Each WordPress release celebrates an artist who has made an indelible mark on the world of music. WordPress 7.1, code-named “Mary Lou,” honors pioneering jazz pianist, arranger, and composer Mary Lou Williams.

A child prodigy who began playing publicly at six, her influence and work cut across nearly every major era of jazz, moving through swing, bebop, and sacred jazz. Through all of it, she kept reinventing her own sound. In the 1940s, she turned her Harlem apartment into a nightly workshop where Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, and Bud Powell came to trade ideas and shape bebop itself. That combination of reinvention and collaboration inspired WordPress 7.1.

Let the range of Mary Lou’s music carry you through everything 7.1 offers.

Welcome to WordPress 7.1!

WordPress 7.1 is built around how you work: navigating the admin, controlling your designs, collaborating with others, and building what you want. The admin bar now follows you across the entire admin experience, putting the tools you need within reach, whether you’re writing a post or editing your site’s design. Built-in responsive styling, added to the current show/hide options for blocks, means you can ensure your site looks exactly how you want across screen sizes, without custom CSS. A new media editor keeps the familiar Crop button entry point, and brings freeform and aspect-ratio cropping, horizontal and vertical flipping, fine-grained and snap rotation, and metadata editing into one dedicated workflow. Leave Notes anywhere in your content—no longer limited to the block level. Rich text support and @mentions make it easier to collaborate with others as you write. Two new blocks, Playlist and Tabs, as well as a new API to register your own set of icons for the Icon block, give you even more flexibility to build what you want without additional plugins. These are just the highlights! Read on to see everything WordPress 7.1 has to offer.

What’s inside

There’s a lot packed into WordPress 7.1 across new styling tools, updated media flows, added Notes functionality, and more. Some changes add new capabilities, while others refine existing tools and workflows.

Here’s a closer look at what’s new in this release, starting with the release video:

Apply responsive styles

Style your content your way, on every screen.

WordPress 7.1 brings more responsive controls directly into the Site Editor. Style how a block looks at different screen sizes from Global Styles or in individual block settings, without custom CSS. You can also preview your changes at different viewport sizes as you work, making it straightforward to build layouts that adapt to the way people browse the web.

Admin bar, now in every editor

Consistent navigation, from dashboard to editor.

The WordPress admin bar now stays with you as you move across all editors, so you always know where you are and have easy access to familiar tools. The admin bar also features some small visual updates to more fully polish the experience. 

A new way to crop

One dedicated workflow for editing your images.

A new media editor modal replaces the previous inline cropping tool, bringing together freeform and aspect-ratio cropping, horizontal and vertical flipping, precise rotation control, and metadata editing together in one place. The familiar Crop button still gets you there.

Inline notes with mentions and rich text

More ways to leave feedback.

Notes now support rich text and mentions, making it easier to leave clear feedback and loop in the right people. Format your Notes with bold, italic, and code, add links, or type @ to mention a collaborator and notify them.

You can also leave a note on a specific piece of text instead of just an entire block, keep multiple conversations going on the same block, and collapse longer notes to keep the margin tidy. It’s built for the back-and-forth that happens when people review content together.

Improved media handling

Faster, more flexible image processing.

Image compression, resizing, and thumbnail generation now happen in the browser, reducing server load and producing smaller files — without hitting PHP memory limits or upload timeouts.

Media handling in 7.1 also includes native support for AVIF, HEIC, and HDR gain maps, adding native support for the image formats modern cameras and phones already produce.

Enhanced details and new blocks

WordPress 7.1 also adds two new blocks, along with more ways to customize how content looks and behaves.

Create playlists

Bring multiple audio tracks together in one playlist, with an optional waveform that gives listeners a visual sense of each track as it plays.

Customize responsive breakpoints

Block themes can now define their own mobile and tablet breakpoints in theme.json, overriding the defaults for responsive styles and block visibility.

Organize with tabs

Organize content into tabbed panels instead of showing everything at once—a cleaner way to present related information without crowding your content.

Add custom icons

Developers can extend WordPress’s icon library with their own collections, making custom icons available throughout the editor alongside the built-in library.

Set interactive styles

Give Button blocks distinct styles for hover, focus, and active states directly in the editor’s style controls. Set the styles for just one button or all buttons.

A more consistent editing experience

The post editor is now fully iframed for all themes, matching the Site Editor.

The editing canvas runs separately from the WordPress admin interface, so admin styles don’t interfere with your content. Viewport-relative units and media queries now target the editing canvas directly, so responsive layouts behave more predictably as you build. The change is mostly invisible, but the result is a more reliable and consistent editor.

Developer’s toolbox

Advanced tools for building your way.

WordPress 7.1 expands several of the APIs and tools developers use to build on WordPress, with new options for icons, automation, admin interfaces, and responsive styling.

The SVG Icon API is now a public API, allowing developers to register their own icon collections and icons and use them throughout the editor with functions such as wp_register_icon_collection(), wp_register_icon(), and wp_get_icon().

The Abilities API builds on the infrastructure introduced in WordPress 6.9 with a filterable execution lifecycle, custom validation, and shared discovery. These additions make it easier to build integrations and automation on top of WordPress, including AI-powered tooling.

A new Design System provides foundational support for theming WordPress admin interfaces, including color, roundness, and cursor styles. Developers can use semantic design tokens and the ThemeProvider React component to bring more consistency to custom admin interfaces while still feeling at home in WordPress.

Theme authors also get responsive styling and pseudo-state styling for hover, focus, focus-visible, and active states through theme.json, along with new filters for configuring the DataViews and DataForm screens that power Pages, Templates, Parts, and Patterns in the Site Editor.

Accessibility

WordPress 7.1 continues to improve accessibility across WordPress Core and the editor. New wp_get_tooltip() and wp_get_toggletip() functions bring accessible tooltips to more areas of the WordPress admin, including post meta boxes and the login screen.

Screen reader support also improves across admin interfaces, with clearer labeling and more predictable navigation in post list tables. The new Tab and Playlist blocks, along with improvements to editor navigation and interaction, add to the broader accessibility work included in this release.

Together, these changes continue to make WordPress easier to navigate and use for more people.

Performance improvements

Image compression, resizing, and thumbnail generation now run in the browser (via a WebAssembly build of libvips), reducing the processing load on your server and helping avoid memory limits and timeouts with larger uploads.

Opt-in GIF-to-video conversion produces typically smaller files, while upload progress indicators and automatic retries make uploads more resilient when connections drop.

The Media Library now uses infinite scrolling by default, with a per-user option to return to pagination. Speculative loading defaults can now be set through environment variables or constants, so hosts and site owners can configure how WordPress prefetches pages without writing a plugin.

And much more!

For a comprehensive overview of everything new and improved in WordPress 7.1, visit the feature showcase website.

Learn more about WordPress 7.1

Learn WordPress is a free resource for new and experienced WordPress users.  Learn is stocked with how-to videos on using various features in WordPress, interactive workshops for exploring topics in-depth, and lesson plans for diving deep into specific areas of WordPress.

Read the WordPress 7.1 Release Notes for information on installation, enhancements, fixed issues, release contributors, learning resources, and the list of file changes.

Explore the WordPress 7.1 Field Guide.  Learn about the changes in this release with detailed developer notes to help you build with WordPress.

The 7.1 release squad

Every release comes to you from a dedicated team of enthusiastic contributors who help keep things on track and moving smoothly. The team that has led 6.8 is a cross-functional group of contributors who are always ready to champion ideas, remove blockers, and resolve issues.

• Release Lead: Anne McCarthy
• Release Coordination: Benjamin Zekavica, Krupa Nanda
• Tech Leads: Aki Hamano, Joe Dolson
• Triage Leads: Adrian Duffell, Sajjad Hossain Sagor, Sergey Biryukov
• Test Leads: Huzaifa Al Mesbah, Nikunj Hatkar

Thank you, contributors

The mission of WordPress is to democratize publishing and embody the freedoms that come with open source.  A global and diverse community of people collaborating to strengthen the software supports this effort.

WordPress 7.1 reflects the tireless efforts and passion of more than 800+ contributors from all over the world. This release also welcomed over 170+ first-time contributors! 

Together, their work delivered more than more than 1500 enhancements and fixes, helping make WordPress 7.1 a stable and polished release for everyone. It’s another great example of what the WordPress open source community can accomplish when people come together to build, test, and improve the software

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More than 20 locales have fully translated WordPress 7.1 into their language making this one of the most translated releases ever on day one. Community translators are working hard to ensure more translations are on their way. Thank you to everyone who helps make WordPress available in 200+ languages.

Last but not least, thanks to the volunteers who contribute to the support forums by answering questions from WordPress users worldwide.

Get involved

Participation in WordPress goes far beyond coding. And learning more and getting involved is easy. Discover the teams that come together to Make WordPress and use this interactive tool to help you decide which is right for you.

On the podcast today we have Adrian Sticea.

Adrian has been working in the WordPress space since 2013, starting out as a developer for small companies, then moving into freelancing, agency roles in the US, major projects at IBM, a stint at StellarWP, and extensive work with enterprise-level clients. Most recently, Adrian’s post on LinkedIn about the dramatic drop-off in WordPress work through the Upwork platform went viral, sparking many conversations and comments.

I suspect that many WordPress professionals listening have seen shifts in their freelance workloads and may be wondering what’s behind these changes, and Adrian is here to share his own data-driven account. He talks about his experience using Upwork as a primary source of project leads, how, for years, it was a reliable fountain of work, but recently, the flow has all but dried up.

We dive into the possible causes. The impact of AI making developers more efficient (and thus reducing hiring demand), changes in the broader economy, increasing competition from rival platforms, and how the nature of WordPress work itself is changing. Adrian mentions the difference between simple website builds, which are still in demand on Upwork, and complex plugin or enterprise projects, which he thinks might have migrated elsewhere.

We also talk about diversification, whether it’s a mistake to rely on just one marketplace for freelance work, and the importance of building real relationships, collecting testimonials, and seeking recommendations. Adrian shares how he’s pivoted, leveraging LinkedIn for networking, connecting directly with agencies, and building partnerships with recruiters and temp agencies.

If you’ve felt your freelance pipeline shrink, are curious where the most interesting WordPress work has gone, or want to hear how other professionals are adapting to marketplace shifts, this episode is for you.

Useful links

Adrian’s post on LinkedIn

CustomWP

Upwork

Toptal

Codeable

When I saw the Slack notification preview, “Matt, I’m literally crying right now,” I must admit my first reaction was “Oh no, what happened…”

Matt, I’m literally crying right now. I just read the Baby & Caregiver Attendance policy that Automattic will fly your baby and whoever is caring for them to be with you at a meetup while you’re breastfeeding.

Everyone talks about closing the gap for women in the workforce after kids. This is the first time I’ve seen a company actually pay for the answer.

