Etch is Here, Is WP still relevant in 2026, Query Filter, GB Query Enhancements & Much More

It’s been a good week. But what’s scary is that with the end of this week, we’ve also ended January. And I gotta say… it’s going too fast for me!

I mean, not to the point that it’s going so fast that I couldn’t find any news for this week’s newsletter, but you get it, right?

Anyway, hope you enjoy this week’s edition. We’ve got a lot of cover!

🗞️ Within WordPress News

Here’s what I saw happening this past week:

• WordPress 6.9.1 RC1 is now available, which means you’ll need to test and prep your < 6.9 sites!

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• Mary Hubbard shared the goals for 2026 on the Make WordPress blog. The TL;DR is three annual releases starting with 7.0 at WordCamp Asia, advancing real-time co-editing into Phase 3, integrating client-side media processing, and rolling out fresh blocks like Tabs and Icons for sharper site building.

• Etch, the fresh approach to what a page builder in WordPress should look like, finally launched its v1. If you haven’t looked at it yet, you really should. It does everything super solid, syncs back to the block editor (natively), has responsive controls, and a bunch of “developer dream” features.

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• It appears Troy Chaplin must make an appearance again this week! It’s because of two things.
  1. An update to his Block Finder plugin. Does what it says on the tin. It finds blocks in use in your WordPress site.
  2. An upcoming plugin that modernizes the way your site looks in maintenance mode when using Block Themes.

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• Jean Galea, of WP Mayor fame, did a deep dive into how relevant WordPress still is compared to all the other options out there. All triggered by his 7-year-old son wanting to build a website.

Really enjoyed Jean’s article. It’s an excellent read.

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• Friend of Within WordPress Ian Svoboda released a new plugin GB Query Enhancements, and it’s available in its v1 release! Term Queries, User Queries, meta queries for posts, and more!

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• Do you know who else is being featured again? Yup, Jonathan Bossenger. He published a blog post about 4 WordPress apps he’s built with AI and uses daily.

I mean, if that doesn’t inspire you to build stuff for yourself, I don’t know what does ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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• Nick Diego shared that WordPress Studio 1.7.0 is here with a major CLI upgrade. It’s making Studio a lot more versatile and complete on the command line.

Can we please have more like this?

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• Nick Hamze has released a tool called Noggin. It’s a note-taking app inside WordPress. Will this be your next Second Brain? I’m sticking with Obsidian, but I like what Nick’s built.

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• Human Made is organizing WP:26, a free online event on March 12th diving into WordPress’s future with Mary Hubbard and pros from Pantheon, Yoast, and more tackling AI agents, hybrid CMS, and orchestration vibes for forward-thinking teams.

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• One of my favorite tools inside of WordPress, Omnisend, went through twenty-six billion seven hundred fifty-nine million one hundred eighty-one thousand eight hundred seventy-two emails to share with us email fun facts, a year in review 2025.

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• Riad Bengualla shared how wp-env now supports WordPress Playground as an experimental runtime. Spin up a local WordPress environment in seconds, no containers required with this command: npx @wordpress/env start –runtime=playground

Somewhat related: The WordPress ENV package now supports SPX (Simple Profiling eXtension). You can get lightweight PHP profiling now with a built-in web UI, making it much easier to analyze and optimize performance during development.

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• Johanna Courtright wonders if you’re tired of filter plugins that fight WordPress. Because if you are, her Query Filters plugin works with Query Loop. No proprietary systems. No page reloads. Just blocks.

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🤖 WordPress & AI

• There is a new AI Agent Skill for WordPress for Playground. This skill starts WordPress and detects where the current code should live inside a WordPress install.

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• All WordPress Skills live in this new repo, btw.

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• I’m sure you’ve seen ClawdBot MoltBot OpenClaw blow up on the socials this past week. If you have no clue how you can use this in the context of WordPress, have a read through this thread and the replies. So many examples there worth giving your own twist on.

BTW, don’t go buy a Mac Mini to run this. Just host it on Cloudflare.

🚀 Performance & Security

PatchStack published their research on vulnerability hacks. It’s called “The Myth of Secure Hosting – Only 26% of Vulnerability Attacks Blocked By Hosts” … and that title should trigger the hell outta you.

🔆 Within WordPress Highlight

This may look like an odd Within WordPress highlight, but I think it deserves to be one. The Developer Blog for Chrome published this post: Let your Coding Agent debug your browser session with Chrome DevTools MCP. And the ways you can use this building WordPress sites are in-fi-nite.

Interesting Finds

If you give ChatGPT the same request for product recommendations 100X, will you ever get the same list twice? And what does that answer mean for folks who try to track their brand presence in AI tools? Rand Fishkin has the answer because he did the research.

Chrome 144 is rolling out with major updates for developers. From the modern Temporal API to the declarative <geolocation> element and ::search-text styling, the 144 release is packed with tools to improve user experience.

Lily Ray, a well-known SEO specialist, shared a reflection about the SEO & AI search industry in 2025, and where she sees things heading in 2026.

For my fellow Obsidian users, there’s now an Obsidian Skills repo for Claude.

🛒 WooCommerce News

• A reminder that WooCommerce 10.5 is scheduled to be released this coming week. Learn more about the upcoming release for developers, including a number of exciting improvements, performance updates, and developer advisories ahead of the 10.5 release.
• Clifton Griffin released a new plugin for WooCommerce that allows you to collect and manage reviews. Looks very promising. It’s called ReviewBird.
• The folks at WooCommerce published an in-depth conversation answering your questions about WooCommerce. Featuring Beau Lebens, Artistic Director and Lead at Woo, and James Kemp, Core Product Manager at Woo. Hosted by Do The Woo / Katie Keith.

That’s it for this week’s edition of Within WordPress. Thanks for reading!

Best, Remkus

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