Woo 10.0 is wooing us hard, CERN on WP + Play w/ New WordPress Dashboard design

It’s a big one again. For me, the most important thing to share is that I’m gearing up to prelaunch my first WordPress related course. It’s called “Make WordPress Fast, and it will help you make WordPress, you know, fast in 25 modules. Covering every single layer you can possibly imagine. Not just images and assets 😉. You can already sign up to be notified when I prelaunch it. Just check out the Courses overview. It’ll also show what other courses I’ve got lined up.

Plenty of other topics to discuss as well this week, so let me just let you dive in straight away.

Hope you enjoy it!

🗞️ Within WordPress News

Here’s what I saw happening this past week:

• Here’s something super cool. WordPress is now powering websites at CERN. In a big move away from Drupal, the organization is adopting it as their official CMS, giving site owners a faster, more accessible way to publish content. Here’s how the rollout is happening.

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• Etch, the WordPress Page Builder that made me change my mind on page builders, is gearing up nicely over the last couple of weeks. Kevin Geary recently did a YouTube video on where they are now in building it out. Prepare to be amazed. I know I am.

James Welbes wrote about his experience building a site with Etch vs Divi, btw.

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• The WordPress AI team has published their AI Chat, and it gives you great insight into what the team sees as the next steps.

I highly recommend you listen to my podcast with James LePage where he explains how the WordPress Project is going to approach all things AI.

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• I enjoyed listening to Matt Medeiros and Nathan Wrigley dive into how AI is reshaping WordPress development, from speeding up prototyping to challenging traditional roles and business models. They also explore the shift toward video-first content, ethical concerns around AI, and why embracing change is now a survival skill for WordPress professionals.

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• Jono Alderson delivers a scathing critique in “JavaScript broke the web (and called it progress)”. He argues that the modern web has become bloated and fragile, prioritizing developer experience over user needs. A must-read for anyone concerned about the direction of web development.

While you’re there, btw, check out Jono’s The long-term cost of short-term platforms and Everything is now opaque articles as well.

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• Jeff Starr breaks down how to redirect URLs based on query strings using .htaccess. Whether you’re handling UTM cleanup or custom parameters, this guide shows you how to do it cleanly with mod_rewrite. Super handy for SEO and server-level routing.

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• Switch to better email & SMS marketing in WordPress with Omnisend. Get the top-rated email marketing platform to convert & keep more customers. Get started today!

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• Shared this before recently, but Austin Ginder‘s command line utilities library is worth mentioning again. And this time, I’ll include a better direct link: https://github.com/CaptainCore/do

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• Brian Coords shared a very nice utility plugin on the socials. It’s called MRW Post Cleanup Utilities. Great find, Brian, thanks for sharing!

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• I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for WordPress’ Dashboard to finally fully embrace the new dashboard design we’re seeing inside the Site Editor. Fabian Kaegy got even more impatient than I, and went ahead and created a library on GitHub, that when installed as a plugin, transforms your entire WordPress Dashboard to look like this new dashboard design.

Man, this looks so smart.

🛒 WooCommerce News

• The upcoming version 10.0 of WooCommerce, when used with a core WordPress or accessibility-ready theme, is fully conformant with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 level AA and substantially conformant with level AAA.

This is amazing news. And that’s not even all that 10.0 delivers. On top of being fully accessible, Woo is getting shareable checkout URLs, a better CSV importer, and long-standing coupon improvements.

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• Big upgrade for Woo devs: WooCommerce just made their developer docs way more AI-friendly, with features like Cursor Rules, LLMS.txt, and copy-to-Markdown. Built for smoother workflows with tools like ChatGPT and Cursor.

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• You may have missed this one, but WooCommerce introduced a modernized version of their email templates in 9.7. It’s hella nicer now, but you can tweak it a lot more as well now. Be sure to tell your clients!

🚀 Performance & Security

• CSS uses a complex algorithm to decide how to animate transforms. If you get it wrong, as many folks do, you end up with an unnatural animation. Here’s how it works, and how to avoid the pitfalls.

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• Some seriously nice improvements just landed in Perfmatters. The latest release adds support for Cloudflare Early Hints (BETA) to speed up LCP, a new WP-CLI import-settings command, enable/disable subcommands with live option toggles, and tighter JS delay controls—including quick exclusions for SureCart and better handling of WooCommerce and Gravity Forms. Plus, a ton of cleanup under the hood.

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• Felix Arntz teased us with an upcoming update for the View Transitions plugin he’s built: View Transitions for WP Admin! This kicked off at WCEU Contributor Day and brought to life by Mukesh Panchal, this update will bring smooth, SPA-like transitions to the WordPress dashboard—without the overhead of a full single-page app.

Seriously. If you haven’t installed this on your machine yet, go take a look at my site and click through the menu and on any additional internal link. Or just peruse through the blog. You’ll quickly see how fast and wonderfully the page refreshes to the next URL.

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• Heads-up for anyone still on older WordPress sites: security updates for versions 4.1 through 4.6 will end in July 2025. These versions now account for well under 1% of installs, and backporting fixes has become too costly. Sites on 4.6 or earlier will soon display a non-dismissible admin notice urging an upgrade. If you’re still running one of these, it’s time to move forward.

🔆 Within WordPress Highlight

There was an ongoing discussion in the WordPress Playground project about enabling networking by default. Currently, networking is disabled by default to improve performance, but this can lead to unexpected behavior for users who expect networking to work out of the box.

The proposal suggests enabling networking by default and allowing users to disable it if needed, aiming to enhance user experience. However, concerns have been raised about potential performance impacts, such as increased loading times for /wp-admin and other screens.

All this to say, this a very handy incoming improvement of WordPress Playground 😍

💡 Interesting Finds

• Nataliya Kosmyna et al. explore in Your Brain on ChatGPT how relying on LLMs like ChatGPT for essay writing affects cognitive engagement. Their EEG-based study shows that LLM users exhibit reduced brain connectivity, weaker memory recall, and less ownership of their writing compared to those who use only their own thinking or traditional search.

I think you all should read this. Because these findings suggest that over time, habitual LLM use may erode deeper cognitive skills, even while offering convenience. Can’t say it comes as a surprise, but yeah…

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• This deserves more love. Tyler Cipriani highlights Git Notes, a forgotten Git feature that lets you attach metadata to commits without rewriting history. Clean, powerful, and totally underused.

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• Run a Linux virtual machine in your browser, no server needed.

🎁 Bonus

🎙️ The next Within WordPress podcast features Mark Westguard from the most excellent WS Form plugin. One of my favorite plugins. Check out our fun conversation and hear Mark and I talk about what WS Form does, as well as some other topics.

Why WS Form Stands Out: A Conversation with Founder Mark Westguard

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

Best, Remkus