I don’t think you hear this enough, so I want to say it plainly: thank you, THANK YOU. Forever grateful.

Stephanie Ospina also posted about it on LinkedIn. This benefit isn’t even on our public benefits page! From our Field Guide post revisions I found it was added in 2018 by Ingrid Miller of our Human Wrangling team, and it’s a great example of the care and effort they put into shaping what we call the Automattic Operating System.

Sarah Perez at TechCrunch writes: WordPress.com targets the next generation of web creators with a free student plan. $24/yr, starting with “6 GB of storage, backups, staging sites, and other tools, as well as support for plug-ins, SFTP/SSH, phpMyAdmin, and Studio Sync“

Hi there,

Before you read any further, another security updates needs your attention: WordPress 7.0.4 is out. Update now!

You might have noticed, that the Gutenberg Times website has a new theme. It’s built on top of the Twenty Twenty-Five default theme. I started working on it last year, but was pulled away by other priorities. Then AI Enablement weeks arrived and I started to use all kinds of different AI tools for design and WordPress. None of them were really good at block themes at first. Then Telex got me close and I used it for my Block theme workshop. As the final stack I used WordPress Studio with the new AI Agent (Beta) and Claude. Both competently used theme.json and block markup for patterns, template and template parts.

The biggest hurdle, and that’s why it took multiple trials, was that the podcast data wasn’t block-theme ready so I had to build a plugin that handles all the block bindings and assembles them into templates. The plugin is in the WordPress repository (still beta), if you are interested. During the process I used Claude and WordPress Agent skills. Between November 2025 and August 2026 the quality of Claude’s work has improved considerably and it produced much more robust code. The deployment to GitHub and WordPress repository was a breeze. Take a look at the new podcast page. All feedback is welcome!

The WCUS program team announced great keynote speakers:: Bo English-Wiczling, PayPal, Loyal Pyczynski, Disney and Meta, Amanda Ventura, Waymo and the fireside chat w/ Matt Mullenweg round up a fantastic roster of speakers and topics. If you can make it get your ticket now. And I see you on the WCUS Livestream!

Have a great weekend!

Yours,
Birgit

Developing Gutenberg and WordPress

WordPress 7.0.4 shipped as a security release fixing a single vulnerability: an authenticated remote code execution via malicious file upload, affecting sites running Imagick with Ghostscript, responsibly reported by the team at pwn.ai. Release lead John Blackbourn notes the fix is being backported all the way to the 4.7 branch and into the 7.1 release candidate. If your site doesn’t update automatically, head to Dashboard → Updates and click Update Now.

Release day falls on the last day of WordCamp US, and Justin Tadlock’s August roundup of what’s new for developers tells you what to test in the days that remain: responsive block styles with theme-configurable breakpoints, pseudo-states for Buttons and Navigation Links, the now-public SVG Icon API, and the always-iframed post editor. He also flags the change most likely to quietly break something — post list table row headers moved — and notes React 19 is punted again.

Joe Dolson tallies 88 accessibility enhancements and bug fixes in WordPress 7.1, 45 in core, 43 in the editor. Highlights are the new accessible tooltips API, post list tables that identify rows by title instead of checkbox, a decorative toggle for the Image block, and stronger focus indicators throughout. He’s equally candid about the known regression: the Media Library’s infinite scroll is an inaccessible pattern, and the note walks you through three ways to turn it off.

Just in time for WCUS Contributor Day, JuanMa Garrido released v1.0 of the WordPress Contributor Toolkit. Your first Core contribution no longer starts with installing Git, Node.js, and Docker — this desktop app handles it all. After running the setup wizard, contributors can link a Trac ticket, apply and test existing patches on a running site, then open a pull request, attach a patch, or hand their work to a mentor. If you are heading to Phoenix and want to join the Core table, download it and create your first site before Sunday, so you can hit the ground running.

48 fixes for the small annoyances that add up: Ella van Durpe opened a round of Block Editor Paper Cuts for the WordPress 7.2 cycle. The list spans big tasks like rethinking appenders and inserters, writing-flow improvements, and long-standing bugs — pasting from Excel, Safari selection quirks, multi-block selection on iOS. Nine items are already done and several more have PRs in progress, so if one of these papercuts has been bugging you, now’s the time to test or comment.

Jeff Paul opend the call for volunteers for WordPress 7.2 release squad. The release is scheduled for December 9th, 2026. That’s of course, still preliminary.

Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners

Elliott Richmond pulled fourteen WordPress 7.1 features from the Source of Truth and tested every one hands-on against the release candidate for his latest video — no speculation, no reciting release notes. You’ll see responsive styling controls, custom breakpoints in theme.json, hover, focus and active states, the new Icon, Tabs and Playlist blocks, the media editor modal and the mark-as-decorative accessibility option. Thirteen earn a genuine thumbs up; the one mixed verdict only asks you to think backwards for a bit.

Image processing moves from your server to the browser in WordPress 7.1, and Carlo Daniele’s rundown of client-side media processing, design tools, and the Abilities API for Kinsta explains what that shift means: libvips compiled to WebAssembly produces images roughly 15% smaller while cutting server CPU and RAM. He also covers rich-text Notes with @mentions, the Playlist and Tabs blocks, four new Abilities API lifecycle filters, and the design tokens plugin developers can use to style admin screens.

Do custom field builders need to worry about WordPress 7.1? Lua Nguyen answers for the Meta Box community with a look at what’s new and how it affects Meta Box users. The always-iframed editor is the big one — Meta Box blocks already run on Block API v3 with modal-based editing, so you can upgrade without changes. Client-side media processing covers the Image fields automatically, and editable blocks inside Custom HTML give developers finer control over what clients may touch.

WooCommerce 11.0.1 arrived as a security and compatibility dot release, and Brian Coords lists what’s inside: a stronger, salted hashing scheme for guest session cookies, sanitized notices in Cart and Checkout blocks, capability checks on image matching, onboarding and Marketplace endpoints — plus faster logging that cuts checkout latency on stores with large log backlogs. It also readies the Orders list for WordPress 7.1’s changed list-table markup, so update your stores before August 19.

Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks

Your hero area looks gorgeous on desktop and clunky on a phone — a scenario Eric Karkovack solves in his walkthrough on how to hide WordPress blocks based on device. He builds two versions of the hero, then uses the Block Visibility controls from WordPress 7.0 to hide one on mobile and the other on desktop and tablet — no plugin, no custom CSS. A neat companion piece to the responsive block styles arriving in 7.1.

WordPress uses “patterns” for two related but different things, and Gina Lucia sorts them out in her guide to WordPress patterns vs reusable blocks — the latter renamed synced patterns back in WordPress 6.3. Regular patterns become independent copies once inserted; synced patterns stay connected, so one edit updates every instance, with partially synced overrides for things like team member cards. She also draws the line between patterns and templates and shows you how to save your own.

Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor

If your plugin styles the post list table or expects a non-iframed editor, WordPress 7.1 has surprises in store. Jonathan Bossenger spent a livestream testing the developer-focused changes from our Source of Truth ahead of release day: responsive per-viewport block styles, hover, focus and active states, the admin bar rendering as a block, the Playlist and Tabs blocks, and the reworked Notes with mentions. He flags a gradient-over-background-image bug live and shares migration notes for both breaking changes.

One npx command scaffolds the whole plugin — from there, Emre Ekener‘s six-step tutorial on building your first custom Gutenberg block from scratch has you shipping an editable CTA block with heading, description, and button. Along the way you’ll learn what actually matters: attributes in block.json, the split between edit.js and save.js, RichText for inline editing, and InspectorControls for sidebar settings. As he puts it, the complexity scales, but the structure stays the same.

Ai and WordPress

You configure an AI provider once, and every plugin on the site can use it — no keys in plugin settings, no provider lock-in. Team WPShout’s developer guide to the AI connectors and wp_ai_client_prompt() covers where credentials live, why environment variables beat the database (keys there sit unencrypted), and builds a complete post-summarizing plugin whose actual AI work takes five lines. The gotchas section warns you: core ships no spend limit, so gate every feature behind the support checks.

Greg Ziółkowski‘s walkthrough of the Abilities API in WordPress 7.1 covers the three areas the release fills in: an execution lifecycle you can observe with actions and steer with filters, a shared preparation layer that turns canonical schemas into portable Draft 4 copies for REST and AI clients, and discovery filtering in wp_get_abilities() by category, namespace, and metadata. Each extension point comes with a working code example and the trade-offs he’d weigh before reaching for it.

Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg’s master branch?
Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review.

Now also available via WordPress Playground. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? Email me with your experience.

Questions? Suggestions? Ideas?
Don’t hesitate to send them via email or
send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph.

For questions to be answered on the Gutenberg Changelog,
send them to changelog@gutenbergtimes.com

TechCrunch on how Me.sh (née Clay) is now available on Android. Also, kudos to those other Clay folks for winning the Clay memetic namespace dominance.

The official WordPress Browser Extension is now available for Google Chrome and Chromium-based browsers in the Chrome Web Store and for Safari on macOS in the Mac App Store. This new open source extension lets logged-in site users easily hide the admin bar while keeping its most helpful shortcuts in the browser toolbar, provides quick access to all of your WordPress sites, and adds helpful tools for developers and content creators.

By default, the admin bar sits at the top of every page you view while signed in to WordPress, keeping the dashboard, the editor, and your profile within reach. That convenience carries a cost: the bar occupies the viewport, so the page on screen is never quite the page a visitor sees. On sites doing more interesting things with the viewport, such as sticky headers or scroll-driven effects, it can introduce artifacts that send you hunting for a bug that is not there. Further, the admin bar can sometimes grow unwieldy as plugins add their own features and shortcuts to it. Switching it off in your profile settings trades one problem for another, because the shortcuts leave with it.

That problem was the spark for the creation of the WordPress Browser Extension. The extension hides the admin bar on the sites you choose, or everywhere by default, and keeps the most commonly used shortcuts one click away. Bringing the full bar back takes two clicks and no trip to the dashboard. What began as a fix for that one tradeoff grew into something broader: a way to recognize WordPress wherever you find it on the web, to jump into your own sites from anywhere, and to carry a small set of tools for testing and review.

As you browse, the toolbar icon shows whether the current site runs WordPress and whether you are signed in, without being obtrusive. On a site you manage, opening the extension reveals shortcuts to the dashboard or to the editor for the exact post, page, taxonomy, or template in view, including template-backed pages that open in the Site Editor on block themes. A locally stored launcher remembers the sites you sign in to, so they stay available even when you are somewhere else entirely.

