This Week in WordPress #370

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 23rd March 2026

Another week, and we’re bringing you the latest WordPress news from the last seven days.

Sadly, there’s no “This Week in WordPress” show for this week, as I’ve some medical ‘fun’ that I’m dealing with!

Also, just to add that I’m going to attending WordCamp Asia in India, then doing some travel over the next few weeks, so this email and the live show will not be returning until the 27th April 2026. Sorry about that!

If you’re in Mumbai for the WCAsia event, I hope that our paths cross. I will be wearing a cap and am uglier than most other folk!

WordPress Core

gutenbergtimes.com

WordPress 7.0 lands April 9 with real-time collaboration, built-in AI connectors, visual revisions, new blocks, and a refreshed admin. Your complete guide to every change

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wordpress.org

The second Release Candidate (“RC2”) for WordPress 7.0 is ready for download and testing…


WP Builds Deals Page

make.wordpress.org

Content Guidelines is now available as a Gutenberg experiment – a single place in WordPress to define the content standards that shape how your site’s content is written, edited, and managed…

make.wordpress.org

The WordPress 6.9.2 release on March 10th wasn’t the smoothest, so some members of the Security Team did an internal retrospective to identify how the project can continue to improve release processes, with the aim of ensuring that users continue to have trust in minor releases…

www.therepository.email

WordPress 7.0 RC1 shipped on March 24 with a new fix for real-time performance issues and two new features – but not before core committers questioned whether the release was ready to ship

make.wordpress.org

It’s nice that plugins can hook into the left nav wherever they want, but there’s no hierarchy and things can get pretty mixed up. Perhaps we have all the core WP stuff first, then at the end we have plugins, and below Plugins…

make.wordpress.org

Gutenberg 22.8 has been released and is available for download with these new features…

make.wordpress.org

As of WordPress 7.0, any block attribute that supports Block Bindings also supports Pattern Overrides. So now, you can use Pattern Overrides for any block you want…

make.wordpress.org

WordPress 7.0 expands contentOnly editing to unsynced patterns and template parts. The key behavioural change is that unsynced patterns and template parts inserted into the editor now default to contentOnly mode…

make.wordpress.org

As of WordPress 6.9, you can hide any block entirely with blockVisibility: false in block metadata. In WordPress 7.0, viewport-based visibility rules give your users the power to show or hide blocks per device type…

make.wordpress.org

WordPress 7.0 expands the Dimensions block supports system with three significant improvements: width and height are now available as standard block supports under dimensions, and themes can now define dimension size presets to give users a consistent set of size options across their site…

make.wordpress.org

WordPress 7.0 introduces the ability to add custom CSS directly to individual block instances from within the post and site editors. This closes a long-standing gap in the block styling system…

make.wordpress.org

WordPress 7.0 introduces the Connectors API – a new framework for registering and managing connections to external services. The initial focus is on AI providers, giving WordPress a standardized way to handle API key management, provider discovery, and admin UI for configuring AI services…

www.godaddy.com

WordPress 7.0 brings real-time collaboration, visual revisions, native breadcrumbs, AI client infrastructure, and admin view transitions

Community

wpbiz.dev

The 20i 2026 survey shows web designers earning well but under AI pressure. In the WordPress world, lower pay tells only half the story – open source mission makes up the rest

forums.classicpress.net

We’re delighted to announce the release of ClassicPress 2.7.0! This version introduces two new features and two significant improvements, as well as many other smaller fixes…

Plugins / Themes / Blocks / Code

wordpress.org

When WP Engine acquired WPackagist on March 12, the WordPress developer community faced a familiar question: what happens when critical open source infrastructure ends up under corporate control…

wordpress.org

Missing or weak alt text hurts SEO rankings and can create accessibility gaps. Scan and fix your entire media library in minutes with the help of AI

wordpress.tv

The debut of the “full site editor” in WordPress 5.8 has led to rapid iteration on theme development options and best practices over the last four years…

wordpress.tv

This session begins with three separate case studies – from Bill Erickson, Ellen Bauer, and Beth Soderberg – to help you prepare themes for Gutenberg and concludes in a tremendous panel discussion…

twentig.com

Twentig One is a free, powerful WordPress block theme. Create stunning websites with Full Site Editing. Starter sites included

www.webtng.com

Mosaic is a new WordPress page builder from Nextend Web – the team behind Smart Slider 3 and several other WordPress plugins…

