Friday, I just didn’t have it in me to push out a newsletter, so I did what I needed to do, and I regrouped. I am making up the two-day delay for you, however, because number 166 is absolutely full of gems!
Hope you enjoy it!
🗞️ Within WordPress News
Here’s what I saw happening this past week:
- We’ve got a new list of things WordPress developers will want to know.
This list includes a lot of stuff that’s added to WordPress 6.7. Things like Content Only Editing, Fields package, and updated SavePost filters and much more. Go do that deep dive , you know you should 😉
- Remember how I shared that WooCommerce now allows for more complex sharable checkout URLs? Well, Borko Livic shared
his open source plugin with an entire UI for generating and managing Shareable Checkout URLs. This includes QR codes and more!
- Marco Almeida of Naked Cat Plugins released
Language Attribute for Container Blocks , a free plugin that adds a langattribute to Group, Columns, and Cover blocks. It improves accessibility by helping browsers and assistive tech detect section languages. Born from a community collaboration at WordCamp Europe, and that makes me as a co-founder of WordCamp Europe and being a polyglot happy!
- Stumbled across Blake Whittle‘s
URL Image Importer plugin. It’s a WordPress plugin that lets you import images directly from URLs into your media library without manual uploads. It supports bulk imports, automatically validates sources, and works with large files and all hosting environments. Perfect for those handling external assets or managing content migrations.
- Gutenberg 21.2 is out with
a wave of refinements : design tools for individual List items, better Pattern management and DataViews, block-level style overrides for synched blocks, and a ton of accessibility and performance improvements. A solid step toward WordPress 6.9.
- Automattic’s WordPressVIP team released
Remote Data Blocks , a plugin for pulling in remote data. Think of APIs or Google Sheets and then displaying it in customizable Gutenberg blocks. It handles fetching, caching, and rendering, letting you map data to layouts without touching code. Even works in Playground for easy testing.
- James LePage released
Trac MCP , a tool that bridges WordPress Trac with the new MCP protocol. It’s aimed at modernizing contributor workflows by enabling richer, more automated interactions with Trac data.
You should get proper excited about this considering how this is a step towards a huge improvement of being able to process all the issues.
- Sometimes it’s good to reevaluate your dependencies. This goes for real life as well as software you’re building. Case in point, WooCommerce is ditching the
frontend React dependency entirely for the mini-cart for the Interactivity API . Slated for 10.1.
So, the real question here is, have you already properly looked into the
- Jeff Starr compiled and recently updated
The Ultimate AI Block List , a massive .htaccessand firewall-ready list to block AI crawlers, scrapers, and bots from your site. A go-to resource if you want to keep LLMs and data harvesters out.
There’s over 500 in there!
- Calvin Alkan shared a Search solution for WordPress that I hadn’t come across yet. It’s called
Typesense , and it’s supposedly both really good, and a performant way to hella improve the search capabilities inside WordPress.
- Ian Svoboda released
Content Area Block , a Gutenberg block that lets developers define editable content areas within complex layouts. Perfect for locking down designs while still giving clients flexible content editing.
I was amazed to learn this was his first WordPress plugin, knowing he’s worked a ton on GenerateBlocks. Wonderful first plugin, Ian!
- Easy Digital Downloads now has
built-in EU VAT handling . No more relying on third-party extensions. EDD can automatically calculate, display, and store VAT details for compliance across EU transactions.
One has to wonder how long it takes for other ecommerce solutions for WordPress are going to follow suit.
- Elliot Richmond shares
a real-world case study on migrating legacy WordPress content to the block editor . From planning to pitfalls, it’s a practical look at what it takes to bring old content into the modern editor. I suspect a lot of you are going to find this one incredibly helpful.
- At WordCamp Europe in Basel, Vito Peleg of Atarim shared with me how they’re going to use AI inside Atarim. And this is one of those examples where it’s not “just a slap on”. This AI integration makes all the sense, and I highly recommend you
check it out .
