<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-25013" src="https://theadityashah.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/JBS_5507-1024x684.jpg" /></figure>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-25011" src="https://theadityashah.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/JBS_5993-1024x684.jpg" /></figure>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-25010" src="https://theadityashah.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/JBS_5979-1024x684.jpg" /></figure>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-25008" src="https://theadityashah.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/JBS_5742-1024x684.jpg" /></figure>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-25003" src="https://theadityashah.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/F3212581-AF69-4FFE-8EE3-B303ADEEC66E-1024x768.jpg" /></figure>
</figure>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-24969" src="https://theadityashah.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/JBS_5687-1024x684.jpg" /></figure>



<p>Another experiment that surprised us was the <strong>WordPress Showcase</strong>. We invited community members to showcase what they had built. We wondered if we’d get enough responses. Instead, we saw <strong>four solid showcases</strong>, each carrying stories of effort, learning, and pride.</p>



<p>In the series of firsts- we also experimented with <strong>custom ID cards</strong> for speakers, sponsors, and organisers — a small but thoughtful detail. While extending this to all attendees wasn’t possible this time due to logistical and data-consent challenges, the response was overwhelmingly warm. </p>



<figure class="wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-27 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex">
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-24977" src="https://theadityashah.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/PHOTO-2026-02-05-10-05-44-614x1024.jpg" /></figure>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-24976" src="https://theadityashah.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/PHOTO-2026-02-05-10-06-07-584x1024.jpg" /></figure>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-24971" src="https://theadityashah.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/id-card-768x1024.jpg" /></figure>
</figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Swag With a Story</h2>



<p>This year, swag told a story.</p>



<p>Our Wappu this year carried Bhopal in its soul — a tribute to the city of lakes and the warmth of its people.<br />It wasn’t just a mascot, it was our way of saying: this WordCamp belongs to Bhopal, and Bhopal belongs to the community.</p>



<p><strong>WAPPUNO</strong>, a WordPress-inspired card game featuring Wappus from WordCamps around the world, quietly reminded everyone that while this WordCamp was rooted in Bhopal, it belonged to something much bigger.</p>



<p>And when it was time to part, we had our little surprise.</p>



<p>Just like in 2023, sustainability stayed close to our hearts. Instead of traditional souvenirs, attendees received <strong>seed-embedded thank-you cards</strong> — something to plant, nurture, and grow. A reminder that communities don’t end with events. They continue with care, patience, and time.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-28 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex">
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-24999" src="https://theadityashah.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/1766425720615-576x1024.jpg" /></figure>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-24995" src="https://theadityashah.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/1766562673033-1024x768.jpg" /></figure>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-24994" src="https://theadityashah.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/wordcamp-bhopal-swags-768x1024.jpg" /></figure>
</figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Voices on Stage: Diverse, Honest, Impactful</h2>



<p>Around <strong>20 resource persons</strong> joined us this year, covering a wide range of topics. We were proud to have <strong>6 women speakers</strong>, bringing valuable perspectives and diversity to the stage.</p>



<p>Two panel discussions stood out for sparking deep conversations:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Education to Employment</strong></li>



<li><strong>Artificial Intelligence</strong></li>
</ul>



<p>Our speakers, panelists and Showcase included:</p>



<p><strong><a href="https://hiabhaykulkarni.com/">Abhay Kulkarni</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/aditya112/">Aditya Vikram Singh</a>, <a href="https://akshatgupta.in/">Akshat Gupta</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@AmitTiwari">Amit Tiwari</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;source=web&amp;rct=j&amp;opi=89978449&amp;url=https://www.instagram.com/damini.creator/&amp;ved=2ahUKEwihk7e98MKSAxWebPUHHX0eGPcQFnoECBcQAQ&amp;usg=AOvVaw0HTnYXuK-dRe92_NhO26le">Damini Tripathi</a>, Dr. Tabassum Zafar, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/techplusgadgets/">Naman Deshmukh</a>, <a href="https://saakshichoithani.com/">Saakshi Choithani</a>, <a href="https://sakshimehta.link/">Sakshi Mehta</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandeshjangam?originalSubdomain=in">Sandesh Jangam</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sourabhmatolia/">Saurabh Matolia</a>, Sumankant Jain, Priyanka Shah, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/richa-khanna-61537615">Richa Khanna</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jinendra-khobare-99003923">Jinendra Khobare</a>, <a href="https://theadityashah.com">Aditya Shah</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashishkolarkar/">Ashish Kolarkar,</a> Siddharth Mishra, and Talib Ahmed.</strong></p>



<p>Each session added depth, honesty, and perspective — reminding us why community-led learning matters.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-29 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex">
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="Panel | WordCamp Bhopal" class="wp-image-24988" src="https://theadityashah.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/IMG_0066-1024x768.jpg" /></figure>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="Panel | WordCamp Bhopal" class="wp-image-24989" src="https://theadityashah.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/JBS_5724-2-1024x684.jpg" /></figure>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-24997" src="https://theadityashah.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/sakshi-speaker-wordcamp-bhopal-1024x683.jpg" /></figure>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="Speakers &amp; Team | WordCamp Bhopal" class="wp-image-24993" src="https://theadityashah.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/JBS_6149-edited-scaled.jpg" /></figure>
</figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Sponsors Who Believed in the Vision</h2>



<p>WordCamp Bhopal 2025 wouldn’t have been possible without sponsors who didn’t just fund the event — but believed in the community.</p>



<p><strong>Platinum Sponsors:</strong> <a href="https://www.bluehost.com">Bluehost</a>, <a href="https://jetpack.com">Jetpack</a>, <a href="https://kinsta.com">Kinsta</a>, <a href="https://woo.com">Woo</a>, <a href="https://hosting.com">Hosting.com</a>, <a href="https://wordpress.com">WordPress.com</a>, <a href="https://sfatechgroup.com/">SFA Technologies</a>, <a href="https://www.vultr.com">Vultr</a>, <a href="https://www.mptourism.com">Madhya Pradesh Tourism Board</a>.</p>



<p><strong>Silver Sponsor: </strong><a href="https://www.pabbly.com/connect/">Pabbly Connect</a>.</p>



<p><strong>Bronze Sponsor:</strong> <a href="https://www.seopress.org">SEOPress</a>.</p>



<p><strong>Partners:</strong> Shommypics (Photography Partner), <a href="https://www.youstable.com">YouStable</a> (Livestreaming &amp; Swag Bag Partner), <a>House of Raasta</a> (After Party Sponsor).</p>



<p>Thank you for trusting us and standing by us.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-30 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex">
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="Jetpack | WordCamp Bhopal" class="wp-image-24986" src="https://theadityashah.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/WhatsApp-Image-2025-12-29-at-16.14.40-1-1024x768.jpeg" /></figure>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="SFA | WordCamp Bhopal" class="wp-image-24987" src="https://theadityashah.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/PHOTO-2026-02-04-13-39-14-1024x768.jpg" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">SFA | WordCamp Bhopal </figcaption></figure>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="Vultr | WordCamp Bhopal" class="wp-image-24985" src="https://theadityashah.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/WhatsApp-Image-2025-12-29-at-16.14.39-2-1024x768.jpeg" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Vultr | WordCamp Bhopal </figcaption></figure>
</figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Powered by People</h2>



<p>Behind every smooth transition and smiling face was a team that worked relentlessly.</p>



<p><strong>The OC: </strong><a href="https://kripeshadwani.com/">Kripesh</a>, <a href="https://www.serverlord.in/">Atharva</a>, <a href="https://in.linkedin.com/in/atishara-shrivastava-325a421b4">Atishara</a>, <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/users/iamshashank/">Shashank</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/iamshivamm/">Shivam</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/ishita27/">Ishita</a>, <a href="https://mvp.kapilarya.com/">Kapil</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/amit-vishwakarma-av7999?originalSubdomain=in">Amit</a></p>



<p><strong>Volunteers: </strong>Krishika Verma, Pramanya Rajput, Jaya, Sanskriti Malviya, Taufiq, Srijan Prasad, Suhas, Chandra Prakash Ojha, Roshni Rajani, Yash Varma, Prathamesh</p>



<p>Special mention to our local HR for the event: <a href="https://asthajain.in/">Astha</a>.</p>



<p><a href="https://bhopal.wordcamp.org/">Visit our website </a></p>



<p>From website to social media marketing to logistics and ideas and so many other things, it was their dedication that could bring all of this together so well.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Spreading the Word</h2>



<p><strong>Media Partners: </strong><a href="https://wpvaat.in/">WP Baat</a>, <a href="https://wpsimplified.in/">WP Simplified</a>, Aayudh, Hashtag India, Bhopal Ki Baatein</p>



<p><strong>Community Partners: </strong>LinkedIn Local, Google Developer Groups SATI Vidisha, Bhopal Development Index, Tech Help 4 U</p>



<p>Thank you for being pillars in amplifying our voice.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Looking Ahead</h2>



<p>WordCamp Bhopal 2025 reminded us that WordCamps are not just about WordPress,  they’re about people, stories, shared growth, and the courage to try something new.</p>



<p>From thoughtful sustainability choices to inclusive programming, from powerful panels to joyful moments over games and desserts — every piece mattered.</p>



<p>They’re about <strong>people, stories, shared growth, and belonging</strong>.</p>



<p>Our larger idea throughout was simple, yet ambitious — to <strong>carry tradition forward in a refined, modern setup</strong>, filled with thought, celebration, and joy. We thought we were building this mostly for the younger generation. But when we saw middle-aged and senior community members actively participating, it became clear:</p>



<p>This wasn’t about age, roles, or experience levels. It was about <strong>belonging</strong>. And that’s exactly what we hoped WordCamp Bhopal 2025 would feel like.</p>



<p>To the community that keeps believing and encouraging, <strong>thank you for believing in us.</strong></p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-24984" src="https://theadityashah.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/JBS_6241-1024x684.jpg" /></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:"Mon, 09 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Aditya Shah";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:36;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:72:"Gutenberg Times: Block Themes, Icon Block and AI –Weekend Edition #356";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=44240";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:78:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/block-themes-icon-block-and-ai-weekend-edition-356/";s: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:24634:"<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Hi there,</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">AI is on my mind a lot these days. It speeds up my life when I research or analyze content, tools and technology. Even more so when working on workflow automation. This week saw an &#8220;explosion of visible AI progress in the WordPress project&#8221; as James LePage calls it. And on my travel through the feeds Block Themes and theme.json appeared as an important topic. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">We are less than two weeks and one Gutenberg release away from WordPress 7.0 Beta 1 release on February 19th. WordPress 6.9.1 and Gutenberg 22.5 were released..</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">You all have a wonderful weekend! </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Yours, <img alt="💕" class="wp-smiley" src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/72x72/1f495.png" style="height: 1em;" /><br /><em>Birgit</em></p>





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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">As mentioned last week, <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2026/02/wordpress-6-9-1-maintenance-release/"><strong>WordPress 6.9.1 Maintenance Release</strong></a> shipped on Tuesday with 49 bugs fixed <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?resolution=fixed&amp;milestone=6.9.1&amp;group=component&amp;col=id&amp;col=summary&amp;col=milestone&amp;col=owner&amp;col=type&amp;col=status&amp;col=priority&amp;order=priority">throughout Core</a> and <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74806">the Block Editor</a>. If your site has automatic minor updates enabled you should have it by now. Otherwise you definitely should make it a point to update manually.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Rae Morey</strong>, editor of The Repository, has the skinny for you in <a href="https://www.therepository.email/wordpress-6-9-1-released-with-fixes-for-49-bugs-in-core-and-block-editor">WordPress 6.9.1 Released </a></p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2026/02/wordpress-6-9-1-maintenance-release/"><img alt="" class="wp-image-44279" height="367" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/WordPress-6.9.1.jpg?resize=652%2C367&#038;ssl=1" width="652" /></a></figure>



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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Gutenberg 22.5</strong> was also released. My post on the Make blog gives you <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/02/04/whats-new-in-gutenberg-22-5-04-february/">What’s new in Gutenberg 22.5? (04 February)</a>.</strong> The highlights: </p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/02/04/whats-new-in-gutenberg-22-5-04-february/#custom-css-support-for-individual-blocks">Custom CSS Support for Individual Blocks</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/02/04/whats-new-in-gutenberg-22-5-04-february/#image-block-aspect-ratio-control-for-wide-and-full-alignment">Image Block: Aspect Ratio Control for Wide and Full Alignment</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/02/04/whats-new-in-gutenberg-22-5-04-february/#list-view-improvements">List View Improvements</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/02/04/whats-new-in-gutenberg-22-5-04-february/#other-notable-highlights">Other Notable Highlights</a>, among those, Text-columns support and focal point for fixed Cover background images. </li>
</ul>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="Screenshot of the Advanced sidebar section to add Custom CSS on the block level. " class="wp-image-44286" height="500" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/gb-22-5-custom-css.png?resize=652%2C500&#038;ssl=1" width="652" /></figure>



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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In his <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/64308">trac ticket</a>, <strong>Fabian Kägy</strong> proposed a <strong>&#8220;coat-of-paint&#8221; visual reskin of the WordPress admin</strong> for the 7.0 release. The goal is to modernize wp-admin&#8217;s appearance. It aims to reduce inconsistencies between older screens and the block editor. All elements should align with the <a href="https://www.figma.com/community/file/1436359662053949167/wordpress-design-system"><em>WordPress Design System</em></a>. Kägy has broken the work into focused sub-tickets covering color variables, buttons, inputs, notices, typography, spacing, and the admin frame. You can <a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/?blueprint-url=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fabiankaegy/wp-admin-redesign-exploration/main/_playground/blueprint.json">test early explorations</a> via WordPress Playground. A new <code>wp-base-styles</code> handle has already landed to share admin color scheme CSS variables across core. Your feedback would be appreciated. 12 days before WordPress 7.0 beta, it&#8217;s not clear that it makes it into the next WordPress version. Kägy also mentioned that he is working with <strong>Tammie Lister</strong> on a post on the Make Core blog.</p>



<div class="wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><img alt="🎙" class="wp-smiley" src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/72x72/1f399.png" style="height: 1em;" /> The latest episode is <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-126-gutenberg-releases-22-3-22-4-22-5-and-wordpress-7-0/">Gutenberg Changelog #126 – Gutenberg Releases 22.3, 22.4, 22.5 and WordPress 7.0</a> with special guest <strong>Carolina Nymark</strong>, author at fullsiteediting.com and long time contributor. </p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-style-no-vertical-margin"><img alt="" class="wp-image-44359" height="184" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Screenshot-2026-02-13-at-12.32.32.png?resize=652%2C184&#038;ssl=1" width="652" /></figure>


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<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-pocket-casts wp-block-embed-pocket-casts"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">

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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Troy Chaplin</strong> released <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/planned-outage/"><strong>Planned Outage for Block Themes</strong></a>, a simple maintenance-mode plugin for block themes. You can create your maintenance page directly in the Site Editor or use a <code>maintenance.html</code> template in your theme. Logged-in users can still browse normally, while other visitors see a 503 error with a Retry-After header. It also allows search engine bots to keep crawling during extended outages, helping to maintain your rankings while you make updates.</p>



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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Johanne Courtright</strong> has restructured her <strong>Groundworx Core</strong> product into <a href="https://groundworx.dev/resources/groundworx-core-is-now-a-bundle-and-every-plugin-is-available-separately/">a bundle of four focused plugins</a> — Query Filters, Showcase (Embla Carousels), Cards &amp; Sections, and Tabs &amp; Accordion — each now available separately. You can still buy the full bundle or grab just what you need. The core block extensions like responsive column controls and unified breakpoints have been spun off into a <em>free plugin called Foundation,</em> which also adds a new Gravity Forms block with proper block theme styling support.</p>



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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Hans-Gerd Gerhards</strong> released version 1.5 of his <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/shrinking-logo-sticky-header/">Dynamic Header &amp; Navigation for Block Themes</a> plugin in January, fixing an annoying header flicker when scrolling back near the top of a page. You can now try the plugin instantly via a Live Preview directly from the WordPress plugin directory.</p>



