Exciting times ahead for WordPress enthusiasts! With the recent updates, it's clear that the next major release on December 2, 2025, is going to be a game-changer. The planning phase is complete, and the announcement of the release squad is imminent. Have you had a chance to dive into the Roadmap to 6.9 post? With so many exciting features and updates, it's hard to pick just one. Whether it's the improved DataViews, enhanced Site Editor capabilities, or better template handling, there's something for everyone to get excited about.

ICYMI (In Case You Missed It): WordCamp US has published the schedule for the four-day event. Be sure to check it out! Ray Morey has more details on what to expect. Looking ahead, I'll be taking a long weekend retreat in the beautiful Bavarian Alps. The next Weekend Edition will be published on August 23, just before WordCamp US, and then again on September 6, 2025.

Gutenberg 21.4 RC1 is now available for testing. It seems like the team is back on track with last year's numbers of PRs merged per release. A quick look at the changelog reveals an abundance of DataViews updates. 🎉

Don't miss the latest episode of the Gutenberg Changelog 119—WordPress 6.8.2 and 6.9, Gutenberg 21.1, 21.2, and 21.3 Releases with Tammie Lister. If you're listening via Spotify, please leave a review. This will help with distribution.

John Blackbourn has announced Maintenance Releases for WordPress branches 4.7 to 6.7, ensuring that the included update to the root security certificate bundle is backported to all branches, including 4.7. This ensures that when your site performs server-side HTTP requests, the most up-to-date information about trusted security certificates is used.

A discussion is underway among contributors regarding which new blocks should be added to the editors if any. For a long time, there was hesitation to add more blocks beyond the basic ones already available, and users were directed to the many plugin options. However, it appears that there's some movement now. Matias Ventura, lead architect of the Gutenberg projects, has published an article on this topic.

New block additions for the Block Library are being discussed in this week's Core Dev Chat on Slack. There are plenty of opinions on the matter, and contributors are weighing the pros and cons before making any decisions. Whether you're a theme developer or plugin creator, it's essential to consider the aspects that will impact your work.

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

In his post Migrating Legacy WordPress Content to the Block Editor: A Real-World Case Study, Elliot Richmond shares his experience of bringing old content into the modern editor. The post is a practical look at what it takes to transform 15+ widget types, manage edge cases, and process 200+ property listings while maintaining functionality and performance.

Nagir Seghir has published a Developer Advisory: Changes to session management and cron jobs in WooCommerce 10.1. Review your plugins if you haven't tested with WooCommerce 10.1 before the August 11 launch. Update your code since logged-in user session storage is changing from usermeta to session table only.

EventKoi, the new event management plugin mentioned in previous newsletters, has just announced the release of a free version. Download it from the pricing section.

Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks

In his latest tutorial, Carlo Daniele at Kinsta explains how to hack Gutenberg blocks with style variations and block variations. He demonstrates creating an animated Polaroid effect for the Image block, covering the differences between these features: Style Variations change appearance with CSS, while Block Variations create preconfigured block versions.

The tutorial includes setting up a development environment, building a complete “Image Hacker” plugin, and addressing compatibility issues with WordPress's lightbox feature. It's an excellent tutorial to level up your block customization skills.

Ryan Welcher has also created a shorter version of how to create block styles in minutes! If you're eager to learn more ways to add block style variations to your theme or plugin, read through the complete developer guide: “Mastering Custom Block Styles in WordPress: 6 Methods for Theme and Plugin Developers” by yours truly.

Building Blocks and Tools for the Block Editor

Ronald Huereca has written a detailed guide on How to Generate a Block Manifest to Improve Block Performance. You'll learn what they are and how to effectively use them in your block plugin.

This comprehensive resource explains the technical aspects of block manifests, best practices for implementation, and ensures that you can optimize your plugins for better performance.

Juliette Reinders Folmer has released v3.2 of the WordPress Coding Standards, PHP_CodeSniffer rules (sniffs) to enforce WordPress coding conventions. This release adds stricter meta usage checks, new sniffs for heredoc, improved PHP 8.1+ callable support, expanded deprecated feature detection to WP 6.8.1, and various optimizations.

In his latest live stream, Ryan Welcher took a Deep Dive into explaining WordPress Interactivity API Router. He walked through the WordPress Interactivity API and its routing system, showing how to use its front-end routing features.

This is useful if you're working on custom blocks or interactive themes. He covered how the Interactivity API functions, what the routing package does, and how you can apply it in your own WordPress projects.

In his latest livestream, JuanMa Garrido explored how to test WordPress PHP code with PHPUnit. Follow along as he spun up the Docker-powered wp-env test stack, created WordPress-standards-compliant unit tests, used TDD for clean architecture, and wired everything into CI pipelines—ensuring that your plugins and themes stay stable, refactor-ready, and bug-free.

Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg's master branch? Gutenberg Times provides daily builds 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 the WordPress Playground? 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

Featured Image: Photo by Kimson Doan on Unsplash

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