General

Logging into your analytics to find a sudden drop in website traffic is incredibly frustrating. Your first thought is usually, “Did I break something, or did Google penalize my site?” At WPBeginner, we have managed high-traffic websites since 2009. We have seen just about every… Read More »
The post Why Your WordPress Site Lost Traffic (And How to Get It Back) first appeared on WPBeginner.

Hi there,

Good news, dear friends. WordPress 7.0 has a new release date! May 20, 2026. Announced on Friday, the post featured the updated release party schedule: All release parties happen in the Make #core Slack channel. Everyone is welcome to join.

This week, I also traveled to Salzburg, Austria to discuss WordPress 7.0 features with the local community. It was a great joy to meet so many fellow community organizers from WordCamps Vienna, Europe and Kampala, as well as the local meetup organizers and participants from Salzburg.

Auf dem Weg nach Salzburg zum WordPress Meetup heute abend https://t.co/vQbGHHN8vvWir werden uns über die Änderungen in WordPress 7.0 unterhalten und die neuen Features vorstellen #WordPress Es sind noch Plätze frei! pic.twitter.com/FqgjsaOYjA— Birgit Pauli-Haack (@bph) April 22, 2026

Such a beautiful privilege to be able to work from the train traveling through the Bavarian landscape. #myofficetoday pic.twitter.com/FdV5A6SaaR— Birgit Pauli-Haack (@bph) April 23, 2026

Enjoy the hopefully restful weekend.

Yours, Birgit

Developing Gutenberg and WordPress

Ray Morey, The Repository has the skinny about WordPress 7.0 Gets a New May 20 Release Date

Jonathan Desrosiers and Max Schmeling of the WordPress Core team has published Distributed RTC performance testing, a bash/PHP load-testing tool for the real-time collaboration HTTP polling endpoint coming in WordPress 7.0. Hosting providers can run scenarios — baseline, single idle, sustained polling, burst concurrency, and two-client editing — then submit results directly to WordPress.org. Only curl and bash are required, with WP-CLI optional. If you’re a host and need reporting credentials, ping Jonathan Desrosiers (@desrosj) or Amy Kamala (@amykamala) in the #hosting Slack channel.

JuanMa Garrido introduces the WordPress Core Dev Environment Toolkit, a desktop app for macOS, Windows, and Linux that eliminates the painful setup that burns through Contributor Days before anyone writes a line of code. Powered by WordPress Playground, it bundles Git, Node, and npm as JS/WASM — so you install the app, click a button, and you’re cloning wordpress-develop, running a dev server, and generating Trac patches without touching a terminal.

The latest Dev note arrival brings you Roster of design tools per block (WordPress 7.0 edition). I updated a previous version for WordPress 7.0, summarizing design support changes across the last ten releases. WordPress 7.0 adds seven new blocks — Accordion, Breadcrumbs, Icon, Math, Post Time to Read, and the Term Query family — and renames Verse to Poetry. I also removed the Pattern Overrides/Block Bindings column, since both features are now opt-in per block and attribute, making a single checkbox no longer meaningful.

Gutenberg 23.0 ships a revisions panel for templates, template parts, and patterns (experimental), and completes the Site Editor’s Design › Identity panel with Site Title and Tagline fields alongside the existing Logo and Icon. Real-time collaboration gets legacy meta box compatibility via a new opt-in flag, plus reliability fixes for concurrent edits and corrupted sync updates. 174 PRs merged, with 8 first-time contributors.

For the Gutenberg Changelog episode 130, Tammie Lister and I chatted about AI in Art and WordPress, WordPress 7.0 and Real-tine collaboration and Gutenberg plugin release 22.9 and 23.0. The episode will drop in your favorite podcast episode over the weekend. I hope you listen in and enjoy our conversation.

The latest episode is Gutenberg Changelog #129 Artificial Intelligence, WordPress 7.0 and Gutenberg 22.8 with Beth Soderberg, of BeThink Studio

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

Brian Coords, developer advocate at WooCommerce, walks you through a prototype plugin called WP Content Types, a block-native take on custom post types and fields built directly into the WordPress interface using Data Views and Data Forms. You’ll see AI generate a Recipe content type, configure fields with core components, connect templates through block bindings, and explore a “Fields Only” modern UI. It’s a V1 vision for content modeling that leaves legacy backwards compatibility behind.

Coords implementation goes much further than a similar project “Create Content Model” Autumn Fjeld and Candy Tsai demo’d at WordCamp Asia 2025 in Manila, Philippines. Their repo is available on GitHub including links to the talk and demo video.

In his latest video, Wes Theron walks you through using block dimensions to control layout in WordPress — without touching any CSS. You’ll learn how to find the dimensions panel in the editor and learn when to reach for padding (space inside a block), margin (space around it), block spacing (gaps between child blocks), and minimum height. Each setting gets a practical demo so you can confidently build cleaner, more polished pages with better visual hierarchy.

Alex de Borba makes a pointed case in Why Developers Keep Reaching for Builders Over Block Themes that the “block themes can’t compete” narrative is more habit than fact. With theme.json v3, register_block_style(), synced patterns, and wp_enqueue_block_style(), you can build design systems, reusable components, and performant layouts without proprietary tools — and without locking your clients into someone else’s ecosystem when developer relationships change.

At WordCamp Asia, the WordPress Speed Build Challenge returned for a second round: experienced builders had 30 minutes, a surprise brief revealed live on stage, and nothing but the Full Site Editor — no page builders, no custom code. Watch how they tackle layout, content, styling, and real-time problem-solving under pressure while narrating their decisions. A fun, unscripted window into smart site editor workflows for anyone curious about block-based building. The recording is now available on WordPressTV.

