Hi,
This week, we saw many updates in WordPress Core with two Betas and three security releases. Your auto-update email folder got plenty of traffic if you are managing more than one website 
The next step for the security team is to backport the 6.9.4 fixes to older version for WordPress, all the way back to WordPress 4.7.. It’s a huge job and it needs to be diligently executed.
Be well and hope you can enjoy Spring or Fall colors.
Yours, 
Birgit
Developing Gutenberg and WordPress
WordPress 6.9.2, led by John Blackbourn, is a security-only release you’ll want to apply immediately. It patches ten vulnerabilities: a blind SSRF, a PoP-chain weakness in the HTML API and Block Registry, regex DoS in numeric character references, stored XSS in nav menus and via the data-wp-bind directive, an AJAX authorization bypass, a PclZip path traversal, and an XXE in the bundled getID3 library—now also patched upstream by James Heinrich.
WordPress 7.0 Beta 5 is available for testing, packing over 101 fixes since Beta 3. The headline new feature is a Command Palette shortcut in the Omnibar — logged-in editors will spot a ⌘K / Ctrl+K symbol in the admin bar, giving you instant access to navigation and customization tools from anywhere on the site. The final release remains scheduled for April 9, 2026.
Ben Dwyer recaps what’s new in Gutenberg 22.7, a feature-packed release. You’ll find a new experimental Connectors screen under Settings, letting you manage AI providers like OpenAI with extension hooks for plugins. Real-time collaboration is now enabled by default, style variation transforms show live previews, the Grid block visualizer is more responsive, and the Playlist block gains a WaveForm Player.
Maggie Cabrera and I sat down to discuss the latest Gutenberg release and the Dev notes for WordPress 7.0. It’s been a while since we chatted and it was a great conversation. As always, the episode will drop into your favorite podcast app over the weekend. Stay tuned.
Anne McCarthy has issued a call for volunteers to build the Twenty Twenty-Seven default theme, with Henrique Iamarino confirmed as lead designer. Targeting the WordPress 7.2 release in early December, the team is getting started early to allow room for iteration. If you want to contribute to development or testing, leave a comment on the post by Friday, March 27th — the community response has already been enthusiastic.
This month’s What’s New for Developers (March 2026) is your essential pre-launch briefing as WordPress 7.0 approaches RC1 on March 19. The big headline is Real-Time Collaboration, now built on HTTP polling with Yjs and CRDT data stored in post_meta. You’ll also find AI provider packages for OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic landing in the Plugin Directory, plus visual in-editor revision tracking, a new Icon block, Content-Only pattern editing by default, and phpMyAdmin support in wp-env’s Playground runtime.
Maggie Cabrera outlines what’s new with pseudo-element support for blocks and their variations in theme.json in WordPress 7.0. You can now define :hover, :focus, :focus-visible, and :active states directly on blocks and their style variations — no custom CSS needed. An “Outline” button variation, for instance, can have its own distinct hover behavior. No Global Styles UI yet; that work continues separately.
Gopal Krishnan outlines what plugin and theme developers need to know about real-time collaboration in the block editor in WordPress 7.0, powered by Yjs. Collaboration is disabled when classic meta boxes are present, so you’ll want to migrate those to registered post meta with show_in_rest. The new sync.providers filter lets you swap the default HTTP polling transport for WebSockets or WebRTC. Avoid local React state for shared data — always derive values from the WordPress data store.
The latest episode is Gutenberg Changelog #127 – WordPress 7.0 Beta and Gutenberg 22.6 with special guest Jessica Lyschik, senior developer at Greyd
Anne McCarthy shared a candid look at three Notes features for WordPress that didn’t quite make the 7.0 cut — show/hide notes on the canvas, filter options in the Notes panel, and compact notes. All built with Claude Code as part of her “Learn AI deeply” effort. She’s openly working through open questions, including whether “Open” or “Unresolved” is the clearer label, and whether a resizable sidebar should replace the compact toggle entirely. Chime in if you are interested and have an opinion.
My WordPress
Brandon Payton announced my.WordPress.net, a browser-based WordPress that requires no sign-up, no hosting, and no domain — just open it and start creating. Built on WordPress Playground, your site lives privately in your browser, persists across visits, and stays entirely yours. An App Catalog offers one-click installs for a personal CRM, RSS reader via the Friends plugin, and an AI workspace that can modify plugins on your behalf. As Alex Kirk puts it, this is WordPress democratizing digital sovereignty.
Where the official announcement focused on the product itself, Matt Mullenweg‘s WordPress Everywhere is the strategic vision behind it. He zooms out to explain what’s coming next — peer-to-peer sync, version control integration, and cloud publishing — and frames Playground containers as composable, atomic units you can roll back entirely. Mullenweg believes this shifts WordPress from millions of installs to billions, with AI making open source more powerful, not less relevant.
Sarah Perez covers WordPress’s new browser-based workspace, my.WordPress.net, for TechCrunch.
Emma Roth reported about it for The Verge: WordPress launches an in-browser website creator.
