One of the hardest things do with WordPress plugins is the settings. I've spent 2 hours trying to work out how to explain a potentially complex new MetaSlider feature using only a 4 word label and a 20 word tooltip 🤔

Someone has done a good job of taking over the WordPress theme results for "Elementor". The official Elementor theme is down on about row 20

If you're selling WordPress plugins using Easy Digital Downloads, I'd recommend trying this new tool called "Stripe Subscription Sync". On one of our sites, it led to about 70 "new" subscriptions being recorded. Other sites produced fewer results, but still it's worth testing:

Have you seen the new Media Library that's being built in the Gutenberg plugin? It's pretty cool and I suspect it will come to the WordPress core this year:

I've been testing collaborative editing experiments in WordPress for years. Those earlier versions never worked smoothly. Now, with the Gutenberg plugin, for the first time it works great, right out of the box. Google-Docs style editing in WordPress is here. Give it a try 😃

I'd love our team to try and tackle the linking feature in Gutenberg. By default, there's a lot of noise including attachments, terms, images etc before we get to the posts and pages. - Does anyone have feedback on this feature currently? - Ideas on how it could be better?

You've probably seen the Tailwind CSS story today (the founder had to lay off most of the dev team). One thing that jumped out to me as lifetime hater of lifetime sales: the business runs 100% on lifetime plans. Got to get some annual subscriptions going: tailwindcss.com/plus#pricing

The Big Bite agency is now part of WP Engine. This could be a very interesting move for publishers using WordPress. If you're curious what Big Bite does, I wrote about them last year. For example, they helped "The Times" to standardize on WordPress: publishpress.com/publishing-n...

I see lots of WordPress support replies saying "Try changing the theme". That's a major headache for users as it often messes with the settings. A plugin like this from @perishablepress.com is much better. You can visually test a new theme without making it live: wordpress.org/plugins/them...

AI is good for internal processes such as support, coding, and translations. But (so far) our customers aren't requesting it at all for use inside the WordPress admin area. Like 0.0%. Nobody we serve is yet comfortable using it for customer-facing work.

Ready for the first week of January: we've got a small but helpful new feature for WordPress publishers. You can lock new posts to a status. You can lock them to "Published", to "Private", or even to a custom status that's visible to a unique group of users.

@bph.social came on the PublishPress podcast and we talked about the new Notes feature in WordPress 6.9. The goal is Google Docs-style commenting. The first version of Notes is good, but it's going to get even better with WordPress 7.0 and other core releases next year.

Birgit @bph.social follows Gutenberg as closely as anyone in the WordPress world. I asked her where things stand with the 4 phases of Gutenberg. That plan started in 2018. Are we still following those 4 phases? And what's next for WordPress in 2026?

Do you need to prevent visitors from accessing some of your site's content? There's a helpful new feature in PublishPress Permissions for anyone with restricted content. You can design the message that you show to users who can't yet access your content.

The new version of the Gutenberg plugin (22.3) is out and it makes the new Notes feature much better. You can now get emails whenever anyone writes a note on one of your posts.

Birgit @bph.social is *the* source of news on what's happening with Gutenberg. She came on the PublishPress podcast and I asked her about the strategy of developing Gutenberg separately as a standalone plugin:

The latest version of the Gutenberg plugin adds a "Fonts" menu under "Appearance". This is one place to can manage the fonts for your theme, upload new fonts, or connect to Google Fonts:

There's a helpful update from Anne McCarthy on Google Docs-style editing in WP - The next step is to get this into Gutenberg for more testing - It's still too early to know what will happen with sites on low-end hosts - Could end up in core or a in canonical plugin make.wordpress.org/core/2025/12...

Does anyone have advice for language files for plugins on the WP repo? It seems like there are two choices: 1. Include the files inside the plugin (which can really add to the size of the plugin) 2. Go through the official submission process (which can be really bureaucratic)

Do you need to prevent visitors from accessing some of your site's content? You can do that now using the Free version of the PublishPress Permissions plugin.

- 4 or 5 times higher conversion rate - Deals close twice as fast It's fair to say that Alex Denning came on the PublishPress podcast and was bullish on AI chat as a way to drive sales.

WordPress VIP has a promo out for their collaborative editing feature. Coming to the WordPress core at some point in 2026? www.youtube.com/watch?v=6txE...

Have you seen this tree before? It's the default "Page not found" screen for the Twenty Twenty-Five theme If a visitor tries to access a post that isn't published or has restricted access, they'll see the tree 🌳

What is the best LLM to use for your data? @alexdenning.bsky.social has spent the last 4 years testing every available model to improve his Falcon AI service. He believes the LLM landscape has completely changed this year:

New in WordPress 6.9, the mystery feature at the bottom of the screen has a label:

This is new on the WordPress plugin repo: some of our company accounts such as "PublishPress" are marked as brand accounts and can't reply on the forums. This is a good move, I think 👍. Support with a human face.