A few tools also turn out to be a better fit for the browser than for a WordPress plugin. The extension can draw block boundaries over the rendered page, open a phone-sized preview window, reload with cache busting, or clear cookies and local storage for the site you are on. Some of that is hard to do from inside a site, and none of it requires a plugin or any other software installation, so the same tools are available on every WordPress site you visit.

All of this happens on your device. The extension reads the page in front of it to work out what it is looking at, and when it needs more than the page can tell it, it asks the site. Your preferences, and the list of sites you sign in to, stay in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere else, and there is no tracking or analytics of any kind.

The extension began as an independent project and became an official project with active support from Matt Mullenweg. Notable contributors include Fabian Kägy, a core contributor and colleague at Fueled (formerly 10up), who helped shape much of its early design and architecture, and Khokan Sardar who contributed multiple patches. Several other Fueled colleagues provided comprehensive testing and influenced its final shape.

You can follow along with its development on its GitHub repository, where bug reports and pull requests are welcome.

WordPress 7.0.4 is now available

WordPress 7.0.4 is now available which features a security fix. Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately.

You can update to WordPress 7.0.4 by downloading it from WordPress.org, or visiting your site’s Dashboard → Updates and clicking Update Now. Sites that support automatic background updates will begin updating shortly.

For more information, please visit the WordPress 7.0.4 HelpHub site.

Security update included in this release

The security team would like to thank the team at pwn.ai for responsibly reporting the following vulnerability and allowing it to be fixed in this release:

• Authenticated Author+ remote code execution via malicious file upload on sites that use Imagick and Ghostscript.

Backports

As a courtesy, these fixes are being backported through to the 4.7 branch and the 7.1 RC3 release that’s due later today. As a reminder, only the most recent version of WordPress is actively supported. The backports are in progress and will ship as they become ready.

CVE and GHSA references

Further details can be found in the advisory: CVE-2026-65640 / GHSA-8vr3-7mxf-gx8w.

Thank you to these WordPress contributors

This release was led by John Blackbourn, with significant input from Dennis Snell and Jeremy Felt. In addition, WordPress 7.0.4 and its backports would not have been possible without the valuable contributions of the following people:

Aaron D. Campbell, Aaron Jorbin, Adam Silverstein, Aki Hamano, Alex Concha, Barry, Dennis Snell, Ehtisham Siddiqui, Jeremy Felt, John Blackbourn, Jon Surrell, Jonathan Desrosiers, Lance Willett, Marin Atanasov, Mohammad Jangda, Sergey Biryukov, vortfu, Weston Ruter, and representatives from WP Engine.

On the podcast today we have Amy Kamala.

Amy’s journey into tech is anything but conventional, starting with a Master of Fine Arts from UCLA and a passion for art that eventually bled into, and was overtaken by, technology. Since 2018 she’s been an active contributor to WordPress, serving multiple terms, such as the Hosting and Core teams. Her career zigzags through key roles at DreamHost, InMotion Hosting, Pantheon, Canopy Studios, and local government, picking up everything from technical support and web development to managing teams of designers and DevOps staff. Along the way, Amy has organised WordCamps, led teams, and is currently being sponsored by Elementor for her open source work.

Today’s conversation gets into the chaotic, creative overlap between art and tech, and how those different mindsets can feed one another, especially in the world of WordPress. We talk about the blend of creative and logical thinking needed in web development, and why skills like user experience, curiosity, and even willingness to fail publicly can set you apart.

We then turn to contribution. What draws people to volunteer in an open source community, what Amy gets out of participating far beyond her paid hours, and the messy journey from being an eager helper to an essential part of the team. She explains the unique feeling of the WordPress community, the importance of being welcoming to new contributors, and why being outgoing, and not afraid to ask questions, can be your biggest asset.

If you’ve ever wondered about the blurred lines between art and code, why people throw themselves into volunteer work in the WordPress ecosystem, or what’s really at the heart of this global community, this episode is for you.

Useful links

 Jonathan Desrosiers

DreamHost

InMotion Hosting

Pantheon

Miriam Schwab

Elementor

Beeper has some fun new features where you can merge chats with the same person across multiple networks, polls, labels… Very exciting work happening on that product.

Welcome to the Source of Truth for WordPress 7.1!

Before you dive headfirst into all the big and small changes and pick your favorites, make sure to read these preliminary thoughts about this post and how to use it. If you have any questions, leave a comment or email me at pauli@gutenbergtimes.com.

A huge “Thank you” to Anne McCarthy, Justin Tadlock, Isabel Brison, Adam Silverstein, Ramon Dodd, Andrew Serong, Hans-Gerd Gerhards, Marin Atanasov, Krupa Nanda, Aaron Robertshaw, Ben Dwyer, Brent MacKinnon, Ashar Fuadi, and a lot more. It still takes a village. Also huge respect to the whole release squad on getting WordPress 7.1 over the finish line.

This article is also available in German on Krautpress: WordPress 7.1 Source of Truth – Deutsch

Changelog

Any changes are cataloged here as the release goes on.

August 14, 2025

• Added screenshot and copy about the split of the color panels for text and background to the particular section.

August 12, 2026

• Corrected the Interactive states section: Global Styles state controls ship for the Button block only.
• Change the order of Changelog items to newest updates first.

August 11, 2026

• Updated the Highlight grid with latest iteration
• Updated the Featured image with the 7.1 color schema

August 5, 2026

• Removed the “On This Day” from the Overview
• Added wp_get_abilities() filtering to the Abilities API section
• Added the notify_post_author filter behavior change.
• Added the Navigation font-size propagation change to the Navigation Block section
• Added section Host can now tune speculative loading defaults
• Updated dev note links from draft previews to published versions (Responsive styles, Filtering Site Editor screens)
• Updated the Resources section: linked the published WordPress 7.1 Field Guide

August 4, 2026

• Removed On This Day widget information per this ticket. Punted to 7.2 pending more design input.
• Corrected the "-current": { "color": { "text": "pink" }” code example.

August 3, 2026

• Added info on responsiveEditingEnabled editor setting
• Added link to Iframed Editor Changes in WordPress 7.1
• Added updates to the Abitilites API
• Removed Tags from the headlines as they borked the TOC
• Added link to the dev note for the Accessible tooltips
• Added Post list table markup changed for accessibility section

July 31, 2026

• Added Apply Globally now with review panel
• Added Filtering Site Editor screens

July 30, 2026 – First edition.

Important note/guidelines

Try not to just copy and paste what’s in this post since it’s going to be shared with plenty of folks. Use this as inspiration for your own stuff and to get the best info about this release. If you do copy and paste, just remember that others might do the same, and it could lead to some awkward moments with duplicate content floating around online.

Each item has been tagged using best guesses with different high-level labels so that you can more readily see at a glance who is likely to be most impacted.
Each item has a high-level description, visuals (if relevant), and key resources if you would like to learn more.

Overview

WordPress 7.1 rounds out the block editor’s styling controls and makes working with media noticeably smoother. Long-requested features let you style how blocks look across three screen sizes and in interactive states like hover and focus — all without writing custom CSS. The admin experience becomes more personal, too, following you with your own color scheme and toolbar across every screen.

Handling images gets a considerable upgrade, too. The new media editor modal brings free-form cropping, rotation, and metadata editing into one workflow, and client-side media processing makes uploads faster and more resilient, with broader format support and better-optimized files.

The new Playlist and Tabs blocks enrich the layout options available out of the box and make for more creative information presentation. In the same realm fall the expanded Icon API with custom icon collections, dynamic galleries, and background gradients for more blocks.

The unification of WP Admin and the block editors progresses as well: the editors now respect your admin color scheme, and the admin bar stays with you on every screen — including the editors and the front end.

While real-time collaboration has been punted to a future WordPress version, the asynchronous collaboration in Notes took real steps forward with inline notes on partial text selections, @mentions, rich text formatting, and multiple notes per block.

Beyond the headliners, core blocks receive many quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes to make editing content in WordPress streamlined, consistent, and fast — and developers get an expanding set of APIs to build on.

Resources

• Help Test WordPress 7.1 
• Follow along with Dev Notes published.
• WordPress 7.1 Field Guide
• Roadmap to 7.1

This release consists of features from the Gutenberg plugin version 22.7 – 23.6. Here are the release posts of those plugin releases:  22.7 | 22.8 | 22.9 | 23.0  | 23.1 | 23.2 | 23.3 | 23.4 |  23.5 | 23.6  Later Gutenberg releases contain bug fixes, backported to WordPress 7.1. release branches.

Assets 

In this Google Drive folder you can view all assets in this document.

Tags

To make this document easier to navigate based on specific audiences, the following tags are used liberally: 

• [end user]: end user focus. 
• [theme builder]: block or classic theme author. 
• [plugin author]: plugin author, whether block or otherwise.
• [developer]: catch-all term for more technical folks. 
• [site admin]: this includes a “builder” type. 
• [enterprise]: specific items that would be of interest to or particularly impact enterprise-level folks
• [all]: broad impact to every kind of WordPress user. 

How can you use these? Use your browser’s Find capability and search for the string including the brackets. Then use the arrows to navigate through the post from one result to the next.

Priority Items for WordPress 7.1

WordPress 7.1 introduces significant enhancements to block-based design and editing. These priority features focus on responsive controls, interactive states, media management, and modernized Admin bar navigation.

Responsive styles for blocks

[theme builders] [site admin][end user]

Probably the most requested improvement of the block editor: after years of pushing intrinsic design for fonts and spacing, WordPress 7.1 makes responsive design a built-in, first-class part of the editing experience. The feature builds on earlier steps in this direction — the ability to show or hide blocks by screen size and the Navigation block’s customizable mobile overlay — and extends the idea to styling itself.

The feature is available across all block editors for Posts, Pages, Templates, Patterns,template parts and Navigation. Responsive styling follows a desktop-first model, letting styles cascade to smaller screens until you customize them for specific devices.

Viewport-specific values are currently limited to block sidebar settings (like typography, spacing, and colors). The controls work in Global Styles (affecting all instances of a block) and on individual block instances, across all block editors — Posts, Pages, Templates, Patterns, template parts, and Navigation. 

Any controls from the toolbar that can’t be set by viewport will be hidden when a viewport state is enabled. Among the most significant controls: viewport-level aspect ratio presets for Image, Featured Image, and Cover blocks, so each can be optimized per device (#78543). Alongside this work, the Layout controls moved from the Settings tab to the Styles tab, keeping all styling decisions together. 

Community feedback from the Call for Testing made sure this feature ships with an off switch via a new responsiveEditingEnabled editor setting: turned off, both the Responsive styles option in the View menu and the viewport selector in Global Styles disappear. It gates the editing interface only. Responsive styles already saved keep rendering as before. (#80814). See code examples are in the responsive styles dev note.

Follow the Call for Testing: Responsive Styling to learn how to invoke the feature and what to look out for, and find the technical details in the Dev Note: Responsive block styles and configurable viewports in WordPress 7.1. 