- Human Made shared how
NASA saved two months of dev time by using their open-source Asset Manager Framework for WordPress. It streamlines media management, saves 5–10 minutes per image, and bakes in accessibility and attribution handling. A strong case for the power of open source in enterprise 🚀
- Remember the highlight about how Fabian Kaegy shared a plugin that turned the whole of WordPress Dashboard into what we’re seeing inside the Appearance menu? Well, today I can happily report that Matias Ventura has opened an issue on GitHub that’s about that same goal.
Push WordPress to a new admin design .
In other words, my friend, the future of WordPress.
- Some WordPress block developers are having issues getting their blocks to work with Block API v3, i.e., the iframe editor, due to dependencies on legacy JS libraries. Aki Hamano has provided a
small example to help you solve the problem .
- Jonathan Desrosiers explores how AI can be integrated into open‑source projects like WordPress without losing the human collaboration that drives them in
a thoughtful new post , offering his perspective on the balance between automation and people.
- Lastly, I promised Marcus Burnette I’d highlight
his boardgame full of Wapuus . You know, despite of me absolutely not loving Wapuus. Or jazz, for that matter.
🚀 Performance & Security
- Jono Alderson argues
why semantic HTML still matters , making the case that clear, meaningful markup isn’t just good for accessibility and SEO, it’s the foundation of a resilient, machine-readable web. More importantly, it’s the most performant way.
- Weston Ruter shows how to enable
instant back/forward navigations in WordPress using the browser’s bfcache. It’s a subtle but powerful UX boost, making back/forward clicks feel near-instant without extra complexity.
🔆 Within WordPress Highlight
There’s a wave of new features and APIs either already landing in browsers or on the near horizon, and they promise to meaningfully change what developers can build for the web. In some cases, these capabilities won’t just refine existing workflows but dramatically expand what’s possible, enabling experiences that were previously out of reach for browser-based applications.
To get a clearer picture of where things stand and what’s coming next, Nathan Wrigley sat down with Adam Silverstein from Google for an in-depth conversation. Their discussion dives into the evolving browser landscape, unpacking which features matter most for developers, how they can impact the WordPress ecosystem, and what opportunities these changes create for site builders.
You can listen to their full conversation on the
Some of my favorite WordPress tools:
- My two favorite forms for WordPress:
Gravity Forms and WS Form - These are the themes I use:
Ollie , Rockbase and GeneratePress - And, obviously,
Scanfully for all my Site Health & Performance monitoring
💡 Interesting Finds
- Metehan Yesilyurt discovered that ChatGPT ranks citations using
Reciprocal Rank Fusion (RRF) , a method that blends multiple search results for better relevance. It’s not new, but understanding it could give SEOs insight into how AI tools surface and prioritize content.
- Jonathan Bossenger explains how to use
NVM for managing Node.js versions with MCP . A quick, practical guide for developers working with the new WordPress MCP protocol who need to juggle multiple Node environments.
- One of the handiest Cloudflare features just got better:
Email Routing now supports subaddressing . That means you can use [email protected]for smarter filtering, tracking, and inbox management—perfect for testing, signups, and routing rules.
- Josh Comeau wrote
a friendly introduction to SVG , breaking down how it works, why it’s so powerful, and how to start using it effectively. A perfect primer for anyone ready to level up their visuals on the web.
I appeared on the WP-Tonic podcast. We talked about what really makes WordPress fast — from DNS to database design to theme and plugin choices — and why caching isn’t the magic fix most people think it is.
We also explore how AI is moving beyond “sprinkles” to become a true assistant for building, debugging, and iterating on complex WordPress projects, plus what that means for the future of plugins and development workflows.
Add in some candid thoughts on full-site editing, page builders, and the changing WordPress community, and you’ve got an episode worth your time.
That’s it for this week’s edition of Within WordPress. Thanks for reading!
Best,
Remkus
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