economy.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>12. C.H.I.M.E Secondary School and Vocational Institute</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-4 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-12 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-420\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_8816-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-422\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_8855-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-421\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_8962-1024x768.jpg\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-419\" src=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/jinja/files/2026/03/IMG_9091-1024x758.jpg\" /></figure>\n<figcaption class=\"blocks-gallery-caption wp-element-caption\">CHIME Jinja &#8211; 79 Students and 5 Teachers &#8211; 28th February 2026</figcaption></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The final Campus Connect engagement took place at C.H.I.M.E Secondary School and Vocational Institute, where students explored WordPress as a bridge between academic learning and vocational development. The session covered blogging, portfolio creation, and communication platforms that can support both school-based and practical career pathways. It also emphasized collaboration, creativity, and digital presence as essential skills for young people preparing for the modern world. A student WordPress club was established to carry the program forward within the school.</p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>A Synergy of Local Community Efforts: </strong></h1>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Lessons and Reflections</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Like many long term community-driven initiatives in Africa, the Campus Connect program encountered several logistical challenges.</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Nationwide teachers’ strikes in 2025 disrupted school schedules</li>\n\n\n\n<li>National examination periods and elections</li>\n\n\n\n<li>School timetable changes were sometimes communicated late</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Photography volunteers, mostly university students experienced delays in compiling and editing event documentation</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite these challenges, the initiative continued successfully thanks to the dedication of community volunteers and partners.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Acknowledgement and Appreciation</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The success of our Campus Connect event series reflects the strength of collaboration within both the local and global WordPress ecosystems. We extend our gratitude to the <strong>Global WordPress Campus Connect sponsors</strong>, whose continued support for open source and education makes initiatives like this possible.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We also thank the local ecosystem partners in Jinja who have continuously worked with our WordPress Jinja Community and whose non-financial support and collaboration enabled the program to reach students across Eastern Uganda; Rotary Club of Jinja City, Hello World Africa, Xerus, World Educare Network for mobilizing schools through their partner networks, Tech Reach Africa for providing a mobile ICT laboratory, GDG Cloud Jinja and other local technology communities for technical expertise and mentorship, Community volunteers, educators, and school administrators.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because of this collective effort, students who might otherwise have been excluded from digital opportunities gained access to tools, knowledge, and skills that many around the world now consider a fundamental part of modern education.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>By meeting students where they are within their schools and communities Campus Connect ensures that the WordPress ecosystem continues to grow, inspiring the next generation of creators, innovators, and open-source contributors.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>The Road Ahead: What’s Next</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Following the successful and massive pilot of Campus Connect Jinja, we will focus on increasing sustainability, formalizing and onboarding the student communities/clubs that were formed and expanding the regional WordPress ecosystem. With more than 1,200 students and about 100 educators introduced to WordPress and open source, the goal now is to continue the momentum and build long-term learning pathways for students and educators and create bridges between them and the general local WordPress community and opportunities.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Supporting and Formalizing Active Student WordPress Clubs</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The student WordPress and digital skills clubs established during the Campus Connect visits will now be gradually fomalized and onboarded according to the by-laws within their respective schools as well as onboarded officially through the Student Club program with their student leaders to be able to optionally organize their own events. For now, these clubs each with their own leadership and faculty support will act as <strong>satellite communities of the WordPress Jinja Meetup</strong>, supporting continued learning, student-led workshops, blogging initiatives, and participation in the wider WordPress ecosystem.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Upcoming Jinja events</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The next major event for the Jinja community will be <strong>WordCamp Jinja 2026 tentatively happening in September 2026</strong> led by Joan Namunina, co-organizer from our WordPress Jinja Meetup, where many of the students, educators, and partners involved in Campus Connect are expected to reconnect, share their experiences and continue building the future of open source in Eastern Uganda.</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, 19 Mar 2026 13:10:16 +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:18:\"Mohammed Kateregga\";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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s: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: Building Trust at Scale and Navigating Agency Challenges in the Age of AI\";s: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:34:\"https://openchannels.fm/?p=2551086\";s: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/building-trust-at-scale-and-navigating-agency-challenges-in-the-age-of-ai/\";s: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:206:\"In this episode, Adam and Marc discuss agency challenges in digital marketing, focusing on AI\'s impact, client expectations, and the importance of communication and efficiency in managing multiple 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:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Thu, 19 Mar 2026 11:42:39 +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:8:\"Bob Dunn\";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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s: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: #209 – Simon Pollard on Navigating the New Normal for WordPress Community and Events\";s: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=203117\";s: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/209-simon-pollard-on-navigating-the-new-normal-for-wordpress-community-and-events\";s: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:61768:\"<details>Transcript<div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:00:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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, trying to navigate the new normal for WordPress community and events.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So on the podcast today we have Simon Pollard.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Simon has been building with WordPress for many years. Originally from Devon in England, he&#8217;s worked as a professional web developer across locations, eventually landing at Illustrate Digital, where he&#8217;s been for six years.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Simon&#8217;s not just a coder. He&#8217;s been deeply involved in the WordPress community, not only organising, but helping to grow the Bristol WordPress Meetup from a casual get together in a pub, to a thriving, officially backed event with dozens of regular attendees.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Like many in the WordPress ecosystem, Simon wears multiple hats. He&#8217;s a musician, a devoted dad, and an accidental community leader who found himself at the heart of local WordPress organising. But COVID-19 changed all that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In today&#8217;s episode, Simon explains what happened to WordPress Meetups during and after the pandemic. How vibrant communities fizzled out. How hard it was to bring people back. And the new challenges of connecting when traditional social media platforms no longer bring everyone together.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Simon talks about his own journey, how he paused on events, shifted his social life to music, and struggled to hand the Meetup keys to new organisers. Eventually, a call from an old friend drew him back and he was faced with the new reality. Smaller groups, fractured channels, and the question of how to keep the in-person spirit of WordPress alive.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We get into the irreplaceable value of real life connection, the warmth in the room, and the need to rethink what gets people to in-person events now. Is it hybrid events? Perhaps it&#8217;s music? Something beyond pure WordPress talks? We discuss what&#8217;s been lost, what still matters, and what it might take to build the new era of WordPress community in a distracted, always connected, world.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you&#8217;re curious about the future of WordPress Meetups, if you felt the ebb and flow of community during the past few years, or if you just want to know how to find your people again, this episode is for you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so without further delay, I bring you. Simon Pollard.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I am joined on the podcast by Simon Pollard. Hello Simon.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:03:42] <strong>Simon Pollard:</strong> Hello Nathan.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:03:43] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Very nice to chat. Simon and I have met for the first time, just sort of 10 minutes ago. We&#8217;ve had a little bit of a chat. And as is so often the case, Simon has a musical instrument in the background. I don&#8217;t know what that is, but there&#8217;s definitely a thing there. WordPressers often have musical instruments.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:03:57] <strong>Simon:</strong> There&#8217;s more behind me as well. And randomly, I&#8217;ll bring in another fact, so I&#8217;m in a very casual band of predominantly mid forties internet developing type people. And, yeah, we&#8217;re all the same, we all play instruments. And randomly we all, without being connected in any way, can work in the same one building in Bristol, which is co-working in individual offices and we all found out we&#8217;re all in the same building. And that wasn&#8217;t how we met.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:04:21] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I think probably anybody listening to this has figured out by your accent that you&#8217;re from the UK. And you mentioned Bristol just there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:04:27] <strong>Simon:</strong> Well, Brizzle if I&#8217;m going to be correct.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:04:29] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Right at the top of the podcast, we typically ask the guests to just give us a little potted bio, a moment or two just telling us who you are. And as it&#8217;s a WordPress podcast, just give us your background with WordPress, I guess, as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:04:40] <strong>Simon:</strong> Yeah, well, I&#8217;m from Devon originally, which the English people will pick up on the accent potentially. I try to hide that away, but every now and again a little bit of farmer will come out and it&#8217;ll be oh, argh. And then, yeah, so I was born in Devon, moved away into to Cheltenham, been to Cardiff and then ended up in Bristol and worked at various places amongst all of them.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bristol was where I finally got my kind of proper web job, an actual proper official web job. And the first company I started used WordPress as one of the platforms, and that&#8217;s from where I started off my kind of professional career. Moved around a few places since then as developers do, but always kind of staying in the area. And then currently, I am now at Illustrate Digital. Been there for six years, joined at the start of 2020, so that was an interesting progression, we&#8217;ll cover that later.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">During my time in Bristol, it was someone else who originally raised the idea of a Meetup for of WordPress devs to kind of meet up and have a chat. So myself and a few others met up with this one guy called Henry, and we just met at the pub, sat around a table and had a chat and said, what are you doing? What do you need help with? What would we like to talk about?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And it kind of progressed from being, so we had a few more kind of casual chats, managed to grow. I think there was about six of us met originally and we kind of grew a bit and then said, oh, should we try doing like talks and making it a bit more official? So we progressed onto that. Struggled to find speakers, which I think is the story of absolutely every Meetup is find someone to talk. So I ended up doing a lot of talks myself, which I didn&#8217;t mind, but there was only so many times I can involve cats and WordPress together in the same thing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And then it grew a bit. The key point for me is we took on someone who was a project manager by trade, who was also a developer. And they created a Trello board, and then suddenly we got organised. And I don&#8217;t know how, we kind of reached out, I remember now as I&#8217;ve just literally spoken to Jenny Wong who works over at Human Made, and she was assisting and she said, you know, is there anything I can do?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And she came over, I was working in Bath at the time. So she came over in person, back in the day when you met in person. Came over to Bath and we sat down and had a coffee and a chat, and she gave me all the tips and advice she could to kind of help build the Meetup and get it bigger and try and get things working.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She also helped us get official backing. So we got the WordPress official backing for the Meetup, which is brilliant because that gave us funds. That allowed us to start hiring venues which is brilliant. So all the worry of paying for kind of costs or anything for the venues got covered by WordPress. We still reached out for sponsors, and the sponsors gave us money for food. Food is obviously a good tool to get people in as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It just kind of grew. And I&#8217;m not sure what made it grow or how it grew, but it just kind of fed through. But this was back in the day when social media was less run by maniacs and you were happy to post on Twitter and Facebook and it kind of grew from that. I already had quite a good Twitter following, so I just kind of shouted there all the time and tried to pull in everybody and anyone who isn&#8217;t at all connected to the internet.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We went to Facebook, I got a friend of mine, was a bit of a social media guy, he set us up several kind of media accounts and added his advice. And then, yeah, just kind of moved on, and we were getting in a good crowd. Towards the end of 2019 into 2020 we were getting say 30, 40 people coming along to the Meetup, which is really impressive.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So we&#8217;d fill out a room, we&#8217;d get catering in, that would all get done. We had an account, we were that kind of organised, so we had an actual bank account to put our sponsorship money in. We were in profit at one point. So it was crazy. It was just going, yeah, going really well. Lovely kind of gathering, it was just a nice thing. We ran monthly. The organising team grew to about six or seven of us, because there was so much to do. So there&#8217;s plenty of us involved.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And yeah, it was going great, all going along lovely. 2020 came about and then suddenly COVID, and that was it. It kind of stopped because it had to, and none of us had the appetite to do the video side of things. We didn&#8217;t really have the technology, or the means, and it was just too much with everything else that was going on in the world. So it kind of petered out, and as did my involvement in the community, as much as in person involvement kind of faded out.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I looked back and, yeah, the last meetup that I attended was in 2020, before just the other week when I&#8217;ve gone back, but like the last one was 2020 was the last, looking at my logs, the last Meetup I attended in person, which is quite sad to look back. But this all changed around. I&#8217;ve gone very off topic of what I actually do. I think I just went into this hole.