You can find more technical details in the Dev Note: Responsive block styles and configurable viewports in WordPress 7.1.

Viewport breakpoint customization

Themes can now define custom breakpoints in theme.json, so both responsive styling and per-viewport block visibility work from your design system’s breakpoints instead of WordPress’s defaults. For theme developers and designers, this provides fine-grained, device-agnostic control over responsive behavior. (79104).

"settings": {
		"viewport": {
			"mobile": "30rem",
			"tablet": "45rem"
		}
	}

"settings": {
		"viewport": {
			"mobile": "30rem",
			"tablet": "45rem"
		}
	}

Tracking: WordPress 7.1: Block visibility configurable breakpoints and theme.json integration (#75707)

This makes interactive design accessible to non-coders and theme builders. It eliminates the need to add custom CSS snippets for common interactions. 

Interactive states styling (hover, focus)

You can now style interactive pseudo-states (:hover, :focus, or :active) without writing any CSS. For the Button block, this works both per-instance and site-wide in Global Styles. For navigation link blocks (Custom Link, Page Link), the state controls are available per-instance in the block inspector; in Global Styles, the state selector is enabled per block, with Button as the first, so styling navigation states site-wide currently goes through theme.json.
An editor UI for the current-item state is also in development as part of the custom states iteration for 7.2.

The Dev Note give you more details Pseudo and custom style states in WordPress 7.1 and more code examples.

"core/navigation-link": {
  "-current": {
    "color": { "text": "#ff0000" },
    "typography": { "fontWeight": "700" },
    ":hover": {
      "color": { "text": "#0000ff" }
    },
    ":focus": {
      "color": { "text": "#00aa00" }
    },
    ":active": {
      "color": { "text": "#ff6600" }
    }
  }
}

"core/navigation-link": {
  "-current": {
    "color": { "text": "#ff0000" },
    "typography": { "fontWeight": "700" },
    ":hover": {
      "color": { "text": "#0000ff" }
    },
    ":focus": {
      "color": { "text": "#00aa00" }
    },
    ":active": {
      "color": { "text": "#ff6600" }
    }
  }
}

Media editor modal and free-form image cropper

[end user][site admin]

The new media editor modal replaces the inline cropping tool, accessed via the familiar Crop button, and brings together free-form and aspect-ratio cropping, flip, fine-grained rotation with snap guides, and metadata editing in one unified workflow. (78653, 78935, 78792) 

This considerably improves the editing experience in WordPress Block editor. The goal was to eliminate the need for external tools for basic image editing. You can now exercise faster, more precise control over your images—fine-tuning framing, fixing orientation, or mirroring an image to better fit your layout in just a few clicks, all without breaking your editing flow.

For the Cover Block, this new media editor modal is hooked up to the Crop background image button. The option appears whenever the Cover block uses an editable image, and the block automatically recalculates its overlay color and contrast after an edit, so text stays readable even if the crop removes the image’s brightest or darkest areas (79258 )

Tracking: Media Editor Modal task tracking (#73771)

Client-side media processing improvements

[developer][site admin][enterprise]

When you upload an image in the block editor, your browser — not your server — will now handle the creation of all sub-sized images using a WebAssembly (WASM) version of libvips (wasm-vips), a high-performance image processing library. The result stored on your server is improved over what server-side processing produced until today: smaller files generated directly on your device. Server-side image processing CPU usage could decline by more than 80% on capable devices (79188)

The update also comes with broader modern image  format support that includes HEIC (the default format for iPhone photos), JPEGS with HDR gain maps (used by UltraHDR and Adaptive HDR), AVIF and WebP support built in. A great performance improvement is the GIF-to-video conversion feature for lighter, more efficient files that are faster to load on the front-end. This feature is opt-in right now. Uploads are also more resilient, with a progress indicator and automatic retries if your data connectivity drops off (76765, 79307).

For content creators uploading media, this update means better support for HDR images,  faster, more reliable uploads, broader format support, and better-optimized files without manual intervention.

Plugin developers should note that some server-side hooks, including `wp_generate_attachment_metadata`, `image_resize_dimensions`, and `wp_handle_upload` may not fire as before. The team is working on documentation and mitigation strategies. (74333)

More in-depth information is available in the Dev Note Client-Side Media Processing in WordPress 7.1

Icons now inherit color, and the Icons API takes shape

[theme builder][plugin author][developer][enterprise]

WordPress 7.0 shipped a built-in set of SVG icons for the block editor and the Icon block. With WordPress 7.1, this grows into a proper, public API: plugins and themes can register their own icons, group them into collections, render them on the server, and read them over the REST API.

For content creators, the most visible change is the Icon block’s picker: it now groups icons by collection, with a tab per collection plus an “All” tab, and your search query carries over as you switch tabs. Custom icons from plugins and themes appear right alongside the core set. The block itself picked up several refinements: it inserts a default icon so you’re never staring at an empty placeholder, offers flip and rotate controls in the toolbar, and shows text and background color controls by default.

For developers: Registering more collections

For developers, the pieces come together on the PHP side: register a collection with wp_register_icon_collection(), add icons with wp_register_icon() — from an inline SVG string or an .svg file — and print any registered icon with wp_get_icon(), including size, CSS class, and an accessible label. Icon names get strict validation, the registry’s register method is now public, and REST API endpoints expose collections and icons to your own code. A dev note with full code examples is on its way to the Make Core blog.

One breaking change to flag: all 330 icons in @wordpress/icons v15 now declare fill="currentColor", so icons inherit the surrounding text color by default. If you’ve been tinting icons with the CSS fill property, switch to color — it’s more reliable, since an icon may use fill, stroke, or both internally. If you register your own icons, add fill=”currentColor” to their <svg> element to get the same behavior.

The Dev Note Registering and rendering SVG icons in WordPress 7.1 holds all the details. 

Tracking: SVG Icon API: Iteration for WordPress 7.1 (#75715)

Admin Bar everywhere 

[all]

With WordPress 7.1, the WordPress admin bar which sits at the top of your site’s front end and other admin pages is now displayed when using block editor by default. It stays hidden when Fullscreen mode and Distraction-free mode are both turned on. 

Until now, entering the editor in its default fullscreen mode meant the admin bar disappeared, cutting you off from the rest of wp-admin. Since the admin bar now provides site context, the update also replaces the top-left W/site icon in the site editor with an explicit back button, making the navigation control more obvious (79197). 

With this update also comes a design refresh: 

• your site icon replaces the home icon, 
• the profile avatar becomes circular, and 
• the command palette keyboard shortcut moves into the Admin bar to remove visual clutter and resolve shortcut conflicts. (79060) 

This keeps the familiar navigation with you on all screens again. 

Dev Notes with all the details for users and developer can be found here: Consistent navigation in WordPress 7.1 with persistent toolbar.

New Blocks

[all]

This release expands the block library with versatile new tools. These additions provide content creators with improved ways to display interactive media and organize information.

Playlist block

The new Playlist block lets you create audio playlists with waveform visualization, making it easy to showcase multiple tracks or podcast episodes in a single interactive player. Visitors can browse and play through your audio content without leaving the page. For content creators this provides a rich, modern listening experience built right into WordPress to highlight podcast episodes, track of music or talks. 

Each track comes with its metadata: artwork, artist name, track number, and track length. The tracklist itself is configurable — you can set the play order and toggle artwork, artist names, track numbers, and track length individually to suit the design of your page.

The WaveformPlayer visualization comes with a visualization style selector. You can set waveform and waveform background colors for more granular theming and show the track artwork on the play button, accessible for all visitors. The Playlist and Playlist Track blocks are available in the default block library.

This is the first version and contributors are working on improvements for the next WordPress version, too looking to add more waveform styles, shuffle and skip buttons, a hover overlay for more intuitive track scrubbing, as well as performance improvements.

Tracking: Playlist Block: Iteration issue for 7.1 (#77421)

Tabs block

The new Tabs block organizes content into separate tabbed panels that visitors click through to navigate. It’s a design pattern that presents information compactly without overwhelming readers with a wall of text. It’s a common layout for FAQs, product features, or any content where you want to show options side-by-side. For editors, it’s a familiar, flexible layout pattern now available natively in WordPress.

The block family consists of a Tab List for the navigation and Tab Panels for the content. Each panel accepts any blocks you like, and the tab buttons come with their own color, typography, border, and spacing controls, so the navigation can be styled to match your theme. Using the toolbar buttons you can reorder the tabs quickly. 

Under the hood, the markup and keyboard behavior follow the best practices set out in the tabs pattern from the W3C ARIA Authoring Practices Guide.

Tracking: Stabilize Tabs Blocks (#73230)

Improved Blocks and Block handling

Core blocks receive numerous quality-of-life improvements in 7.1. These updates refine existing editing workflows, simplify media handling, and provide deeper customization for layouts and design.

Block transforms: preview first, convert faster

[end user][site admin]

Switching a block’s look or type is now much easier to evaluate before you commit. When you open the block switcher in the toolbar, the style options a theme provides — say, a Button’s “Outline” style — show live previews on hover, so you see exactly how your block will look with the style applied. (75889) The same previews in the inspector’s Styles panel now match the toolbar presentation, so it no longer matters where you make the switch. (75989) A small polish fix also centers the Navigation block’s preview in its preview pane. (75741)

Transforms got more capable, too: a block can now transform directly into a variation of another block. Instead of converting to a Group and then picking Row afterwards, the transform menu offers Row or Stack as direct targets — one step instead of two. (78713)

The same “one step instead of two” thinking extends to legacy content. Pasting or converting an shortcode now creates a proper Embed block instead of leaving raw shortcode text behind, so embeds from YouTube and other services display correctly right away (77937)— and if you change your mind, undo restores a paragraph with the URL rather than deleting it. (77551).

The Shortcode block joins in as well: when its content matches a registered shortcode, it now offers block-specific transforms to convert it into the equivalent block. (77944)

For anyone maintaining a site with years of shortcode-based posts, that removes a tedious cleanup step on the way to block-based editing.

Combine gradient and image backgrounds

[end user] [theme builder][site admin]

More blocks now support background gradients through the new background.gradient block support, which layers a gradient on top of a background image instead of one overwriting the other — a translucent color wash over a photo, for instance, without custom CSS.

Previously, gradients lived only in the Color panel, stored as a CSS background shorthand that clashed with any image on the block. The new support adds a Gradient control to the Background panel next to the existing Image control, and the style engine combines both into a single layered background-image value on individual blocks, in Global Styles, and via theme.json. A follow-up allows modern color functions in standalone gradients, and the text and background color controls moved to the Typography and Background panels to match.

To place the two color settings for background and gradients in the sidebar together, the controls needed to be split up from the text color. So now the color settings for text color and background colore are in two different panels.