We've just agreed to add our 11th plugin to PublishPress. One key part of this new plugin will be the ability to share previews of unpublished content. Basically a 2025 version of Public Post Preview. But you'll be able to share published content too, using QR codes and more.

Alex Denning has been in the WordPress and SEO community for years. Recently, he's been diving deep into AI. Everything changed for him when he opened a very early version of GPT-3 🤯

This Week in WordPress #357 In "This Week in WordPress Episode 357," Nathan Wrigley, Michelle Frechette, Steve Burge, and Marcus Burnette cover a playful Cards Against Humanity Black Friday sale, Michelle’s tech award nomination, and the upcoming WordPress 6.9 release wpbuilds.com/2025/12/02/t...

I said something on the @wpbuilds.com podcast this morning and aml pretty confident it's true. But maybe I'm wrong? "Nobody has yet built a successful business on the block editor. It's always an adjacent product (forms, events, eCommerce) that uses the power of blocks." True? 🤔

I'm hearing from a lot of WordPress developers who aren't happy that their existing customers want the Black Friday deal. Hot take: why wouldn't they? I think we have to plan on our current customers seeing and wanting our Black Friday discounts.

WordPress 6.9 is going to have a global search feature. Click Command+K and this search box will appear. It allows to search for content, admin screens, and layouts inside the Site Editor.

There's several new blocks coming in WordPress 6.9 including a "Terms Query" block. This is basically taking the same approach as the "Query Loop" block and applying it to terms.

TIL: Namecheap is nearly 80% more expensive than Cloudflare for domains Namecheap: $18.68 per year for .coms Cloudflare: $10.44 per year for .coms

"Miscellaneousness improvements" 1. What an excellent new word 😆 2. That's absolutely something when your update is simply to show "Black Friday" banners

Rodolfo Melogli has built a big following in the WooCommerce world under the "Business Bloomer" name. But you'll never see him using that name on social media. Real people > brands.

Do you find yourself writing a group of posts on the same topic? There's a new version of the PublishPress Series plugin out this week. It's ideal for magazines, newspapers, short-story writers, comic artists. You can help your readers easily navigate through the whole series:

It took a lot of prompting, but Nano Banana seems to have a good understanding of the PublishPress penguins now. Initially it got very, very confused by having the 3 penguins overlapping in the original logo.

Rodolfo Melogli came on the PublishPress podcast and told the story of Checkout Summit. Rodolfo admires the WooConf events that WooCommerce ran a few years ago. He wanted a new WooCommerce conference badly enough that one day he sat up and said, "I'll do it!"

WordPress 6.9 is coming in a couple of weeks. One of the new features is that you can hide blocks. Click the "Hide" link in the block toolbar and that block will disappear from the frontend and from the admin area.

There's a new "Time to Read" block in WordPress 6.9. You'll see this feature on a ton of news sites. For example, here's the "Time to Read" info on today's New York Times homepage:

Checkout Summit is a new WooCommerce conference that's taking place in Sicily next April. Rodolfo Melogli is running the conference. He came on the PublishPress podcast and explained why there's such in-person experiences are so powerful right now:

We helped a customer create a pretty cool WooCommerce workflow for the holidays 🎄🛒. Anyone creating a product can chose 4 dates: - When to publish the product - When to change the product to "Out of stock" - When to add a "Sale over" tag - When to unpublish the product

The new "Notes" feature is ready for WordPress 6.9. Here's a quick intro to how it works: - Select any block - Look for the 3-dot icon in the toolbar - Click "Add note"

So you have a WordPress site with a ton of content. It's a real pain to keep it clean and remove stale posts. Would this help? - You add an "Remove" tag to a post. - The post is automatically deleted after 12 months. - You get an email when it happens.

Akshat from WP Remote has got his team to the point where they're using AI to write 99% of some new projects. How did his team become so good at AI? By taking a top-down approach, or by allowing his team to vibe code?

Plain English. It's really hard. We've been trying to use simpler English. We updated the PublishPress Revisions plugin with new text: - Before: Revision Queue - After: New Revisions - Before: Revision Archive - After: Past Revisions Simpler. And hopefully more helpful.

Akshat Choudhary came on the PublishPress podcast and talked about the joy of building a beautiful product. Not products, plural. Not spreading yourself too thin. Focusing on one thing (like his WP Remote platform) and enjoying the craft of building it.

My wife really doesn't like the background I use for podcasts (a couple of bookshelves, her desk). Now I look, most people have equally random backgrounds. Anyone have a recommendation for a better approach? Do you have a great look for your podcast room?

Have you used WP Remote, Blog Vault, or MalCare on your WP sites? Probably yes, but you likely don't know the man behind those projects: Akshat Choudary. He's a shy guy, but his company does awesome work. He's leaning into AI right now. 99% of the new WP Remote redesign was all built with AI 🤯