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:08:49] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Oh, no, it&#8217;s great because obviously what the listener doesn&#8217;t know is that you and I already know this is what we&#8217;re destined to talk about. So you&#8217;ve given us the full introduction. So I&#8217;ll just take over for a minute, if that&#8217;s all right? Because that&#8217;s really the case, I think you could map that across all of the WordPress Meetups within the UK.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So prior to COVID, things seemed to be going great guns. There were lots and lots happening. I don&#8217;t know the exact number, but there were many. I could pluck out of the air several, and probably, if you combined all of the numbers of those, it was hundreds of people, you know, getting out of their house, going to an event, sharing expertise but also, like you said, the social side of things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And then this moment in time, this kind of sword of Damocles, if you like, suddenly that we didn&#8217;t know was there, dropped. Killed the whole thing overnight for good reason. You know, there was a really legitimate reason for everybody to stop moving around. But it seemed to have changed something for good.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now what&#8217;s curious about that is I remember being in that COVID time, and I remember being utterly fed up and bored, and praying for the time when things would just return back to normal. And with great speed, actually, with the benefit of hindsight, looking back, that almost seems like I watched a COVID TV program. You know, it seems like, obviously I know it was real to me, but it all seems so in the rear view mirror now. It was almost like it was part of a fictional book or something like that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But I fully expected that the minute all of the guards, and the protections, and the legislation came away, that I would just drop back into everything that I&#8217;d done before. And so for me, that&#8217;s what happened. I went immediately back to everything, you know, attending events, and all the other different things that I do in my own spare time that have got nothing to do with WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But the curious thing is, for me at least anyway, is that I appear to be different. You know, you&#8217;ve just gone back, within the last few weeks or so. What changed for you? Have you had the time to be introspective and think to yourself, why, Simon, did I not just resume what I was doing before?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:10:59] <strong>Simon:</strong> Yeah. So I mean it&#8217;s twofold for me. Yeah, I&#8217;ve been very reflective over the last kind of few weeks on this because I&#8217;m just reaching out again and seeing people. It&#8217;s like, I&#8217;ve not seen you in six years and it&#8217;s kind of crazy. Well I mean I spoke to them online and responded to comments here and there but, yeah, for me it was twofold.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So during the COVID times I was fortunate enough to have a baby, which changes everything again anyway. And that just became my focus. So whilst working full time and also having a child, that was my focus. The evenings, when I used to have the time to go to the Meetups and everything, in the evening, if I had any spare time, I would just prefer to sit. I didn&#8217;t want to do anything else. I didn&#8217;t have any energy. I was spent. I was enjoying a glorious moment of sitting, and if I was lucky watching a bit of TV. Yeah, it took it all out of me.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I&#8217;ve put things on pause in that sense. I wasn&#8217;t really doing anything. Yeah, as you&#8217;ve mentioned the guitars and everything, used to go to gigs a lot as well, but that kind of went on hold. The music side ironically kicked off after. So that&#8217;s something that did come in first. So whilst I didn&#8217;t go to Meetups, some other people, when things got back reached out to me and said, oh, I&#8217;m running a band, do you fancy joining that? So that became my kind of social outlet instead. So my focus went on that, and playing in a band and just meeting up with them. So that was my social interaction.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ironically, that was someone I knew through, not through Meetups but through events they used to run, I think it was Future of Web Design, or future of, one of those that was down in London. A lady called Michelle, who also has a child, used to live behind me, back in the day in Bristol. She&#8217;s moved away. And then she just dropped a message on one of the other social platforms, which I&#8217;ll go back to, and just said, oh, do you fancy joining a band, I do drums? I didn&#8217;t even know she played drums. Like, she&#8217;d been playing drums since kind of school and it just came out.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So that was my social outlet for a while. So I was doing that, and that was good because that was like once a month or so we&#8217;d just meet up and have a few hours. My wife could look after my little girl. And so that was my focus for a while and that kind of kept me content for a while moving forward. But I think, yeah, I lost the kind of the urge or the will. I didn&#8217;t really have the capacity to run the Meetup that I used to be involved with.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And there were a couple of failed attempts to hand it over. Several people came in and said, oh, I&#8217;d like to have a go at running that. So it&#8217;s brilliant. So I kind of was like, here&#8217;s the keys, off you go. Even still had the Trello board and everything that we had.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And one tried and failed. I think another one did and I just kind of left it. So I assumed nothing really was happening on that. Until recently, it was last year I believe when some of the original team, a lady called Janice who was there at the very first pub round table with me, I think we&#8217;ve been to every Meetup ever since. She moved into retirement because she was a web developer and was like, don&#8217;t want to stop doing things. And she liked the community and she thought, right, well, if no one&#8217;s going to get this up again, I&#8217;ll do it again. And she was in the team at the end as well, so she&#8217;s already had the experience. She pulled together some of the others of the team. So still another couple of people, Michael and Rob who used to kind of be managing as well, they&#8217;re back in it as well and they started bringing it back to life.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so I kind of saw this last year, the Meetups kind of started filtering through. And because I&#8217;m still connected to a lot of these people I found out, trying to remember how it came, it might, would&#8217;ve been something like LinkedIn or somewhere, or even emailed and that kind of came through. And it was like, oh, I need to go along to that one time, I really need to go along. And even one of my friends was talking, I was like, brilliant, I&#8217;ll go and see him, I&#8217;ve not seen him in ages. And then I had an operation that put me out of action for a while.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So that came in, so even when I was just about ready to go. And then finally, turn around to this year and then, yeah, another good friend of mine Ross Wintle, who is a developer, who I think a lot of people hopefully will know, he works doing stuff for ACF in particular, which is why I harass him all the time. But I&#8217;ve known him for ages. He was talking, I was like, right, I&#8217;ve got to go along because he&#8217;s talking. I&#8217;ve not seen him in six years, and it&#8217;s a great chance to see everyone. And I was so glad I did.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A lot of it, whilst it was smaller, it was still just a lot of the same people. So I think I kind of took in that seeing the people didn&#8217;t really appreciate the size but still it was kind of nice. It still felt the same. It was still the nice, friendly atmosphere which you get with WordPress. I think you get that across the board. Not just in Meetups, but devs talk to other devs which you don&#8217;t necessarily get in other industries. I would happily tell another dev, for what I would call a rival, inverted commas, company, how to do something if they were stuck, which you wouldn&#8217;t necessarily get in other industries.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And that filters through, for me, for the Meetup side. The atmosphere, it&#8217;s just very friendly and welcoming. And talking at it is a joy, because you will never get heckled. No one&#8217;s going to do that. Unless it&#8217;s a friend of yours and they&#8217;re teasing you, because you know them.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s just such a nice kind of crowd, and that&#8217;s where I started doing talks. And I don&#8217;t think I would&#8217;ve ever done a talk if it wasn&#8217;t in front of such a nice crowd and you knew you could kind of do what you wanted. You can make a mistake and no one&#8217;s going to pick you up on it. And then a lot of the time they were just interested to hear what you had to say. It was just, yeah, nice.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I think I&#8217;ve already talked myself into doing a talk again. So there&#8217;s a good reason to go back. So got to think about that. Yeah, and then I said, well, I used to have a network of people, so how do I reach out to that network of people that I used to do and pull them in? Like, how do I go, right, okay, we are doing all right here but as always, looking for people to talk? So how do I reach out to those people?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And that&#8217;s kind of the next point is, the next thing that changed was the social network seemed to almost turn evil in places like Twitter, which used to be a nice go to, and you&#8217;d message everyone. Everyone kind of jumped ship because, for good reason. No one seemed to jump ship into the same boat, and everyone was doing their own thing and there was no confined next to step of where you get in touch. And that&#8217;s where I&#8217;m currently at is, six years down the line, what&#8217;s the way to kind of network now on the internet with these people and get in touch with those I may have lost touch with?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:16:34] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> That&#8217;s so interesting. I&#8217;m going to unpack a lot of what you said there. I&#8217;ve been making my little notes as you&#8217;ve been going along, but there&#8217;s a few things there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So the first thing is that it&#8217;s curious you, for reasons that you&#8217;ve explained very well, you know, the family being the easy one to grasp. You know, you had a very, a different life out the other side of COVID. And so the constraints around that, and the possibilities of socialising were diminished regardless.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I didn&#8217;t have that, and so I did sort of just drop back into where I was before. But what&#8217;s curious is that clearly isn&#8217;t the pattern. You know, we hear about, not just in the WordPress space, but lots of sort of social enterprises, clubs and things that were going on all over this country, kind of lost their way. They couldn&#8217;t attract the people back.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So something happened, I think, to us during that period of time. I don&#8217;t know if we just became habituated to sitting in more and, you know, more accustomed to watching the telly. I don&#8217;t know if they&#8217;re ingrained into us somehow, was this fear of the outside world. That&#8217;s really overdramatising it, but hopefully you can grasp what I mean. You know, just this idea that outside, bad, inside, good.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:17:44] <strong>Simon:</strong> It was two years of being told to stay inside. And whether of not, that&#8217;s going to sink in isn&#8217;t? At some point, without even thinking.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:17:50] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. But then it just means that, when eventually the guardrails are pulled off, and obviously they weren&#8217;t just pulled off in one fell swoop. It was this sort of slow experimental phase, where you could be with a few people and then more people, and then that all got pulled back again, and then it all began again. Eventually, where we are now is you can do basically everything again. There&#8217;s no restrictions whatsoever.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But the community, the WordPress community in particular, I do wonder if we probably went into our screens a bit more than the typical person might do. Because, you know, we&#8217;re on our screens doing the work. Six o&#8217;clock maybe would&#8217;ve rolled by in the year 2018 and we would&#8217;ve closed the laptop, shut the computer down, and then done the other things. But then for a period of three or four years, we just carried on, on the screens and met on Zoom, or just carried on watching Netflix or whatever it may be. And then untangling all of that on the other side, proved hard, hard to do.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But then the bit that you just said, I&#8217;ve never thought about that. The social media, the shattering of social media where people have decided that this platform over there is not for them anymore. And, okay, I&#8217;m going to either discontinue using social media, or go to somewhere else and there really isn&#8217;t that, what do they call X? They used to call it the town square or something like that. And that&#8217;s a long time since that happened. But there&#8217;s now, there&#8217;s no replacement for that. There&#8217;s no one place you can go to. Everything&#8217;s shattered over multiple accounts. There&#8217;s no question there, but I don&#8217;t know if you wanted to respond to any of that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:19:15] <strong>Simon:</strong> That&#8217;s where I am at the minute was I moved on, I tried different things and that&#8217;s randomly how I got the band notification was off one of those. But I can&#8217;t even remember now what platform that was. And I think I&#8217;ve closed the tab on my browser, and I&#8217;ve long since forgotten and not really gone back into it because it was a handful of people. And I spent a lot of time building up my Twitter following, and I just lost the urge to kind of do that all over again. And followed enough people for a while but then kind of lost the interest in that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And, yeah, I don&#8217;t know, it&#8217;s weird. It&#8217;s just because there isn&#8217;t really anywhere that&#8217;s taken over that was, I mean Twitter was the key one for me. That was because I managed the account for the Meetup as well. So I could post on their behalf, but I could also kind of tie in and connect myself. I could retweet myself and retweet other people, and you could get those connections in place which is harder to do now.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That was my go-to, and then I don&#8217;t really know now, yeah, where to reach out. And even, one of the things raised at the Meetup I went to was, someone asked a question. It was like, well I&#8217;m not sure I can answer that for you immediately. We need to kind of sit down in front of a computer or something. But how do we communicate in between this and the next Meetup? How do we talk? What is the way to communicate now, that&#8217;s standard? You give out an email address or something that, I don&#8217;t know. Is that the way you communicate? I seemed very lost and almost forgotten how to socialise outside of actually being there in person. The in-betweens, which I&#8217;ve been doing for years and years, what&#8217;s the in-between way of talking?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:20:40] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s strange that that&#8217;s a thing really, isn&#8217;t it? But it definitely is a thing. I suppose the piece of the jigsaw puzzle where it fits into this podcast is that if you are new to WordPress and you&#8217;ve never been to any of these events, and you&#8217;ve recently started going, a bit like you have done again. You go and you look at the event and you&#8217;ll think, okay, this is nice. Here&#8217;s the collection of people. But if you were to go pre 2019, so 2017, 2018 in particular, you were probably looking at the same event with, I don&#8217;t know, five times the number of people, 3, 4, 5, maybe even 10 times the number of people.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so whatever that period was, whether it was COVID or a variety of other things, the numbers have dropped. And I think, whilst it&#8217;s not, I&#8217;m using air quotes at the moment, whilst it&#8217;s not necessary to have community for an open source CMS software project, certainly helps.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It helps that these people gather. It helps that they gain empathy. They sort of start to understand each other. It helps so that they feel a connection. You know, they&#8217;re going to join different teams because, oh, that person&#8217;s in that team and I know that person. It helps because it enables you to share knowledge and hopefully, instead of 10 people falling over the same problem, one person does, and shares their experience to the other nine. And yada, yada, yada. On it goes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And it does trouble me that that component is now missing. It makes me think this isn&#8217;t good. And I don&#8217;t know what the answer is. I wish I had a magic wand that I could wave and bring it all back. Does it bother you? Do you feel that the community should still be important? Or can we just say, this is now where it is, just accept it. This is what we&#8217;ve got.