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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Mike Davey</strong>, senior editor at Delicious Brains, published <a href="https://deliciousbrains.com/the-anatomy-of-theme-json-a-developers-cheat-sheet/"><strong>a developer&#8217;s cheat sheet to theme.json anatomy</strong></a>. You&#8217;ll learn how setting the <code>$schema</code> property unlocks IntelliSense in VS Code. The <code>settings</code> section lets you lock down color pickers and font sizes to prevent design drift. The <code>styles</code> section replaces traditional CSS with auto-generated variables. The post also covers block-specific overrides. &#8220;Once understood, [theme.json] offers a level of granular control over what clients <em>can</em> and <em>cannot</em> do that was difficult to achieve in the classic PHP era.&#8221; Davey wrote.</p>



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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">As a side note, the post <strong><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2024/07/15-ways-to-curate-the-wordpress-editing-experience/">15 ways to curate the WordPress editing experience</a> </strong>by <strong>Nick Diego</strong> is still one of the most read articles on the WordPress Developer Blog. You&#8217;ll learn how to turn off blocks, unregister variations and styles, lock down color pickers and font sizes via theme.json, restrict access to the Code Editor and Template Editor, and remove Openverse and the Block Directory. The post covers PHP filters, JavaScript techniques, and Editor settings.</p>



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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you want to dive deeper into how to handle common theme-building problems with theme.json, here is a list of articles for your perusal from the WordPress Developer blog, mostly by <strong>Justin Tadlock. </strong></p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2025/11/how-wordpress-6-9-gives-forms-a-theme-json-makeover/">How WordPress 6.9 gives forms a theme.json makeover</a></li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2025/07/you-dont-need-theme-json-for-block-theme-styles/">You don&#8217;t need theme.json for block theme styles</a></li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2024/10/mastering-theme-json-you-might-not-need-css/">Mastering theme.json: You might not need CSS</a></li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/08/adding-and-using-custom-settings-in-theme-json/">Adding and using custom settings in theme.json</a></li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/07/how-to-modify-theme-json-data-using-server-side-filters/">How to modify theme.json data using server-side filters</a> by Nick Diego</li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/05/customizing-core-block-style-variations-via-theme-json/">Customizing core block style variations via theme.json</a></li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/04/per-block-css-with-theme-json/">Per-block CSS with theme.json</a></li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2022/12/leveraging-theme-json-and-per-block-styles-for-more-performant-themes/">Leveraging theme.json and per-block styles for more performant themes</a></li>
</ul>



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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Johanne Courtright</strong> makes a compelling case for <a href="https://groundworx.dev/resources/why-i-choose-gutenberg-over-elementor/">why she chooses Gutenberg over Elementor</a>. She argues that Elementor became a CMS inside a CMS—duplicating templates, colors, typography, and breakpoints WordPress already provides. The result? Specificity wars, inline styles, and sites that break when you deactivate the plugin. With Gutenberg and theme.json, you get one source of truth: change a spacing value once, see it everywhere. Her clients now update their own sites without calling for help.</p>


<div class="ng-block-70e922f0fce1a918 wp-block-newsletterglue-container ng-block" style="color: #666666;" width="100%"><div><div><div class="ng-block-vs ng-block-vs-1" colspan="3" height="0" style="height: 0px;"></div></div><div><div class="ng-block-hs ng-block-hs-1" height="0" style="width: 0px;"></div><div align="none" class="ng-block-td" style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: 1.6; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 20px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: none; color: #666666; background-color: #fdfcea; border-radius: 12px;"><div class="ng-block-f093d433f0471270 wp-block-newsletterglue-text ng-block" style="color: #666666;" width="100%"><div><div><div align="none" class="ng-block-td" style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: 1.6; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 8px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; text-align: none; color: #666666;"><p><strong> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index 2025&#8221;</a> </strong><br />A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test, and Meta team from Jan. 2024 on. Updated by yours truly. </p></div></div></div></div>

<div class="ng-block-f3e9889ea4705a24 wp-block-newsletterglue-text ng-block" style="color: #666666;" width="100%"><div><div><div align="none" class="ng-block-td" style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: 1.6; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 8px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; text-align: none; color: #666666;"><p>The previous years are also available: <br /><strong><strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/">2020</a> | <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2021/">2021</a></strong> | <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2022/">2022</a></strong></strong> | <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/gutenberg-index-2023">2023</a></strong> | <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/gutenberg-index-2024/"><strong>2024</strong></a></p></div></div></div></div></div><div class="ng-block-hs ng-block-hs-2" height="0" style="width: 0px;"></div></div><div><div class="ng-block-vs ng-block-vs-2" colspan="3" height="0" style="height: 0px;"></div></div></div></div>


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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In his latest live stream, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0lZdyXamhI"><strong>Getting the Icon Block ready for WordPress 7.0</strong></a>, <strong>Ryan Welcher</strong> takes you behind the scenes of contributing. He has been working on the new Icon Block for Gutenberg plugin and the next version of WordPress. He is in crunch mode to finish the new Icon Block in time. Join him to see where we&#8217;re at and what needs to be done before then! You can <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/71227">read up about the genesis </a>of this block via the GitHub PR. </p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="ai-and-wordpress">Ai and WordPress</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Jonathan Bossenger</strong> has published a helpful article titled <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2026/02/from-abilities-to-ai-agents-introducing-the-wordpress-mcp-adapter/">From Abilities to AI Agents: Introducing the WordPress MCP Adapter</a> on the WordPress Developer blog. The WordPress MCP Adapter links the Abilities API with AI tools like Claude Desktop. In this article, you’ll learn how to change abilities into MCP tools, connect using STDIO or HTTP transport, and create custom MCP servers for your plugins. It also provides easy configuration examples for each client and security tips for turning existing abilities into AI-ready APIs.</p>



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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>James LePage</strong> rounds up <strong><a href="https://j.cv/wp-ai-progress/">a remarkable burst of AI progress across the WordPress project</a>.</strong> You&#8217;ll find a proposal to bring an LLM client into WordPress 7.0 core, a mature MCP adapter for building agents, the Abilities API shipping in 6.9, and a new &#8220;AI Leaders&#8221; micro-credential for students. There&#8217;s also WP-Bench for benchmarking model performance on WordPress tasks, plus a growing AI experiments plugin nearing 1,000 commits — covering everything from Typeahead completions to content guidelines in Gutenberg.</p>



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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Speaking of which, you can read more about <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/ai/2026/02/03/content-guidelines-a-gutenberg-experiment/"><strong>Content Guidelines: A Gutenberg Experiment</strong></a> on the Make AI Blog. In its the first version.  Lots of feedback is expected.  The goal is to give site owners a first-class place in WordPress to capture the rules and context that shape how content should be written, edited, and managed on their site. </p>



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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The WordPress project now has an official <strong><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/agent-skills">Agent Skills repository</a> </strong>designed to teach AI coding assistants like Claude, Copilot, and Codex how to build WordPress properly. You&#8217;ll find portable bundles of instructions, checklists, and scripts covering block development, block themes, the REST API, Interactivity API, Abilities API, performance, and more. Skills install globally or per-project, helping AI assistants avoid outdated patterns and follow current best practices — contributions are welcome, mostly in Markdown.</p>



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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Jeff Paul </strong>published a <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/ai/2026/02/04/call-for-testing-exploring-new-ai-experiments/">call for testing to  explore new AI experiments</a> you can try right now via WordPress Playground.  The experiments are</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Type-ahead suggestions while writing, </li>



<li>AI-assisted comment moderation, </li>



<li>Markdown feeds for agent consumption, </li>



<li>extended provider options, </li>



<li>an AI Playground for testing prompts, </li>



<li>MCP integration, and </li>



<li>request logging for debugging and cost tracking. </li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The instructions are quite detailed to follow along. The ask is feedback on UX, usefulness, and flow.  Jump in and share your impressions on the post or the PRs links with each experiment. </p>



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


<div class="ng-block-032a32219ee8cf24 wp-block-newsletterglue-container ng-block" style="color: #666666;" width="100%"><div><div><div class="ng-block-vs ng-block-vs-1" colspan="3" height="0" style="height: 0px;"></div></div><div><div class="ng-block-hs ng-block-hs-1" height="0" style="width: 0px;"></div><div align="none" class="ng-block-td" style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: 1.6; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 20px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: none; color: #666666; background-color: #f8f8f8; border-radius: 8px;"><div class="ng-block-1315100646833b27 wp-block-newsletterglue-text ng-block" style="color: #666666;" width="100%"><div><div><div align="none" class="ng-block-td" style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: 1.6; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 8px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; text-align: none; color: #666666;"><p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review.</p></div></div></div></div>

<div class="ng-block-72b95071844580d5 wp-block-newsletterglue-image ng-block size-full is-resized" width="100%"><div><div><div align="center" class="ng-block-td" style="padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px;"><a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/?blueprint-url=https://gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/playnightly.json"><img alt="" class="wp-image-42874 ng-image" height="45" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Screenshot-2025-11-15-at-12.06.44.png?resize=196%2C45&#038;ssl=1" style="border-style: none; border-color: transparent;" width="196" /></a></div></div></div></div>

<div class="ng-block-dcdda5e8484dee39 wp-block-newsletterglue-text ng-block" style="color: #666666;" width="100%"><div><div><div align="none" class="ng-block-td" style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: 1.6; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 8px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; text-align: none; color: #666666;"><p>Now also available via <a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/?blueprint-url=https://gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/playnightly.json">WordPress Playground</a>. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">Email me </a>with your experience.</p></div></div></div></div></div><div class="ng-block-hs ng-block-hs-2" height="0" style="width: 0px;"></div></div><div><div class="ng-block-vs ng-block-vs-2" colspan="3" height="0" style="height: 0px;"></div></div></div></div>


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



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



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



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


<div class="ng-block-9e70b9955faf67c0 wp-block-newsletterglue-separator ng-block" style="color: #666666;" width="100%"><div><div><div align="center" class="ng-block-td" style="padding-top: 20px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; color: #666666;"><hr style="background-color: transparent; color: transparent; margin: 0; border: 0; border-top: 1px solid #666666; width: 560px; height: 0;" /></div></div></div></div>

<div class="wp-block-newsletterglue-showhide ng-block" width="100%"><div class="ng-block-73e0297733f224cb wp-block-newsletterglue-text ng-block" style="color: #666666;" width="100%"><div><div><div align="none" class="ng-block-td" style="font-size: 14px; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: 0.2; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 8px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; text-align: none; color: #666666;"><p><strong>Featured Image: </strong></p></div></div></div></div></div>




<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />";s: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, 06 Feb 2026 23:27:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:37;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:17:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s: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:1:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:37:"HeroPress: Many thanks to Ninja Forms";s: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:29:"https://heropress.com/?p=8367";s: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:119:"https://heropress.com/many-thanks-to-ninja-forms/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=many-thanks-to-ninja-forms";s: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:992:"<figure class="wp-block-image alignright size-full"><a href="https://ninjaforms.com/"><img alt="NinjaForms Logo" class="wp-image-8363" height="400" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/ninjaforms_logo.webp" width="400" /></a></figure>



<p>Yesterday <a href="https://ninjaforms.com/">Ninja Forms</a> became the latest WordPress company to financially support HeroPress! They&#8217;ll now be listed forever on the <a href="https://heropress.com/sponsorship/" id="1685">Sponsor Wall Of Fame</a>.</p>



<p>I&#8217;ve used Ninja Forms for years, and it&#8217;s an excellent forms plugin, so if you need one give it a shot!</p>



<p>If you or your organization would also like to support HeroPress financially, please head over to <a href="https://heropress.com/donate/" id="3283">the donate page</a>.</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://heropress.com/many-thanks-to-ninja-forms/">Many thanks to Ninja Forms</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:"Fri, 06 Feb 2026 16:18:35 +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:"";}}}}}i:38;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:89:"WordCamp Central: WordCamp Port Harcourt 2026: A Community-Led WordPress Event in Nigeria";s: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=13421014";s: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:113:"https://central.wordcamp.org/news/2026/02/wordcamp-port-harcourt-2026-a-community-led-wordpress-event-in-nigeria/";s: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:5055:"<p>WordCamp Port Harcourt 2026 is set to bring together WordPress users, designers, developers, content creators, entrepreneurs, and digital enthusiasts from across Nigeria and beyond for a day of learning, collaboration, and community building.</p>



<p>The event will take place on <strong>21 February 2026</strong> at the <strong>Celebr8 Center, 35 Olu Obasanjo Road, Port Harcourt</strong>, and is fully <strong>volunteer-led</strong>, in line with the global WordCamp tradition.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://central.wordcamp.org/files/2026/02/WP-PHC-scaled-1.webp"><img alt="" class="wp-image-13646507" height="684" src="https://central.wordcamp.org/files/2026/02/WP-PHC-scaled-1-1024x684.webp" width="1024" /></a></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Growing the WordPress Community in the Niger Delta</strong></h3>



<p>Port Harcourt has a fast-growing tech and creative ecosystem, and WordCamp Port Harcourt continues to play a key role in nurturing local talent, encouraging open-source contribution, and creating access to digital skills.</p>



<p>Since its inception, the WordCamp Port Harcourt community has focused on:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Supporting beginners taking their first steps with WordPress</li>



<li>Helping freelancers and agencies improve their workflows and businesses</li>



<li>Introducing students and young professionals to open-source culture</li>



<li>Connecting local creators to the global WordPress ecosystem</li>
</ul>



<p>WordCamp Port Harcourt 2026 builds on this foundation by creating a space where people can learn, share experiences, and form meaningful connections.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://central.wordcamp.org/files/2026/02/WhatsApp-Image-2025-08-06-at-17.52.54_7df1cea9.jpg"><img alt="" class="wp-image-13646506" height="576" src="https://central.wordcamp.org/files/2026/02/WhatsApp-Image-2025-08-06-at-17.52.54_7df1cea9-1024x576.jpg" width="1024" /></a></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>What to Expect at WordCamp Port Harcourt 2026</strong></h3>



<p>Attendees can look forward to a full day of practical and engaging sessions covering topics such as:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>WordPress for business and entrepreneurship</li>



<li>Design, performance, and user experience</li>



<li>Content creation and digital publishing</li>



<li>Security, hosting, and website management</li>



<li>The future of work, skills development, and WordPress</li>
</ul>



<p>The event will feature talks from a variety of speakers, panel discussions, speed build challenge, and opportunities to interact with sponsors and community partners.</p>



<p>As with all WordCamps, sessions are designed to be accessible to a wide range of experience levels—from complete beginners to seasoned professionals.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Community, Not Just a Conference</strong></h3>



<p>Beyond talks and presentations, WordCamp Port Harcourt 2026 emphasizes the importance of community. Attendees will have opportunities to:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Network with fellow WordPress users and professionals</li>



<li>Meet contributors and community organizers</li>



<li>Learn how to get involved with WordPress meetups and future events</li>



<li>Share ideas and experiences in a welcoming, inclusive environment</li>
</ul>



<p>Meals, drinks, and community freebies are included with tickets, helping to create a relaxed and engaging atmosphere throughout the day.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://central.wordcamp.org/files/2026/02/VLG00654-1-2-scaled.webp"><img alt="" class="wp-image-13646505" height="609" src="https://central.wordcamp.org/files/2026/02/VLG00654-1-2-1024x609.webp" width="1024" /></a></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Organized by Volunteers</strong></h3>



<p>WordCamp Port Harcourt 2026 is organized by a dedicated team of local volunteers who contribute their time and skills to make the event possible. The organizing team works closely with the global WordCamp community to ensure the event aligns with WordCamp guidelines and open-source values.</p>



<p>Support from sponsors helps keep ticket prices affordable and ensures the event remains accessible to students, freelancers, and small business owners.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Get Involved</strong></h3>



<p>Whether you’re a WordPress user, a business owner, a student, or someone curious about open-source technology, WordCamp Port Harcourt 2026 offers something for you.</p>



