Yesterday I gave a talk at WordCamp Lithuania about how to be taken seriously in WordPress. My angle was from a content creator, but if you think about it, we’ll are content creators in some way with our comments, reactions, and blog posts, aren’t we? Anyway, I blogged about it as well. This weekend I’ll be at WordCamp Gdynia talking about why caching isn’t solving performance problems. For those wondering, yes, I drove there as well. Roadtrips FTW!
So, yes, it’s been a good week so far. And, lots of stuff to share as well.
Hope you enjoy it!
🗞️ Within WordPress News
Here’s what I saw happening this past week:
- I know this one should go into the WordPress & AI section below, but it’s too good of a tutorial for you to miss. My friend Mark Westguard published this most excellent guide on How to Create an MCP Server in WordPress with the Abilities API and MCP Adapter.
Absolutely wonderful.
- Friend Ronald Huereca did a major rewrite of his popular PSR-4 article on WordPress plugins. If you’re curious how to set up a plugin using PSR-4, Ron’s your man!
- Corey Maass told me that if I (and probably also you) ever wished you had a crystal ball to see your publishing schedule at a glance? His Post Calendar plugin delivers exactly that!
- An article that created a lot of buzz this the past week was Nick Hamze‘s “Why WordPress Lost the Cool Kids (And How to Win Them Back)“. A quote that stood out to me is this one: “WordPress doesn’t need to become a different platform. It just needs to become a better storyteller about the platform it already is.”
Matt Mullenweg posted about it on X as well, and the comments and quotes are worth checking out.
- Underscores is no more.
- Mike McAlister offered this as a response to Matt Mullenweg sharing Nick Hamze‘s article:
to which Matt replied:
This so sorely needed. That, and proper marketing added to the mix. A man can dream, can’t he?
- 📺 Jamie Marsland published a complete beginners guide WordPress + Cursor.
- Another one from Nick Hamze you should check out is his 20 Blocks made with Telex. More on what Telex is and what you can do with that right below!
🤖 WordPress & AI
- Telex. If you’ve not heard about it just yet, get ready to have your mind blown. The best way to understand what Telex does is to read this article by Nick Diego on WordPress.com. Also, Matt’s blog post is worth a read. And, while you’re at it, read Marko Ivanovic’s post as well about how Telex is to be used by designers.
But rest assured, this is a game-changer of the highest magnitude.
- This article on WPVIP is written like it’s only relevant for Enterprise marketers, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. You, too, will want to know how MCP Connects AI to the CMS and Beyond.
- Jonathan Bossenger shared his lesson script/tutorial blog prompts, so if that’s your jazz, go check ‘m out and use them as you see fit.
🚀 Performance & Security
- Chrome’s DevTools recently announced a public preview of Chrome DevTools MCP. If you find yourself regularly looking at DevTools, you’ll want to check it out. Here are the key features:
- Reliable automation: It can programmatically handle clicks, form fills, dialogs, and page navigation with ease.
- Performance insights: Go beyond simple audits. Instruct your agent to record a performance trace and extract actionable insights to optimize your web apps.
- Advanced debugging: Empower your AI to analyze network requests, list console messages, take screenshots, and even evaluate scripts in the browser context.
- Browser emulation: Easily test different conditions by emulating CPU slowdowns, network throttling, or various screen sizes.
🔆 Within WordPress Highlight
Jono Alderson is on a flippin’ roll! He’s built a deliberately impolite wrapper on top of Lighthouse, that calls out your organizational cruft, blockers & bad decisions. It’s called Impolighthouse, and it doesn’t just tell you just “how fast is my site?”, but “why is it slow, and what does that say about our org?”.
💡 Interesting Finds
- Over on web.dev, a bunch of CSS courses have been refreshed and updated with the latest and greatest available to us now. Things like container queries and grids to anchor positioning, and view transitions. So go and sharpen your web styling expertise!
- Cloudflare just introduced a new Email Service, extending its mission of making the internet faster and safer. The service provides routing, security, and reliability for email, applying the same infrastructure Cloudflare uses for DNS and web traffic to one of the web’s oldest protocols. Details are in the Cloudflare announcement.
🛒 WooCommerce News
- WooCommerce 10.2.1 has been released! This marks the first stable release of the 10.2 cycle with essential fixes for WordPress 6.9 compatibility, AMP plugin conflicts, RTL price display, and update script handling of refunded orders.
That said, who in their right minds still uses AMP?!
- If you want to test out the upcoming shipping and order fulfillments feature in WooCommerce? You can!
That’s it for this week’s edition of Within WordPress. Thanks for reading!
Best, Remkus
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