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:22:26] <strong>Simon:</strong> Having dipped my toe back in properly into the community as it were, recently, it&#8217;s kind of reminiscing now what it was, and there&#8217;s still elements there of what it is and knowing people. It is almost networking. It&#8217;s kind of knowing those people, and someone knows someone. There&#8217;s a very kind of small world. Those relationships and people I used to speak to a lot that I didn&#8217;t so much, and it&#8217;s weird why that kind of stopped.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I think, yeah, it&#8217;s definitely the kind of the sharing. And it&#8217;s particularly relevant I would say if you are a freelancer or work on your own or you are even part of a smaller team. But the networking helps you kind of expand out, and expand your team without it having to be in the company you&#8217;re working for. Because as I previously mentioned, the rare thing in the WordPress community is that a developer can speak to another developer about an issue for say, it might even be for a client, and they will work together to resolve it. Offering back is how it was, and I think it still is in some areas, which you wouldn&#8217;t say get in others. And I think that&#8217;s the community side of it that&#8217;s very different.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I noticed that with the Meetup because I&#8217;ve been to other Meetups. We even did a collaboration Meetup as well. And the other ones I went to, it just didn&#8217;t feel the same kind of warmth. It felt very fixed. There was no kind of welcoming.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So the one thing that has always been relevant that the Bristol one, is we&#8217;ve got a welcoming team. So as soon as you step through the door there&#8217;s someone there. Get a little name badge as well. And if you&#8217;re new, they&#8217;ll ask a few questions and find out what you do. And what we always do is, oh, what do you do? Oh, I&#8217;m in project management. Ah, go and speak to so and so, they&#8217;re a project manager. Or, I&#8217;m looking for a developer. Or kind of find out what was their reasoning, and then direct them because we knew who was there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That&#8217;s opposed to other ones where you go in and you almost kind of sign in and then you&#8217;re left to your own devices, and no one approaches you, and it just felt very kind of awkward. Whereas we would try and engage everybody, and we were lucky with the people who kind of organised it, with people like Janice who&#8217;s just a naturally approachable person and she will go out and talk to people. And we had that kind of mixture of people that, it just made it nice, and it was nice to go along. And you would go along for the people as much as you would for the talk itself.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I would go to talks which had absolutely no interest to me on paper, but I go along anyway because I wanted to see everybody. And then I ended up finding out that these talks were actually sometimes even more interesting when I thought they wouldn&#8217;t be any relevance to me. And it helps you kind of expand your kind of knowledge, and appreciate other elements, and other factors that you might not know about. Which in person is just a lot better and I think it&#8217;s more engaging as well. So you can kind of stare at a screen watching something. It isn&#8217;t quite as engaging as it is being in person.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And also, once you finish, it&#8217;s the debrief after that I really like. So when the talk is finished and everything&#8217;s wrapping up, you can go and speak to the talker and query something with them and go and speak to other people. And you kind of have that little social bit afterwards, and it&#8217;s all just nice and relaxed. And you don&#8217;t really get that on a video call because you can&#8217;t really go and mingle on a video call, because how do you go and talk to someone else. And it isn&#8217;t the same in person, it&#8217;s just a lot easier to kind of do that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yeah, how do you sell that for something that wasn&#8217;t there for a few years? It&#8217;s twofold. How do you bring in the people who used to come? And how do you introduce people who may have been born into never having that? The younger generation who lived through COVID, and didn&#8217;t really have that Meetup experience before it to know that this exists on the other side. And what would make it appeal to different kind of levels, really?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:25:43] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So I&#8217;m not entirely sure, again, if we could rewind the clock. So this is going much, much further back. Let&#8217;s say the year 2003, something like that, when WordPress was really little. I don&#8217;t actually know the date of the first Meetup, but let&#8217;s imagine it was around there. And nobody had, in the WordPress community had ever thought to meet up.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If that just never had become a thing, I wonder how the project would&#8217;ve fared. I wonder if it would have been as successful. Because, you know, there were things like Skype and these platforms were coming along where you could do project management and things like that online. It feels like there was no, there would&#8217;ve been no inhibition to it being successful.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But I&#8217;m more or less willing to predict that it would not have been successful. I think the glue that binds the project together on some completely unquantifiable level is that community. And a certain proportion of that community in the past required the in-person meeting. You know, whether it be the WordCamp events, where they get on a plane or in a car and drive a long distance for a few days and lots of talks. Or whether it&#8217;s the more kind of informal monthly Meetup scenario, where it&#8217;s probably closer to home and a little bit quicker and one evening only, something like that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I just have an intuition that the project wouldn&#8217;t have been successful. It was those people, and I think I&#8217;ve heard the word maven. Maven being this sort of description of somebody who is like a hyper connector. They&#8217;re really good at connecting the dots between people and saying, you should meet this person, and you should meet this person. A little bit how you described.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think there&#8217;s some jigsaw puzzle of that going on. There&#8217;s some tapestry of these community members making it successful in a way we&#8217;ll never fully unpick. And now that that, in the year, so we&#8217;re recording this in March, 2026. Now that that seems to be somewhat in question, it then raises the question of, well, what does that mean for the future of the project as a whole?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My anticipation is that if we were to, let&#8217;s say nobody from this moment forward ever attended an event again, I think the project would not be as successful. There would be less development, there would be less interest in it. So I think it&#8217;s important that we do get these things back. But again, moving on to your point about how, that&#8217;s the tricky piece. You know, has life changed? Is the advent of everything online all the time, you know, so go back 10 years, there was no Netflix. Well, maybe there was, I don&#8217;t know. But the point is the entertainment that&#8217;s available through everybody&#8217;s TV now is so compelling, it&#8217;s kind of hard to fight against that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But I don&#8217;t know how we get the young people in. I don&#8217;t know what it is about, you know, what the competition is. We&#8217;ve obviously got AI painted into the mix, and all of the interesting things going on there. So I don&#8217;t really, I&#8217;m not really pressing you for the answer.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:28:36] <strong>Simon:</strong> That&#8217;s fine. One of the reasons for joining is to kind of ask that question to the people listening and saying, has anyone else got that kind of magical wand and jigsaw missed piece? Has anyone got any ideas to kind of move forward with it? Because I say, I&#8217;m going to be looking, moving forward now, what I can do and how I can connect and get back in touch with people that I&#8217;ve not spoken to. I&#8217;ve already done it with a few people I hadn&#8217;t spoken to in a while. It&#8217;s like, oh, I&#8217;ve not spoken to you, oh, you&#8217;ve got a child as well. Oh, lovely. Those things you talk about which you just kind of left.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But yeah, I completely cut short on it and it&#8217;s just bizarre. But it is kind of coming back. It&#8217;s nice to know that whilst it&#8217;s quiet, it&#8217;s still there. It hasn&#8217;t died out, it&#8217;s just a little bit smaller than it was. But like you say, whether it can rebuild to where it was, or even partway to that is the query. I&#8217;d hope it can because I think it helps.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And the project itself, as you mentioned, WordPress wouldn&#8217;t exist without a community because it&#8217;s built by a community. It&#8217;s not built by a singular development company, and we wait for them to do it, you get involved. If you want to work with WordPress, you can do. There&#8217;s nothing stopping you getting involved. You can get in, you can be involved, you can be a tester, you can be a developer for it. There&#8217;s no like barrier to be involved in it, and it needs that community to keep it going. As you said, it wouldn&#8217;t probably have progressed to where it is without that community behind it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And that community is still there in some context, but where are they in terms of, how can I to them and talk to them? Because there&#8217;s definitely people I want to reach out to again. And what&#8217;s the way to reach people these days? What&#8217;s the platform now? What&#8217;s the way to reach out to people? Where are people talking? Are they talking anymore? Or is it all just looking at TikTok? This is where I&#8217;m going to sound really old. Looking at like TikTok and just looking at short videos of things and that&#8217;s where. Or do people still communicate, and how? What&#8217;s the way to do that?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:30:20] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I get what you&#8217;re saying by the way. I am of a certain age and things like, how do you even do TikTok? What even is that? I&#8217;m not entirely sure. But again, rewinding the clock, the website was the thing. That was the fulcrum of the internet really. It was, you know, suddenly you had this capacity to publish things online, and in order to do that, certainly prior to Facebook and MySpace and those platforms, you had your blog, you know, that was the way to do it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You had to go through the process of setting it up. And the process of setting it up would pull back the curtain on, oh, so this is a bunch of files and a thing called a database. Right, okay. And that&#8217;s now on my computer, is it? Oh, right. And then that means I can mess up out with it. Oh, that&#8217;s interesting. And I can do this. And so this loop of curiosity gets created.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Whereas now, and again, this is where I&#8217;m going to sound old, the internet feels like a very different place. You know, you&#8217;ve got a billion platforms that you can just log into, no money down. There&#8217;s maybe some, you know, quid pro quo in terms of advertising or selling whatever it is that your attention can demand. And you can create your stuff over there, and it&#8217;s fine. And that platform has a reach of 3.6 billion people and yada yada, on you go.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So whether the incentives for younger people has changed because they just don&#8217;t see the need for having a website. Because that&#8217;s all been taken care of by these platforms that you log into. And, oh, just go over there, username, password, I&#8217;m all done. I think there&#8217;s something there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:31:48] <strong>Simon:</strong> Yeah, I guess it&#8217;s the questions when you&#8217;re working on something. Because back in the day you would speak to someone, it would be someone&#8217;s response. If I had a question I would need someone to have answered that question on the internet. So developers will, of a certain age, will know Stack Overflow is kind of the go-to. That&#8217;s where we spent most of our time on the internet. You&#8217;d ask Stack overflow because you&#8217;d hope someone else had the same issue, and they responded or they&#8217;ve posted it, someone&#8217;s told them how to fix it or that kind of thing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I got to the point where even I started, I made it as a goal to hit a certain score on Stack Overflow. I was like, right, I&#8217;m going to hit a certain score, I&#8217;m going to respond, I&#8217;m going to answer questions, just because I want to feel like I&#8217;m giving back because it felt nice. I&#8217;d consumed so many answers from Stack Overflow, it felt rude not to give back. And the same thing for me I think with WordPress is I was consuming so much information I wanted to kind of give back, it was nice. And it made you feel, there was a nice thing in the community thing was, if I knew the answer to something and I could explain that to someone else and help them, it was a nice feeling, it was a nice thing to do.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was like, I&#8217;ve learned this thing, and you are looking to do that thing, oh, I learned it, do it this way, this is how you do it. And that kind of helped me. So all of my Stack responses were WordPress. And it was nice to kind of respond to someone and them say, oh yeah, that&#8217;s great, and then several other people would like it. It was just a real nice, positive thing as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But now, again, there is a lot of reliance on AI coming forward, because it&#8217;s like, you ask AI and AI gives you the answer. And whilst AI consumes information from people, it doesn&#8217;t tell you who it consumed it from. So your answer is coming from the AI agent you are using, not from whoever&#8217;s actually come up with that answer. So you&#8217;ll get your responses, you don&#8217;t have to reach out to a person anymore so much as you did back in the day. And whether that&#8217;s a factor that the community isn&#8217;t needed because it&#8217;s being replaced. And you aren&#8217;t exposed to the community so you are not getting the answers through the community, you are getting it kind of channeled through an AI agent who&#8217;s consuming that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So they&#8217;re doing all the stuff you used to do, and giving you the answers without you having gone into the community and found out that, oh, it was Joe Blogs who answered that question. And it might be that you reach out to them and say, actually, you knew this, do you know that? I&#8217;ve made connections through kind of these things as well, and if the answers are no longer attributed, and it&#8217;s like the AI agent is the one who&#8217;s responded, you don&#8217;t know who actually did that if that came through someone because it&#8217;s got this information.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:34:07] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, it&#8217;s just the void provided the answer for you. Yeah, yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:34:11] <strong>Simon:</strong> Exactly. And that&#8217;s the community&#8217;s kind of gone on that sense but, is that how people are kind of, that&#8217;s what they like or do people still enjoy asking others? I still like responding to others internally in my team. If one of my fellow devs has a question, I love to kind of speak, screen share, go and talk through together, because it&#8217;s a lot more kind of enjoyable than just asking the internet.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:34:32] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. So I wonder if that&#8217;s the bear bones of what we need to sort of aspire to. So it&#8217;s to realise that there&#8217;s a proclivity to, so, okay, rewind a bit. To realise that the community has taken a hit. There&#8217;s no question that&#8217;s happened. But also to realise that there isn&#8217;t a panacea for this. There&#8217;s no red pill that we can take which is going to fix it over time.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s to recognise that there&#8217;s value in these things. It may be that there has been a dwindling in the audience of these things, but also that little avatar that you just painted of the person who&#8217;s curious about the code, but also has a desire to hang out, for the multitude of reasons that that could be, you know, they want to just hang out because that&#8217;s a nice thing to do, or they want to do networking, or they want to just make connections that they can chat to when they&#8217;re not in the room. To recognise that those people are still out there, and maybe those numbers are smaller.