<p>To learn more, purchase tickets, or find out how to get involved as a volunteer or sponsor, visit:<br /><a href="https://portharcourt.wordcamp.org/2026/"><strong>https://portharcourt.wordcamp.org/2026/</strong></a></p>



<p>WordCamp Port Harcourt 2026 looks forward to welcoming the WordPress community to the Garden City for a day of learning, sharing, and celebrating the power of open source.</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, 06 Feb 2026 11:54:46 +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:"Emmanuel Eluwa";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:39;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"Open Channels FM: Jerks and Flows";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=114879";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:40:"https://openchannels.fm/jerks-and-flows/";s: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:77:"For myself, in the very early days, lots of teeny jerks, too many to mention.";s: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, 06 Feb 2026 10:35:00 +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:40;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:65:"Jonathan Desrosiers: Open Source Collaboration And A Proud Moment";s: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:39:"https://jonathandesrosiers.com/?p=10572";s: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:84:"https://jonathandesrosiers.com/2026/02/open-source-collaboration-and-a-proud-moment/";s: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:7205:"<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This past weekend at <a href="https://fosdem.org/2026/">FOSDEM</a>, I had a proud moment that had me reflecting on open source collaboration.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">We all experience moments like this throughout life. On occasion it’s a result of my own efforts, such as finally publishing something I’ve spent a considerable amount of effort on. But it&#8217;s more common that the feeling is triggered by something someone else does.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Late on day 1 of the conference, fellow WordPress Core Committer <a href="https://fluffyandflakey.blog/">Dennis Snell</a> gave a talk in the <a href="https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/track/collaboration-and-content-management/">Collaboration and Content Management track</a> called <a href="https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/BBXNKY-re-embracing-html/"><em>Stronger interop through HTML and better tooling</em></a> (recording can be found on the session page). The talk detailed how the HTML API within WordPress came about, the considerations that were made while building it, and how the end result has helped the broader web in addition to WordPress itself.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Dennis did a fantastic job! While I’m also a Core Committer, I have only been casually involved with this feature at best. It’s impossible to keep track of everything being worked on within a project as large as WordPress. His talk filled in many of the gaps of my knowledge, and I learned a ton!</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-letting-go">Letting Go </h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">When you’re involved with a project in a sustained and meaningful way, it can be difficult to “let go” of the urge to weigh in on as many tickets, pull requests, and discussions as you can. While it’s often true that you could add something that’s valuable or mention a non-obvious detail, <a href="https://producingoss.com/en/producingoss.html#common-pitfalls">knowing when to engage </a>is a craft that requires consistent refinement and reflection.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">When Dennis was presenting, I found myself thinking “I’m so glad he worked on this project.” He deeply researched prior art both internally and externally to WordPress, and he put a lot of care into thinking through what would be best for the users of the software. In the context of this challenge the users are primarily two groups: the developers interacting with the API and end users viewing sites with HTML manipulated by the API. Watching him present made me realize something important about collaborative work.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In many ways I was relieved. It was a great reminder to “let go”. We need to have confidence in each other to take on challenging problems and share that work openly, creating space for emerging contributors to learn and grow.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full wp-lightbox-container"><img alt="Dennis Snell standing in front of a projector screen presenting at FOSDEM 2026." class="wp-image-10585 not-transparent" height="4284" src="https://jonathandesrosiers.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/IMG_2608.jpg" width="5712" /><button class="lightbox-trigger" type="button">
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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-impact-on-others">Impact On Others</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">As a number of thoughtful questions were asked following his talk, I couldn’t help but feel proud. Yes, I was proud of Dennis. But I was also proud of <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/44410">everyone that contributed to this feature in some way</a> (he was certainly not the only contributor who invested time and effort into researching and building), and of the software that we all invest so much time and effort into maintaining.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">There are so many incredibly smart and talented people who contribute to WordPress and open source. His talk not only reminded me to step back and trust others, but also of the impact we can have on our peers and colleagues by caring about our craft and sharing that generously in the open. Though we try our best, thoughtfulness can be really hard to detect through written communication. In-person presentations and discussions will always be the best way to share passion, enthusiasm, and care with other humans.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">As contributors, we are solving real problems with solutions that don’t only benefit users of WordPress. In the case of the HTML API, the contributors working on this feature submitted bug fixes back to the <a href="https://github.com/whatwg/html/pull/10540">HTML specification</a> to benefit every single person building on and using the Internet. The <a href="https://jonathandesrosiers.com/2025/06/the-impact-of-open-source-work/">impact that open source work has</a> is unpredictable and surprising.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-being-project-ambassadors">Being Project Ambassadors</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">As a senior mentor within the WordPress community, I’m often asked what it means to be an ideal contributor to an Open Source project. While the <a href="https://nacin.com/2014/02/07/how-wordpress-chooses-committers/">qualities of a good open source contributor</a> are long established, I’ve been meaning to publish a “reloaded” breakdown for some time. This recording has been added to my list of examples to include when I finally get around to it.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">To some degree, every member of the community is a representative of the project. But this is especially true for Core Committers. I couldn’t have asked Dennis to be a better ambassador for WordPress at the largest open source conference in the world. In an extraordinary way he represented the collective work of all our contributors and the way we advocate for our users above all else.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So thank you, Dennis. And thank you to everyone who contributes to open source. <img alt="❤" class="wp-smiley" src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/72x72/2764.png" style="height: 1em;" /></p>



<p class="has-text-align-right has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph"><em>Featured image credit: <a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/">CC0</a> licensed <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/photo/39361f2c15/">photo</a> by <a href="https://jenniferbourn.com/">Jennifer Bourn</a> from the <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/">WordPress Photo Directory</a>.</em></p>
<p>The post <a href="https://jonathandesrosiers.com/2026/02/open-source-collaboration-and-a-proud-moment/">Open Source Collaboration And A Proud Moment</a> appeared first on <a href="https://jonathandesrosiers.com">Jonathan Desrosiers</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 06 Feb 2026 01:49:05 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:19:"Jonathan Desrosiers";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:41;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:74:"Open Channels FM: Bridging Cultural Gaps in Global WordPress Collaboration";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=114579";s: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:81:"https://openchannels.fm/bridging-cultural-gaps-in-global-wordpress-collaboration/";s: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:128:"Understanding cultural differences in international WordPress projects to enhance teamwork, communication, and project outcomes.";s: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, 05 Feb 2026 14:32:00 +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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s: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:60:"WordPress.org blog: Piloting the AI Leaders Micro-Credential";s: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=19874";s: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:57:"https://wordpress.org/news/2026/02/ai-leaders-credential/";s: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:3925:"<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Today, we are happy to announce our first WordPress-focused micro-credential, designed to help students build practical AI skills, earn a recognized credential, and connect more directly to job opportunities.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The program, <a href="https://ai-leaders.org/">AI Leaders</a>, is a workforce-oriented credential rooted in WordPress and open source contributions. Students are paid for their time, work on real WordPress projects, and gain hands-on experience applying AI in ways that are directly relevant to the WordPress ecosystem. This pilot represents a meaningful step forward in how the project supports learning, contribution, and career pathways.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Beginning in March 2026, AI Leaders launches its first cohort of 80 students from Illinois and Louisiana, with <a href="https://today.uic.edu/uic-and-wordpress-foundation-launch-workforce-focused-ai-literacy-course/">University of Illinois Chicago</a> (UIC) students given priority to apply before enrollment expands to the public. Enrollees begin with an orientation covering generative AI tools and AI literacy. From there, 40 participants are selected for the full course experience. Ultimately, the program leads to the AI Leader WordPress Micro-Credential and an opportunity to pursue living-wage job pathways. Learners who complete the course also earn $1,000 (USD).</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This pilot is the result of collaboration across several organizations, each playing a distinct role. The program is funded through the UIC Tech Solutions Open Source Fund, with support from the University of Illinois Chicago and <a href="https://automattic.com/2026/02/03/uic-tech-solutions-open-source-fund/">Automattic</a>. That funding supports program delivery, participant compensation, and the institutional infrastructure needed to run the pilot. Alongside that funding, the WordPress project and the WordPress Foundation will contribute to the development of the credential itself. This includes shaping the curriculum, grounding the work in real WordPress AI use cases, and ensuring alignment with open source values and public benefit.</p>



<div class="wp-block-group has-off-white-2-background-color has-background is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-2431c55b wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
<p class="has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph">Visit the AI Leaders site to learn more and apply.</p>



<div class="wp-block-buttons is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-3e41869c wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex">
<div class="wp-block-button"><a class="wp-block-button__link wp-element-button" href="https://ai-leaders.org/">Start Your Application</a></div>
</div>
</div>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This is the first WordPress Foundation-backed micro-credential, and it is intentionally being run as a pilot. We are exploring how the Foundation could support additional credentials over time, across different skill areas and partners, while maintaining clear governance, openness, and alignment with the WordPress project. It represents a step toward a future where WordPress contributors can more easily translate their skills into credentials, careers, and long-term opportunities.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-text-color has-dark-strokes-grey-color has-alpha-channel-opacity has-dark-strokes-grey-background-color has-background" />



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>WordPress offers a wide range of educational opportunities for people at every stage, from first steps to advanced contribution. Explore workshops, lesson plans, and community-created resources designed to help you build practical skills while connecting with others who are learning and contributing at <a href="https://wordpress.org/education/">WordPress.org/education/</a>.</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:"Wed, 04 Feb 2026 19:03:18 +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:43;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:89:"WPTavern: #203 – Miriam Schwab on Elementor’s Decade of Growth and the Future With 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:48:"https://wptavern.com/?post_type=podcast&p=202496";s: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://wptavern.com/podcast/203-miriam-schwab-on-elementors-decade-of-growth-and-the-future-with-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:56050:"<details>Transcript<div>
<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>



<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 Elementor&#8217;s decade of growth and its future plans with AI.</p>



