You’d think that summer holidays being upon us would mean there’s not much to share, but hey, here we are with a full edition of Within WordPress!
My week has been super productive, more on that next week. Oh, btw, it appears the link to Greyd in last week’s edition misfired, but this time I made sure it’s working:
Let me know if you’ve enjoyed this episode.
🗞️ Within WordPress News
Here’s what I saw happening this past week:
- I’m sure this isn’t new for the most of you, but WordPress 6.8.2 is out with
fixes for 20 Core tickets and 15 Block Editor issues . A tidy maintenance release that smooths out edge cases across Core and the editor.
- I did not think we were going to see another WordPress version this year, but I’m happy to see otherwise. You see, WordPress 6.9 is on the horizon, and
the planning proposal is now live . Feature freeze is set for 11th of November and with the release targeted for the 2nd of December.
Volunteers are needed across roles, if you’ve been wanting to contribute, now’s the time to jump in.
- According to new research by Fueled (formerly 10up),
Google’s Site Kit is the most trusted analytics plugin for WordPress . It leads in trust, ease of use, and likelihood of recommendation. And with that, outpacing both MonsterInsights and ExactMetrics.
Personally, I see the desire for Google Analytics declining for my clients, and I’m using
- BTW, did you know Danny van Kooten, the creator of Koko Analytics has
a Pro version as well now? And you can self-host it.
- Here’s a plugin I’ve already mentioned in two podcast episodes I’ve been on this week:
Hide AI by Andrew Hoyer. It hides all those AI “enrichments” we see in our WordPress dashboards all over. Those integrations of AI that are just added for the sake of having added something AI to the WordPress dashboard. More from Andrew here on X about the launch and reason.
NGL, I like this plugin more than I should.
- Here’s a different way to hide stuff in your WordPress Dashboard: hide it with a Chrome Extension. Davy Grey, your friendly web guy, has released exactly that for all those nasty nagging notices. It’s called
Nag Me Not !
- Speaking of Dave, he asked a great question on X this week, and Torsten Landsiedel shared a super useful tool as the answer. So, if you need to sync a live WooCommerce site with a dev build—orders, customers, subs, and all?
Safety Net by Automattic Special Projects does exactly that. It lets you clone a WooCommerce store and re-sync changes since a set date. Perfect for staging workflows.
- Delicious Brains shared this article about a very common problem to solve for single installations inside a WordPress Multisite environment:
Splitting a WordPress Multisite: Migrating a Subsite to its Own Single Installation .
- Speaking of Automattic Special Projects, be sure to check out
their GitHub repo because there are quite some gems in there.
- The deep dive on WooCommerce 10.0 (which was released on the 14th of this month) is live on the developer blog, and it goes hard.
This release post breaks down everything from major frontend accessibility improvements to shareable checkout URLs, enhanced coupons, and a smarter product importer. If you build with Woo, this one’s worth your time.
All the good stuff I’ve talked about before in previous newsletters.
- There’s a new proposal to
add PHPStan to the WordPress core development workflow . The idea: catch more bugs earlier with static analysis, improve code quality, and reduce back-and-forth in reviews. A welcome step toward modernizing the workflow.
Uhm, yes, please!! Not sure
- Jonny Harris shared that WordPress 6.8.2 is out—and it finally closes a 15-year-old ticket. 🎉
wp_get_attachment_image_attributes()now includesheightandwidthby default, making it easier to customize image tags, tweak sizes, and swap URLs.Long-awaited fix , finally landed.
- As Mike McAlister is building out new templates and patterns for Ollie Pro, including “Coming Soon” solutions, he was annoyed by going through a lot of redundant work. When
he presented his solution this week with a short video , it was received so well that multiple folks are now working on getting this into Core. Check out Mike’s solution for bulk edits in the Block Editor.
- That a mega cool title for a blog post:
Making 7 Million eCommerce Websites More Accessible . It takes aobut how Equalize Digital helped WooCommerce doing exactly that. Very good read.
- Your WooCommerce clients will love Omnisend. Omnisend is trusted by 125,000+ brands who love using it for email & SMS marketing.
Sign up now .
Rodolfo Melogli sharded something way cool: WooCommerce devs finally have a space to connect in person: Checkout Summit is a two-day event for those who build with Woo every day. Developers, contributors, product makers, and agencies. No marketing fluff, just real conversations about blocks, HPOS, performance, and the wishlist features no one’s building yet. It’s about shaping the future of WooCommerce, together.
🔆 Within WordPress Highlight
The WordPress AI team just published
Think: reusable UI patterns, API architecture, permission controls, model transparency, and clear opt-ins. This is about more than just integrating AI, it’s about defining how AI should behave in open-source tools.
A must-read if you care about shaping WordPress’s AI future thoughtfully. And while you’re at it,
💡 Interesting Finds
- Harry Roberts shares
what it means now that Core Web Vitals are coming to Safari . With OSX and iOS joining the party, performance metrics like LCP, FID, and CLS matter more than ever across all major browsers. A timely workshop for developers focused on Safari.
- Chapter 4 of the
NASA Systems Engineering Handbook reads like a hidden gem for AI prompting. It lays out how to structure goals, break down problems, and communicate with agents. It’s basically a masterclass in working with coding copilots, without ever mentioning AI.
- Metr ran a randomized controlled trial to see how much AI coding tools speed up experienced open-source developers. The results surprised them: Developers thought they were 20% faster with AI tools, but they were actually 19% slower when they had access to AI than
when they didn’t .
- This deserves more love: you can get the real-time location of the ISS using nothing but DNS. No API keys, no HTTP requests, just a TXT lookup. A clever, low-tech trick with high-geek appeal.
Here’s how it works .
- Vincent Warmerdam shows how to
turn SVGs into GIFs with nothing but a text editor . It’s weirdly delightful, super hacky, and a fun reminder of how far you can stretch open standards when you get creative.
- Ben Dicken dives into
why caching is harder than it looks , breaking down the core challenges like cache invalidation, stale reads, and race conditions. A sharp, example-rich post that goes beyond “just add Redis” thinking.
That’s it for this week’s edition of Within WordPress. Thanks for reading!
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