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Whilst you were talking also, it sort of occurred to me that maybe we&#8217;re just in flux. You know, nobody&#8217;s writing on cuneiform tablets anymore. Nobody&#8217;s using a stylist to write on papyrus anymore. Things change, you know, over time. And it may be that this is just the new normal, this is what we now have. I&#8217;m not entirely sure. But I kind of long for halcyon days. I&#8217;m looking back to those sort of 2018s, 2019s and thinking that&#8217;s the bar I&#8217;d like to have set. Whether or not that&#8217;s possible, I&#8217;m not sure.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:35:59] <strong>Simon:</strong> Yeah. It leads to me onto the level up on the Meetup was the WordCamps where it was a big kind of weekend event. And I was lucky enough to be involved. So I was the speakers organiser for the WordCamp that was in Bristol in 2019. Ironically booked my boss before I joined a company just as one of the speakers, and someone we employed as well I booked in for that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And that was just, yeah, it got so big that we could actually run an entire weekend of stuff. But because the Meetups are now going down in size, I see there is still the appetite. It seems in America and other kind of countries around, but would there still be the appetite in England specifically, where we&#8217;re both based, for there to be a WordCamp? Would there be enough to warrant one of those? Or would it have to be very scaled back? Because I remember back in the day, I&#8217;ve been to like the London ones and you&#8217;ve got multiple tracks. Even the Bristol one had two separate tracks running. But now would it be something a bit more stripped back? Would it just be one track and a small kind of event? What scale would it be? Would there still be the interest?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:36:56] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> And also, does it have to be kind of mixed up with other things? Like, does it have to be part entertainment, part information, part hallway? Because again, I just wonder if that&#8217;s the diet that we&#8217;ve created ourselves with. Our always on culture, where entertainment is so readily available, I do wonder if, you know, we&#8217;ve got to just acknowledge that those things are of importance.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you want to attract an audience of people, you&#8217;ve got to have the social afterwards, you&#8217;ve got to have the band, the live entertainment, the bits in between, the, I don&#8217;t know what that is, but just some aspect of gimmicks to make these events fun. Not just, okay, let&#8217;s go to a talk, watch the talk and then all go home.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:37:36] <strong>Simon:</strong> Yeah. There was always, I mean the thing I liked with a lot of these was there was the kind of a developer day or, that often preceded so you could get involved a bit more for those who wanted to. So there were kind of certain things. There were the socials as well that was always key to some, and that was just a nice way to kind of unwind afterwards. Because a lot of the time people would be traveling, so you didn&#8217;t want to go to the event and then go back to the hotel room and sit on your own. You could stay out and chat.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And as mentioned before, the community is a lovely community. So it&#8217;s people you want to hang out with because they&#8217;re nice people to hang out with. They&#8217;re all really lovely. And I&#8217;ve met a lot of really nice people at Meetups, at WordCamps. Just afterwards in particular and just chatting, chat about anything because after a while you get bored talking about WordPress, you&#8217;ll chat about whatever you want.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I mean if I get talking about music then I&#8217;m away. But it&#8217;s just, you build those relationships. And there are connections that I&#8217;ve made back, six, seven years ago that I&#8217;m still in touch now and I&#8217;m reaching out again and going, we lost that touch in between. So I&#8217;m kind of reaching out again and just catching up with people. It&#8217;s just nice to know like, oh, you&#8217;re still in the industry. What are you doing? What&#8217;s happened to you? And that kind of just disappeared almost. There wasn&#8217;t a way to stay in touch in between.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:38:42] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> The sort of glib comment that I made at the beginning about the fact that if we were to switch on the cameras on this podcast, we&#8217;d be able to see that Simon has a guitar in his background.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:38:51] <strong>Simon:</strong> I&#8217;ve got more if you look further up.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:38:52] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, there&#8217;s many musical instruments there. But the point being though that there seems to be a, certainly from my perspective, doing these interviews on a, multiple a week. There&#8217;s a high correlation between musicians and WordPressers. And so I&#8217;m going to drop this bomb. Maybe that&#8217;s a channel for these events is to combine other things. Like combine cinema with a WordPress event. So, you know, there&#8217;s a track for watching films at the same time as there&#8217;s tracks for speakers, but there&#8217;s also live music over there. You know, I&#8217;m not suggesting we invite Coldplay or anything. But, you know, some local acts. Maybe some of the people that are involved in the event themselves, many of whom we know are musicians. It&#8217;s gimmicks again, but it&#8217;s fun.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:39:32] <strong>Simon:</strong> It&#8217;s a nice way, yeah, I mean it&#8217;s on our, so our band&#8217;s been going for a while and it&#8217;s still on our bucket list is to actually perform somewhere. We get together and rehearse and it&#8217;s one of my bucket list things is I would love to actually perform. Even if it&#8217;s just in a small pub in front of a handful of people and I know them all anyway, but just to kind of do that performance in front of things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So that could be tied in. I wouldn&#8217;t be against kind of suggesting it to the rest of the guys and saying, there&#8217;s going to be this event and there&#8217;s all sorts of things taking place. There&#8217;ll be some technical talks or whatever and all these things. There&#8217;s also some music so we could perform. Definitely an idea. Yeah, like you said, there&#8217;s a lot of musicians around.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:40:07] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Like a hybrid, arts meets technology kind of event.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:40:11] <strong>Simon:</strong> Yeah. There&#8217;s a lot of creativity. One of the best people I got speaking at the Bristol Meetup, bare in mind this is just a very small handful of people, a guy called Gavin Strange who works for Aardman. He is just amazing, and he&#8217;s done some brilliant speeches. I lucked out working with him on a community thing where we got together on a weekend and built websites in the space of a weekend. So thank God for WordPress, I basically built a site in, I don&#8217;t know, about five hours, we built a website from scratch.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He was working with us doing some animations and things and was such a positive, really great person. He works outside of work. He&#8217;s insane. He never stops. I reached out on a whim and said, do fancy doing a talk? And he goes, well, I don&#8217;t do WordPress. It doesn&#8217;t matter, it can be anything. And he came along and did a really good, positive, energetic talk. And that was my biggest coup was I got him to speak to us.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:40:57] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> And it was nothing to do with WordPress. Okay, that&#8217;s so interesting.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:41:00] <strong>Simon:</strong> Absolutely nothing. Nothing to do with WordPress. He just talked about, I can&#8217;t even remember, it&#8217;s a long time ago, but it was just interesting because it, just talking about what he does and a lot of kind of what he does outside of his working day and keeping busy and just.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:41:14] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> There&#8217;s a lot of overlap with soft skills and things, isn&#8217;t there? And to be honest with you, even just learning about the animation process and the tech, no doubt, involved in that. It&#8217;s kind of interesting. Okay. This is fascinating. This is going in an unexpected direction.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:41:27] <strong>Simon:</strong> That&#8217;s my thing now is maybe I can reach out to him again. And then through my other ways I&#8217;ve, I know someone who&#8217;s done a TED talk. That&#8217;s just probably a little level too much, but he&#8217;s a mountain biker. But I wonder, can I tie in that into somehow? And can I pull in that crowd that way? There&#8217;s all those kind of connections. It&#8217;s like, it doesn&#8217;t have to be. I think that&#8217;s the thing, we managed to get across that it doesn&#8217;t have to be WordPress. You can talk about anything if it relates to the internet, and then it might just aspire that that connects to a site that runs WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That&#8217;s how we kind of got a bigger crowd because we dabbled. We did do a technical focused one and it just, that was my thing. I really wanted to get techie and nerdy and it&#8217;s like, but you just cut down to too much of a niche and you&#8217;re cutting people out. It&#8217;s better to kind of have all sorts of things, and as I mentioned before, getting people to see a talk about something they might not think they&#8217;re interested in and realise actually it is very interesting and put across and try and get people in.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:42:17] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. I think that&#8217;s the perfect place to sort of draw a line under this one. So what we&#8217;re saying is that WordPress events, Meetups in particular, I think we&#8217;re talking about mainly, they&#8217;re definitely going through a state of flux. We don&#8217;t necessarily have the answer, but we&#8217;ve definitely floated what the problem is. And there&#8217;s a few towards the end there, interesting ideas of ways to possibly make it more engaging to people who&#8217;ve, I don&#8217;t know, just lost interest, or have never come across WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, oh, that&#8217;s fascinating. I really enjoyed that. Simon, where do people find you? Where are, you mentioned earlier how the entire world of social networking has been shattered.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:42:53] <strong>Simon:</strong> That&#8217;s my issue. Yeah, well, I mean you can find me on illustrate.digital. I&#8217;ve got to give a slight plug out to the company I work for. We are a WordPress agency. We do loads of stuff for WordPress. At the minute I seem to be living on LinkedIn. I got addicted to a game on there, and then I kept kind of pulling back. That&#8217;s my kind of way to reach out at the minute so you can find me there. I think, yeah, otherwise I don&#8217;t really use the other socials. I am on Facebook, if you find me, good luck. But otherwise I think LinkedIn is the way to get me initially. But if you&#8217;ve got an example and say, ah, you should join this platform, do reach out and let me know, I&#8217;m happy to have a look.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:43:22] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you. I will make sure that anybody listening to this is able to find that. If you go to wptavern.com, search for the episode with Simon Pollard in, you&#8217;ll be able to probably scroll to the bottom of the show notes and there&#8217;ll be links to his LinkedIn.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So Simon Pollard, that was a really curious and interesting chat. Thank you for chatting to me today. I appreciate it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[00:43:41] <strong>Simon:</strong> Thank you very much Nathan.</p>\n</div></details>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On the podcast today we have <a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonp303/\">Simon Pollard</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Simon has been building with WordPress for many years. Originally from Devon in England, he’s worked as a professional web developer across locations, eventually landing at Illustrate Digital, where he’s been for six years. Simon’s not just a coder, he’s been deeply involved in the WordPress community, not only organising, but helping to grow the Bristol WordPress Meetup from a casual get-together in a pub to a thriving, officially-backed event with dozens of regular attendees.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Like many in the WordPress ecosystem, Simon wears multiple hats. He’s a musician, a devoted dad, and an accidental community leader who found himself at the heart of local WordPress organising. But COVID-19 changed all that. In today’s episode, Simon explains what happened to WordPress Meetups during and after the pandemic, how vibrant communities fizzled out, how hard it was to bring people back, and the new challenges of connecting when traditional social media platforms no longer bring everyone together.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Simon talks about his own journey, how he paused on events, shifted his social life to music, and struggled to hand the Meetup keys to new organisers. Eventually, a call from old friends drew him back, and he was faced with the new reality, smaller groups, fractured channels, and the question of how to keep the in-person spirit of WordPress alive.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We get into the irreplaceable value of real-life connection, the ‘warmth in the room,’ and the need to rethink what gets people to in-person events now. Is it hybrid events? Perhaps it’s music? Something beyond pure WordPress talks? We discuss what’s been lost, what still matters, and what it might take to build the next era of WordPress community in a distracted, always-connected world.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you’re curious about the future of WordPress Meetups, if you’ve felt the ebb and flow of community during the past few years, or if you just want to know how to find your people again, this episode is for you.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Useful links</h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonp303/\">Simon on LinkedIn</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https://illustrate.digital\">Illustrate Digital</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https://www.meetup.com/bristol-wordpress-meetup-group/\">Bristol WordPress Meetup Group</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, 18 Mar 2026 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:45;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s: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:45:\"Open Channels FM: It’s Channel 4, Literally\";s: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:34:\"https://openchannels.fm/?p=2551213\";s: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:48:\"https://openchannels.fm/its-channel-4-literally/\";s: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:132:\"Welcome to Channel 4, where Bob Dunn finally found a home for offbeat chats after sleepless nights. It’s the podcasting wild card.\";s: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, 18 Mar 2026 10:10:00 +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:8:\"Bob Dunn\";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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s: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:63:\"HeroPress: I Don’t Have It All Figured Out. I Show Up Anyway.\";s: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:56:\"https://heropress.com/?post_type=heropress-essays&p=8509\";s: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:168:\"https://heropress.com/essays/i-dont-have-it-all-figured-out-i-show-up-anyway/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=i-dont-have-it-all-figured-out-i-show-up-anyway\";s: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:9087:\"<img alt=\"Pull Quote: You don’t have to wait until you feel ready. You just have to show up.\" class=\"attachment-large size-large wp-post-image\" height=\"512\" src=\"https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/031726.webp\" width=\"1024\" /><section class=\"wp-block-newsletterglue-group\" style=\"padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls=\"controls\" src=\"https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Indira_Biswas_HeroPress_Audio.mp3\"></audio><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Here is Indira reading her own story aloud.</figcaption></figure>\n</section>\n\n\n<p>My background is in Quality Assurance: testing features, observing behaviour, and making sure things work as expected. For a long time, I believed open source contribution mostly meant writing code. Since I wasn’t a developer, I saw myself more as someone learning from the community than contributing to it.