<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>



<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>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So on the podcast today we have Miriam Schwab. Miriam has been deeply immersed in the WordPress ecosystem for around two decades. Starting out offering WordPress as a service, she went on to lead a custom WordPress agency serving major tech companies and nonprofits before founding the startup Strattic, pioneering static WordPress architecture. After Strattic&#8217;s acquisition by Elementor in 2022, Miriam took the role of Head of WordPress acting as the key liaison between Elementor and the wider WordPress community.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Elementor growth over the last decade has been prolific. Miriam says that it now powers over 13% of the entire web. She gives insights into the challenges and responsibilities that come with maintaining such a large user base, especially around major updates and backwards compatibility.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Much of our conversation centers around the rise of AI in WordPress, from built in AI tools for generating images and content to the standalone Angie plugin that introduces agentic AI capabilities across WordPress. Miriam outlines Elementor&#8217;s multi-pronged approach to innovation, talking about how their Site Planner tool uses conversational AI to guide beginners and professionals from an idea all the way to a wire framed website. And how the upcoming AI integrations promise even more granular design control.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Miriam also shares her perspectives on how the new Abilities API is set to change what&#8217;s possible inside WordPress, and what this means for developers, designers, and support teams navigating the complexities of AI driven workflows.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">For those interested in how AI is shaping the future of WordPress, Elementor&#8217;s strategy, and the evolving role of creators within this ecosystem, this episode is for you.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you&#8217;d like to find out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast, where you&#8217;ll find all the other episodes as well.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And so without further delay, I bring you Miriam Schwab.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I am joined on the podcast by Miriam Schwab. Hello Miriam.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:03:23] <strong>Miriam Schwab:</strong> Hi.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:03:24] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Nice to have you with us. Now, dear listener, I have to be very grateful to Miriam because about three weeks ago we tried to capture this exact podcast. In fact, we did. We captured this exact podcast. Unfortunately, the tech failed and Miriam&#8217;s audio was entirely silent. So we had a nice long conversation, Miriam divulged her experience and wisdom, and I got to put it out on the podcast and there was nothing there. It was completely blank. So firstly, an apology for that. And secondly, enormous thanks for coming back and talking to me.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:03:54] <strong>Miriam Schwab:</strong> Well, I have to thank you for giving this another shot because I have a feeling that the technical difficulties were also on my side. So thank you for giving this another go.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:04:03] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, well, I appreciate it. So Miriam has a long and storied history in WordPress. She&#8217;s working with Elementor at the moment, but the story goes back way further than that. Let&#8217;s just do the little potted bio at the beginning, Miriam. Just tell us a, just a short version of who you are in the WordPress space, and what you&#8217;ve achieved in the past.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:04:20] <strong>Miriam Schwab:</strong> Okay, so about 20 years ago, I discovered WordPress. Loved it, decided to work with it, started offering it as a service. Eventually that expanded into being an agency, and working on custom implementations of WordPress for tech companies and large nonprofits, which was a lot of fun and a great learning experience.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Did that for about 13 years. Sold the agency and founded a startup based on one of the many ideas I had had over the years. I had many ideas for products over the years, but I knew that I needed to make sure I wasn&#8217;t over spending my abilities, like between family and work and everything.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But I got to the stage where I was like, okay, I can do this. And I actually really loved the idea. So I founded a startup that was called Strattic. It published WordPress websites in a static architecture while retaining dynamic capabilities. And by doing that, it solved pretty much all the issues related to speed security and scalability. Raised venture capital funding for it, and it was acquired by Elementor in June, 2022.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And after joining Elementor, continued to lead the Strattic team for about six months, and then they offered me this new position that hadn&#8217;t existed before. Initially, we called it the Head of WordPress Relations, and then it evolved to just being called Head of WordPress, where I act as a liaison between Elementor and the broader WordPress community on many levels. Practically, strategically, community, like you name it and I&#8217;m probably doing it. So that&#8217;s a bit about me.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:05:43] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Do you have like a job description? Because when you say sort of Head of WordPress, there really seems to be almost no bounds in terms of the WordPress and Elementor connection. Do you have constraints on what is out of bounds? Or is it literally anything that&#8217;s connected with WordPress comes under your purview?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:05:57] <strong>Miriam Schwab:</strong> It is literally anything, pretty much. It suits me because I was the CEO of two companies, right? I led them. So I have an entrepreneurial character, I guess you could say. And I&#8217;ve always been involved in a lot of aspects of the businesses that I&#8217;ve been running, and I like that. I actually like to be involved in marketing and sales and even the financial side of things, and internal and external and all that kind of stuff. So it allows me to continue to embrace that side of me, even though I&#8217;m now like corporate. And I really appreciate that Elementor allows me that flexibility. It keeps the work that I do very interesting.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:06:33] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, I&#8217;ll bet. And you&#8217;ve always me as an extremely curious person, who likes to be busy, let&#8217;s put it that way.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Does Elementor continue to grow? I mean, I guess Elementor for me feels like it&#8217;s coming up to a decade old or something along those lines.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:06:48] <strong>Miriam Schwab:</strong> Yes, exactly. June is going to be 10 years since it was founded. We&#8217;re in our 10th year now, like heading up to it.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:06:53] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, and when it began, the plugin offered an incredibly valuable free version. And this was a real good way of kind of promoting growth because page builders were becoming all the rage at that point, and the market was already becoming saturated. But Elementor managed to put some daylight between themselves and the competitors because of the fully rounded free version. And then obviously, you know, built the pro version on top of that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And then when you chart the numbers of WordPress&#8217;s growth over the last decade, I don&#8217;t know what the exact numbers are, perhaps you can fill us in on that, but it feels like quite a bit of the WordPress growth, so WordPress generally, that 43% figure that we constantly like to refer to, it feels like quite a bit of that belongs, well, not belongs, but you know what I mean, is because of the popularity of Elementor. So the growth was meteoric. And I don&#8217;t know how that&#8217;s carried on, whether the line continues that trajectory, or whether it&#8217;s kind of flat lined, but still growing. Can we just get into that a bit?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:07:50] <strong>Miriam Schwab:</strong> After Elementor was launched, it really quickly reached a million active installs, I think within a year or something because it was the right, very much the right product at the right time, bringing a lot of value to users. And like you mentioned, like with the free version, for sure, that definitely helped power its growth and adoption. But also because it was a valuable, and is a valuable product for web builders to use.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In terms of the growth, so amazingly, Elementor&#8217;s adoption continues to grow. So you know W3Techs? Every year they publish like top stuff. And the various categories is based on the absolute number of sites that that particular technology accrued over the course of 2025. For the third year running, Elementor was given the title of Top Content Management System by W3Techs, beating out Wix and Shopify and WordPress. WordPress was the winner for many years.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And I&#8217;m not privy to the exact numbers or their exact calculations, but based on what they say, if Elementor is the top CMS, it&#8217;s because over the course of 2025, it&#8217;s usage base grew by more websites than those other platforms grew, which is wild. And like there, they even states, I think Elementor started off 2025 with 11.7% of the internet, and ended off 2025 with 13.1% of the internet.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:09:12] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Wait. Do that again.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:09:13] <strong>Miriam Schwab:</strong> Of the entire web, yes, of the web. Not WordPress.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:09:17] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> We use the 43% figure to be WordPress. So that same kind of sentence, but substitute Elementor for the word WordPress in there. 13%?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:09:27] <strong>Miriam Schwab:</strong> Yeah, over 13%. So over the course of 2025, Elementor continued to grow at a very significant pace. So Elementor is still growing.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:09:36] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, that&#8217;s remarkable. Do you know if that&#8217;s because of new adoption or is that that the current users of the platform, you know, who have a license for multiple sites and what have you, are just using it more and more, so that number kind of creeps up? So I guess the question there is, do you have a growing user base or is it just more broad use by your current user base?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:09:54] <strong>Miriam Schwab:</strong> Our current user base definitely contributes to growth, but by our estimation, we grew by something like three and a half million sites over the course of 2025. So a significant number of those sites are new. New users, or new sites, or whatever, that kind of thing.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:10:12] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> What a phenomenal story that, I mean it is the story really inside of the WordPress space over the last decade. I presume there&#8217;s nothing that can touch those kind of stats. That&#8217;s really remarkable. And I suppose it&#8217;s a blessing and also a curse. And what I mean by that is, you&#8217;ve got this giant platform, enormous user base, but I suppose it also means that anything that you do with the Elementor platform, there&#8217;s a lot of care that needs to be taken on every single update. So if you&#8217;re going to update to the 4.0 version, which you recently did, big overhaul, but a big user base to get annoyed if things go wrong. So I guess a lot of care and attention required because of your popularity.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:10:52] <strong>Miriam Schwab:</strong> Yeah. Backwards compatibility, you know, it&#8217;s a very important aspect of WordPress development in general. So at Elementor it&#8217;s the same. It&#8217;s super critical in terms of every update that we push out, determining how far back we&#8217;re going to support things, et cetera. So every version that goes out, it has to be super duper QA&#8217;d.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And even so, you know what WordPress is like, it&#8217;s like the wild west. Every site is like a snowflake. It has its own combination of themes, plugins, server configuration, PHP version, you know what I mean? Like, good luck with that. But the team does an amazing job of really managing to make sure that pretty much every version doesn&#8217;t cause issues.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And with regards to version four, that is an overhaul. And the team, while moving ahead with creating version four, because it&#8217;ll bring a lot of value to our users and it pulls Elementor even more towards the future, it&#8217;s being done so carefully. Like every step is considered.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And in terms of how it&#8217;s being developed and also how it&#8217;s going to work in conjunction with the previous approach to Elementor. Because the assumption is, not everyone&#8217;s going to just jump over to version four. Migrating an existing site to version four may be complicated. There&#8217;s discussions around how to do that in the best way, but it may be complicated.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So even an existing site, it might have pages still built on version three and prior, while new pages will be built with version four to gain the benefits of version four. So they have to live side by side for some amount of time. It&#8217;s incredibly complicated, but it&#8217;s a really important, exciting project because, like you said, Elementor is 10 years old, which means a 10-year-old code base. That means it&#8217;s time to give it an overhaul, even with all the risk and complication involved.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:12:32] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> What&#8217;s the staff count that you&#8217;ve got over there now?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:12:34] <strong>Miriam Schwab:</strong> It&#8217;s something like 350 now, I think.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:12:37] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So enormous. But again, I presume that speaks to the things that you&#8217;ve got to do. You know, if you&#8217;re going to ship a big update, you need a lot of bodies doing the coding for that. But also, you know, checking the backwards compatibility and things.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Okay, so you mentioned the future. In the year 2025, the words, well, the letters AI, I think probably were said by more people than just about anything else in the English language. Apart from maybe the word the. Everything else seems to have gone AI. If you look in the WordPress space, all of the media, all of the excitement, all of the interest, all of the everything, the oxygen is being sucked out of the room by AI, let&#8217;s put it that way.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And so Elementor, I presume, has to keep up with those current trends. What is happening over there? In terms of the page builder, and also I know there&#8217;s other ancillary products and plugins that, whilst built by you, aren&#8217;t necessarily part of that page building experience. What&#8217;s going on?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:13:26] <strong>Miriam Schwab:</strong> So we have like a number of approaches to AI and each one is getting a lot of attention. And while users are enthusiastic about them, we&#8217;re trying to figure out where to give them the best experience and how with AI. I think just like the whole world, we&#8217;re also working on figuring out AI and how to implement the best way possible.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But we strongly believe that WordPress must have strong AI capabilities in order to secure its future. And we want to see WordPress have a strong future for many years to come. But not only that, AI in WordPress will actually give it a big leg up and advantage over the more proprietary platforms in our opinion. So there&#8217;s like intense effort being made on our side to create amazing AI tooling in order to try to secure WordPress&#8217;s feature.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So what do we have? We have the kind of basic obvious stuff, which is, you&#8217;re in Elementor editor, you want to generate an image, here, you can generate an image with AI. You want to create copy, text, add title, all that kind of stuff, the content release stuff, there you go. HTML, CSS, okay. Kind of like check the box, pretty expected stuff.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Then we have Angie which is its own standalone plugin, which applies to all of WordPress, not just Elementor. And it gives agentic capabilities to WordPress in general. So whatever you would think an AI assistant would be able to do for you in your WordPress environment, it can pretty much do that. As we know, AI is non-deterministic. You tell it to do something and it will do it one way, and it tells you to do something else and it&#8217;ll do it the other way. So there&#8217;s a lot of guardrails being developed by our team to direct Angie to give the results that the user probably wants.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But you can do things like around managing your site, managing users, creating content, changing categories, WooCommerce management, product management, things like that. So it streamlines a lot of stuff. And the team is working on some like really exciting capabilities, which hopefully will be released soon. And then we&#8217;ll be able to talk about it. But in the meantime, it&#8217;s free to use. Anyone can go into the repo, install it, start using it, and of course we want to hear feedback about that. So that&#8217;s Angie.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And then the third approach with AI is our Site Planner. So Site Planner is a very cool tool. You chat to it, and you chat your way to a very robust website. It&#8217;s not like a one line prompt, build me a flower shop website, and then it just kind of guesses what you might want. It asks you very specific and useful questions so that it can get the fullest picture of what you want to build. And it guides you along the way by asking you the right questions, and then it generates a site for you in Elementor, and then you can export that site into your own hosting environment, or into our hosting environment, or you can download it as a zip file or whatever.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So the Site Planner can be the first stage in your AI website building journey. It takes you, let&#8217;s say from zero to 80, I would say. And then the last 20% of the site you can do with Angie, you can do manually, you can do with Elementor, you could do not with Elementor. You could do however you want, and launch your site.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So that&#8217;s pretty much what&#8217;s going on with AI. We have some more stuff coming out soon, but we&#8217;ll talk about it when we can, you know?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:16:39] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, so let me just reprise that and make sure I&#8217;ve understood. So the first piece of that jigsaw puzzle was the things with inside of Elementor, the page builder itself. And if we rewound the clock just five years, even though you are now saying, oh, the expected stuff, that stuff was the stuff of Star Trek. You know, oh, ask it for an image and it&#8217;ll make an image. Yeah, okay, that seems like a distant future that we&#8217;ll never reach. And yet now that&#8217;s kind of de rigueur. Everybody expects that stuff. So that&#8217;s the stuff inside of the page builder as you&#8217;d expect. Text, images and what have you.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But then you&#8217;ve got this Angie product, which if I&#8217;m parsing that correctly, enables you to leverage the abilities of WordPress. So I would like you to create me a post and assign these categories to it and publish it on this particular date. Do you know, does that leverage the sort of Abilities API, or have you done the foundational work yourselves as opposed to the Core Abilities API, which the teams have been working on more recently?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:17:32] <strong>Miriam Schwab:</strong> That&#8217;s a very good question. So the Angie team started building Angie at least a year ago, which was before the Abilities API was, I don&#8217;t know, even a twinkle in someones eye. So the team, in order to make Angie work, built their own tools, like it&#8217;s called tools, exposing WordPress&#8217; capabilities, so actually invested a ton in exposing something like 200 tools in WordPress to Angie.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And not only in Angie, the team actually also did some work to expose tools in WooCommerce and ACF as like a starting point for, because they&#8217;re very popular plugins. So when the Abilities API came around, the team already had a lot that was done and also more than what the Abilities API has. The goal is to sync up with the Abilities API and leverage it. At the moment there&#8217;s still some issues, at least on our end using it. But we&#8217;re in constant communication with the WordPress AI teams and giving feedback and things like that. So hopefully we&#8217;ll be able to resolve that. But the team did build all of that themselves, which is pretty amazing.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:18:33] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, that is amazing. But I guess given what Elementor touches, and the fact that you&#8217;ve got that enormous staff there that can try to build that, it kind of made sense to go at that because you didn&#8217;t know that the team were working on the Abilities API. I remember when that dropped. So I&#8217;ve been covering WordPress news for, I don&#8217;t know, a decade or something like that. I remember thinking, this is probably the most consequential piece of news that I&#8217;ve ever covered.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The idea of binding AI, so AI in the scenario that you described first, where I&#8217;m in Elementor, I want an image, I&#8217;m in Elementor, I want some text. That&#8217;s interesting, but it&#8217;s really confined. There&#8217;s lots of boxes around that, there&#8217;s only a certain permutation of things that you can do. But the minute you start to bind an AI to all the things that WordPress can do, so create a user, delete a user, create a page, schedule it for this time. Oh, I don&#8217;t know. Just imagine clicking around inside the WordPress admin interface and wherever you end up, there&#8217;s a thing, there&#8217;s a box or a field to fill out, and there&#8217;s an ability that can be done by that thing.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And uncovering those and making it so that the AI agent can understand what that is, it&#8217;s very hard to me to encapsulate in English why I think that&#8217;s so impressive. But, do you know what I mean? Can you see the thread of what I&#8217;m trying to say there, how important that is?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:19:49] <strong>Miriam Schwab:</strong> It is super impressive. What you&#8217;re saying about AI being like, if we had thought about it five years ago, it would be amazing. Even agentic AI, everyone talks about agents as if it&#8217;s like obvious that AI can be agentic. But for quite a bit of time in the beginning, and of course AI years are like a million years.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So for the first year and a half or something of us, of the world using AI, something like that, there wasn&#8217;t even agentic AI. So the fact that there&#8217;s agentic AI, and that it can be applied to WordPress is pretty wild. And I&#8217;ll tell you why I also think it&#8217;s wild. Because WordPress is 20 years old, 23 years old, whatever it is at this point. It&#8217;s a legacy platform. And the fact that it can be, the Abilities API is a really smart approach to it because it kind of slackens the exposure of everything that&#8217;s going on behind WordPress.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Instead of needing like a million different APIs and different approaches and that every plugin&#8217;s creating their own way to integrate with WordPress. It standardises it in a way that actually is also good for development, but also is good for the AI future, because it means that the way AI will interface with WordPress is straightforward and standard enough that regardless of what the LLMs end up doing going forward, if there&#8217;s more capabilities, if we move beyond agentic to who knows what, I don&#8217;t know what, like implants in our brains, then we can still interface with WordPress even though it&#8217;s over 20 years old. I think that&#8217;s amazing. So kudos to the team for accomplishing that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:21:12] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, and it was a penny that just didn&#8217;t drop for me. I saw AI as this interesting thing where it could create content, but I didn&#8217;t make the connection with all of the myriad things that WordPress could do. I just thought, okay, it&#8217;ll be inside the block editor, or it&#8217;ll be inside of Elementor or wherever it lives. That&#8217;s where the AI will belong. And then when I first read a summary of what the Abilities API was going to achieve, and that then binds to a whole other layer of APIs surrounding that, that was when the penny dropped. And I thought, okay, so basically what you&#8217;ve done there is you&#8217;ve opened the door and you&#8217;ve said, here&#8217;s all the things that a WordPress website can do. Until now, the AI was just in the interface and you could, you know, words and images and what have you. Now it&#8217;s, okay, we&#8217;ve opened the doors, now you can do the whole range of things that you&#8217;d like to do with the AI. And so it opens up all of those capabilities.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Again, the words fail me, but the import of it, the importance of it, I think only time will tell. But it feels like it&#8217;s probably one of the more important things. And again, like you said, 20 year old legacy system, there could have been a moment where the two paths split and, you know, AI became more interesting outside of WordPress, and WordPress sudden decline and what have you. But by opening the doors and saying, actually let&#8217;s just let all of the AI in and you can explore that if you wish to, kind of interesting for those people that want to.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:22:29] <strong>Miriam Schwab:</strong> Yeah, WordPress could have struggled to keep up with AI and we, I&#8217;m not saying it&#8217;s not a struggle. I think we&#8217;re a bit late to the AI game in general as a, like an ecosystem, which is understandable. We&#8217;re open source, things like, you know, move slower and by committee, so that&#8217;s just how it goes. But the fact that it picked itself up, the team was established and within six months of being established or something like that, it already had accomplished their four pillars of work that they had set out for themselves, is really amazing. And it&#8217;s super important for the future of WordPress, and it&#8217;s great to see that they were able to accomplish that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:23:01] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, and also it feels like the moment has arrived where a lot of the people that write in the WordPress space, so content creators and what have you, they&#8217;ve sort of got this now and they&#8217;re now creating content. And some of the people that no doubt, you and I both follow, who may be writing on their own blog or on social media or what have you, there seems to have been over the last couple of months, a real, a sense that, okay, WordPress has a place. We don&#8217;t need to worry about that anymore. We&#8217;ve now got a path with this AI team. State of the Word AI team sort gathered there and pressed the big red button and all that kind of stuff. There seems to have been so much focus that it&#8217;s built itself into relevance again. And there seems to be less worry. People now writing content about the things that WordPress can do with these abilities bound to it.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Okay, so let&#8217;s move on to the third strand of what you mentioned, which was, forgive me if I get this wrong. You said Site Planner, right? Was that correct?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:23:51] <strong>Miriam Schwab:</strong> Site planner, yeah.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:23:51] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay. And this is a conversation that you have. This is something that I always find kind of interesting. You know, getting into a conversation with something which is essentially an AI, that&#8217;s kind of curious. But you mentioned that whole process was a back and forth. So it&#8217;s not, I want a website. You write this great, big, long prompt, click the button, wait for five minutes and kind of cross your fingers and hope for the best. This is more of a dialogue, is it? Where you repeatedly get asked a series of smaller questions, which hopefully then build up to the sort of final thing. Tell us a little bit more.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:24:19] <strong>Miriam Schwab:</strong> The way that works is, yes, you can like paste in some kind of giant prompt, but even then, whether you start with like one sentence or a prompt, the Site Planner will ask you questions, clarifying questions, and also suggestive questions. Do you want any of these types of pages, or content on your site? And things like that. It&#8217;s really good for guiding non-professionals.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">It then creates actually a brief, like it writes out a brief for your website based on this conversation. So it&#8217;s really good for non-professionals who don&#8217;t know the questions to ask, right? They don&#8217;t know what they should be even considering. So it asks questions for them.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But it&#8217;s also great for professionals. It cuts down a lot of time in the research stage of building a site for a client. And the AI can actually like give them added value in terms of asking questions they might not have thought of. That conversation process can be cut short whenever the user wants. Like it can go on for as long as they want, but they can also say, that&#8217;s enough, let&#8217;s build the site based on what we discussed.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">When the AI is creating the brief, it will tell you the strength of the brief, like in the top right corner of Site Planner. So once you get to the stage where it says strong brief, you could stop there, but you could keep going. The more information you give it, the better the outcome will be. Just like with AI in general.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So once you finish that conversation, you say, let&#8217;s move to the next stage. It creates a site map. So it shows the hierarchy of the site based on the conversation. But also, on each page it shows you like what type of content it will have, and it actually gives you the content. The nice thing about the way the AI builds the site is that, first of all, content is king, which it always has been on websites. And here you really get to see the strength of that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So the content that it creates is really good because it&#8217;s based on this conversation that you had with it. At that site map stage you can drag and drop things around, add different pages that it didn&#8217;t include, remove sections from pages, but it&#8217;s just content chunks. Once you are happy with that stage, you go to the next stage, which is the website stage.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">We call it the wireframe stage because it&#8217;s not like a fully designed site, it&#8217;s more like the site with a structure, but it&#8217;s like 80% of the way there. It could have like testimonials section, contact page form, gallery. I created a demo site for a cafe that also has community events. So it has an events page. It&#8217;s really great. It like really gets you 80% of the way there. It saves a lot of time, and if you&#8217;re a professional, you can show your client that at that stage and work off of that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If anyone works with clients, you know that communicating and getting to a point where everyone&#8217;s happy can be very challenging when you don&#8217;t have something to show. But here, when you have something to show, you get past that blank canvas stage, which is very hard for people to like even imagine anything, and then you can work from there.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So once you have the wire frames done, also at that wire frame stage, by the way, you can also there edit things, remove things, et cetera. Change the colour palette, upload a logo to be used across the site, and things like that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Then you can publish the site. You can publish it into our own hosting environment in one click, but you can also publish it into any existing Elementor account. You just kind of add your It hooks up to your account and it will send it to wherever that site is hosted. Or you can download and upload it somewhere else. So it gets you from zero to 80, or 90% of the way with a site through a conversation and then you can like tweak it, polish it, and finalise it from there. So it&#8217;s really useful in my opinion.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:27:34] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So prior to the publication of it, you mentioned that you could show it to your clients. Is the capacity to have a public facing yet not public facing, if you know what I mean? So a URL, which is visible to you, but not the wider world for SEO and what have you. Is it possible to sort of take an up and running version, give it to a client so that they can have a little bit of a poke around?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:27:52] <strong>Miriam Schwab:</strong> That&#8217;s an interesting question. At that point, when it&#8217;s still in site planner, I think it&#8217;s only visible to you. So you would have to download and put it somewhere. But then you could put it in like a staging site or wherever you want to put it. You could share your screen with the client. But yeah, I think you can&#8217;t share the URL to that particular project within a third party.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:28:09] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Because that&#8217;s all so very instantaneous compared to, you know, it may be that you get into this dialogue, which takes half an hour or what have you. But, you know, compared to the old way of building things, it&#8217;s more or less instantaneous. I had this notion that a service like that would be kind of interesting if it spat out four or five variations of the same thing at the same time.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So I realise there&#8217;s a sort of, you know, a burden in terms of technology and overhead and all of that, cPU time and what have you. But the idea of entering that client meeting with five versions of the same basic thing. So, okay, I have a, I don&#8217;t know, a bricks and mortar store and I sell widgets. So I build the one version, but Elementor, for example, in this scenario, builds me four others as well. And then I can go through and cherry pick which bits of this one do you like or, I like the colour scheme of that, if you know what I mean? So I don&#8217;t know if it&#8217;s possible to do that. In other words, is it possible to spin up multiple versions of the same thing, or would you have to sort of start from scratch each time?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:29:02] <strong>Miriam Schwab:</strong> Well, what you can do within the project is you can ask it to regenerate a section. Like, you could be like, I don&#8217;t like that. So you could say like, do it differently and then it will suggest something else. You could theoretically, I guess like create a second page, let&#8217;s say a second about page and then be like, okay, suggest a different format for me for this. Like a different structure because it&#8217;s not exactly design.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The design afterwards can be worked on with a client or whatever. It&#8217;s more like the structure of the page. So, and even though it&#8217;s a live website, it is like structure. So you could be like, no, I want the testimonials to be a different style, like suggest something else. And then you could show, I guess the customer various pages within the site. It&#8217;s an interesting idea.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I know that the team is working on Site Planner, and it will be more rolled into the WordPress Elementor environment, like in the site. Right now, it&#8217;s an external tool, so once it&#8217;s in there, you could like duplicate pages, you could regenerate pages, things like that. I don&#8217;t have an ETA on when that&#8217;s happening but that&#8217;s the general direction.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:29:58] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s a fascinating conversation. And the other thing I was going to say is that there&#8217;s obviously, in your community, there&#8217;s a lot of people who are, they have a lot of history of building things with Elementor. They&#8217;ve learned the UI inside and out. They&#8217;ve become experts. They know where every checkbox is. If you show them something in Figma and then give them 10 minutes, they&#8217;ll mimic that perfectly.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And I was wondering what kind of capabilities the AI has within the Elementor interface. So in other words, does it do a sort of cookie cutter job of creating rows and sections and what have you, based upon things that have already been prebuilt? Or can it, in its AI wire frame stage, can it do, I don&#8217;t know, unique padding or crazy CSS things? Can it get into all of the bits and pieces that Elementor offers, all of those rich experiences? Or is it more kind of, okay, somebody in the team built these testimonial elements, and so we&#8217;re going to basically pick one of those and mimic that onto this wire frame?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:30:52] <strong>Miriam Schwab:</strong> So there&#8217;s Angie as it exists now and there&#8217;s Angies that will be over the next few months. So I&#8217;m going to be giving like, I guess kind of a sneak preview into what&#8217;s coming.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">At the moment it can do a lot within Elementor, but it is kind of constrained within what Elementor classically does. However, v4 is going to enable the AI, or let&#8217;s say the v4 AI partnership will give it a lot more creative capabilities, and extend basically to whatever you want it to do, that you can do with Angie. From custom code snippets, to custom widgets, to custom anything, or working within the Elementor. There&#8217;s going to be a lot of interesting things that people can do, basically in some ways just limited by their creative ideas.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:31:38] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Right, so much more granular. Because I have this vision that at some point in the future, and maybe some tool out there can do this. But I have this vision that, let&#8217;s say you&#8217;re inside Elementor, you&#8217;ve got 99% of the way there, and then you suddenly realise that that picture of the cat is the wrong cat. And so you just sort of say, can we have a different cat? No, not that one. Okay, that cat. And now, could we make the borders rounder on that particular image and give it a bit of a box shadow? That would be nice. Oh, and then swap it around so the text is on the other side.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So you end up in this sort of dialogue, almost like you&#8217;re chatting to the designer and you are watching over their shoulder as they build it. That seems to be the kind of place where we would love to get to. And then of course we enter this curious, difficult moment for the web developers and web designers, where these things become so dreadfully straightforward and easy that we then have to start questioning, how do you offer this as a client service if almost everybody can speak to a website and get it to do whatever you would like it to do?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So there&#8217;s two things in there. I sort of smuggled the last one in. But the first one is this sort of dialogue with the website, and then the second one is whether or not these tools are making it more difficult to be in the industry that we all love so much.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:32:44] <strong>Miriam Schwab:</strong> With regards to the dialogue description, so AI in general, it&#8217;s become like our team members for certain things. You know, in the past, if I wanted to, let&#8217;s say, post something on social media on behalf of Elementor, I would go to the design team and ask them to design something and go through that process, and then get what they gave me and then post it.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And now my design team is Nano Banana, right? Or ChatGPT. I get two versions, they compete against each other. Whichever one works best for me is what I take. And so it&#8217;s like that in almost everything we do if we&#8217;re using AI, and also in the world of website creation, design, development, and management. Our team for many aspects of it will become AI, which will create greater efficiency and also it seems like greater redundancy.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But I think like anything with a tool, the results will be defined by the abilities and skills of the person directing it. AI needs direction and that conversation to happen. And the quality of the results will be dependent on the skillset of the user, not skillset in terms of, how do I get AI to do stuff? But skillset of, what should an excellent website be?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So the human in the loop, I think, will continue to be a very important part. It&#8217;s just we&#8217;re kicking the can down the road kind of thing in terms of where we bring value. So instead of us bringing value, sitting and clicking on an image and changing the background using Photoshop, our value will be in being the director and producer of what output we want it to have and getting it there.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So we&#8217;re not like the tinkerers and like the hammer or nail people, we&#8217;re the contractor or the strategist, or the blueprint creators. So the conversations will take place, but the human in the loop part will still be really important. We all, whether we&#8217;re web creators or whatever profession we have, have to figure out how to use AI to help us do what we&#8217;re doing better.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I actually don&#8217;t exactly agree with the idea that AI helps us do more. It does, a lot of things become faster, but I think the value is that a lot of things get done better and a higher quality. So there&#8217;s that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So how do we use AI to the best of our abilities to help us do our work even better. But also, how do we continue to provide value in a world that&#8217;s dominated by AI? And that&#8217;s like, I don&#8217;t know what the answers are. 2026 is going to be the year of, who knows? Because AI changes every second. They could invent a new model or release a new model tomorrow that changes this whole conversation.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:35:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> One of the things that, sort of round it off with this one maybe. I&#8217;m thinking about your support system. So your support system, which has built up over 10 years, and presumably worked to help your clients. But the clients themselves probably started with a blank canvas and then, you know, made mistakes along the way, but were able to describe the mistakes that they made along the way to your support agents. Like, okay, I was doing this and then something went wrong. Can you unpick that for me? Where did I go wrong?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The realignment that needs to take place for your support team with the advent of AI, I suppose is fairly profound because you&#8217;ll probably have a lot of users who will just know that they did a prompt. And now this thing happened and I didn&#8217;t want that thing to happen. How do I go back? I mean there&#8217;s obviously a case of click undo, or don&#8217;t save the changes or whatever. But I&#8217;m also imagining the support that you provide has to pivot a lot as well.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:36:06] <strong>Miriam Schwab:</strong> The development of AI has to include implementing a ton of guardrails to prevent users from doing things that can damage their site. I&#8217;ll give you an example. In the early days of Angie, I generally love pushing tools to their limits, so I was pushing Angie to its limit and I got it to kick me out of my own site and remove my user. And I was like, well that&#8217;s not cool. So guardrails were put in place around that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">There&#8217;s concepts of, first of all, not allowing a user to implement something until they&#8217;re sure. Like meaning, not just be like, hey AI, can you do this? And the AI is like, done. No. AI is like, okay, here&#8217;s what it will look like, here&#8217;s what it will do, that kind of thing. Do you want to go ahead? Then, of course, undo buttons.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But then even with all of that, yeah, support could be different. We can have logs and things like that about what happened and why it happened and things like that. And that can help troubleshoot things. But on the other hand, I think support can become much better because while still the human is in the loop, getting the answers to issues, you know, you end up with this huge knowledge base of stuff, and a support agent can only know so much. Our brains are finite. We don&#8217;t know what someone discovered yesterday as an issue and as a solution and all that kind of stuff. So once you have AI kind of like analysing your corpus of knowledge and then pulling out what can help you or the user, then that becomes much better.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But I&#8217;ll give you another interesting angle of where support becomes complicated, where you have the Abilities API, or Angie or both, and a user is interacting with Angie, let&#8217;s say, and Elementor and also a third party plugin that is also working with AI. And then there&#8217;s something borks. And then the user is like, was it Elementor that was a problem? Was it WordPress that was a problem? Was it this third party plugin that was a problem? How do I even ask for support when I don&#8217;t know what just caused that issue? I guess it&#8217;s another version of plugin conflicts, but it&#8217;s just taking it to another level.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:38:01] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, it&#8217;s a different level altogether. I said that was my final question. Turns out I was being insincere. I have one more. And that is, I know that Elementor has done a lot of work trying to make websites more accessible in the recent past. And so that&#8217;s the final question, I promise. The idea that we hand over the agency of this to our AI builder and so things like accessibility, there may be other things that we could smuggle in there as well, but we&#8217;ll go with accessibility. Is work being done to ensure that the output follows WCAG guidelines and things along those lines?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:38:32] <strong>Miriam Schwab:</strong> So something that I&#8217;ve seen as we&#8217;re working on implementing AI capabilities is that there&#8217;s this idea that I had, and I think others do as well, that AI is the all powerful whatever. And if you just say to it, make my site accessible, it will make my site accessible. So it turns out it&#8217;s not like that. Maybe one day it will be. But AI needs tools, needs direction, needs the capabilities, and it doesn&#8217;t just have it just because it&#8217;s AI.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So it&#8217;s kind of the same with accessibility. So actually Elementor created an accessibility plugin called Ally, which is very useful because it goes through the website, analyses it, tells you where there&#8217;s issues, but doesn&#8217;t just tell you where there is issues, it gives you solutions. And it can, with AI, implement those solutions. Like you can click and be like, fix that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And that kind of ongoing accessibility assistance means that a person can, first of all do like a once through of their site and bring it to a better level of accessibility. We don&#8217;t guarantee like 100% accessibility, I don&#8217;t know if anyone can, but it improves accessibility on many levels.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And then as you&#8217;re going along, it can keep an eye on things or you can like trigger it and it can help make sure that whatever you&#8217;re doing going forward also stays within accessibility guidelines. So it&#8217;s like a really useful assistant, slash solution, slash tool that users can implement on an ongoing basis with their site. So worth checking out.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:39:59] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, I&#8217;ll put that into the show notes as well. And if memory serves, I could be wrong about this, if memory serves it&#8217;s not an Elementor specific solution.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:40:06] <strong>Miriam Schwab:</strong> Oh, right, exactly. It&#8217;s for all sites, all WordPress sites.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:40:08] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So any WordPress website can benefit from that. Okay, that&#8217;s interesting. Okay, so who knows what the year 2026 will bring. It no doubt will be chaos, turmoil.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:40:18] <strong>Miriam Schwab:</strong> It won&#8217;t be boring.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:40:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> That&#8217;s the words. Yeah, it definitely won&#8217;t be boring. And, yeah, good luck for Elementor in the year 2026.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:40:26] <strong>Miriam Schwab:</strong> Thank you. I&#8217;m excited, by the way, for 2026. It&#8217;s like a whole new world, and I think in some ways, at least for me, and I see this with others, it like reignited a spark for innovation in WordPress. WordPress is amazing, it&#8217;s been amazing for over 20 years and we&#8217;ve always, you know, been seeking, looking for ways to innovate. But AI takes it to a whole other level and makes innovation more accessible, if we&#8217;re going to use that word. And it&#8217;s really fun to see what people are creating around AI for WordPress. And I think we&#8217;re going to see some amazing things released over the course of 2026, not just by Elementor, that will make WordPress, wow. Anyways, that&#8217;s just my thoughts about 2026.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:41:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Miriam Schwab, thank you for chatting to me today.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:41:02] <strong>Miriam Schwab:</strong> Thank you.</p>
</div></details>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">On the podcast today we have <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/illuminea/">Miriam Schwab</a>.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Miriam has been deeply immersed in the WordPress ecosystem for around two decades. Starting out offering WordPress as a service, she went on to lead a custom WordPress agency serving major tech companies and nonprofits, before founding the startup Strattic, pioneering static WordPress architecture. After Strattic’s acquisition by Elementor in 2022, Miriam took on the role of Head of WordPress, acting as the key liaison between Elementor and the wider WordPress community.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Elementor’s growth over the last decade has been prolific. Miriam says that it now powers over 13% of the entire web. She gives insights into the challenges and responsibilities that come with maintaining such a large user base, especially around major updates and backwards compatibility.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Much of our conversation centres around the rise of AI in WordPress. From built-in AI tools for generating images and content, to the stand-alone Angie plugin that introduces agentic AI capabilities across WordPress. Miriam outlines Elementor’s multi-pronged approach to innovation, talking about how their Site Planner tool uses conversational AI to guide beginners and professionals from an idea all the way to a wireframed website, and how the upcoming AI integrations promise even more granular design control.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Miriam also shares her perspective on how the new Abilities API is set to change what’s possible inside WordPress, and what this means for developers, designers, and support teams navigating the complexities of AI-driven workflows.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">For those interested in how AI is shaping the future of WordPress, Elementor’s strategy, and the evolving roles of creators within this ecosystem, this episode is for you.</p>