Ben Werdmuller marvels at your browser becoming your WordPress — a genuine innovation announced by Brandon Payton. Built on WordPress Playground and powered by WASM, my.WordPress.net installs a full WordPress instance directly in your browser: no sign-up, no hosting, nothing between you and a running site. Werdmuller wonders about cross-device syncing and sees broader implications — to-do lists, CRMs, source management — as a glimpse of what private, browser-based personal apps could become.
If you get a chance to try my.WordPress.net in its current early state, go in with the right expectations: this is a proof of concept, a rough but genuinely exciting experiment. The App Catalog reframes plugin discovery in a way that just feels right, and the idea of a private personal space — where outside research meets things you want to keep to yourself — is compelling. Give it a few months, more apps, and a designer’s touch.
Just before the official announcement of My WordPress, Ray Morey interviewed Adam Zieliński’ on his vision for Playground in 2026 and also recounts the history of WordPress Playground starting in 2022.
Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners
On the WooCommerce Developer Blog, Brian Coords invites you to Building Ecommerce Community: Meetups, Networks, and Real-World WooCommerce, a free 60-minute panel on March 31, 2026 (17:00–18:00 UTC). Coords brings together Amber Hinds (Equalize Digital), Mary Hubbard (WordPress Executive Director), and Raquel Manriquez (PressConf) for an honest conversation about building community, finding collaborators, and getting real value from events — whether you’re an agency, freelancer, or developer who’s never quite felt at home in a crowd.
Mike McAlister has expanded Ollie into WooCommerce territory, adding dedicated shop templates, product grid patterns, custom WooCommerce blocks, and a guided setup wizard — all built natively for full site editing. You can design and customize your store, product pages, cart, and checkout entirely inside the WordPress site editor. One user reported a 170% year-over-year sales increase after rebuilding their client’s store with Ollie.
Rae Morey, The Repository also reported on it in Ollie Moves Into Ecommerce With Full WooCommerce Support
Derek Hanson, Technical Account Manager at Automattic, shares 10 field-tested tips for building custom WordPress blocks with Telex AI, drawn from real agency work on his team. You’ll learn practical techniques like drafting prompts in Claude before opening Telex, using post-it sketches as visual references, remixing projects as version control checkpoints, and knowing when a block has outgrown the tool and needs a developer to finish it properly.
In his latest video, Wes Theron shows you how to speed up your designs with WordPress patterns. You will learn how to quickly build and customize professional WordPress layouts using block patterns. Theron shows you how to insert, modify, and create patterns to design pages effortlessly.
Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks
The Create Block Theme plugin v2.9.0 brings a handful of focused improvements to your theme-building workflow.
- fixed localization for Cover block background images and the Read More block’s content attribute.
- added basic end-to-end tests and an AGENTS.md file,
- polished the sidebar with a Card component,
- consolidated redundant APIs,
- migrated to husky v9, and bumped the minimum WordPress requirement to 6.8.
Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.
In this week’s livestream, Ryan Welcher and Troy Chaplin teamed up on this episode of Talk Devy To Me to walk you through “Veils of Fate,” a fully functional Choose Your Own Adventure game Chaplin built entirely with the WordPress Interactivity API. You’ll see how he delivers instant feedback and seamless state changes across game choices — no page reloads, no JavaScript framework. A creative, boundary-pushing demonstration of what the Interactivity API can do beyond typical block development use cases.
Wojtek Naruniec writes about two new debugging tools now available in WordPress Studio: Xdebug support and a debug log toggle. Xdebug lets you set breakpoints and step through code line-by-line from your editor on port 9003, no system-level installation is needed. The debug log toggle sets WP_DEBUG and WP_DEBUG_LOG automatically and adds a direct “Open log file” link in Settings. A bonus tip: point your AI agent (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex) at wp-content/debug.log to interpret errors hands-free.
AI and WordPress
Jeffrey Paul recaps what’s new in AI Experiments 0.4.0 for the WordPress AI Team. This release, shaped by 14 contributors, introduces prompt-based image generation in the editor and Media Library, along with a Generate Review Notes experiment for accessibility, readability, grammar, and SEO suggestions.
In another post, Paul outlines what’s new in AI Experiments 0.5.0, a focused release aligning with WordPress 7.0. It removes AI client dependencies, using the WP AI Client in core instead, while previous credentials migrate to a new Connectors screen. The plugin is available in the repository.
Ray Morey reported on both releases for The Repository: AI Experiments Plugin Gets Two Updates in a Week, With WordPress 7.0 Now the Focus
Elliott Richmond put wordpress-agent-skills repo and Automattic’s Claude Cowork plugin through its paces and came away impressed. Describe your site, pick from three AI-generated design directions, and a complete block theme — theme.json, templates, patterns, the lot — deploys straight to WordPress Studio in minutes. The generated code follows solid conventions and is yours to iterate on. Setup requires MCP configuration and Studio CLI, so developers will find it straightforward; everyone else faces a steeper climb. Token usage on Opus is substantial.
Questions? Suggestions? Ideas?
Don’t hesitate to send them via email or
send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph.
For questions to be answered on the Gutenberg Changelog,
send them to changelog@gutenbergtimes.com
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