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-finding-my-place\">Finding My Place</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I grew up in <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akola\">Akola</a>, a small town a few hours from <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagpur\">Nagpur</a>. Our school computer lab had one computer for every ten or twelve students. I was shy, so I rarely got a turn at the keyboard. Most of the time I watched from a few rows back, trying to understand what the others were doing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I went on to complete a diploma and then a degree in Computer Science. Fast forward to today: I started a role at <a href=\"https://rtcamp.com/\">rtCamp</a>, a company where contributing to open source is part of the culture rather than something people do in their spare time. Even then, I was too reluctant to ask whether there was a place for a QA engineer in the WordPress contributor community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then, at a Contributor Day, I watched a few people test a feature, open tickets, report bugs, and translate strings. They weren’t writing code, but they were clearly contributing. I remember thinking: this is exactly what I do. I eventually understood that testing is an important part of building better software, and that there is space for many different kinds of contributors.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>While browsing <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/chat/\">WordPress Slack</a> one day, I came across the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/contributor-day/contributor-working-group/contributor-mentorship-program-for-wordpress/\">WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program</a>. It felt like the opportunity I had been waiting for. Without consulting anyone or giving myself time to second-guess it, I signed up. The program did what the best communities do. It didn’t focus on teaching me how to code. Instead, it showed me how to collaborate: how to work with a team, support each other, communicate clearly, and encourage one another. It helped me understand why the WordPress community feels so welcoming to so many people.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-one-step-at-a-time\">One Step at a Time</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>From there, I started contributing to the Polyglots team, then Core, Test, and Photos.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Being part of these teams helped me understand open source in a new way. I started to see how many different kinds of work go into building and supporting a project. Not just writing code, but testing, translating, documenting, and helping each other. Every contribution, no matter how small, helps move things forward.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I became a contributor on consecutive releases: WordPress 6.7 “Rollins,” WordPress 6.8 “Cecil,” and WordPress 6.9 “Gene.” I still feel the butterflies, and a lot of pride, every time I’m listed as a contributor in a release post. The community had quietly been helping me overcome my fears, and I no longer felt the jitters about coming forward and putting my name in for different roles.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>A recent example: there was an upcoming Contributor Day at WordCamp Asia, and I signed up to volunteer at a table. I didn’t apply to lead or co-lead. That felt like too much. Volunteering was enough. Then I got a call from the organisers asking if I would be open to co-leading the table.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>For once, I said yes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am still a month away from WordCamp Asia 2026 as I write this. I am thrilled and nervous in roughly equal measure. The person who used to watch from the back of the school computer lab is going to stand and address a room full of people.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don’t know yet how it will go. But I said yes, and that feels like something.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-for-anyone-watching-from-the-sidelines\">For Anyone Watching from the Sidelines</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>It wasn’t always easy. I completed my primary schooling in the regional language, and things as basic as speaking and writing fluent English required a lot of effort. On many occasions, I doubted myself.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I feel very fortunate to have been welcomed into this community with open arms. From the very beginning I felt at home, and I have never been made to feel like I don’t know enough. I am still learning every day, finding my path and trying to make an impact.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are many accomplished contributors and talented women in this community, juggling multiple responsibilities, quietly taking on leadership roles, contributing consistently without making a fuss about it. None of them waited to feel ready. They started anyway, and the community met them where they were. I am sure that by simply continuing to show up, I will learn a great deal from them and keep finding my voice along the way.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you’re someone who is on the fence about starting a contributor journey in the WordPress community, know this: there is no hierarchy here. Everyone is welcome and equally valued. The work you already know how to do is needed. You don’t have to learn to code, unless you want to. You don’t have to wait until you feel ready. You just have to show up.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It’s okay if you’re not ready to lead yet. It’s okay if you’re still watching from the sidelines. Start where you are. Your yes will come.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>My name is Indira Biswas. I am a QA Engineer at rtCamp. I have contributed to WordPress Core, the Test Team, Polyglots, and Photos. I have spoken at WordCamps, and in a few weeks I will stand on the WordCamp Asia stage as emcee and co-lead the Core table at Contributor Day.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am grateful beyond what I know how to say, to the community that kept the door open, to people like <a href=\"https://www.worksbymichelle.com/\">Michelle Frechette</a>, <a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/in/thecancerus/\">Amit Kumar</a>, and <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/pavanpatil1/\">Pavan Patil</a> who were encouraging from the very beginning, and to the Mentorship Programme.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The WordPress community gave me a place to put my work and a reason to keep doing it. I hope to keep giving that back for a long time.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you are coming to WordCamp Asia in Mumbai this year, please come say hi. I would love to meet you, hear your story, and yes, probably add a few more photos to my selfie collection.</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-2 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-8514\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/WordCamp-Pune-2025-820x1024.webp\" width=\"820\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-8516\" height=\"769\" src=\"https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/WordCamp-Pune-2026-1024x769.webp\" width=\"1024\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-8515\" height=\"768\" src=\"https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/WordCamp-Pune-2026-_-Team-1024x768.webp\" width=\"1024\" /></figure>\n</figure>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-background is-vertical is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-8f084edc wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\" id=\"desktop\">\n<h2 class=\"kt-adv-heading8509_a5d107-fd wp-block-kadence-advancedheading\" id=\"work-environment\">Indira&#8217;s Work Environment</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>We asked Indira for a view into her contribution life and this is what she sent! Make sure you click on the hot spots.</p>\n\n\n	<div class=\"hotspots-image-container\">\n		<img alt=\"Indira Biswas&#039; Desktop\" class=\"hotspots-image skip-lazy\" height=\"2259\" src=\"https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Indira_Biswas_Desktop.webp\" width=\"1440\" />\n	</div>\n\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has--font-size\">HeroPress would like to thank <a href=\"https://wpdrawattention.com/\">Draw Attention</a> for their donation of the plugin to make this interactive image!</p>\n</div>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https://heropress.com/essays/i-dont-have-it-all-figured-out-i-show-up-anyway/\">I Don’t Have It All Figured Out. I Show Up Anyway.</a> appeared first on <a href=\"https://heropress.com\">HeroPress</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, 18 Mar 2026 02:30:00 +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:13:\"Indira Biswas\";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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s: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: Connecting Decentralized Social Networks and Rethinking Interoperability\";s: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:34:\"https://openchannels.fm/?p=2551015\";s: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://openchannels.fm/connecting-decentralized-social-networks-and-rethinking-interoperability/\";s: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:196:\"In this chat, Matthias and Ryan dive into Ryan\'s journey building tools like Bridgy to connect decentralized networks, emphasizing the importance of interoperability and community in the open web.\";s: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, 17 Mar 2026 09:30:00 +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:8:\"Bob Dunn\";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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s: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: Song Creation\";s: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=151483\";s: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/2026/03/song-creation/\";s: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:2957:\"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m in New Orleans for the first time in 7 years for a beautiful wedding. My Mom&#8217;s side of the family emigrated here in the 1860s, and there&#8217;s a deep comfort in the art, traditions, and weirdness of <a href=\"https://www.louisianafolklife.org/lt/articles_essays/creole_art_creole_state.html\">Creole culture</a>. Good music and food are ubiquitous. </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I met up with WordPresser <a href=\"https://gravatar.com/blakeaeda05338c\">Blake Bertuccelli-Booth</a> to catch a set by <a href=\"https://jasonmarsalis.com/\">Jason Marsalis</a> at <a href=\"https://snugjazz.com/\">Snug Harbor</a>, featuring some great originals and surprising arrangements of <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPpTgCho5ZA\">Maroon 5&#8217;s &#8220;This Love&#8221;</a> and the music from the <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd2Xiz_XEt4\">Bejeweled Butterflies</a> game. Great artists find inspiration everywhere.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Afterward, we went to see my friend <a href=\"https://www.tromboneshorty.com/\">Troy, aka Trombone Shorty</a>, at his studio. (Troy and I met when we both received the <a href=\"https://www.heinzawards.org/recipients\">Heinz Award in 2016</a>.) He was with <a href=\"https://www.instagram.com/silkktheshocker/\">Silkk the Shocker</a> and <a href=\"https://www.reggienic.com/\">Reggie Nicholas Jr.</a>, working on beats and songs. Though I was there for just a short while, it was inspiring to see the act of musical creation.</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-151490\" height=\"805\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/ma.tt/files/2026/03/IMG_2458.jpeg?resize=604%2C805&#038;quality=89&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"604\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A few days ago, <a href=\"https://www.edsheeran.com/\">Ed Sheeran</a> went on the new <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/@friendskeepsecrets\">Benny Blanco / Lil Dicky / Kristin Podcast Friends Keep Secrets</a>. I haven&#8217;t watched the entire episode, but the twenty minutes from about 1:09 to the end where Ed and Benny come up with a new song I&#8217;ve seen 4 times now, it&#8217;s magical. Check it out, it&#8217;s one of the coolest things you&#8217;ll see this week.</p>\n\n\n\n<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\">\n\n</div></figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;ve seen Ed Sheeran loop his songs live, but this act of creation is very special, and I love the dynamic between him and Benny. It reminds me of that magical moment in <a href=\"https://www.disneyplus.com/browse/entity-eaea3ecf-6636-4468-b777-54bb2aee5545\">Peter Jackson&#8217;s Get Back documentary</a> where you <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R8pFCE3TP8\">see Paul McCartney and the band come up with the idea for the classic song Get Back</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, 15 Mar 2026 05:23:55 +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:49;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s: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:\"Gutenberg Times: Gutenberg Changelog #128 – Gutenberg 22.7 Version and Dev Notes for 7.0\";s: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=44744\";s: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://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-128-gutenberg-22-7-version-and-dev-notes-for-7-0/\";s: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:58698:\"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><img alt=\"🎉\" class=\"wp-smiley\" src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/72x72/1f389.png\" style=\"height: 1em;\" /> Announcing GT Changelog Podcast Episode 128: Deep Dive Into Gutenberg 22.7 &amp; WordPress 7.0 Dev Notes! <img alt=\"🎉\" class=\"wp-smiley\" src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/72x72/1f389.png\" style=\"height: 1em;\" /></p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We’re back with another packed episode of the GT Changelog Podcast! In episode 128, host Birgit Pauli-Haack welcomes JavaScript developer and full-time WordPress contributor Maggie Cabrera for an insightful conversation about all things Gutenberg and WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In this episode, we unpack the highlights of Gutenberg 22.7, with a special focus on the latest features coming to WordPress 7.0. From the innovative navigation overlays—earning plenty of “oohs” from the community—to the long-awaited pseudo selectors in theme.json, our speakers share behind-the-scenes perspectives on development.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Birgit Pauli-Haack and Maggie Cabrera explore game-changing updates like the new breadcrumbs block, PHP-only block registration, and the emerging real-time collaboration features. They also discuss the vision for my.wordpress.net—WordPress running right in your browser for ultimate digital sovereignty.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-69-gutenberg-releases-wordpress-6-0-1-the-create-block-theme/#shownotes\">Show Notes</a> / <a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-69-gutenberg-releases-wordpress-6-0-1-the-create-block-theme/#transcript\">Transcript</a></p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Editor: <a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandy-reed/\">Sandy Reed</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Logo: <a href=\"https://markuraine.com/\">Mark Uraine</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Production: <a href=\"https://icodeforapurpose.com\">Birgit Pauli-Haack</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-larger-font-size wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"shownotes\"><strong>Show Notes</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Special Guest: Maggie Cabrera</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>GitHub <a href=\"https://github.com/MaggieCabrera\">MaggieCabrera</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/onemaggie/\">WordPress profile</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/one_maggie\">Twitter @one_maggie</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">My.WordPress.net</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2026/03/announcing-my-wordpress/\">Your Browser Becomes Your WordPress</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://ma.tt/2026/03/wordpress-everywhere/\">WordPress Everywhere</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">WordPress 7.0 Dev Notes</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/04/breadcrumb-block-filters/\">Breadcrumb block filters</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/04/customisable-navigation-overlays-in-wordpress-7-0/\">Customizable Navigation Overlays</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/04/changes-to-the-interactivity-api-in-wordpress-7-0/\">Changes to the Interactivity API</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/04/dataviews-dataform-et-al-in-wordpress-7-0/\">DataViews, DataForm, et al.</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/03/php-only-block-registration/\">PHP-only block registration</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/09/pseudo-element-support-for-blocks-and-their-variations-in-theme-json/\">Pseudo-element support for blocks and their variations in theme.json</a>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/75627\">Implement state UI for pseudo selectors on Global styles</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/42299#top\">Ability to style current menu item</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/75736\">Navigation link: add support to style current menu item via theme.json</a></li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/10/real-time-collaboration-in-the-block-editor/\">Real-Time Collaboration in the Block Editor</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/wp-admin/post.php?post=121473&amp;action=edit\">Iframed Editor Changes in WordPress 7.0</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">More to come.  <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/dev-notes+7-0/\">Get the full list</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What&#8217;s released?</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2026/03/wordpress-6-9-2-release/\">WordPress 6.9.2 Release</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2026/03/wordpress-6-9-3-and-7-0-beta-4/\">WordPress 6.9.3 and 7.0 beta 4</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2026/03/wordpress-6-9-4-release/\">WordPress 6.9.4 Release</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2026/03/wordpress-7-0-beta-5/\">WordPress 7.0 Beta 5</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/11/whats-new-in-gutenberg-22-7-11-march/\">What’s new in Gutenberg 22.7? (11 March)</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/ai/2026/02/03/content-guidelines-a-gutenberg-experiment/\">Content Guidelines as a Gutenberg experiment</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What’s in active development or discussed</h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"\">Tabs: Restructure Tabs Menu and inner blocks</a><br /></p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-large-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Stay in Touch</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\">\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Did you like this episode? <a href=\"https://lovethepodcast.com/gutenbergchangelog\"><strong>Please write us a review </strong></a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Ping us on X (formerly known as Twitter) or send DMs with questions. <a href=\"https://twitter.com/gutenbergtimes\">@gutenbergtimes </a>and <a href=\"https://twitter.com/bph\">@bph</a>.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>If you have questions or suggestions, or news you want us to include, send them to <a href=\"mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com\">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a>. </em></li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Please write us a review on iTunes! <a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/itunes/\">(Click here to learn how)</a></em></li>\n</ul>\n</div></div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-large-font-size wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"transcript\"><strong>Transcript</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Welcome to our 128th episode of the Gutenberg Changelog Podcast. In today&#8217;s episode, we will talk about Gutenberg 22.7 version and dive a bit deeper into the dev notes for 7.0 that have been published as we record this on March 12th, 2026. I&#8217;m your host, Birgit Pauli-Haack, curator at the Gutenberg Times and a core contributor for the WordPress open source project sponsored by Automattic. And today, I&#8217;m very happy to say Maggie Cabrera joins me on the show. Maggie is a JavaScript developer and theme builder and is contributing full-time to the open source project and also sponsored by Automattic. So welcome to the show, Maggie. How are you today?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Hi, I&#8217;m really good. Thank you for having me again. Really excited.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: It&#8217;s been a long time. So maybe a year and a half or even two years. Yeah. Since I&#8217;ve been on the channel.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: At least one year. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Oh, and I forgot to mention in the intro that you are also a co-developer. You were a co-developer on the Twenty Twenty-Four theme, which was one of the first full-featured block default themes. And has gotten a lot of workout through the WordPress community because I think that started when, when people started with a default theme and just adjusted things and created that for client work or for private projects. And the others were okay. And I, I really like the Twenty Twenty-three part where we, there was a community push to get more style variations in. That was really cool.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yeah. I think I need to go back to them to look at those. Again, to get some ideas there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah, I think it&#8217;s funny looking back at them and how each of those themes and Twenty Twenty-Five too have like different things from it that you could, you would want to reuse today because they haven&#8217;t gone out of style really. And hopefully soon we&#8217;ll be able to do that kind of thing where you can, you can have multiple themes installed, be able to reuse like patterns or style variations and stuff like that. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And I know that people are actually working on it. There was an idea to have the template management a little bit more safe for people. Ella, I think, was working on it. And she switched the priorities to revisions for 7.0. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Hopefully, maybe 7.1.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: I also think that that&#8217;s part of it, that you can have multiple templates for the same slug. We talked about it on the show when we talked about 6.9 and what was coming from the Gutenberg. It&#8217;s still in Gutenberg, but it&#8217;s experimental now and you have to open it up through the experiments tab. But yeah, I&#8217;m, I really like that. And then you can reuse patterns. That&#8217;s definitely something. Yeah, we&#8217;ll see what&#8217;s coming down the pipeline. </p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">WordPress 7.0</h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So for WordPress 7.0, you worked on several features, for instance, bringing the pseudo selectors to the theme.json and patterns for the navigation overlays.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. And the navigation overlays were really a got a few oohs when I demoed it last night at the meetup in Munich. And it was really cool to see. There were also some tiny things where I said, oh, I didn&#8217;t know that they were getting so much excitement out of people. Revisions, of course, was one. And the other one was that you can have a paragraph now create columns. So you have just one setting and you switch it on and then you can have a paragraph display in 2 or 3 columns depending on the site.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And that is really cool. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Well, anyway, so yeah, the overlay work has been in the making for so long and I&#8217;m so excited that that finally made it and I&#8217;m really happy with how it ended up looking by the time, like the deadline of the release. I think there will still be follow-ups and stuff, but I think it&#8217;s really, really nice. Now I not only worked on the patterns, but I also worked on the whole setup for themers to extend that. So a theme, a themer, but that, that was like previous work, I guess, but it all made it to the release. So a themer will be able to create a template part for the overlay to set up as a default, and also patterns. So you can have your theme will have maybe 5 different overlay patterns and then you&#8217;ll select, well, this one is going to be the default and you&#8217;ll assign it to the navigation block you want it to have it and you&#8217;ll instantly have it as soon as you activate the theme, which is really nice. </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;ve also been tinkering with it on my personal blog. I was like, now that I can have it, I have, because I have Gutenberg on it, I will, yes, yes, I need to put it on and change the colors and center it and put the site logo on it and all this kind of thing. So yeah, I&#8217;m really excited about what other people are going to be able to do with it. I think it&#8217;s quite flexible and I think it&#8217;s, there&#8217;s still more work to make it more flexible. Like things we want for people to be able to do something like if they want to make their overlay, like maybe always on, not just on mobile and not have it be full width, maybe only have like half the viewport, in the future, they will be able to do that. Right now there&#8217;s only one thing where you can&#8217;t really close it by clicking outside of it, which is the thing that we need to fix. But once we have that, the sky&#8217;s the limit.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Yeah. There was Nick Diego, a year and a half or so ago, wrote a tutorial on the developer blog about how to create mega menus.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yes, I remember that. Yeah, yeah, that&#8217;s the next step too.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And he had this idea with template parts and then push it into the navigation bar, but of course it wasn&#8217;t wired up from core, so he had to do some, some interesting workarounds. And then Mike McAllister with his Ollie Theme Builder, he had a plugin called the Menu Builder and it&#8217;s in the repo. </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: I think that was a big inspiration when we were working on the navigation overlay.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, that&#8217;s what I thought. Yeah. And there was a conversation between Mike McAllister and also Matt Mullenweg on Twitter and yeah, how to get this into core and I&#8217;m glad it&#8217;s now there and it can be, of course, everything can be improved, but—</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Oh yeah, this is V1.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: It&#8217;s phase one. Like I explained yesterday. It&#8217;s phase one. It&#8217;s baby steps. It can&#8217;t be fully featured.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: We iterate.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. </p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Announcements</h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, but today, completely a different thing was an announcement. No, it was yesterday actually that your browser becomes your WordPress. It&#8217;s the announcement of my.wordpress.net. It&#8217;s a browser-based, signup-free WordPress built on WordPress Playground. And those of you, dear listeners, who know Playground wouldn&#8217;t be all surprised how this is gonna work. But it&#8217;s just, the site is private across visits because it&#8217;s automatically saved in your browser. But it also offers an app catalog and one-click installs for personal CRM and RSS reader. And it&#8217;s kind of a prototype for maybe seen as a WordPress democratizing digital sovereignty because you can, you don&#8217;t have to put it on a central place. </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You have it all on your browser, on your machine, and you can interact with your machine with it. It also has a hook into an AI assistant if you want to, and also some other apps. But the plugin and the WordPress still is what it is. But Matt also posted about it on his personal blog, Matt Mullenweg, under ma.tt, and he calls it the WordPress Everywhere. And outlines the strategy as well. And he can see that this one thing that&#8217;s in your browser and only for you can have peer-to-peer sync with another person&#8217;s MyWordPress, could have version control and also cloud publishing, which means pushing it to a host or pushing segments of it like single posts to another public website or any way you wanna kind of think about it. But it&#8217;s a kind of atomic container, composable units. And you can fully roll back. You can just say, okay, I don&#8217;t want it anymore. And then it&#8217;s gone. But it shifts. One of the hopes, it shifts from WordPress for millions to WordPress for billions. We&#8217;ll see. We&#8217;ll talk about it in the next 20 years about it. So, again, so AI will enhance it. And it&#8217;s the open source power is really coming to life in that vision. We&#8217;ll see if we can get the product also to fulfill all those promises. </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I got a chance to try it out in early stages. It&#8217;s mainly built by Alex Kirk and he published it and then went on sabbatical. So it&#8217;s kind of— what&#8217;s this little baby? Yeah, took a little break and it&#8217;s a, I think it&#8217;s a wonderful proof of concept. It&#8217;s a rough experiment, definitely. But I love the app launcher instead of plugins because it&#8217;s kind of a different metaphor. Yeah, kind of if you can have this single install additional apps in WordPress, that would be so much more approachable than plugins that need to be installed and find and everything. And it&#8217;s a personal note-taking app with many others out there. But this would let you connect your personal ideas with what you&#8217;re doing out on the web and bring it in, in certain ways or other. So it kind of, you can kind of put it together. Say if you have a chat with your AI, you can copy paste it into your private WordPress and think about it some more and write about it or add it with other information and resources and just keep your own learning process private. But it&#8217;s not in a Google Doc, it&#8217;s just out there in the browser. Easy to use because it&#8217;s in WordPress. But yeah, there&#8217;s so many ideas that I all of a sudden had with that. So I really liked it. It was announced yesterday, so you probably haven&#8217;t gotten an opportunity.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah. Yeah. I&#8217;m gonna definitely check it out. Sounds really interesting.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Definitely do that. Yeah. TechCrunch also had, and I will share all the links in the show notes. TechCrunch also had a little report about it. So yeah, check it out. Of course, it&#8217;s the first version as always in WordPress and it&#8217;s baby steps, right? </p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Dev Notes</h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now with WordPress beta 4 being out, the first dev notes appear on the Make blog. And there are quite a few that are about the block editor. The first breadcrumbs block is coming to WordPress 7.0. And the dev note talks about the block filters. Yeah, learn how to use it with two PHP filters or customize it. And with the trail terms and also the taxonomy terms, the interface is actually more like, okay, we will, we will find out where your page is. Is it a subpage of a page section or is it a post in a category? And we put the things that we know about it into the breadcrumbs. And there&#8217;s a, you can have a home link in there and you can have the current page also in the trail if you want to. But that&#8217;s kind of, so yeah, I share the dev notes in, in the show notes, like we&#8217;re talking about all 6 or 7 of them. So yeah. But, um, have you worked with the breadcrumbs block?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: No, I had a time when I was working on WooCommerce theme development for a little while. And I knew that that was needed and I think Woo had its own little solution. So I&#8217;m really happy to see that there&#8217;s something coming to core. That definitely helps for any use case, not just the commerce side. So yeah, definitely need it. Will help SEO and everything. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. There were quite a few plugins out there. I think SEO had it already in there. So, but I&#8217;m not quite sure they were all block-based. So having a block in there and you can actually put &#8217;em on any page. Yeah. You don&#8217;t have to put &#8217;em in the template. So yeah, you can connect with. Have the visitor not getting lost so much on your big, big, big website. The next one, we already mentioned that that&#8217;s the customizable navigation overlays. And see developers learn how to register and bundle the new navigation overlay and customize that. That&#8217;s what you said for the mobile navigation. Yeah, the overlay, when I demoed it yesterday, it had always used as overlay. As a navigation, so the default navigation will never show. You always show the overlay, but that&#8217;s kind of full page and then you have to close it. Yeah, you mentioned that already. Yeah. So how would theme developers register and bundle then?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: So there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s a couple of options. So they can just do patterns and tag them as core slash, I think navigation overlay. I think it&#8217;s on the dev note. And that would have those patterns show on the sidebar when you create a new one. And right now you, we only have the ones that are coming from core, but if a theme bundles a few patterns more, you&#8217;ll see them too. But you can also, as a themer, decide, well, I want to not only bundle patterns, but also decide right away that the header that I&#8217;ve designed will have a specific overlay and they can decide which one and link it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By having the attribute to the navigation block specifically. And if you want to have 4 headers for a website, for a theme, and each one of them is going to have a different overlay, you can absolutely do that. So it&#8217;s, you&#8217;re not tied to just one for the whole website. You can decide on a per-block basis. So it&#8217;s really nice.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Awesome.