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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://elementor.com">Elementor</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://elementor.com/blog/elementor-acquires-strattic/">Elementor Acquires Strattic To Redefine WordPress Hosting</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://w3techs.com">W3Tech</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://elementor.com/products/angie-ai-for-wordpress/">Angie plugin</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/apis/abilities-api/">Abilities API</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://elementor.com/products/ally-web-accessibility/">Ally plugin</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, 04 Feb 2026 15:00:00 +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:44;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:74:"Open Channels FM: Navigating Tech Shifts, Expanding Your Developer Toolkit";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=115049";s: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:80:"https://openchannels.fm/navigating-tech-shifts-expanding-your-developer-toolkit/";s: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:209:"Zach Stepek and Carl Alexander discuss winter challenges, work-life balance, and AI’s impact on coding. They emphasize the importance of diversifying skills and adapting to tech changes for career longevity.";s: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, 04 Feb 2026 13:14:08 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s: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:45;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:34:"Open Channels FM: Tech Predictions";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=114894";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:41:"https://openchannels.fm/tech-predictions/";s: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:60:"For content creators, it's murky waters that many wade into.";s: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, 04 Feb 2026 09:05:14 +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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:55:"WordPress.org blog: WordPress 6.9.1 Maintenance Release";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=19862";s: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:71:"https://wordpress.org/news/2026/02/wordpress-6-9-1-maintenance-release/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:9407:"<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>WordPress 6.9.1 is now available!</strong></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This minor release includes fixes for 49 bugs <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?resolution=fixed&amp;milestone=6.9.1&amp;group=component&amp;col=id&amp;col=summary&amp;col=milestone&amp;col=owner&amp;col=type&amp;col=status&amp;col=priority&amp;order=priority">throughout Core</a> and <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74806">the Block Editor</a>, addressing issues affecting multiple areas of WordPress including the block editor, mail, and classic themes. For a full list of bug fixes, please refer to the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/01/30/wordpress-6-9-1-rc1-is-now-available/">release candidate announcement.</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">WordPress 6.9.1 is a short-cycle maintenance release. The next major version of WordPress will be 7.0; it is scheduled for release on 9 April 2026 at <a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/2026/">WordCamp Asia</a>.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">You can <a href="https://wordpress.org/wordpress-6.9.1.zip">download WordPress 6.9.1 from WordPress.org</a>, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”. For more information on this release, please <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/wordpress-version/version-6-9-1">visit the HelpHub site</a>.</p>