A.I.

techcrunch.com

New AI agents on WordPress.com could lower barriers to publishing while increasing machine-generated content across the web

www.therepository.email

After months of testing, Elementor has launched Angie, its agentic AI plugin for WordPress, letting users build custom widgets, snippets, and apps from plain-language prompts

pento.net

A week ago, I put together a quick tech demo, showing how an MCP server could be created for Claude Code that hooked directly into Gutenberg’s Collaborative Editing feature…

make.wordpress.org

The WordPress AI Team is excited to invite the community to test a growing collection of community-built AI connector plugins…

www.therepository.email

WordPress’s market share is slipping, the ‘None’ category just moved for the first time, and developers are having the most fun they’ve had building websites in years

make.wordpress.org

If you use AI-powered development tools like Claude, Cursor, or VS Code with AI capabilities, you can now connect them directly to the WordPress.org Plugin Directory…

make.wordpress.org

AI Experiments 0.6.0 adds image editing and refinement workflows, enabling iterative updates to generated images and editing within the Media Library, alongside improvements to how AI features are organized and surfaced

therealjasoncoleman.com

I have an AI agent that lives on an old gaming PC in my basement. His name is Flint. He runs 24/7. He has memory. He has opinions. He writes code, publishes blog posts, reviews pull requests, monitors servers, and sometimes tells me when I’m about to do something dumb

make.wordpress.org

WordPress 7.0 includes a built-in AI Client – a provider-agnostic PHP API that lets plugins send prompts to AI models and receive results through a consistent interface…

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Deals

wpbuilds.com
It’s like Black Friday, but 365 days of the year…

Events

asia.wordcamp.org

Contributor Day at WordCamp Asia 2026 brings people together to learn, collaborate, and give back to WordPress. Alongside the traditional Contributor Day experience…

asia.wordcamp.org

We’re not wrapping up quietly. We’re going out with a bang. Saturday, 11 April – 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm…

europe.wordcamp.org

Make Your Mark at WCEU. Submit your side event! Have an idea that could bring people together during WCEU? This is your chance to make it happen…

europe.wordcamp.org

Welcome to WordCamp Europe Insights, our podcast series taking you behind the scenes of Europe’s largest WordPress event. Each episode covers a different aspect of WordCamp Europe…

us.wordcamp.org

Organizers are the magicians behind the scenes who make WordCamp US happen – and we need you! If you are passionate about WordPress, WordCamps, or events, help us make WCUS 2026 a success. Who can …

WP Builds

wpbuilds.com

In this episode, Nathan Wrigley and Jamie Marsland debate the impacts of AI on WordPress and broader society – spoiler alert: Nathan wins!! ;-)…

Not WordPress, but useful anyway…

www.bbc.co.uk

A woman has been awarded $6m in a verdict that could have implications for hundreds of other cases in the US

rachelandrew.co.uk

How do you decide whether it’s “safe” to use a feature that’s still Baseline Newly available

atproto.com

Bluesky is providing a grant to the creator of Microcosm to build a full mirror of public data on the Atmosphere to help make the network more resilient

searchengineland.com

LinkedIn says Google’s AI Overviews cut non-brand B2B awareness traffic, forcing a rethink of how discovery works

thenewstack.io

F-Droid fights Google’s Android developer verification plan that could kill alternative app stores used by millions. Here’s what developers need to know

www.platformer.news

The company tells Platformer it will let experts opt out of the controversial feature – but how different is it than what every other AI company is doing


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Transcript (if available)

These transcripts are created using software, so apologies if there are errors in them.

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Nathan Wrigley
Nathan Wrigley

Nathan writes posts and creates audio about WordPress on WP Builds and WP Tavern. He can also be found in the WP Builds Facebook group, and on Mastodon at wpbuilds.social. Feel free to donate to WP Builds to keep the lights on as well!

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