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: If a theme doesn&#8217;t want to do that, or you&#8217;re using a theme that it&#8217;s older than this feature, but you still want to use the navigation overlay, you can only need to click on the navigation block. And go to the settings and click on the— there&#8217;s an overlay on this, on the inspector on the sidebar. You can create a new overlay and it will automatically give you the simple one. That&#8217;s just your navigation block and the close button with a white background. And you can customize it or use one of the bundle patterns that came with the feature.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Is it possible to switch out those patterns?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah, the same way you can for when you create a new page and it will show you all the, on the sidebar or this popup that tells you all the different patterns that come with your theme, you can completely replace them.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Okay.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Same that you do with the query block and all these kinds of things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. So I think a lot of theme developers are going to try it out and maybe have an update to their themes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah, I can&#8217;t wait to see what they come up with.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. So the next dev note is about the changes interactivity API. And that&#8217;s pretty much a new watch function, or that&#8217;s implementing a new watch function for the server-side state URL and populate cleaner patterns for side effects and navigation tracking. And there&#8217;s also the state.navigation is going to be deprecated. So watch out for those deprecation notices in the console log. Another dev note covers all the changes on the data views, the data form, and the field API. And there are some substantial updates in the API with new layouts, validation rules, grouping options for the table, and then picker improvements. And yeah, the whole package, I think it&#8217;s now in the version 13 or so for the data views. So it&#8217;s pretty great to use for plugin pages.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah. Oh yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And sites. So you don&#8217;t have to make any of the design decisions and keep up with— Yeah, yeah, yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Your components, those are really stable.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yes, they are.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And it is really fun and Claude code can really work with them. Just need to make sure that it&#8217;s kind of looking at the right version. So, and then there is a PHP only block registration. A lot of people, PHP developers—</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah, very excited about this.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Are excited about this. Yeah. Yeah, it has all the, all the details in the dev note about auto-register and also how you can with the auto-registration, you also can get all the inspector controls on the sidebar. If you enable the support for that. And I will share this also in the show notes. Brian Welcher has on his private or personal blog, wrote a whole tutorial on how to create a block like that and kind of walk you through step by step. I&#8217;m sure he also did a live stream on it. Or multiple, but I think that&#8217;s both of them. You can kind of look at the livestream on YouTube. So a lot of developers are really excited about that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. And the next one is about the pseudo-element support for blocks and their variation in theme.json. And Maggie, you worked on that. How does it work?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah. So this is basically just working on top of what we already have, like The theme developers can already define via theme.json support for hover, focus, focus visible, and all of these states for their blocks, like the buttons block, uh, on theme.json. But we have variations for blocks, and in particular on the buttons block, we have like the outline variation. And you could, on theme.json, change the background color for hover on your default button block, but if someone decides to use the outline, there is no way without using manually CSS to change the hover for the outline. So this, this little change adds that feature, but I think I wanted to talk about what&#8217;s coming up that&#8217;s not making it to 7.0, but we&#8217;ll make it for the next one, which we&#8217;re finally Hang on.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: I have a question to the hover block theme.json. So I could do hover and focus changes also to other blocks than buttons? Is that what you&#8217;re selling? Or only to the button style variations?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Only for the way it worked before is you could do it for button blocks and elements and links, blocks and elements. Well, there&#8217;s no link blocks, so the link element. You could do that. Now you can also do it on the variations. So if you have a variation that&#8217;s created by core or one that you create yourself, you can also add hover for it. That&#8217;s what&#8217;s coming up.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: So what&#8217;s coming up now?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah, what&#8217;s coming up is we&#8217;re finally merged, I think it was yesterday, the UI for controlling adding that hover using the editor and not only theme.json. So if you, if you have your button block. You just go on the site editor, go to global styles, and you&#8217;ll have on the top right, you&#8217;ll have a dropdown that will let you see all the different states that your button can be in.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And you select from that dropdown, like hover, and then change anything, change color, change typography, change font size. You can even, we&#8217;ve even tested that you can change and put it on your hover.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You can change the right mode and put it so it&#8217;s vertical instead of horizontal. When you hover your button, it suddenly flips and it becomes horizontal.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Wants, wants my attention. Wants my attention. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Don&#8217;t follow that advice. Probably very not accessible.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Yeah. But that&#8217;s cool because a lot of people are just designing with the site editor and having all that UI is really important to have that. Yes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: I think it was one of the issues that had more comments in Gutenberg, the issue, the pattern issue that I was asking for those controls.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Yeah. I imagine. Yeah. But that&#8217;s not coming in 7.0. Just clarify.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: That&#8217;s, that&#8217;s coming on the next Gutenberg release. So you will talk about this on the next changelog.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yes. Yes. It will come to Gutenberg 22.8. Yeah, it&#8217;s already merged, so it&#8217;s in the milestone. So yeah, you have to wait another 2 weeks, but yeah, okay.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. And the next dev note is all about real-time collaboration, the block editor. It&#8217;s essential reading for plugin developers and to learn how the classic Meta Box disabled the collaboration mode by default and how to use the sync providers filter to customize your your transport layer, because right now it&#8217;s all on HTTP and it&#8217;s kind of reduced to just, I think, 2 people or 3 people just to make it also available to shared hosting. But if you have VS Virtual Hosting or Virtual Boxes or your own servers, you can actually switch out the providers and have more people being on there in collaboration. And there are some pitfalls or unintended block insertion side effects that need to be kind of looked at, not only for plugin developers, but also for site owners and agency developers. So that&#8217;s definitely a very important dev note to read. Speaking of side effects, have you done any collaborative editing yet?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: No, I&#8217;ve not.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: On your website?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah, no.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: It&#8217;s really cool, but I got into some trouble yesterday. When I was demoing. Of course, live demo is always the interesting part, right? I got the notification that I lost the connection to the server. And although it was only me in there, so it couldn&#8217;t have been. And so it was a little bit, I need to track it down for maybe a bug report, but could also be the technology in the room because we had some Beamer issues and it wouldn&#8217;t show up, wouldn&#8217;t show the dropdowns. It was interesting. </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yeah, I was trying to show off the aspect ratio dropdowns for the gallery block, and it would only show the active one, but not the rest of it. It&#8217;s kind of very weird. I was talking and sooner or later they let me know that they don&#8217;t see anything, but it was kind of weird. </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But anyway, so, and then the iframed editor changes for WordPress 7.0. There wasn&#8217;t a post earlier that 7.0 brings automatic iframing post editor, but that has been moved to 7.1. So you have a little bit of a grace period, plugin developers, because those blocks that are in version 1 or version 2 of blocks.json trigger that the post editor is not iframed. And the iframed version is actually really helpful when you want to separate concerns from the block editor and from the rest of the admin. But the big part is also not only meta boxes is not this problem there, but it&#8217;s the version. And we have not seen all the things that may go wrong are actually only theoretical. We have not seen it yet. So, but we still need to do some more testing. And if it&#8217;s now in the Gutenberg plugin, so if you want to test it, that would be really cool to see if your site or some of the blocks that you have from earlier block collection. </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That are still on your website, make sure you test it and see if anything breaks. And if it does, let us know wherever you can. You can comment on the Gutenberg times, you can comment on the Make.blog or on GitHub, anywhere you want in the Slack channel. There&#8217;s an outreach channel is a good place to post those as well. So yeah, we definitely need some wider testing with the Gutenberg plugin and what happens with the blocks on the earlier version of blocks. And I will do. Some testing when I get back from my travels. </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And that&#8217;s probably what I&#8217;m going to do at Contributor Day in WordCamp Asia is testing some of the old plugins. I have still on my website somewhere on the Gutenberg times, I have a list of 100 plugins and some of them, I think 40 of them were block collections. So I&#8217;m going to install them all and see if they break or maybe have Playground write some automation for that. Yeah, we&#8217;ll see how that works. But that&#8217;s definitely what I&#8217;m gonna aim for. Yeah. </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dev notes, we are, we are kind of a little bit in the know. There are 7 more dev notes coming to, for WordPress 7. They will all be released for the field guide, which is coming out with the release candidate 1. Not the same day, but maybe a day later. And that&#8217;s about the block visibility and the pattern editing. Who knew we are now supporting Unicode in email addresses? And then some simplified HTML5 tags in WordPress, then the new block support for text indent.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Oh yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Which is kind of nice too. And then the custom CSS for individual block instance in WordPress 7.0 and the dimension support enhancement that come to WordPress. So those are dev notes coming up. </p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What’s Released</h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And we are now going into what&#8217;s released. And this week was a little bit of a release galore. So there was WordPress 6.9.2 that came out as a security release. And that had one bug that kind of for a few sites had a whitespace, a blank page on the front end. And that was fixed within hours to 6.9.3. But that coincided with having a release for 7.0 beta 4.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And that was kind of all one after another. And once it went out, it was found out that there were 3 security, 3 of the 10 security fixes that were in 6.9.2 didn&#8217;t actually make it into 6.9.3. They made it into beta 4. So that&#8217;s kind of when you have these clashes of versions, something happens. And so they had to create another 6.9 point release, the number 4. But it&#8217;s really amazing how much goes into some of the releases.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah. They work so fast too. It&#8217;s amazing. It&#8217;s really impressive.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And how you can do this one after another. There were 2 a day and then it&#8217;s really amazing. Great work for the other contributors.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Amazing. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Into the night and they were handing it off from one person to the next because the time zones changed.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">No stress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: It&#8217;s like a release relay.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah, yeah. Like a well-oiled machine.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, it was, yeah. But still some hiccups in there, so.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah, always.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Gutenberg 22.7</h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: All right, so now we come to Gutenberg 22.7. We were all waiting for that, right? </p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Enhancements</h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So the enhancements are starting not with block library. Right now, the first thing on the changelog is that phpMyAdmin is now supported by the wp-env Playground runtime. So you can then have access to the database right from your Playground wp-env local environment, which is really cool because then, yeah, you have the whole thing. It still is SQL, but it&#8217;s the phpMyAdmin, what we all love and used to for the last 20 years. Yeah. To connect with the database. What&#8217;s also in 22.7 is the connectors screen. That has been backported already to WordPress 7.0. And that is the single place where you can connect your website to external services. It starts with AI provider, but it&#8217;s not going to stop there. It&#8217;s any service that you have to connect to to get data in or get data out. You can put to the connector screen and also plugins can use it to organize the handoff of keys, API keys and connectors, security, no, we have public keys and all that, or securities. And what also happens is that the providers that are connected with prefix with AI will also register with the WP AI client. So then a plugin can push prompts to an AI that is connected if there is one available. So it&#8217;s really interesting how that comes to pass. I have on my list to do kind of how you write a plugin to connect to an OpenWeather app. Just get the free key and then have your, the weather around be displayed on a website. I think that&#8217;s a nice example tutorial that we could do. Yeah. And the next one?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah, the next one&#8217;s a playlist block, which is ramping up, it&#8217;s getting the waveform player visualization where Benny has been implementing this open source visualizer instead of creating one that we need to maintain and applied it to the playlist block, which is, I think it&#8217;s, I don&#8217;t know if it&#8217;s going to make it. No, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s going to be for 7.1 then.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah. And it&#8217;s looking really, really nice. I can&#8217;t wait to. To have this for themes. I was just looking into the original playlist because I kind of like to do this kind of thing, which is look at all the issues that we&#8217;re closing our— and it&#8217;s from— it&#8217;s, uh, issue 805. Oh wow, 2017. So we&#8217;re doing that in 2026, which is great. Honestly, I like it. Yeah. So yeah, and it&#8217;s looking so good. I love it. I can&#8217;t wait. I have a bunch of friends from the Sevilla community who are podcasters, and I can&#8217;t wait to see what they can make with it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, and I&#8217;m definitely going to put it also on the Good Mythical Times. Oh yeah, for sure.