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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This release was led by <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/jorbin/">Aaron Jorbin</a> and <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/wildworks">Aki Hamano.</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">WordPress 6.9.1 would not have been possible without the contributions of the following people. Their asynchronous coordination to deliver maintenance fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.</p>



<p class="is-style-wporg-props-medium wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/jorbin">Aaron Jorbin</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/aaronrobertshaw">Aaron Robertshaw</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/acmoifr">acmoifr</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/adamsilverstein">Adam Silverstein</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/oztaser">Adil Öztaşer</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/wildworks">Aki Hamano</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/albigdd">Alexander Bigga</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/amanandhishoe">amanandhishoe</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/andrewserong">Andrew Serong</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/bernhard-reiter">Bernie Reiter</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/brumack">brumack</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/darerodz">David Arenas</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/davidbaumwald">David Baumwald</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/raftaar1191">Deepak Gupta</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/deepakprajapati">Deepak Prajapati</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dmsnell">Dennis Snell</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/digitalblanket">digitalblanket</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/ellatrix">Ella Van Durpe</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/fabiankaegy">Fabian Kaegy</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/mamaduka">George Mamadashvili</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/hbhalodia">Hit Bhalodia</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/iflairwebtechnologies">iflairwebtechnologies</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/isabel_brison">Isabel Brison</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/jdeep">Jaydeep Das</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/audrasjb">Jb Audras</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/maverick3x6">Jeff Golenski</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/jeffpaul">Jeffrey Paul</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/jhtjards">jhtjards</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/joedolson">Joe Dolson</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/johnbillion">John Blackbourn</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/jonsurrell">Jon Surrell</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/desrosj">Jonathan Desrosiers</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/jorgefilipecosta">Jorge Costa</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/greenshady">Justin Tadlock</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/karthickmurugan">Karthick</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/solankisoftware">Kirtikumar Solanki</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/0mirka00">Lena Morita</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/luisherranz">luisherranz</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/madhavishah01">Madhavi Shah</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/sirlouen">Manuel Camargo</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/jillro">Maud Royer</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/mehrazmorshed">Mehraz Morshed</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/monarobase">Monarobase</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/mrwweb">mrwweb</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/mukesh27">Mukesh Panchal</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/muryam">Muryam Sultana</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/mydesign78">mydesign78</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/narenin">Narendra Sishodiya</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/ntsekouras">Nik Tsekouras</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/ninos-ego">Ninos</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/noruzzaman">Noruzzaman</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/oglekler">Olga Gleckler</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/gabertronic">Ophelia Rose</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/ov3rfly">Ov3rfly</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/ozgursar">Ozgur Sar</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/paragoninitiativeenterprises">Paragon Initiative Enterprises</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/swissspidy">Pascal Birchler</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/vybiral">Pavel Vybíral</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/peterwilsoncc">Peter Wilson</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/pmbs">pmbs</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/presskopp">Presskopp</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/r1k0">r1k0</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/ramonopoly">ramonopoly</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/youknowriad">Riad Benguella</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/ricjcs">Ricardo S.</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/rollybueno">Rolly Bueno</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/mikachan">Sarah Norris</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/coffee2code/">Scott Reilly</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/sergeybiryukov">Sergey Biryukov</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/sajib1223">Shazzad Hossain Khan</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/siliconforks">siliconforks</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/soyebsalar01">Soyeb Salar</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/spielers">spielers</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/sabernhardt">Stephen Bernhardt</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/studiomondiale">studio_m</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/iamtakashi">Takashi Irie</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/inc2734">Takashi Kitajima</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/threadi">threadi</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/tobiasbg">Tobias Bäthge</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/shimotomoki">Tomoki Shimomura</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/umeshsinghin">Umesh Singh</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/twvania">Vania</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/westonruter">Weston Ruter</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/wfmattr">WFMattR</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/wolf45">wolf45</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/zoe20">zoe20</a></p>



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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">To get involved in WordPress core development, head over to Trac, <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/report/6">pick a ticket</a>, and join the conversation in the <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02RQBWTW">#core</a> channel. Need help? Check out the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/">Core Contributor Handbook</a>.</p>



<p class="has-text-align-right wp-block-paragraph"><em>Props to </em><a class="mention" href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/audrasjb/"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>audrasjb</a>, <a class="mention" href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/davidbaumwald/"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>davidbaumwald</a>, <a class="mention" href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/westonruter/"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>westonruter</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/presskopp/"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>presskopp</a><em> for proofreading.</em></p>



<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, 03 Feb 2026 18:07:31 +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:"Aaron Jorbin";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:47;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:63:"Jonathan Desrosiers: Offering Criticism in Open Source Projects";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:38:"https://jonathandesrosiers.com/?p=9966";s: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:82:"https://jonathandesrosiers.com/2026/02/offering-criticism-in-open-source-projects/";s: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:33210:"<p class="wp-block-paragraph">A <a href="https://crossword.fm/s10/e10/">recent episode</a> of the <a href="https://crossword.fm/">Crossword podcast</a> had me thinking about offering criticism constructively in open source projects. <a href="https://jonathanwold.com/">Jonathan Wold</a> and <a href="https://carb.is/">Luke Carbis</a> were discussing the <a href="https://wordpress.org/download/releases/6-9/">new Notes feature in WordPress 6.9</a>, which was added as a building block for real-time collaboration.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Luke mentioned how he was curious about the reasoning behind the related technical decisions. He was having some difficulties and was a bit concerned about the choice to use the preexisting Comments APIs with a new comment type to build out the Notes feature. The part of this conversation that I really found interesting was when they discussed how it was unfair to the contributors who did work on the feature for him to complain or criticize without knowing the full background of why it was built in the way that it was.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I&#8217;ve heavily condensed and paraphrased, so I definitely recommend giving the episode a full listen.</p>



<figure class="wp-embed-aspect-21-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">

</div></figure>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This premise stuck with me and sent me down several rabbit holes, each one leading to a different dynamic within open source communities. When is it acceptable to be critical in open source? Is it fair to offer criticism when you don&#8217;t have all of the information? If so, what is the right way to go about sharing? Who is allowed to criticize? When is it appropriate to solely observe rather than attempt to participate? How do you transition from an observer to a participant? Let&#8217;s dig into these questions a bit more.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-who-can-contribute">Who Can Contribute?</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The simple answer to this question is anyone and everyone, of course! It is open source after all! But don’t stop reading because it’s not <em>actually</em> that simple.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">While everyone <em>can</em> participate, there are so many forces at play that impact <em>how</em> you should contribute. Knowing what these are, understanding them, and being able to recognize them can help make your open source journey a more successful and rewarding one.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I won&#8217;t be covering contributing from the perspective of specific disciplines (ie. code, documentation, testing, etc.), or even different ways of contributing (ie. financial, time-based, etc.). Instead I&#8217;m looking to define two broad &#8220;states&#8221; of contributing, how to move back and forth between these two groups, and how to communicate better so that everyone feels welcome to contribute.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">First let&#8217;s establish what these two groups of contributors are.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full wp-lightbox-container"><img alt="An empty auditorium in a university is furnished with wooden chairs that have blue cushions. The chairs are neatly arranged in rows, facing a stage or a podium that is not visible in the frame. The room is empty of people, and the lighting is relatively bright, daytime or artificial lighting. The overall atmosphere of the scene is academy." class="wp-image-10599 not-transparent" height="3333" src="https://jonathandesrosiers.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/570645e40a6435bc2.81819652.jpg" width="5000" /><button class="lightbox-trigger" type="button">
			<svg fill="none" height="12" viewBox="0 0 12 12" width="12" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
				<path d="M2 0a2 2 0 0 0-2 2v2h1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 1 .5-.5h2V0H2Zm2 10.5H2a.5.5 0 0 1-.5-.5V8H0v2a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h2v-1.5ZM8 12v-1.5h2a.5.5 0 0 0 .5-.5V8H12v2a2 2 0 0 1-2 2H8Zm2-12a2 2 0 0 1 2 2v2h-1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 0-.5-.5H8V0h2Z" fill="#fff">
			</svg>
		</button><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/">CC0</a> licensed <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/photo/570645e40a/">photo</a> by <a href="https://blazejzablotny.pl/">Blazej Zablotny</a> from the <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/">WordPress Photo Directory</a>.</figcaption></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-passive-contributing">Passive Contributing</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Whether they know it or not, every single user and consumer of an open source project contributes back in some way.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">When you use a piece of software (whether it’s open source or not), you are using your voice (and in some cases, your wallet) to communicate that the software is valuable to you. “This piece of software solves a problem that I have.” Over time, continued usage turns into a second layer of feedback. “This piece of software continues to solve a problem that I have well enough to continue using it.”</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I like to think of this as &#8220;passive contributing&#8221; because it happens naturally through the normal use of software without any additional level of effort required. The examples I gave above are the most simple and pure examples of passive contribution and may not seem that useful. But passive contributions can be quite significant at scale.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Every WordPress site checks if there are available updates for plugins, themes, and Core itself every 12 hours. However, a few details are needed to ensure an accurate answer is given, such as the version of WordPress the site is currently running, the site&#8217;s PHP and database versions, the PHP extensions loaded, etc..</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Now consider this happening across tens of millions of WordPress sites. This becomes <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observability_(software)#Telemetry_types">metric-based telemetry</a> and the data helps paint a <a href="https://wordpress.org/about/stats/">larger picture of what the &#8220;typical&#8221; environment is for a WordPress site</a>. This data allows contributors to make well-informed decisions about the software itself. What should the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/01/09/dropping-support-for-php-7-2-and-7-3/">minimum required version of PHP be</a>? Should a <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2019/10/15/php-native-json-extension-now-required/">native PHP extension be required to run WordPress</a>?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Understanding the actual real-world state is essential before making certain changes, especially in a project so staunchly committed to backward compatibility such as WordPress.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-untapped-potential">Untapped Potential</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In many ways, this group is the most exciting one in open source. There is so much potential to tap into! One thing that I&#8217;ve learned is that you never know what will inspire someone or how they will discover contributing. This is just one compelling reason to <a href="https://producingoss.com/en/producingoss.html#be-open-from-day-one">underscore the importance of working in the open</a>.</p>



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



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote alignwide has-text-align-center is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p class="is-style-text-title is-style-text-title--1 wp-block-paragraph">&#8220;Each interaction with a user is an opportunity to get a new participant.&#8221;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://producingoss.com/en/managing-participants.html#users-to-participants">Producing Open Source Software</a> &#8211; Carl Fogel</p>
</blockquote>



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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">As maintainers of open source, we need to consider this group as much as possible. Since most passive contributors are simply users, the <a href="https://wordpress.org/about/philosophy/">user-focused philosophies</a> of the WordPress project help to keep this group front of mind.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full wp-lightbox-container"><img alt="A man in a white shirt and black backpack leans against a chrome railing inside a building while looking at his phone. The man appears relaxed, with his weight resting on one leg and his other foot crossed over it. He holds the phone in one hand and seems to be scrolling through its contents." class="wp-image-10597 not-transparent" height="4128" src="https://jonathandesrosiers.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/53645e3e76c13ed0.89060804.jpg" width="6192" /><button class="lightbox-trigger" type="button">
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			</svg>
		</button><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/">CC0</a> licensed <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/photo/53645e3e76/">photo</a> by <a href="https://blazejzablotny.pl/">Blazej Zablotny</a> from the <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/">WordPress Photo Directory</a>.</figcaption></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-active-contributing">Active Contributing</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Conversely, if someone contributes to an open source project knowingly, they fall into the second type: active. These contributors are the backbone of every open source software project. They&#8217;re intentionally spending their time filing bug reports, building out new features and APIs, reviewing patches, translating strings, writing documentation, and so much more.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In an ideal world, many more passive contributors are activated than the number of active ones who leave a project to ensure growth. But be warned, if you&#8217;re ill-prepared to support newly activated contributors, they can <a href="https://jonathandesrosiers.com/2025/07/the-ghosts-of-unactivated-contributors/">easily become ghosts that quietly haunt the halls of your project</a>.</p>



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



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-some-additional-considerations">Some Additional Considerations</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I tried to clearly define these two buckets to encompass everyone. But like the question of &#8220;who can contribute?&#8221;, there is additional nuance to be aware of.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-awareness-of-passivity">Awareness Of Passivity</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">One important thing to note is that individuals may not even be aware of the fact that they are passively contributing. Some (likely most) have no idea about what contributing is or how it works. In other cases, someone can be aware and intentionally choose to remain passive.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This was the case with Luke and the concerns he expressed about the implementation of the Notes feature. He is familiar enough with open source communities to understand that <a href="https://maintaine.rs/desrosj#the-value-of-presence">decisions are made by those who show up</a>, but was also self-aware enough to recognize he was not properly prepared to engage. He intentionally chose to remain passive until he felt he had enough context to engage thoughtfully (which <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/64377">he has since</a>).</p>