WordPress 7.1 ships with six blocks supporting the new gradients: Group, Verse, Accordion, Pullquote, Post Content, and Quote. More will follow, with a long-term plan to migrate the older color.gradient to the new system across all blocks. There’s no built-in migration path in 7.1 yet.

For extenders, opting in follows the familiar block supports pattern. Custom blocks declare it in their block.json:

"supports": {
	"background": {
		"gradient": true
	}
}

"supports": {
	"background": {
		"gradient": true
	}
}

Themes control the setting via theme.json under settings.background.gradient (it’s also included in appearanceTools), and can define gradient values in styles — at the root, per block, or in style variations:

{
	"styles": {
		"background": {
			"gradient": "linear-gradient( 135deg, #000 0%, #fff 100% )"
		},
		"blocks": {
			"core/group": {
				"background": {
					"gradient": "var:preset|gradient|vivid-cyan-blue"
				}
			}
		}
	}
}

{
	"styles": {
		"background": {
			"gradient": "linear-gradient( 135deg, #000 0%, #fff 100% )"
		},
		"blocks": {
			"core/group": {
				"background": {
					"gradient": "var:preset|gradient|vivid-cyan-blue"
				}
			}
		}
	}
}

All the salient details in this Dev Note New Block Support in WordPress 7.1: Background Gradient (background.gradient)

Cover Block: control video embed providers

[theme builder][plugin author][enterprise][developer]

Besides gaining the new media editor modal for background images, the Cover block addresses a request from community feedback. When the block’s “Embed video from URL” feature shipped in WordPress 7.0, site builders asked for a way to curate or disable it. WordPress 7.1 adds a new allowedVideoProviders attribute to restrict which video providers are offered, or to remove the URL-embed option entirely by allowing none (#80092). Existing embeds keep working; only new URL input in the editor is restricted. 

The details are already reflected in the Cover block’s documentation.

Gallery and the attached images workflow in the Media Library

[end user][site admin]

Images you upload while writing a post have always been “attached” to that post. This specifically true for older sites, pre-Block editor. Attached images where no accessible as an cluster and need to be added the block editor canvas one at a time. WordPress 7.1 finally puts that relationship to work in the editor, via an additional filter drop-down item Uploaded to this post in the Media Library Inserter modal. Photos and other media you’ve uploaded stay within reach for reuse instead of disappearing into the media library. 

The Gallery block is the showcase: instead of hand-picking every image, a single Use attached images button populates a dynamic gallery from all media attached to the current post (#78796). For content creators, this makes assembling image galleries faster and more flexible. It also helps reorganize image on older posts. The Source panel provides options for sorting the images. This brings the block editor handling of Galleries up to par with some features of the [ gallery ] shortcode.

To have entire freedom to control the Gallery block, the Detach feature comes in handy. A Detach button in the toolbar and in the sidebar’s Source panel, makes out a stand-alone Gallery without the dynamic connetion to the post’s image. Using it help user to edit/upate the gallery block. 

Below video visualizes the connection between a list of image attached to a post from the Media Library and the gallery block with the new feature. 

Tracking: WordPress 7.1: dynamic galleries and post-attached media iteration issue (#77117)

It’s a step back toward the simplicity of dropping photos into a post and having WordPress do the arranging. It’s the first visible piece of a larger effort around dynamic galleries and post-attached media, with dynamic queries by date and eventually categories or tags ahead.

Image Block: Mark as decorative toggle

[end user][site admin]

Screen readers announce every image to their users — but some images, like dividers and design flourishes, carry no information worth announcing. The Image block’s new “Mark as decorative” checkbox tells assistive technologies to skip such an image entirely on the front end, by rendering it with role=”none” in the published post. It now eliminates the question, did we forget an alt=text or was it a deliberate decision to leave the alt-text empty?

There is further processing to come with the checked box. Marking an image decorative clears its alt text and disables captions and links, since an image that links somewhere or explains something isn’t decorative by definition. Until now, the accessible route was knowing the empty-alt-text convention; the checkbox makes the intent explicit, machine-readable, and available to every content creator. (78064)

Login/out Block Improvements

[theme builder][site admin][developer]

The Login/Logout block has an option to display a full login form instead of a simple link — but until now, that form’s submit button ignored your theme entirely, rendering with plain browser-default styles that stuck out next to every other button on the site. With a block theme active, the submit button now carries the standard button classes (wp-block-button__link and wp-element-button), so it automatically picks up the button styling your theme defines in theme.json — colors, border radius, and all — with no custom CSS required. The block follows the same approach the Comments form already uses, resolving a mismatch first reported back in 2023. (76746)

Navigation Block and Link Creation

[theme builder] [site admin][end user]

The Navigation block picks up several improvements that give site builders more freedom in what a menu can contain and where it can be edited. The Login/Logout block can now be nested inside submenus (#75497), handy for tucking account actions into a “My Account” dropdown instead of spending a top-level slot on them. New links can be created directly from the sidebar List View in the Site Editor (#75918), so building out a menu no longer requires clicking into each item on the canvas. And the Home Link block gains previously missing controls (#76672), bringing it up to par with its navigation siblings.

One behavior change to note for theme builders: the Navigation block no longer force-propagates its font size down to individual menu items (#77419). Until now, every navigation link, submenu, and page list item received the parent’s font-size markup — and because relative units multiply, nested dropdowns compounded dramatically (1.5em became 2.25em, then 3.375em).

The block now relies on standard CSS inheritance instead, which also fixes mismatched typography between the editor canvas and the front end. Most themes need no changes, but themes that target has-{slug}-font-size classes directly on nav items should check their menus — the Miscellaneous Editor Changes dev note includes a filter to restore the old markup if needed.

Search block Styling

[theme builder] [site admin][end user]

A styling gap is closed in the release for the Search block: color settings now apply to the search input field even when the search button is disabled (77219), so your search boxes match your design system regardless of which display options you choose.

The block also embraces modern HTML: it can now render inside the native <search> landmark element, which carries search semantics for browsers and assistive technologies without the manual role=”search” attribute. Because dropping that attribute could break existing theme CSS, the feature is opt-in — per block via a new HTML element selector in the Advanced panel, or site-wide with add_theme_support( ‘search-element’ ) (#78485). Default output is unchanged, with a path to making the modern markup the default in a future release.(78485)

Query block

[theme builder] [site admin][end user]

The Query block received an additional filter to control the list of blocks: You can now exclude the current post from a list of posts. This is useful when you want to add a list of posts with related posts. (64916).

General quality of life improvements. 

Pattern editing experience improvements

[theme builder] [site admin] [developer]

WordPress 7.0 shifted pattern editing to focus on content changes rather than exposing every tool, treating patterns more like single blocks. In 7.1, work focuses on UX refinements based on feedback, bug fixes, and general maintenance. For users inserting and customizing patterns, this means a more polished, predictable experience with fewer rough edges.

Tracking: WordPress 7.1: Pattern Editing Iteration (#75717)

• Pattern Editing and Block Fields: Highlight selected block (74841)
• Pattern editing: show root block identity when editing pattern sections #79417 

 Block Width and Layout Controls

[theme builder] [site admin] [developer]

Refines spacing and layout tools to be more intuitive. The Columns block no longer shows a confusing ‘Skip’ option in its layout picker, the Button block now uses the standard width control system, and spacing controls display in a more logical order when unlinked. These changes remove friction points that tripped up editors when building complex layouts.

• Button: Migrate to width block support #74242 
• Columns: Remove redundant Skip option from layout picker #78405 
• Re-order spacing side controls when unlinked #66317 

Link Control and Preview Enhancements

[theme builder] [site admin] [developer]

When linking to pages or posts, the link picker now shows ‘Homepage’ instead of just ‘Page’ for your site’s front page, and uses the actual entity link title for previews. These small improvements make link creation feel smarter and help editors understand exactly what they’re linking to before publishing.

• Use entity link title for link control preview #77155 
• Link Picker: Use Homepage badge instead of Page if Homepage #75929 

Additional CSS Validation

[theme builder] [site admin] [developer][end user]

Additional CSS is now validated both on mount and via a new dimension validation endpoint for sideloaded styles. These checks prevent malformed or insecure CSS from breaking your site’s appearance or introducing security risks, giving you more confidence when adding custom styles.

• Validate additional CSS on mount #78682 
• Add dimension validation to sideload endpoint #74903 

Block Editor Attribute Handling

[theme builder][developer]

The block editor now correctly targets the right block when copying direct insert block attributes, fixing edge cases where attributes would apply to the wrong block. This fix ensures that copy-paste and duplication workflows behave as expected.

• Block Editor: Fix target block for copying direct insert block attributes #77877 
• Block Editor: Allow overriding `disableContentOnlyForTemplateParts` setting #79191 

Image handling improved

[end user][site admin]

A set of small fixes makes working with images more predictable. If an image points to a media library item that has since been deleted, the editor no longer treats it as a local attachment, preventing confusing errors. The crop button only appears when cropping is actually available for your user role and image type, so you’re never offered a tool that can’t work. 

And the featured image field now shows placeholder text making clear at a glance what goes there.

• Image block: Validate attachment ID exists before treating image as local #77178
• Image/Site Logo: hide crop toolbar when editMediaEntity is unavailable #76626
• Set placeholder to featured image field #76342

Post Template Layout Improvements

[theme builder][site admin]

Ensures the Post Template block’s fallback styles only apply when appropriate, preventing layout conflicts when custom minimum column widths are defined. This fix gives editors more predictable control over query loop layouts without unexpected style overrides.

• Ensure Post Template fallback styles don’t apply when minimumColumnWidth is defined #77411 

Post Title Block Enhancements

[site admin][end user]

The Title block gains a placeholder attribute, letting you show helpful text when no title has been entered yet. This small addition improves the editing experience for custom post types and guides content creators to fill in required fields.

• Post Title: Add placeholder attribute #7601 v22.7.0

Block Inserter Enhancements

[site admin][end user]

Makes discovering and adding blocks easier with visual polish to the inserter interface. The search input now stays visible while scrolling through block options, and the inserter button animates to clearly signal when the panel is open. These small touches reduce friction when building pages and help editors stay oriented while exploring block options.

• Block Inserter: Animate inserter button icon to signal open state. #78306 
• Make Block Inserter search input sticky while scrolling #77698

Editor enhancements

Beyond the block improvements, the editing experience itself picks up refinements across the board. Notes mature into a fuller commenting workflow. Visual revisions gain a more detailed timeline. And your site’s brand identity gets a dedicated home in the Site Editor.

A Dev Note provides a list of miscellaneous Editor changes.

Notes move toward a full commenting workflow

[end user][site admin][developer][enterprise]

Notes, the inline editorial comments right in the editor, continue to mature, with several additions in this release that make asynchronous collaboration richer and easier to act on without leaving WordPress.