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: For sure. You let us know if it fails or—</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Oh yeah, of course. I have opinions. I travel. Go for it. Yeah. I also know that, so our team, which is Justin Tadlock, Ryan Welcher, Jonathan Bossinger, Juan Margarito, we are all working on a showcase for a band website. And I know that Justin does the theme for it and he has already built with the playlist block and it looks amazing on those band websites when we have albums and all that. I don&#8217;t know when we will release it, but it&#8217;s definitely going to be for education of developers to kind of see how interactivity API works, how some of the theme features work with that. And yeah, it&#8217;s going to be really cool. Just as a side note there. Yeah, there were a few blocks that hadn&#8217;t had a text-align block support added to it, or they had their own implementation. And there was a big push in Gutenberg to make it available for all the blocks that have text in there. To, to do the text align things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah. Yeah. Those code quality changes really make a difference on it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. So there were 5 more in 22.7. Uh, 22.6 had 8 blocks that were going in there. So I&#8217;m not sure they made it all to 7.0. No, no, they were not.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: We have many blocks. So that&#8217;s painstaking work, honestly.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. It&#8217;s taking work. Yeah. And it comes in when it comes in. So, and then there&#8217;s also the previews of style variation transforms. So you can say, okay, I want to transform certain sections into a different style variation. Now there&#8217;s a little preview so people are not surprised what&#8217;s happening. Yeah. Yeah. People don&#8217;t like surprises. If they don&#8217;t click with, they don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s gonna happen.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah. Now we can also enable style variations. Transforms for blocks that are in content-only mode. If you&#8217;re editing a pattern that has an image and you want to change to the variation with around the corners or something, you can do it within the UI of content-only.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Yeah. I saw that yesterday. Yeah. That, that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s actually pretty cool.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: And there&#8217;s another change coming up. Yeah. The block supports, you can define CSS for blocks based on feature selectors. This is kind of like a complicated one that it&#8217;s setting up. A lot of flexibility for blocks.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I&#8217;ve been using personally this option, this feature on a change that recently made it that I haven&#8217;t talked about it yet here, but I think it will make it also on the next changelog, which is I, we&#8217;ve added for the navigation link, the possibility to style the current item. And the reason why this PR by Aaron is, well, this feature in general by Aaron is useful is that, so what this does is basically lets you define a CSS selector that&#8217;s specific to a feature. So right now, block.json allows you to, before it used to only allow you to define like a selector for your block, that&#8217;s what theme.json would target, but some features need something specific. In the case for the current navigation, we want to target the navigation link only if it has the current menu item class too. So now you can go on block.json and say, when we&#8217;re using the feature current, we want this CSS selector to be the one that we&#8217;re using. So that is really flexible and allows for so many things that you can do with global styles and blocks.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, I think that was for custom blocks. You only could have a selector for the wrapper of the block. But the inner blocks you weren&#8217;t able to target without CSS chasing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: But it&#8217;s not only that, like, in the case of the navigation, it&#8217;s not about the wrapper only, but also because it&#8217;s a very dynamic block that changes depending on the state it&#8217;s in. It will change its classes. If you&#8217;re visiting a specific page, it will have this current menu item class. So if you can target only that, that&#8217;s very useful.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: I think we need some little tutorial about that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, well, that will definitely, like the current menu item will definitely have a dev note for 7.1.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But that&#8217;s awesome. Thank you so much for pointing that out. </p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Bug Fixes</h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The next one is that the grid block improved visualizer is now responsive. The visualizer&#8217;s responsiveness has been approved. I wasn&#8217;t quite sure which one was going. The grid block also got a little bit of an improvement for 7.0, but that we already talked about it when, when I was going with Jessica, I think last, last episode. But I really like how the grid block is now. You can define a minimum width of your columns. And then if you, even if it&#8217;s a custom one, it kind of will then be responsive and stack the whole thing. On your mobile. So it&#8217;s much easier to do. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: So strong grid.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Yeah. The grid block gets better and better. And I hope there is some time for some contributors to work on it for the 7.1 and 7.2, because it&#8217;s so helpful to have that also in template parts and patterns and all that. So the PHP-only blocks now have boundary attributes, values. In the inspector controls that wasn&#8217;t before that. Now you can see it in the— so they can be changed and automatically added to the custom block that is registered with PHP. And with the Gutenberg 22.7, the real-time collaboration is actually enabled by default.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: So it&#8217;s getting out of experiment then.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: It was already out of experiment. But it was actually opt-in.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Before.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Oh, I see, I see. And now they switched it to opt out.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Okay.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: The space is the same. You go to the general settings into writing, and then it&#8217;s, I think, the third option from the top. You can disable it if you want to, if it gets into your way like it did yesterday at my demo. I disabled it and it was always fine. I&#8217;m just repeating it so I can remember to file a bug report and test this again. Yeah. What&#8217;s next?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: You can disable multiple collaborators if meta boxes are present.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. And it&#8217;s not the, that you can, it will disable multiple collaborators when meta boxes are present. You&#8217;re right. Because they, it clashes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: It clashes because the saving of the meta box and auto saving, they&#8217;re not in sync. So you might lose content from the meta boxes. In that, so it&#8217;s automatically disabled there. </p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Experiments</h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There&#8217;s an experiment in Gutenberg. It&#8217;s called the Content Guidelines, and it comes through the WordPress AI team. They were exploring Content Guidelines as a Gutenberg experiment, as a dedicated structured place inside WordPress to cover your site&#8217;s voice, tone, image, and copy standards. And it works with the REST API and custom post types and has an UI to manage that, but you need to enable it in your experiments page. It also has block-level guidelines and import and export on the vision history. So what it does, it&#8217;s not, it isn&#8217;t for AI only, but AI, if you have an AI assistant that works with your website, the content guidelines are actually helping that AI to match your tone, to match your your standards, your guidelines, standards, your publishing standards, your pre-publish checklist and all that. But also when an AI comes and goes to your website, then it will know, have more information about your website that&#8217;s more in-depth than what it knows from just scrolling it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah. Makes sense.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. So it supports sitewide categories. Like the site, the copy, the images, and additional, and then the block level stuff. That&#8217;s kind of in the changelog of 22.7 as an experiment. And I don&#8217;t know where it&#8217;s going, but we will see how once it&#8217;s tested and more people have to chime in to see if it makes it out of experiments or when it makes, not if, when.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: It&#8217;s really interesting to see that. Yeah. Kind of all of a sudden you have a second layer of concern. It&#8217;s not only SEO, it&#8217;s AEO, and then you have your own assistants kind of go in and do stuff. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: It&#8217;s important to have default solution for this because WordPress is so extended. There needs to be something that everyone can build on upon. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, absolutely. That&#8217;s actually the, the philosophy of the AI team is to, to build the plumbing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Defaults.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And defaults. So plugins can build on top of it and there is a standard there. So that&#8217;s kind of really cool. </p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Documentation</h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So when we have a few documentation items that we wanna point out, well, because that&#8217;s always a little bit different.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Always important to keep documentation up to date.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Absolutely. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Now more than ever.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. With all the new things coming in. So there is a theme.json schema for the icon block. And then the documentation for the content role and the list view block supports. So custom blocks as well as theme can add the content role to things, patterns, template parts, templates.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: It also has an improved parameter documentation for the icon block and updated README for data views, data forms, and the field API.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah, with all those changes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: All the changes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Like the meme, all the changes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: All the changes. All the changes. Yeah. We like changes. Changes are hard, but we like them. Yeah. So I think that&#8217;s the essence of what&#8217;s in the changelog for Gutenberg 22.7. </p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What’s in Active Development or Discussed</h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I have just one item that I wanted to touch base on with Maggie today, with you about what&#8217;s in development and discuss. Touched on some of it, but the tabs block unfortunately didn&#8217;t make it in 7.0. It&#8217;s on its way to get into 7.1 and it was so close.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: It really was. Yeah. It was a little bit of a pity that it didn&#8217;t make it, but I mean, so the thing was another contributor, I think it was Aki, was reviewing the block when we were trying to stabilize it and he raised important concerns and we sat down and looked at it and thought, yeah, I think this, we think the structure of the block is not correct right now. And this is really important to get right because once it&#8217;s there, it just needs to stay. And this would have been a mess if we had to backtrack that. So yeah, that, those concerns have been mostly addressed in a PR. I think I have the link for you here.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You can share it later. And there&#8217;s a bunch of follow-ups coming after that, which means that the tabs is not only going to be like in a really good state, but also it&#8217;s going to come with more things. One of those things is what I was talking before. That I was working on the current menu item, the ability of adding the, what we&#8217;re calling states for blocks or elements. In the case of the current menu item, like the state of where a nav link is the current one that we&#8217;re visiting. And in the case of the tabs, which tab you have currently open, we will be able to assign a tab as current and be able to style it as such. First via theme.json and then hopefully also for 7.1 with, uh, our new UI for states.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Awesome. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Really excited for all of that. Everything&#8217;s linked. Everything works together.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, it has to. Yeah. I think the concern was that it didn&#8217;t follow the usual how other blocks were built.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: It would kind of confuse not only contributors, but also those who kind of want to extend it. Seth Rubenstein worked on it quite a bit and he actually had to bow out just before 7.0 for his own priorities. And I&#8217;m glad that you picked it up though. Sarah picked it up.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: It was Sarah mainly. I was just reviewing and—</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Sarah, you said?</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I was reviewing and supporting her, but it&#8217;s been Sarah&#8217;s work since she picked it up.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: So that&#8217;s coming and we definitely will talk about it some more on other releases and also have a call for testing. It won&#8217;t be an official one, but I will make it to test it. Yeah. So, but now go back to testing 7.0, what&#8217;s coming to a WordPress instance near you in a month, roughly in a month, April 9th. And it will be released. There will be a release panel at WordCamp Asia Contributor Day. So quite a few from the release squad are going to Mumbai. To be on that panel, and I will see everybody there. I think it&#8217;s after my workshop on theme development is actually after lunch, so we were all gonna sleep in my workshop. I&#8217;m really happy.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Yeah, catch up with that when you have it, when you, when you&#8217;ve done it, because I&#8217;m not going to WordCamp Asia, but I want to see your workshop.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: All right. Okay. Yeah. Well, we&#8217;ll see. It&#8217;s the first workshop that I do on theme development, so it&#8217;s going to be maybe a hit and miss. We&#8217;ll see.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Sure, you&#8217;ll do fine.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: As always, dear listeners, this is the end and the show notes will be published on <a href=\"http://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast\">gutenbergtimes.com/podcast</a>. This is episode 128, 128. And if you have questions and suggestions or news you want us to include, send them to <a href=\"mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com\">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a>. That&#8217;s <a href=\"mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com\">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a>. And Maggie Cabrera, thank you so much for being here. And being such a great resource and talk about all the good things that you work on.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Thank you for having me.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Absolutely. And thanks for listening and goodbye for now. Bye-bye.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Maggie Cabrera</em>: Bye.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"></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, 15 Mar 2026 04:58:16 +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: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:\"\";}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}s:4:\"type\";i:128;s:7:\"headers\";a:9:{s:6:\"server\";s:5:\"nginx\";s:4:\"date\";s:29:\"Sun, 05 Apr 2026 20:37:48 GMT\";s:12:\"content-type\";s:8:\"text/xml\";s:13:\"last-modified\";s:29:\"Sun, 05 Apr 2026 20:30:21 GMT\";s:4:\"vary\";s:15:\"Accept-Encoding\";s:15:\"x-frame-options\";s:10:\"SAMEORIGIN\";s:16:\"content-encoding\";s:2:\"br\";s:7:\"alt-svc\";s:19:\"h3=\":443\"; ma=86400\";s:4:\"x-nc\";s:9:\"HIT ord 1\";}s:5:\"build\";i:1775183577;s:21:\"cache_expiration_time\";i:1775464668;s:23:\"__cache_expiration_time\";i:1775464668;}','off'),(675,'_site_transient_timeout_feed_mod_d117b5738fbd35bd8c0391cda1f2b5d9','1775464668','off'),(676,'_site_transient_feed_mod_d117b5738fbd35bd8c0391cda1f2b5d9','1775421468','off'),(677,'_transient_timeout_dash_v2_c05853b002c443ec8e57ff884f56cdde','1775464668','off'),(678,'_transient_dash_v2_c05853b002c443ec8e57ff884f56cdde','<div class=\"rss-widget\"><ul><li><a class=\'rsswidget\' href=\'https://es.wordpress.org/2026/03/26/wordpress-7-0-candidata-a-definitiva-2/\'>WordPress 7.0 – Candidata a definitiva 2</a></li><li><a class=\'rsswidget\' href=\'https://es.wordpress.org/2026/03/24/wordpress-7-0-candidata-a-definitiva-1/\'>WordPress 7.0 – Candidata a definitiva 1</a></li></ul></div><div class=\"rss-widget\"><ul><li><a class=\'rsswidget\' href=\'https://ma.tt/2026/04/easter-thoughts/\'>Matt: Easter Thoughts</a></li><li><a class=\'rsswidget\' href=\'https://ma.tt/2026/04/turn-every-page/\'>Matt: Turn Every Page</a></li><li><a class=\'rsswidget\' href=\'https://ma.tt/2026/04/pedro-franceschi/\'>Matt: Pedro Franceschi</a></li></ul></div>','off');

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