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



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote alignwide has-text-align-center is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">By participating in discussions, contributing code, submitting bug reports or feature requests, or testing proposed changes, any individual can influence the direction of an Open Source project. By showing up, you ensure that your voice will be heard. But be aware, with presence comes responsibility. Showing up means being prepared, doing research, actively listening, and being thoughtful in your communication.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://maintaine.rs/desrosj#the-value-of-presence">Maintainers in the WordPress Project</a> &#8211; <a href="https://maintaine.rs/">maintaine.rs</a> &#8211; Jonathan Desrosiers</p>
</blockquote>



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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">As contributors gain experience, they&#8217;re often active in some ways and passive in others. For example, someone who spends their time creating patches is still contributing by passing the PHP version their site is using when sending update requests. Contributors also tend to find the areas of a code base that they enjoy working the most and to focus their efforts there. When this happens they choose to be passive for the rest of the code.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-transitioning-unknowingly">Transitioning Unknowingly</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">It&#8217;s also common for someone to be completely unaware of the fact that they have &#8220;activated&#8221;. Let&#8217;s say you are experiencing a problem with your site and open a support ticket. On the surface it may seem like you are just seeking help with the issue that&#8217;s affecting your site. But it&#8217;s actually pretty common that support requests are the first sign of a larger bug or edge case affecting many users.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This is a great opportunity to help them recognize that they&#8217;re contributing. &#8220;Thank you for taking the time to create this report!&#8221; Be transparent about the process and answer any questions they have. Where can they follow along with the process? What is the process? And continue to engage with this person throughout the lifecycle of the report.</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li class="">&#8220;This seems to be due to X and as a result Y happens.&#8221; &#8211; Explain the concept behind what&#8217;s going on to pique their interest.</li>



<li class="">&#8220;It&#8217;s likely that any site using feature Z is experiencing this.&#8221; &#8211; Shows them the importance of their report. It&#8217;s not just you, and you&#8217;ve helped the software improve for many other users.</li>



<li class="">&#8220;There is a fix available in the form of a patch/hotfix plugin/nightly build. Would you be able to test using that to confirm the issue is resolved for you?&#8221; &#8211; Bring them along on the journey and show them how the sausage is made.</li>



<li class="">&#8220;Thanks again for the report and helping to improve PROJECT.&#8221;  &#8211; Their time was valuable and the result was meaningful.</li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you spend any time talking to contributors, you&#8217;ll find that this is a <em>very</em> common path for discovering how to contribute to open source. Make this second nature and weave it into the culture of your project to ensure that no opportunity to grow the contributor base is missed.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-healthy-balance">A Healthy Balance</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Even when maintainers have invested a considerable amount of time and effort into creating forms of passive contribution, <strong>passive contribution has a very low ceiling and will never sustain a project by itself</strong>.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In education there is a metric called the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student%E2%80%93teacher_ratio">student-teacher ratio</a>, which is a way to estimate the number of students per teacher in each classroom within a school. Though it doesn&#8217;t always work out this way, the idea is that a lower student-teacher ratio will result in a higher quality education.</p>



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



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote alignwide has-text-align-center is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Classes with too many students are often disruptive to education. Also, too many students in a class results in a diverse field of students, with varying degrees of learning ability. Consequently, the class will spend time for less academic students to assimilate the information, when that time could be better spent progressing through the curriculum. In this way, student–teacher ratios are compelling arguments for advanced or honors classes.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student%E2%80%93teacher_ratio">Student-teacher ratio &#8211; Wikipedia</a></p>
</blockquote>



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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">There are several variations of this concept at play within open source.</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li class="">The ratio of users to contributors.</li>



<li class="">The ratio of active to passive contributors.</li>



<li class="">The ratio of active contributors to those <em>trying</em> to become more involved (seeking mentorship).</li>



<li class="">The ratio of mentors who are actually <em>available</em> to those seeking to be mentored.</li>



<li class="">The ratio of contributors who have write access (Core Committers) to those who don&#8217;t.</li>
</ul>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large wp-lightbox-container"><img alt="Rockhounding and colorful rocks on a southern Oregon beach." class="wp-image-10601 not-transparent" height="576" src="https://jonathandesrosiers.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/41964067404569fe1.10957269-1024x576.jpg" width="1024" /><button class="lightbox-trigger" type="button">
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<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Each of these ratios could help shine a light on an area of a project that is struggling. Just like there&#8217;s no widely accepted student-teacher ratio that every school should strive for, there&#8217;s no one-size-fits-all formula for the ideal ratio of each of these. It&#8217;s safe to say that the actual ratio is often nowhere close to an appropriate level. Unfortunately, this often results in maintainer burnout.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-equal-opportunity-vs-equal-outcome">Equal Opportunity vs. Equal Outcome</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Open source is at its best when opportunity is equal, but not necessarily contributions or outcomes. Every contribution is different, and that’s a <em>good</em> thing. But when everyone has the same opportunity to contribute, the number of participants will increase along with the diversity of experience, knowledge, and thought. This will naturally result in better solutions.</p>



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



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote alignwide has-text-align-center is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p class="is-style-text-title is-style-text-title--2 wp-block-paragraph">“Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.”</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus%27s_law">Linus&#8217;s Law</a></p>
</blockquote>



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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I understand that a state of true equity of opportunity is utopian. There will always be differences in socioeconomic, cultural, familial situations, etc. But as maintainers, we need to remain vigilant to ensure everyone has the opportunity they deserve. After all, that&#8217;s what open source is all about: a chance to participate.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-encouraging-a-fluid-state">Encouraging A Fluid State</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://www.selectsoftwarereviews.com/blog/employee-retention-statistics#strongstatistics-on-the-cost-of-employee-turnoverstrong">Many studies have found</a> that the cost of replacing an employee could cost upwards of 300% <em>more</em> than the previous employee&#8217;s salary. This includes the cost to terminate the employee, recruitment, hiring, on-boarding, lost opportunity while the position is vacant, and the loss of productivity as the new hire goes through a learning curve.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Consider this concept in the context of open source. The majority of OSS projects barely have enough resources to keep things running smoothly. Dealing with a 300% cost increase can be very detrimental, if not lethal, to the overall health of the project. It&#8217;s in everyone&#8217;s best interest to retain active contributors instead of dealing with the high costs of finding and training new contributors.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Allowing, encouraging, and respecting when contributors ebb and flow between an active and passive state is one way to help lower the risk of someone churning out of your project completely. Yes, they are not actively contributing when choosing to be passive. But when they feel entrusted to adjust their contributing patterns any time they need or want to, they still feel like part of the project. They are capable and knowledgeable enough to return anytime they choose, and that is much easier than a brand new contributor starting from scratch.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That&#8217;s not to say all on-boarding is bad! It&#8217;s usually a <em>good</em> sign when new contributors are joining a project. But it&#8217;s a concerning signal when it&#8217;s consistently a net-negative, or even a net-neutral pattern.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-non-human-contribution">Non-human Contribution</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Though there&#8217;s no human requirement to contribute, <a href="https://jonathandesrosiers.com/2025/07/implementing-ai-in-open-source-without-losing-the-human-touch/">open source communities flourish because of community and strong human connections</a>. Right now, AI is a passive <em>consumer</em> of software (or at least the documentation and other related materials). But since AI tools don&#8217;t actually <em>use</em> the software, they bypass passive contribution and <a href="https://dri.es/ai-is-a-business-model-stress-test">exclusively extract value in a one-way transaction</a>.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I also think it&#8217;s fair to say AI tools cannot actively contribute on their own. They require a human to make use of them while actively contributing. That said, these tools have the potential to amplify someone’s abilities and capacity. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-note-about-makers-and-takers">A Note About Makers And Takers</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">A disproportionate number of passive contributors can be extremely damaging to an open source project. This is especially true when organizations and companies who are generating revenue purposefully choose to remain passive. <a href="https://dri.es/">Dries Buytaert</a>, the creator of <a href="https://www.drupal.org/">Drupal</a>, has described this as the &#8220;<a href="https://dri.es/balancing-makers-and-takers-to-scale-and-sustain-open-source">maker-taker problem</a>&#8220;.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">As I defined what active and passive contributions are to provide context, I came to the realization that in many ways I&#8217;m trying to describe a similar problem. However, there are some key differences to what I&#8217;m exploring here. Dries explores project sustainability and what that means under a financial and governance lens. While the background I&#8217;ve shared so far may resemble the maker-taker problem, I’m focused on how and when to participate when you have criticism. </p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-criticism-as-a-contribution">Criticism As A Contribution</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So let&#8217;s return to the questions from the beginning: When is it acceptable to be critical? Is it fair to offer criticism when you don&#8217;t have all the information? Just like telemetry can help paint the full picture using data points, criticism can help maintainers understand what&#8217;s working and what&#8217;s not. The more feedback loops that exist between maintainers and different stakeholders, the better. It&#8217;s natural to be apprehensive about coming forward to condemn the work that has been done. But if something concerns you or doesn&#8217;t fit your use cases, it&#8217;s important to speak up.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Here are some tips to help you have the right mindset so your insight can have the most impact.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-silos-help-no-one">Silos Help No One</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Learning together is better than learning in a silo. When you voice concerns or questions publicly, you&#8217;re not just advocating for yourself. You&#8217;re likely representing many others who share the same confusion or frustration but haven&#8217;t spoken up yet.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Luke is an experienced community member, so his bar for what constitutes a &#8220;quality&#8221; contribution is quite high. But his hesitation on the podcast actually illustrates an important point: by discussing his concerns openly (even while acknowledging his incomplete knowledge), he invites others into the learning process. The conversation itself becomes valuable, prompting everyone to explore technical decisions together.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full wp-lightbox-container"><img alt="Looking through a rock formation at a seaside fisherman courageously casts his line as a storm approaches Beavertail Lighthouse in Rhode Island." class="wp-image-10528 not-transparent" height="4000" src="https://jonathandesrosiers.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/61365a83787ce7b45.52175946.jpg" width="6000" /><button class="lightbox-trigger" type="button">
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<p class="wp-block-paragraph">When you keep your criticism private or wait until you have &#8220;complete&#8221; knowledge, you miss opportunities for collaborative problem-solving. Sometimes the act of asking &#8220;why was it built this way?&#8221; in public forums leads to documentation improvements, clearer architectural decision records, or simply helps other contributors understand the reasoning.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-research-is-not-everything">Research Is Not Everything</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I mentioned above that showing up comes with the responsibility to be prepared. While it&#8217;s true that researching before engaging can be very helpful, it&#8217;s not a steadfast requirement, provided you approach the conversation with humility, genuine curiosity, and the desire to help.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">There&#8217;s a balance to strike here. Some research shows good faith and respect for the contributors who came before you. It demonstrates you&#8217;ve tried to understand the context. But perfectionism about having complete knowledge can become a barrier to participation.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The key is being transparent about what you do and don&#8217;t know: &#8220;I&#8217;ve looked through the related tickets on Trac and the PR where the feature was built, but I&#8217;m not seeing where the decision about using the Comments API was discussed. Can someone point me to that conversation?&#8221; is far more productive than either staying silent or declaring &#8220;This was obviously the wrong choice.&#8221;</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Your questions and criticisms are still valuable even when they come from incomplete understanding, as long as you frame them as questions and criticisms, not pronouncements.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-voice-not-a-vote">A Voice, Not A Vote</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Showing up does not grant you a vote, no matter how prepared, informed, or experienced you are. This can be a difficult reality to accept, especially if you&#8217;ve spent considerable time researching an issue or crafting a well-reasoned argument.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But understanding this distinction is liberating. Your goal in offering criticism isn&#8217;t to force a particular outcome. It&#8217;s to ensure your perspective is heard and considered. Decisions in open source are ultimately made by those who do the work and maintain the code. Your criticism contributes valuable perspective to that decision-making process, but the decision itself belongs to the maintainers who will live with the consequences.</p>



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



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote alignwide has-text-align-center is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">When a change is made to a code base, the committer making that change is taking on a lot of extra responsibility. In some ways, they now own that change and any resulting test failures, bugs, features built on top of the change, or even security issues that may follow. They must be willing to stand behind the changes they make until new rationale is presented.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://maintaine.rs/desrosj#maintainers-are-the-code-they-commit">Maintainers in the WordPress Project</a> &#8211; <a href="https://maintaine.rs/">maintaine.rs</a> &#8211; Jonathan Desrosiers</p>
</blockquote>



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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This is why the <em>how</em> of criticism matters so much. Criticism framed as demands or accusations puts maintainers on the defensive. Criticism framed as genuine questions and concerns begins a dialogue. &#8220;I&#8217;m worried this approach will cause problems with X&#8221; invites discussion. &#8220;You should have done Y instead&#8221; closes it.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-responsibility-of-voice">The Responsibility of Voice</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Luke eventually did engage with his concerns about the Notes feature, and the WordPress community is better for it. His journey from hesitation to informed participation is a model worth emulating: acknowledge what you don&#8217;t know, do some research, but don&#8217;t let the pursuit of perfect knowledge stop you from contributing your perspective.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The next time you find yourself frustrated with a technical decision or concerned about a direction your favorite open source project is taking, remember: your criticism is a contribution. The question isn&#8217;t whether you have the right to speak (you do). The question is how you&#8217;ll use that voice to make the project stronger for everyone.</p>



<p class="has-text-align-right has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph"><em>Featured image credit: <a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/">CC0</a> licensed <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/photo/4086355e20/">photo</a> by <a href="https://naoko.blog/">Naoko Takano</a> from the <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/">WordPress Photo Directory</a>.</em></p>
<p>The post <a href="https://jonathandesrosiers.com/2026/02/offering-criticism-in-open-source-projects/">Offering Criticism in Open Source Projects</a> appeared first on <a href="https://jonathandesrosiers.com">Jonathan Desrosiers</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 03 Feb 2026 15:20:40 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:19:"Jonathan Desrosiers";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:48;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"Open Channels FM: On Being Flexible";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=114533";s: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:42:"https://openchannels.fm/on-being-flexible/";s: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:108:"Over the years there has been one single piece of advice I have given small business owners and freelancers.";s: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, 02 Feb 2026 13:38:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s: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:49;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:127:"Gutenberg Times: Navigation Overlays, WordPress 7.0, Interactivity API Helper, AI Skills, and  #WCAsia — Weekend Edition #355";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=44172";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:127:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/navigation-overlays-wordpress-7-0-interactivity-api-helper-ai-skills-and-wcasia-weekend-edition-355/";s: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:25916:"<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Hi, there <img alt="👋" class="wp-smiley" src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/72x72/1f44b.png" style="height: 1em;" /></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">this week, you&#8217;ll find a great mix of new releases, new tools, new plugins and events. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Outside the WordPress sphere I signed up for the <a href="https://events.humanitix.com/fediforum-un-workshop-growing-the-open-social-web-2026-03">FediForum Un-Workshop</a>, an event bringing together people who will discuss obstacles and ideas on growing the Open Social Web. It&#8217;ll be a three-hour virtual event on March 2, 2026. It&#8217;s NOT on the same day as <strong>Human Made&#8217;s WP:26</strong> event, which takes place 10 days later. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I hope you enjoy this week&#8217;s edition and I wish you a great weekend! </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Yours, <img alt="💕" class="wp-smiley" src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/72x72/1f495.png" style="height: 1em;" /><br /><em>Birgit</em></p>





<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Human Made </strong>announced <a href="https://humanmade.com/wordpress-in-2026-event/"><strong>WP:26</strong></a>, a virtual event on March 12th exploring where WordPress is heading this year. You&#8217;ll hear from Mary Hubbard (WordPress executive director), speakers from Pantheon, Yoast, News UK, and PMC on topics like hybrid CMS architectures, agentic AI systems, and the CMS as orchestration layer. Following last year&#8217;s WP:25 with 700+ attendees, this one targets digital leaders, architects, and teams betting on WordPress long-term—registration is open now. It&#8217;s free and will be recorded, I reckon. </p>



