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…

Marketing's evolving fast. Creators and businesses must adapt as SEO and ads fade. Experimentation and multi-channel strategies are key to surviving now.

Want visitors to set their own donation amount? Here's how to build a pay-what-you-want Stripe form in WordPress with WP Full Pay, fees included.

I’m trying out this thing, it’s trained on my blog posts and public talks, that you can chat with as me on Telegram. Behold: AutoMattBot. Update: This is powered by Delphi.ai and it appears very broken right now, people are sending messages and on my side it looks like it’s responding but they’re not seeing it.

The first Release Candidate (“RC1”) for WordPress 7.1 is ready for download and testing! This version of the WordPress software is still under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it’s recommended to evaluate RC1 on a test server and site. WordPress 7.1 RC1 can be tested using any of the following methods: PluginInstall and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream.)Direct DownloadDownload the RC1 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website.Command LineUse this WP-CLI command: wp core update --version=7.1-RC1WordPress PlaygroundUse the WordPress Playground instance to test the software directly in your browser. No setup required – just click and go! The scheduled final release date for WordPress 7.1 is August 19, 2026. The full release schedule can be found here. Your help testing Beta and RC versions is vital to making this release as stable and powerful as possible. Thank you to everyone who contributes by testing! Please continue checking the Make WordPress Core blog for 7.1-related posts in the coming weeks for more information. What’s in WordPress 7.1 RC1? WordPress 7.1 RC1 contains more than 145 updates and fixes since the Beta 4 release, including 57 in the Editor and 88 in Core. For an overview of what’s new in WordPress 7.1, read the Beta 1 announcement and the WordPress 7.1 Dev Notes. For a comprehensive summary, see the WordPress 7.1 Field Guide. You can also explore the technical details of all issues addressed since Beta 4 using the links below: GitHub commits for 7.1 since July 29, 2026 Closed Trac tickets for 7.1 since July 29, 2026 New Features since Beta 1 Icons API: New APIs for registering icons and icon collections in Core, ready for plugins to extend. Speculative loading configuration: Speculative loading defaults can now be configured via environment variables and constants. Email notifications for @mentions: Email notifications have been introduced when mentioned in a Note. Shareable Revisions: Share links to specific revisions for faster collaboration. Want to look deeper into the details and technical notes for this release? These tickets and pull requests are just some of the latest updates: #GB-79839: Apply globally: choose which modified block styles to apply #GB-80814: New responsiveEditingEnabled editor setting to hide responsive styles #GB-80107: Tabs: toolbar buttons to reorder tabs #GB-80046: DataViews: shift-click range selection #65636: Preload REST API requests fetched on editor load #65613: Notes are excluded from comment feed queries #65491: KSES allows the autofocus attribute on dialog elements #65517: Multisite upload limits are enforced when sideloading media from a URL #62757: Update the jQuery UI library to version 1.14.2 How you can contribute WordPress is open source software made possible by a passionate community of people collaborating on and contributing to its development. The resources below outline various ways you can help the world’s most popular open source web platform, regardless of your technical expertise. Get involved in testing Testing for issues is crucial to the development of any software. It’s also a meaningful way for anyone to contribute. Your help testing the WordPress 7.1 RC1 version is key to ensuring that the final release is the best it can be. While testing the upgrade process is essential, trying out new features is equally important. This detailed guide will walk you through testing features in WordPress 7.1. Update your theme or plugin For plugin and theme authors, your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for all users. Thanks for continuing to test your themes and plugins with the WordPress 7.1 beta releases. With RC1, you’ll want to conclude your testing and update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file to 7.1. If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the support forum. Test on your hosting platforms Web hosts provide vital infrastructure for supporting WordPress and its users. Testing on hosting systems helps inform the development process while ensuring that WordPress and hosting platforms are fully compatible, free of errors, optimized for the best possible user experience, and that updates roll out to customer sites without issue. Want to test WordPress on your hosting system? Get started with configuring distributed hosting tests here. Thank you to all web hosts who help test WordPress! Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack. An RC1 haiku A candidate standsthe desert sun tests its strengthArizona waits Props to @krupajnanda, @annezazu, @amykamala, @wildworks and @masteradhoc for collaboration and review Join us for the launch of WordPress 7.1 at WordCamp US 2026, August 16–19.