The headline feature: inline notes. You can now attach a note to a specific text selection rather than to a whole block. Select part of a paragraph, add a note, and the highlight stays anchored to that text as you keep editing around it. A single block can carry multiple inline notes, sorted by the order they appear, and none of the highlighting shows up in the published post. Also, blocks are no longer limited to a single conversation, either — you can start multiple note threads on the same block.

The conversations themselves got more expressive, too. Notes now support rich text formatting — bold, italic, links, and code. @mention autocomplete makes it quick to pull a colleague into a thread. Longer notes collapse behind a “Show more” toggle, and a “Resolved” divider in the sidebar separates finished discussions from open ones, so it’s easy to see what still needs attention.

Tracking: Notes iteration for WordPress 7.1 (#76316)

Dedicated Identity section

[site admin][theme builder][end user]

A new Appearance > Editor > Identity screen consolidates your site’s logo, favicon, title, and tagline into one easy-to-find location, with inline editing so you can crop and adjust images right there. This eliminates hunting through Settings or digging into templates just to update foundational branding. For new site builders especially, it makes setting up your site’s identity quick and straightforward. Existing site owners have an intuitive place to update the data.  (76264, 76116)

Visual revisions improvements

[site admin][end user][theme builder]

Building on the visual revisions introduced in 7.0, the revisions screen gains a paginated timeline in the inspector with more detailed information about each revision, making it easier to understand what changed as you scrub through versions. (77333)

Changes  made via autosave are now labeled in the revisions timeline and make the autosave notice work with the visual revisions UI.(79950, 79947)

Apply Globally now with review panel

The block inspector’s Apply globally action which has been a one button push of the block’s local style changes to Global Styles, has received an upgrade in WordPress 7.1 so designer can have a more granular control, on which part of the styles will make it into the global styles.

The button now opens a review modal instead, listing each modified style with its current and new value. All changes come pre-selected; deselect any you want to keep as local overrides, and only the checked styles are applied. Undo still restores the previous state in one step. What was a somewhat risky action is now a deliberate choice. You see exactly what will change across your site before committing. (#79839)

Admin / Workflow updates

Updates to admin and workflow tools in 7.1 improve navigation, content management, and site administration. These changes are designed to reduce friction and help you work more efficiently within the WordPress dashboard.

Organized command palette

[all]

The command palette, the quick-access menu you open with keyboard shortcuts,  now groups results into recent, suggested, and matching sections, and remembers your recently-used commands across sessions. The visual design has also been refreshed to make scanning results easier. This helps you navigate WordPress faster by surfacing the tools you use most often right at the top. (75691)

Change a comment’s parent from the Edit Comment screen

[end user][site admin][enterprise]

Ever needed to fix a comment that landed in the wrong thread? The Edit Comment screen now has an “In reply to” control in the Save box — hit Edit and you get a dropdown of the post’s other comments, listed by the author with a short excerpt. Top-level comments just show “None.”

You can’t create broken threads with it: the dropdown hides the comment itself and anything nested under it, and the server double-checks on save — the new parent has to be on the same post and can’t be the comment or one of its own replies (anything invalid gets bounced with a WP_Error). If the current parent wouldn’t normally show up in the list (a pingback, say), it’s kept in there as the selected option, so saving without touching the field changes nothing. Works without JavaScript too, and there are tests covering the validation. (65570)

See an excerpt of posts without titles

[end user][site admin]

If you publish posts without titles for instance for quick status-style updates, the Posts list has been pretty useless for telling them apart: just a column of identical “(no title)” links. 

Now, in Compact view, untitled posts show the first 15 words of the excerpt right after “(no title)”, so you can actually see what each post is at a glance. 

The checkbox’s screen-reader label gets the same text, password-protected posts keep their content hidden, and the Extended view is unchanged since it already shows excerpts.(65022).

Media Library: infinite scrolling is back on by default, with a per-user opt-out

[end user][site admin]

The Media Library grid now uses infinite scrolling by default, so attachments load continuously as you scroll instead of behind a “Load more” button. For anyone who prefers the previous behavior, there’s a new personal option: a “Disable infinite scrolling in the Media Library grid view” checkbox on the profile screen. The setting only appears for users who can actually upload files, since others never see the attachment grid.

For developers, the existing media_library_infinite_scrolling filter still works and now takes top precedence: a hooked filter always wins, followed by the user’s profile preference, with infinite scrolling enabled when neither is set. Note the filter’s default value has flipped from false to true as of 7.1.0, so any code relying on the old default should be reviewed. The change ships with unit tests covering the new user option and the full precedence chain (65564).

Read the Dev note: Media Library infinite scrolling is now enabled by default, with a per-user opt-out.

Hosts can now tune speculative loading defaults

Since WordPress 6.8, speculative loading lets browsers prefetch or prerender pages a visitor is likely to open next, making navigation feel near-instant. WordPress ships with deliberately cautious defaults — and until now, changing them required an mu-plugin. With WordPress 7.1, hosting providers and site owners can adjust the default mode and eagerness through environment variables or wp-config.php constants. A well-configured host with page and object caching in place can opt its sites into more aggressive speculation and pass the speed gains on to visitors. The real-world data hosts gather this way will also help inform whether core changes the defaults for everyone in a future release. The technical details are available in the core ticket (#65624).

Developer Goodies 

[developer][theme builder][plugin author][enterprise]

WordPress 7.1 provides developers with expanded APIs, theme.json capabilities, and system improvements. These tools offer greater control over site design, block behavior, and system integrations.

Post editor iframe now always on

Other editors in WordPress—the site editor, the template editor, and block, template, and device previews—have been unconditionally iframed for a long time, going back to the template editor’s introduction in 5.8. The post editor was the holdout: starting in 7.0, whether it ran isolated depended on the blocks actually present in a given post, so a post using only Block API v3+ blocks got the isolated canvas, while a post containing even one older block (API v1 or v2) dropped out of it entirely. That meant the same site, even the same author, could see the editor behave differently from post to post. In 7.1, that condition is removed: every post editor is always iframed, regardless of theme type or block API version.

For most people writing and editing content, this is good news—no more switching behavior depending on which blocks happen to be inserted. Block developers have a bit of homework, though: the iframe has its own document and window, separate from the admin page where editor scripts run, so any code that reaches for the global document or window to touch the canvas will now be looking at the wrong place. The usual fix is to get the canvas’s document from an element inside it (via ownerDocument and its defaultView) rather than the global object, and to use useRefEffect for attaching and cleaning up canvas event listeners.

Read the dev note on the 7.1 changes and the block migration guide for more details.

Ryan Welcher published a guide and a demo plugin. The post editor is going full iframe: what block developers need to know before WordPress 7.1 with code examples and instructions how to fix things if necessary. 

Abilities API opens up its execution pipeline

The Abilities API arrived in WordPress 6.9, and 7.1 gives extenders real control over it. Four new lifecycle filters let plugins step into ability execution — short-circuit it entirely (think caching, rate limiting, or maintenance mode), transform input, layer on extra authorization rules, or reshape and even recover results. Two more filters add custom input and output validation on top of JSON Schema, and a new wp_ability_invoked action fires on every invocation — even failed ones — handy for logging and auditing. The core info abilities return more user details, input over the REST API now arrives properly typed, and wp_prepare_json_schema_for_client() strips PHP callbacks and WordPress-only conventions before a schema goes out to REST clients, MCP integrations, or AI tools.

A new public metadata flag rounds it out: declare once that an ability is meant for external clients, and REST, MCP adapters, and future integrations use it as their default — with channel-specific flags still able to override, and permission callbacks still guarding actual execution.

Finding the right abilities gets easier too: wp_get_abilities() now accepts arguments to filter registered abilities by category, namespace, or meta — with the same filtering available on the REST endpoint.

Details and code examples in these dev notes:

• New execution lifecycle filters for the Abilities API
• Abilities API improvements
• JSON Schema preparation for client compatibility
• A unified public exposure flag for Abilities
• Filtering registered abilities with wp_get_abilities() in WordPress 7.1

Global Styles and theme.json 

Text Shadow support for theme.json

Theme authors can now define text shadows directly in theme.json via a new textShadow property under styles.typography. It works everywhere you’d expect: at the root level, per-block (say, a shadow on paragraphs only), via style variations, and on elements — including pseudo-selectors like a link’s :hover state. Any valid CSS text-shadow value is accepted, including stacked multi-shadow definitions. Block placeholder text in the editor resets the shadow so it stays readable regardless of what the theme sets.

"styles": {
		"typography": {
			"textShadow": "1px 1px 2px red, 0 0 1em blue, 0 0 0.2em blue;"
		},
		"blocks": {
			"core/paragraph": {
				"typography": {
					"textShadow": "1px 1px 2px red, 0 0 1em red, 0 0 0.2em red;"
				}
			}
		},
		"elements": {
			"link": {
				":hover": {
					"typography": {
						"textShadow": "none"

"styles": {
		"typography": {
			"textShadow": "1px 1px 2px red, 0 0 1em blue, 0 0 0.2em blue;"
		},
		"blocks": {
			"core/paragraph": {
				"typography": {
					"textShadow": "1px 1px 2px red, 0 0 1em red, 0 0 0.2em red;"
				}
			}
		},
		"elements": {
			"link": {
				":hover": {
					"typography": {
						"textShadow": "none"

More details in the Dev Note: Text Shadow Support in Global Styles

Text-Align Block Support Migration

Nine more core blocks (Post Date, Post Excerpt, Post Navigation Link, Post Title, Query Title, Site Tagline, Site Title, Pullquote and Term Name) now use WordPress’s standardized text-align system. As part of a larger migration effort this update ensures consistent alignment controls across the editor and makes these blocks behave predictably alongside newer blocks. 

WordPress EndUser are not supposed to see any changes and existing blocks continue to work. Theme designers are now able to style any of these blocks text align via theme.json property. The code example shows how to set the center as the site-wide TextAlign default. And `”textAlign”: false` disables the feature for this block 

{
	"version": 3,
	"styles": {
		"blocks": {
			"core/pullquote": {
				"typography": {
					"textAlign": "center"
				}
			}
		}
	}
}

{
	"version": 3,
	"styles": {
		"blocks": {
			"core/pullquote": {
				"typography": {
					"textAlign": "center"
				}
			}
		}
	}
}

Block Visibility

Adds settings.blockVisibility.allowEditing to theme.json, allowing themes to disable the block visibility feature entirely.

