WP.org AI Team, Huge Etch Update, Greyd Collab & Performance Tips

If you’re serious about building better WordPress sites, this is the newsletter for you.

It’s been a big week, hasn’t it? One of the most pivotal things that could be introduced for WordPress has been introduced. You can read all about it below, but there was more happening this week. I announced me partnering up with my friends from Greyd out of München, Germany. Read my blog post about what I’m going to do there. Super excited about this!

I’m preparing for a week full of connecting with friends, new and old, at WordCamp Europe. I’ll be driving with my son Roan to Basel, Switzerland, to what will be our 4th WordCamp Europe roadtrip. Come say hi if you see me!

Lots to cover for the 160th newsletter, I hope you enjoy it!

🗞️ Within WordPress News

Here’s what I saw happening this past week:

  • Let’s start with what, I think, is the most important thing that happened this week, heck, all of this year’s week? I think so. WordPress.org introduced a Make WordPress AI team. With James LePage and Felix Arntz leading the team, I could not be more excited about this team.

Scroll down to find the podcast recording I did with James LePage where we talk about the impact potential of this team.



  • I love when people list their favorite WordPress tools. There’s always a ton to learn about their favorites. Sure, there’s always overlap, but I find gems every single time. Just like I did when EZ Smith shared his list, and I scoured through the comments.

  • And similar to how I like WordPress favorites being shared, I love it as well when deep dives for case studies are being shared. This time around, 10up. They share how they built a custom AI integration for Penske Media, enabling editorial teams to generate headlines, summaries, and SEO metadata directly in WordPress.

It is a smart example of AI woven into real-world publishing workflows.


A useful guide for anyone extending modern WooCommerce. And he follows it up with another good one in this context:

Sliiightly related, I’m happy to see Automattic returning to WordPress Core development.


(Shout-out to my Scanfully Barry Kooij for being part of this team as well!)


If you’re doing block development, this is a good one to read. It’s written a year ago, but still incredibly useful.


Also, good to check out if you’re curious about how far the editor has come.


  • Rodrigo Donini announced a tool he developed to showcase WordPress profiles (from your official WordPress profile) on any WordPress site, and it’s called CardPress. It turns your public WordPress profile into a beautifully designed shareable card that highlights your avatar, name, badges, and contributions.

Neat-o.



  • You want to use custom block styles in your WordPress Block Theme, but don’t know how to define them without writing some PHP or JavaScript code? Then read Bernhard Kau‘s latest blog post to learn how to do it with only one JSON file.

  • WordPress Sites cost up to 44% less than proprietary CMS Platforms. WP Engine’s latest report shows this. Strong data to back what many in the WordPress space already know.

  • Filter, the WordPress agency that also bring you PersonalizeWP, introduced another great WordPress plugin called Filter AI. It brings the power of AI to WordPress, streamlining content creation and enhancing your editorial workflow. Check out its beta!

🚀 Performance & Security

  • In this issue of Tidbits, Brian Jackson (of Perfmatters fame) talks about how they saw a ~29% decrease in image sizes moving from WebP to AVIF in his latest newsletter.

  • Kinsta’s PHP Performance add-on is now available to everyone, with new API controls to fine-tune CDN, edge caching, and PHP behavior. More power, more flexibility for performance-focused sites.

  • Improve the navigation of grid & flex layouts with the reading-flow & reading-order properties, plus use the CSS if() function for concise conditional values. You guessed it, Chrome 137 is here!


Some of my favorite WordPress tools:

🔆 Within WordPress Highlight

Kevin Geary showed a bit more of what’s coming to Etch, and wow, once Etch hits its stride, other page builders are going to have to seriously step up.

Its seamless blend with the block editor means you can whip up native experiences fast, letting clients tweak content directly without a chance of there being issues.

Auto block authoring is a standout feature you can’t afford to ignore. Check it out:

💡 Interesting Finds



  • Dave Foy points out a great tip for layout control: if using flex with row-gap gives you uneven vertical spacing because of extra space around text, the new text-box-trim property in CSS fixes it. A total game changer for clean, consistent typography.

  • In the context of understanding SEO and AI, this is a must-read article. Mike King explains how AI mode works in search engines, breaking down how LLMs, embeddings, and retrieval-augmented generation are changing search. Seriously… you have to read this if you want to understand the future of SEO.



🎁 Bonus

🎙️ In this week‘s Within WordPress podcast, as mentioned above, I had James LePage as a guest. We talked a lot about AI in the context of James’ Head of AI role at Automattic. But more importantly, we talked a lot about what we can expect from the Make WordPress AI team. Because this team will be pivotal, as it’s certainly not limited to WordPress Core. In fact, that’s just a small fraction given the bigger picture.

Anyway, do check this one out. So much to unpack in this one, and you’ll want to know all of it.

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

Best, Remkus

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