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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong><a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/2026/updates/">WordCamp Asia communication team</a> </strong>is publishing great content to get ready for the event: <a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/2026/event-pass/?refresh=true#get-your-pass">Tickets are still available</a>, <a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/2026/call-for-sponsors/">Sponsorships as well </a>and you can learn more about <a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/2026/things-to-do-in-mumbai/">Mumbai</a>, <a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/2026/namaste-india-guide-to-indian-culture/">Indian culture</a> and <a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/2026/mumbai-on-a-plate/">food</a>. The WordCamp will take place between April 9 and 11, 2026. The <a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/2026/category/speakers/">first rounds of speakers</a> are announced, too. Will I see you there? It would be wonderful to meet you! You are welcome to use <a href="https://calendly.com/pauli-haack/wcasia">my public calendar to schedule a meeting</a>. </p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/2026/category/speakers/"><img alt="Announced speakers WordCamp Asia 2026" class="wp-image-44227" height="158" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Screenshot-2026-01-31-at-11.24.05.png?resize=652%2C158&#038;ssl=1" width="652" /></a></figure>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>If WordCamp Asia is not on your radar, check out the <a href="https://central.wordcamp.org/schedule/">WordCamp calendar</a> for in person or educational event closer to you or on a different date. </em></p>



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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/01/30/wordpress-6-9-1-rc1-is-now-available/"><strong>WordPress 6.9.1 RC1 is now available</strong></a>. Led by <strong>Aaron Jorbin</strong> and <strong>Aki Hamano</strong>, the final release is planned for February 3, 2026. You can test using the Beta Tester plugin, WP-CLI, or a direct download. This maintenance release addresses bugs introduced in 6.9, with 23 Core fixes and 25 Block Editor fixes. Notable corrections include mail function errors, broken styling on the Add Plugins screen, widget accessibility issues, and several Interactivity API router fixes. </p>



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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/releases/tag/v22.5.0-rc.1"><strong>Gutenberg 22.5 RC 1</strong></a> is also available for testing. The final release is scheduled for February 4, 2025. It will bring practical refinements for your editing workflow. You can now add <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/73959">custom CSS to individual blocks</a>, and the Image block shows <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74519">aspect ratio controls for wide and full alignments</a>. List View gets more useful with <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74798">full block titles</a> and <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/74794">actual content displayed for list items</a>. The release also stabilizes viewport-based block visibility and pattern editing, plus adds focal point controls for fixed Cover backgrounds and text column support for Paragraphs.</p>



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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Mary Hubbard</strong>, executive director of WordPress open-source project,  outlines the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2026/01/23/big-picture-goals-for-2026/">big picture goals for WordPress in 2026</a>, signaling a return to three releases annually with WordPress 7.0 arriving at WordCamp Asia. You&#8217;ll see real-time co-editing move into Phase 3: Collaboration, client-side media processing graduate to Core, and new blocks like Tabs and Icon ship out of the box. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">What I am most excited about is Hubbard&#8217;s emphasis on WordPress meetups as the primary front door to contribution and calls on Make teams to prepare clearer onboarding paths for incoming contributors. If there isn&#8217;t a WordPress Meetup in your city or region, the community team would love to help you start one. Before my year-end vacation I collaborated with co-organizers, and we revitalized the <a href="https://www.meetup.com/munchen-wordpress-meetup/">München WordPress Meetup</a>. If you are in the city,<a href="https://www.meetup.com/munchen-wordpress-meetup/events/313062167/"> join us on February 11 at 19:00.</a> Or every second Wednesday of the month. </p>



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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> shares her latest round of <a href="https://nomad.blog/2026/01/23/exploring-work-in-progress-for-wordpress-7-0/"><strong>exploring work in progress for WordPress 7.0</strong></a>, with beta 1 just weeks away. You&#8217;ll find hands-on looks at real-time collaboration transport layers, visual revisions, responsive block hiding, customizable navigation overlays, and the Cover block&#8217;s new video embed support. The Gallery block gains lightbox navigation, while Tabs and Breadcrumbs blocks continue maturing. McCarthy encourages you to test via WordPress Playground and to leave feedback on GitHub.</p>



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<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><br /><strong>David Smith</strong> posted a <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2026/01/27/call-for-testing-customizable-navigation-mobile-overlays/"><strong>call for testing customizable navigation mobile overlays</strong></a> targeting WordPress 7.0. This feature finally gives you full control over mobile hamburger menus using blocks and patterns—add branding, calls-to-action, images, and custom styling instead of being stuck with WordPress defaults. Overlays are saved as template parts, so themes can ship their own variations. Feedback is requested by February 9th, with a <a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/?gutenberg-branch=test%2Fcontent-only-patterns-experiment&amp;blueprint-url=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.githubusercontent.com%2Fgetdave%2Fdcaf203c16e7362a2e00f85b04e67404%2Fraw">ready-to-go Playground instance</a> for quick testing.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Your feedback would ddirectly shapes what ships in core—catching bugs, validating UX decisions, and surfacing edge cases before millions of sites receive the update. It&#8217;s one of the most impactful ways to contribute to WordPress without writing code, and the Test Team provides clear scenarios and templates for reporting issues. Give it a whirl, and learn first hand how this new feature works. </p>



<div class="wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><img alt="🎙" class="wp-smiley" src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/72x72/1f399.png" style="height: 1em;" /> The latest episode is <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-126-gutenberg-releases-22-3-22-4-22-5-and-wordpress-7-0/">Gutenberg Changelog #126 – Gutenberg Releases 22.3, 22.4, 22.5 and WordPress 7.0</a> with special guest <strong>Carolina Nymark</strong>, author at fullsiteediting.com and long time contributor. </p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-style-no-vertical-margin"><img alt="" class="wp-image-44359" height="184" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Screenshot-2026-02-13-at-12.32.32.png?resize=652%2C184&#038;ssl=1" width="652" /></figure>


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<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Ryan Welcher</strong> highlights the most important updates from the <em>What&#8217;s New for Developer (January 2026)</em> post in his latest video: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSkiV7yvUD0" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Responsive Grids, PHP Blocks, Smarter Tools: WordPress in January</a>.</p>




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<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Brandon Payton</strong> published <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2026/01/new-ai-agent-skill/">wp-playground</a>, a new AI agent skill that lets tools like Claude Code and Codex run WordPress via the Playground CLI for fast, repeatable testing. The skill auto-detects where your code belongs—mounting plugins or themes by recognizing file signatures—and reduces the &#8220;ready to test&#8221; moment from roughly a minute to a few seconds. You can install it via <code>npx openskills install WordPress/agent-skills</code>, and contributions are welcome at the new <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/agent-skills/">WordPress/agent-skills</a> repository.</p>



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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Varun Dubey</strong>&#8216;s comprehensive look at <a href="https://vapvarun.com/gutenberg-blocks-2026-wordpress-block-editor-ai-era/"><strong>Gutenberg blocks in 2026 and WordPress development in the AI era</strong></a> walks you through how the block revolution has fundamentally shifted WordPress workflows. You&#8217;ll find practical guidance on when to choose patterns over custom blocks, explore emerging AI tools like WordPress Telex and Kadence&#8217;s inline generation, and understand why block metadata makes AI integration particularly powerful. Solid reading whether you&#8217;re building blocks or simply trying to keep pace with where WordPress is heading.</p>



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<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Troy Chaplin</strong>&#8216;s <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/block-finder/">Block Finder plugin</a> gives you a dashboard metabox to quickly locate any core or custom Gutenberg block across your entire site. You can filter by post type, detect InnerBlocks nested within parent containers, and jump directly to editing posts containing specific blocks. Particularly handy if you&#8217;re managing large-scale migrations or hunting down where a particular block lives—one reviewer credited it with helping audit over 700 sites during a Classic-to-Gutenberg transition.</p>



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<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Weston Ruter</strong> released <a href="https://weston.ruter.net/2026/01/19/post-date-block-published-modified/">Post Date Block: Published &amp; Modified</a>, a plugin addressing a long-standing gap in the Date block. You can now display both publish and modified dates when they differ—with configurable prefixes, suffixes, and single-line or two-line layouts. The plugin uses the HTML Tag Processor to inject clean markup with proper microformat classes, and it&#8217;s now live on WordPress.org. Ruter positions it as a prototype until something similar lands in core, possibly via the upcoming Shortblocks feature.</p>



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<p class="wp-block-paragraph">On the <a href="https://wpbuilds.com/2026/01/15/452-exploring-folioblocks-michael-campanellas-wordpress-gallery-plugin-for-photographers/">WP Builds podcast episode 452</a>, <strong>Nathan Wrigley</strong> chats with photographer and developer <strong>Michael Campanella</strong> about <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/folioblocks/">FolioBlocks</a>, his block-based gallery plugin built from a working photographer&#8217;s perspective. You&#8217;ll hear about grid, justified, masonry, carousel, and the clever modular gallery that uses rows and stacks for visual priority. The plugin includes real-time filtering via comma-separated keywords, WooCommerce integration for selling prints, and image downloads—all with true visual parity between editor and frontend.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/folioblocks/"><img alt="" class="wp-image-44214" height="422" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/FolioBlocks.jpg?resize=652%2C422&#038;ssl=1" width="652" /></a></figure>



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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Kadim Gültekin&#8217;</strong>s <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/block-theme-color-switcher/"><strong>Block Theme Color Switcher</strong></a> lets your visitors preview every style variation your block theme offers without you creating multiple demo sites. The plugin automatically parses theme.json and the styles folder to generate a floating frontend menu where users can swap color palettes instantly—no page reload required. Selections persist via localStorage, making it particularly useful for theme developers showcasing their work or sites offering accessibility options like high-contrast modes.</p>



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<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Johanne Courtright</strong>&#8216;s tutorial on <a href="https://groundworx.dev/resources/stop-fighting-your-layouts-the-real-power-of-css-grid/">the real power of CSS Grid</a> goes well beyond basic column setups into territory useful for theme builders. You&#8217;ll learn how <code>minmax()</code> creates flexible-yet-constrained layouts, how named grid lines with <code>-start</code> and <code>-end</code> suffixes unlock implicit areas, and how <code>grid-template-areas</code> lets you draw layouts in code. The full-width breakout pattern—achieving edge-to-edge elements without negative margins—offers a cleaner alternative to the margin-based approach WordPress core currently uses for wide and full alignments.</p>



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



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Ryan Welcher</strong> released <a href="https://github.com/ryanwelcher/wordpress-interactivity-api-helper">WordPress Interactivity API Helper</a>, a VS Code extension that brings intelligent autocomplete and validation to <code>data-wp-*</code> directives. You get context-aware suggestions for state, actions, and callbacks based on detected stores in your PHP and JavaScript files, plus warnings for duplicate directives and undefined namespaces with typo suggestions. If you&#8217;re building interactive blocks and find yourself constantly referencing the documentation for directive syntax, this extension should smooth out your workflow considerably. Go to <strong>Extension &gt; Search for <code>Interactivity</code></strong> and install. </p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><a href="https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ryanwelcher.wordpress-interactivity-api-helper"><img alt="" class="wp-image-44201" height="435" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Screenshot-2026-01-30-at-17.37.50.png?resize=652%2C435&#038;ssl=1" width="652" /></a></figure>



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<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Nick Diego</strong> announced <a href="https://wordpress.com/blog/2026/01/27/wordpress-studio-1-7-0-new-studio-cli/"><strong>WordPress Studio 1.7.0 with a major CLI upgrade</strong></a> that turns the command line into a full-featured companion for local development. You can now create, start, stop, and delete local sites entirely from the terminal, plus run WP-CLI commands without installing it yourself—Studio handles all the environment configuration. Diego walks through practical examples of pairing the CLI with AI coding tools like Claude Code and Cursor, where agents can spin up sites, run diagnostics, and deploy preview sites without you touching the Studio UI.</p>



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<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>JuanMa Garrido</strong>&#8216;s <a href="https://github.com/juanmaguitar/wpsmith">WPSmith</a> brings the Laravel <code>php artisan</code> experience to WordPress, wrapping Playground&#8217;s CLI and WP-CLI into one streamlined tool. You can spin up disposable sites with <code>wpsmith new</code>, manage database snapshots via checkpoint and rollback commands, reset to fresh state, or seed test data—workflows that don&#8217;t yet exist in tool like <em><a href="https://developer.wordpress.com/docs/developer-tools/studio/cli/">Studio&#8217;s CLI</a></em>. Scaffold shortcuts like <code>forge:plugin</code> and <code>forge:block</code> round out the toolkit. It&#8217;s designed for both developers and AI agents working entirely from the terminal.You can take a glimspe on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzCrTWyKnI8"><em>how it works on YouTube</em></a>.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><a href="https://github.com/juanmaguitar/wpsmith"><img alt="" class="wp-image-44213" height="304" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/WPSmith-JuanMa-Garrido.jpg?resize=542%2C304&#038;ssl=1" width="542" /></a></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="wordpress-and-ai">WordPress and AI </h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">On his personal blog, <strong>Jonathan Bossenger</strong> shared <a href="https://jonathanbossenger.com/four-wordpress-apps-i-built-with-ai-that-i-use-every-day/">four WordPress apps he built with AI</a> that he uses daily. You&#8217;ll find </p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>WP Debug for quick access to WordPress debug logs, </li>



<li>WP SQLite for inspecting WordPress Studio databases, </li>



<li>WP Mail for capturing local emails during development, and </li>



<li>WP Shell for running PHP snippets. </li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Each scratches a specific itch without a steep learning curve—and in a fun twist, the post itself was largely AI-generated using the WP AI Client.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In his latest video &#8220;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czH6fV6z4Eg"><strong>Benchmarking AI models for WordPress development</strong></a>&#8221; , Bossenger walks you through getting started with <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/ai/2026/01/14/introducing-wp-bench-a-wordpress-ai-benchmark/">WP Bench</a>, the AI benchmarking tool for WordPress development tasks. You&#8217;ll follow along as he clones the repository, sets up the Python environment, and configures API keys. The real fun comes when he pits his MacBook against an Intel workstation, testing local and cloud models including GPT, Claude Sonnet, Qwen Coder, and Deepseek Coder to see which delivers the best performance for WordPress coding workflows.</p>


<div class="ng-block-70bd50ef70025510 wp-block-newsletterglue-container ng-block" style="color: #666666;" width="100%"><div><div><div class="ng-block-vs ng-block-vs-1" colspan="3" height="0" style="height: 0px;"></div></div><div><div class="ng-block-hs ng-block-hs-1" height="0" style="width: 0px;"></div><div align="none" class="ng-block-td" style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: 1.6; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 20px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: none; color: #666666; background-color: #f8f8f8; border-radius: 8px;"><div class="ng-block-d494010221d9e3b1 wp-block-newsletterglue-text ng-block" style="color: #666666;" width="100%"><div><div><div align="none" class="ng-block-td" style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: 1.6; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 8px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; text-align: none; color: #666666;"><p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review.</p></div></div></div></div>

<div class="ng-block-196313d6d2f88a9d wp-block-newsletterglue-image ng-block size-full is-resized" width="100%"><div><div><div align="center" class="ng-block-td" style="padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px;"><a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/?blueprint-url=https://gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/playnightly.json"><img alt="" class="wp-image-42874 ng-image" height="45" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Screenshot-2025-11-15-at-12.06.44.png?resize=196%2C45&#038;ssl=1" style="border-style: none; border-color: transparent;" width="196" /></a></div></div></div></div>

<div class="ng-block-612023cfa1c8bf21 wp-block-newsletterglue-text ng-block" style="color: #666666;" width="100%"><div><div><div align="none" class="ng-block-td" style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: 1.6; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 8px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; text-align: none; color: #666666;"><p>Now also available via <a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/?blueprint-url=https://gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/playnightly.json">WordPress Playground</a>. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">Email me </a>with your experience.</p></div></div></div></div></div><div class="ng-block-hs ng-block-hs-2" height="0" style="width: 0px;"></div></div><div><div class="ng-block-vs ng-block-vs-2" colspan="3" height="0" style="height: 0px;"></div></div></div></div>


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



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


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