{
  "settings": {
    "blockVisibility": {
      "allowEditing": false
    }
  }
}

{
  "settings": {
    "blockVisibility": {
      "allowEditing": false
    }
  }
}

When set to false, the toolbar button and block options menu item are hidden. In this regard, it makes this block support consistent with color, typography etc.

blockVisibility.allowEditing follows the layout flag. The reason is the two-fold nature of blockVisibility at the block supports level: a bool means don’t render the block at all, but viewport settings allow users to control visibility per viewport.

The object shape also leaves the door open to extending block visibility to triggers, not only blockVisibility.viewports but others like post type or whatever. (76559).

Block Supports: CSS variables by feature selector

Block Supports now generates CSS custom properties based on a block’s feature-specific selectors, not just its root selector. Some blocks—the Button block is the example given—define their outer wrapper and an inner styling target as different elements, and previously there was no way to output a preset variable (like a dimension size) onto that inner element specifically. Theme and plugin authors building design systems now have a way to target the right element per feature, without needing custom CSS to work around the mismatch.

A minimum-width option for block dimensions

Blocks already supported height, minHeight, and width. What was missing was a way to stop something from shrinking too far—so a layout element wouldn’t collapse into an unusable sliver on a narrow screen. Minimum-width closes that gap, mirroring how minimum-height already works.

It’s opt-in at the block level: the control stays hidden in the inspector until a block explicitly enables it, though it shows by default in the global styles panel. Theme-defined dimension presets carry over automatically, so existing spacing scales just work. The Group block is the first to adopt it.

You’ll find more details in the Dev Note New Block Support in WordPress 7.1: Minimum Width

Design System Theme Provider 

The first version of the design system’s theme component arrives in WordPress 7.1. It consists of standardized CSS custom properties that follow the W3C Design Tokens specification. You probably won’t spot the difference right away — the default theme was deliberately built to match existing styles — but this is the machinery that will power the admin color scheme in the Site Editor. You can read more details on the future direction in the Merge Proposal: Design System Theming 

The Dev Note has more: Design System Theming in WordPress 7.1

Admin color schemes in Site Editor

The Site Editor’s sidebar and interface now respect your chosen WordPress admin color scheme instead of always showing a dark background. This brings visual consistency across the post editor, Site Editor, and admin dashboard. If you’ve personalized WordPress with a color scheme you prefer, that choice now carries through everywhere you work. 78397

Mix static HTML with editable blocks

A new innerContent block support lets a block keep static HTML fragments interleaved with editable inner blocks as the canonical source of its own markup. In practice, this means a hand-written HTML structure can have just a piece of it—a paragraph, an image—editable in place, while the rest stays fixed and can’t be moved, removed, or rearranged.

The Custom HTML block is the first adopter: pasting HTML with a block comment delimiter embedded in it (for example, a <!– wp:paragraph –> block inside a larger static <div>) makes that inner piece editable directly in the canvas, while the surrounding markup remains locked in place. It’s a narrow, developer-facing capability for now—the HTML block is the only place it’s wired up—but it opens the door for custom blocks to offer the same kind of “mostly static, partly editable” experience going forward. (79115)

The dev note can be found on the Make Core Blog: Editable blocks inside the Custom HTML block 

Block Bindings for list-items and inner blocks

The List Item block has gained Block Bindings support. A List Item’s content can now be connected to a data source—a custom field, a pattern override, or another registered source—so individual entries in a list can be populated dynamically rather than typed in by hand. The change registers content as a bindable attribute for core/list-item.

A related fix rounds out the feature: previously, if a bound List Item also contained a nested sub-list, that nested list was dropped when the binding was rendered. Now a List Item can carry a bound value and a nested list beneath it at the same time. In practice, this means multi-level lists—say, a team member’s name pulled from a custom field, with a nested list of their current projects underneath—can now be fully dynamic without losing structure.

Tracking: Block Bindings in WordPress 7.1 (#77199)

Connectors authentication improvements

The Connectors framework, which manages WordPress’s connections to external services like AI providers, now supports username and application password authentication as an alternative to API keys. A merged pull request adds a default connector form for this method, along with the underlying authentication type, mirroring the equivalent API already available in WordPress Core.

The change also handles the practical details: saved passwords are masked in the UI and over REST, credentials can be set via constants or environment variables instead of the database, and a companion Core patch keeps the two in sync. For connectors that require an account login rather than a bare API key, this removes the need for a custom settings screen.

This lands alongside a broader open proposal for a PHP-side field registry that would let connector authors declare arbitrary settings—model choice, temperature, custom URLs, and more—the way register_setting() works elsewhere in WordPress. That registry isn’t built yet; the application password work is a first, concrete step (new auth method, not new field types), addressing one of the two gaps the proposal identified rather than the full vision.

Tracking: Connectors: proposal for a PHP-side field registry for connector configuration (#78647)

Blocks package stabilizes two experimental functions

The Blocks package stabilizes cloneSanitizedBlock and sanitizeBlockAttributes, dropping their __experimental prefixes now that the functions have been stable in practice for some time. The old __experimental-prefixed names still work but will log a deprecation notice, so plugins or themes importing them directly should switch to the new names.

Post author notifications: the filter decides

The notify_post_author filter now has the final say: approval status is checked before the filter runs, so it receives an accurate default and returning true reliably sends a notification — even for unapproved comments. Sites forcing notifications with __return_true should switch to a callback that checks approval, or they’ll start receiving emails for spam and moderated comments. (#64217). More Details can be found in the Dev note The notify_post_author filter now has the final say on post author notifications

Accessible tooltips and toggle tips API

WordPress adds a core mechanism for accessible tooltips (51006), offering an alternative to the title attribute, which is not available to keyboard and touch users. Two new functions cover different use cases: wp_get_tooltip() exposes an accessible name when a control has focus or hover, such as for icon-only buttons, and wp_get_toggletip() implements a popover disclosure with extended help information that stays open until dismissed. Both generate accessible markup that avoids excess verbosity for screen readers and follows best practices for voice command users.

The first toggle tip in core explains the “Remember Me” option on the login screen (55343). Plugin developers can use the functions for their own settings screens and metaboxes. (62741).

Dev Note is now available with the details: Introducing name and informational tool tips in WordPress 7.1

Filtering Site Editor screens

Plugin developers can now configure the Site Editor’s Pages, Templates, Template Parts, and Patterns screens through four new PHP filters — one per screen. Each filter adjusts the DataViews and DataForm components powering these screens: the default view (layout, sort order, visible fields), the layouts available to users, the preconfigured views in the sidebar such as “All” or “Drafts,” and the fields shown in the Quick Edit form.

This creates a single place of configuration per entity, with more screens — including the editor inspector — planned to draw from the same source in future releases (#76544). Code examples are in the Dev Note: Filtering Site Editor Screens in WordPress 7.1.

Post list table markup changed for accessibility

An eleven-year-old accessibility ticket is resolved: in post list tables, the row header (th scope="row") moves from the checkbox column to the title column, so screen readers identify each row by the post’s name rather than by a checkbox that may not even be present. (#32892).

Extenders should check their CSS and JavaScript: selectors like th.check-column or ones expecting the title and row actions inside a td need updating. The dev note Post list tables row headers changed lists the affected patterns, and keeping both td and th selectors preserves compatibility with older WordPress versions.

A list of all the dev notes can be reviewed from the Make Core blog

I started using WordPress because it was a practical tool for client work. One tiny patch turned it into a community, a career, and a lasting lesson about what open source makes possible.

The post My WordPress Origin Story: The One-Line Patch That Changed My Career appeared first on Aaron D. Campbell.

Thank you to everyone who expressed interest in shaping OmFest. We’re still working out some details, but we’ve got a Luma registration page for the event up. Please join on September 29, 2026, Om’s 60th birth anniversary, for an eclectic conference curated by his different communities to celebrate the many facets of Om.

If you’re just tuning in, our dearest loved one Om Malik passed away in June. This grieving process has been a rough one for me, but it has inspired some positive life changes. I’m traveling with a real camera again! A Nikon D6. I’ve shot tens of thousands of frames on the D-series, so it feels like home, but it also has some nice new features like built-in GPS (I used to use an attachment for that) and USB-C.

I’ve also become very driven to be meticulous. I miss Om’s harsh but often true feedback, but his voice in my head is a good reminder that if you do something, it’s worth doing it well. I’m kinda a hot mess (still blessed! ) so this will be a journey but the progress already has been rewarding. Excellence is a habit. We can always hold ourselves to a higher standard.

I have so many tools for organization and management across Asana, Google Workspace, P2, and Linear, but they’re not really connected. I’m trying to get everything in one place so there’s no data duplication, a single source of truth, and everything is always linked and accessible. It feels good, like spring cleaning, to go through everything. Woo has an initiative they call Mise en place with a similar idea. Which is why you’ve also seen those bug fixes and clean-up happening. With AI, this should be easier than ever.

Hi there,

It was another busy release week: the WordPress 7.0.3 security update, WordPress 7.1 RC 1, and Gutenberg 23.7 all landed. More on each below — but before you keep reading, update all your sites to 7.0.3 now. This newsletter can wait…

If you are traveling to Phoenix: safe travels, and pack a sweater — the AC will be cranked up high in every building! This year, I will see you on the WCUS Livestream.

Have a great weekend!

Yours,
Birgit

Developing Gutenberg and WordPress

WordPress 7.0.3 shipped as a security release fixing twelve vulnerabilities, so update your sites right away if automatic background updates aren’t already handling it for you. Release lead John Blackbourn lists the fixes, including a pre-auth XSS on the login screen that could lead to PHP code execution, several contributor-level stored XSS issues, and a multisite privilege escalation. Backports reach all supported branches down to 4.7, and 7.1 RC2 carries the fixes too.

To appreciate the huge effort by the security team to get this release out, consider the numbers: until earlier this year, there were 20 to 30 reports per month; now that number has jumped to 450 per month. Both security updates, 7.0.2 and 7.0.3, were backported not only to the two officially supported versions, 6.9 and 7.0, but all the way back to version 4.7. That’s two dozen major versions that needed updating. See also Rae Morey’s story in The Repository: WordPress 7.0.3 Patches 12 Vulnerabilities as Bug Bounty Reports Climb to 450 a Month.

August 19 is the scheduled final release date, and Benjamin Zekavica announces WordPress 7.1 Release Candidate 1 ready for your test sites. Since Beta 4, more than 145 updates landed — 57 in the Editor, 88 in Core — plus new features like the Icons API, shareable revision links, and email notifications for @mentions in Notes. Plugin and theme authors: wrap up testing and bump your “Tested up to” to 7.1. WordPress Playground lets you try it straight in the browser.

Milana Cap counts more than 310 Core Trac tickets, twenty new hooks, and roughly 600 Gutenberg enhancements in the WordPress 7.1 Field Guide, your linked index of every dev note for the August 19 release. Highlights range from client-side media processing and the always-iframed post editor to the SVG Icon API, responsive block styles, and the persistent admin bar. A candid closing section covers what didn’t make it, from the Classic block’s reprieve to real-time collaboration and React 19.

The post editor is always iframed in WordPress 7.1, and the escape hatch that let one apiVersion 2 block pull a whole post out of the iframe disappears. That’s the compatibility risk topping the developer’s audit list for WordPress 7.1 by release coordinator Benjamin Zekavica. He sorts each section by risk level, walks through the SVG Icon API’s strict sanitizer, responsive block styles, and the new DataViews filters, and closes with a checklist for your August 19 release.

The Gallery block’s ambiguous “Convert to images” button becomes “Detach,” complete with a modal explaining what happens — one of many refinements Jonathan Bossenger walks through in what’s new in Gutenberg 23.7. You’ll also find the Global Styles inheritance UI now opt-in via the Experiments page, LaTeX errors in the Math block waiting until you leave the field, and fixes for floated blocks overlapping sticky ones and Pullquote line heights in the editor.

Plugins and Tools for #nocode site builders

Variable product pages load roughly 9 to 12 percent faster and large stores get snappier Order screens, Brent MacKinnon reports in what’s new in WooCommerce 11.0. Analytics also grows more trustworthy: refunds now count in the period they happened, session counts exclude bots, and you can rerun incomplete historical imports. Guest customers can claim past orders when they create an account, and a Checkout Recovery beta lets you test messaging before a full rollout.

Getting Site Editor changes out of the database and into version control has frustrated agency developers for years, and Brian Coords argues agents make it urgent again. His experimental agent-first approach to Create Block Theme, wp-theme-control, wraps the upcoming WP-CLI 3.0 wp block commands in bash scripts and an agent skill: a plan command lists database changes, then you dry-run, export them into your theme, and optionally clear the database copies. He’s collecting feedback ahead of his WordCamp US talk.

Clients pinning comments straight onto your live pages — no logins, no email chains, no PDF round-trips — is the pitch of Ben Elwood‘s Reviso client feedback and approvals plugin. Among other page builders it’s native to the block editor, with threaded replies, status tracking, and review links that work even in maintenance mode. Version 1.5.2 switches on Suggest mode by default, so reviewers propose wording changes like tracked changes and your team applies them with one click.

Bas Buis released Dynamic OSM Maps, a plugin that adds interactive maps without Google API keys or recurring fees. The lightweight block runs on OpenStreetMap and Leaflet: in the free version you enter addresses manually, while Pro connects your custom fields — coordinates, addresses, or repeaters — for unlimited markers and popups. That opens the door for directory and listing sites to render stored location data straight onto the map.

Emily Rapport opens with Dutch tulip mania to frame the rush of llms.txt files and AI-visibility subscriptions, then does something rarer: shares a year of her own content work with real Search Console data. Her rewritten maintenance page climbed from position 50 to 13 and collected exactly five clicks — yet three inquiries arrived saying “I asked ChatGPT.” Her takeaway: publishing consistently across real topics beats chasing one niche, and you still can’t reliably trace an AI recommendation to a page.

Building Blocks and Tools

The WooCommerce Developer Blog follows up its All Products proof of concept with the why behind it. Veronica Fasulo and co-authors lay out the value of DataViews and who it’s for: you describe a field once and it powers the list column, Quick Edit, bulk edit, and forms, instead of four hand-wired implementations. Merchants get switchable views without page reloads, extension developers get registration instead of DOM patching — and the team openly asks whether DataViews is even the right foundation.

What’s new in Playground?

A customizable Dock, auto-save, and live visual previews of your saved instances headline the new WordPress Playground UI, which Fellyph Cintra demos on WordPress.tv. The video walks through importing projects from GitHub or Zip files, previewing Core and Gutenberg pull requests, and the built-in file editor, database manager, and error logs — plus switching WordPress versions all the way back to 0.7. Feedback goes to the Make Playground blog or the #playground Slack channel.

AI in WordPress

Vercel, a major platform shipped the Vercel AI Gateway Provider plugin, by former Core AI team rep Felix Arntz. One API key unlocks hundreds of models from over 40 providers. Any AI Client plugin on your site can route text, image, and video generation through the Gateway — including the Photo to Post demo from Jonathan Bossenger’s tutorial. Automatic fallbacks kick in during provider outages, and you pay provider rates without platform fees.

Your AI agent designs a beautiful page, and Gutenberg freezes it into one uneditable Custom HTML blob. Human Made’s answer is Block Runner, now open-sourced on GitHub: a deterministic Node CLI that converts generated HTML into properly nested native blocks — wp:cover, wp:columns, wp:buttons — with real attachment IDs, and validates every result against headless Gutenberg. In the team’s benchmark, raw models writing block markup score 35 to 73; paired with Block Runner, the same models hit 93 to 99.

Readers may remember Chris Huber’s Block Format Bridge from a few months back — it tackles the same gap from inside WordPress, converting Markdown and HTML server-side at insert time, while Block Runner works the pipeline side with its validation gate and CI hooks. Two open-source answers to the same question is a good sign the agentic content problem is getting real attention.

A third piece of the puzzle: the official WordPress agent-skills repository takes the prevention route, teaching AI coding assistants to write valid block markup in the first place. For a lighter-weight approach, you can also point your AI agent straight at the updated Core Blocks Reference, where each block’s page now documents its markup, attributes, supports, and allowed nesting.

Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg’s master branch?
Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review.

Now also available via WordPress Playground. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? Email me with your experience.

Questions? Suggestions? Ideas?
Don’t hesitate to send them via email or
send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph.

For questions to be answered on the Gutenberg Changelog,
send them to changelog@gutenbergtimes.com

Toni Schneider, Automattic’s founding CEO, board member, and now CEO of Bluesky, has a great conversation with Nilay Patel on The Verge’s Decoder podcast (YouTube, Pocket Casts). Automattic invested in Bluesky back in 2023, and I’m very excited to see what they figure out in open social protocols.

WordPress 7.0.3 is now available

WordPress 7.0.3 is now available which features several security fixes. Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately.

You can update to WordPress 7.0.3 by downloading it from WordPress.org, or visiting your site’s Dashboard → Updates and clicking Update Now. Sites that support automatic background updates will begin updating shortly.

For more information, please visit the WordPress 7.0.3 HelpHub site.

Security updates included in this release

The security team would like to thank the following people for responsibly reporting vulnerabilities and allowing them to be fixed in this release:

• Pre-auth reflected cross-site scripting (XSS) on the login screen with potential to lead to PHP code execution reported by the team at pwn.ai.
• Contributor+ stored cross-site scripting (XSS) in posts via the emoji settings element reported by Asaf Mozes (amosec)
• Contributor+ stored cross-site scripting (XSS) in the Post Content block reported by N05ec@LZU
• Contributor+ stored cross-site scripting (XSS) in Quick Edit on sites with a large number of users reported by Naveen S and Ajmal Moochingal
• Contributor+ stored cross-site scripting (XSS) in the Post Date block reported by Alex Concha of the WordPress Security Team
• A privilege escalation issue on multisite networks with user registration enabled, allowing a user to create a new site reported by Aikido Security
• An information disclosure issue in the Latest Comments block exposing comments on password-protected posts reported by Ehtisham Siddiqui of the WordPress Security Team
• Enumeration of post slugs reported by HDWSec
• Disclosure of notes in comment feeds reported by Elio Gubser
• Author+ CSS injection via a bypass of the safe CSS attribute filter reported by Anthropic
• Bypass of the email address confirmation flow reported by Omar Hasan
• A server-side request forgery (SSRF) issue in URL validation allowing requests to link-local ranges reported by Andrew Mohawk and multiple independent reporters

Backports

As a courtesy, these fixes are being backported, where necessary, to all branches eligible to receive security fixes (currently through 4.7). As a reminder, only the most recent version of WordPress is actively supported. The backports are in progress and will ship as they become ready.

WordPress 7.1 RC2 has also been released, containing all applicable fixes.

CVE and GHSA references

Details of the login screen XSS vulnerability can be found in the advisory: CVE-2026-64638 / GHSA-52p2-r8wf-jcrf.

Thank you to these WordPress contributors

This release was led by John Blackbourn. In addition to the security researchers mentioned above, WordPress 7.0.3 and its backports would not have been possible without the significant contributions of the following people:
Aaron D. Campbell, Aaron Jorbin, Adam Silverstein, adrianmoldovanwp, Aki Hamano, Alex Concha, Andrew Duthie, Andrew Serong, annezazu, Barry, Bernie Reiter, Daniel, Daniel Richards, David Biňovec, Dennis Snell, Ehtisham Siddiqui, Erwan Le Rousseau, Fabian Kaegy, fiocavallari, George Mamadashvili, gubser, Isabel Brison, Jarda Snajdr, Jb Audras, Jeremy Felt, Joe Dolson, Joe Hoyle, John Blackbourn, Jon Surrell, Jonathan Desrosiers, Khokan Sardar, Lance Willett, lucasbustamante, lucatume, Marco Ciampini, Marin Atanasov, Mohammad Jangda, Mukesh Panchal, Paul Kevan, Peter Wilson, ramonopoly, SergeyBiryukov, vortfu, Weston Ruter

Inspired by Automatticians James Kemp and Dave Smith, I’ve been thinking a lot about how much of our discord in the design of WordPress stems from the differences of our two big tribes: Bloggers and Builders.

Many of the OG developers of WordPress, including myself, tend more towards the blogging side. Writers, photographers, podcasters, journalists, the people for whom a reverse chronological stream on the homepage is the most obvious thing in the world. We link out a lot, love comments, social features and think a lot about the editor as a writing environment.

Builders are the site shapers, webmasters, the agencies, the companies, the content managers that think in a more page-first rather than post-first way. Tagging? Blogroll? Date-based permalinks? Who needs them. Give me custom fields, rich templates, a site editor, to craft beautiful sturdy pages that will stand the test of time. A store with a catalog of items where what changes is the inventory and ratings, not the content.

The Builders right now dominate our core development discourse, which makes sense. They hold a lot of the economic share with merchants and rich websites. They’re also more loyal. The Bloggers love their WordPress as the place they truly own and call home, but Bloggers have an account on every channel where there’s an audience, they syndicate out with an ephemerality mindset, because that reader/listener/follower connection is the spark that keeps their flame alive. A Builder would never be a digital sharecropper on someone else’s domain.

Dave Smith has been doing some very interesting explorations of a simpler site editor, and you hear his Builder bias around 3:20 in how obvious a static homepage as default seems to him.

The good news is we can coexist as we have at least since WordPress 1.5. We just need to give a little more love to the Blogger side, there’s so much cool stuff we could do in the Fediverse with RSS, ActivityPub, ATProto, blogrolls (link manager is still in wp-admin!), pingbacks…