Upcoming Events

The 6th annual Web Agency Summit runs April 27–30, 2026. It’s free, virtual, and built for agency owners ready to stop winging it. Hosted by Vito Peleg, Stephanie Hudson, and Andrew Palmer, four days of live expert sessions cover the full agency arc: Build, Expand, Scale, and Thrive. Speakers include Eugene Levin from Semrush and Karim Marucchi of Crowd Favorite. Think of it as a week-long podcast you keep open while you work.

If you’re in New York on April 29, dev/ai/nyc with Hilary Mason is worth your evening. Hilary Mason — CEO of Hidden Door, founder of Fast Forward Labs, and former Chief Scientist at bit.ly — joins Jesse Friedman, who leads WP Cloud at Automattic, for a fireside chat on AI, creativity, and human-computer interaction. Doors open at 5:30 PM at Automattic’s NoHo space on Crosby Street, with drinks and bites after. Registration is on Luma. The event is free of charge.

The Checkout Summit in-person event just wrapped up in Palermo, Sicily — don’t be sad you missed the arancine and Aperol Spritz. Organizer Rodolfo Melogli of Business Bloomer will reassemble 18+ speakers for the online edition, {Reloaded}, on May 7–8, 2026 starting at just €20. The WooCommerce-focused lineup covers SEO after AI, MCP integrations, hosting security, Shopify comparisons, and scaling strategies — practical sessions, zero fluff, built for developers and agency pros.

Rae Morey, The Repository has the skinny for you in Can’t Make It to Palermo? Checkout Summit Is Going Online in May.

Uganda’s biggest annual student web design competition, Website Projects Competition 2026, takes place on June 9, 2026 at Busoga College, Mwiri. Under the theme “Fueling Innovation Through WordPress,” 20 student teams across three age categories — Cubs (12 & under), Rising Stars (13–18), and Explorers (18+) — compete by building and pitching WordPress websites to a live audience of 200+. Sponsored by Automattic and Woo. Registration and sponsorship are open.

WordPress Accessibility Day 2026 is a free, 24-hour global livestream on October 7–8, 2026, dedicated to accessibility best practices for WordPress developers, designers, and content creators. The volunteer-led nonprofit event includes live captions and ASL interpretation for all sessions, with corrected transcripts published afterward. It’s pre-approved for IAAP continuing education credits. Sponsorships are now open, ranging from $150 Microsponsors to $5,000 Platinum packages.

Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks

Gina Lucia, freelance writer, published a beginner-friendly walkthrough on what WordPress block patterns are and how to use them for OllieWP. You’ll learn how patterns differ from synced patterns, templates, and template parts, why block themes unlock their full potential for headers, footers, and full-page layouts, and how to browse, preview, insert, and customize curated patterns in Ollie’s pattern library. A handy primer if you’re moving from classic themes into the full site editing experience.

Nathan Wrigley sits down with Brian Gardner to talk block themes, AI, and the future of WordPress design. The Genesis co-creator argues that many developers are still judging the block editor by a five-year-old experience — and missing how far it’s come. He shares his work on Powder, explores how tools like Ollie and Miles are bridging AI-generated design with native WordPress blocks, and asks the question keeping him up at night: do we still need hundreds of themes, or is one solid base theme plus vertical-specific patterns actually the future?

JC Palmes, WebDev Studios and regular guest on the Gutenberg Changelog, makes the case that block themes can replace one-off chaos with repeatable consistency on large team projects. The approach: start with a shared starter theme, build a reusable pattern library, and centralize design decisions in theme.json. She also tackles the less glamorous side — onboarding developers, running QA, and finding the right balance between editorial freedom and long-term maintainability. Practical and team-focused, it’s a playbook worth your time if you’re managing multi-site or multi-developer WordPress work.

Anne Katzeff walks you through using the Cover block as a Hero section with a Call to Action. Starting from default settings, she shows how alignment (wide or full width), overlay color and opacity, minimum height, focal point, and inner block layout work together to create a polished hero.

Katzeff also created a companion video tutorial to follow along with how she manipulates the cover block for her purposes. All very practical and beginner-friendly.

“Keeping up with Gutenberg – Index 2025” A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test, and Meta team from Jan. 2024 on. Updated by yours truly. 

The previous years are also available: 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024

AI in WordPress

Automattic’s head of global expansion James Grierson argues in WordPress: The Operating System of the Agentic Web that WordPress’s open-source transparency, 90,000+ plugin ecosystem, REST API, and MCP support make it the ideal foundation for AI agents. WordPress.com’s full MCP write capabilities — launched in March 2026—let agents create and manage content via natural conversation. Challenges remain around legacy code, inconsistent plugin quality, and PHP perception, but Grierson sees AI itself as the solution to those very problems.

Inspired by a trip to WordCamp Asia 2026 in Mumbai, Chandra Patel built the WordPress REST API Playground — a free plugin developed entirely with Claude Code in just 2–3 hours. The three-panel interface lets you browse all registered REST API routes, build requests with schema-driven form fields, and view syntax-highlighted responses with timing info. A handy Code tab generates ready-to-use JavaScript, PHP, and cURL snippets for every request. Available on GitHub.

Pablo Postigo used Studio Code, Automattic’s new AI coding agent for building WordPress sites locally, to finally redesign Govoid.es, a geek news blog he co-founded in 2009 that’s been dormant since 2013. He used Claude to craft a detailed design brief, fed it to Studio Code (running Claude Opus 4.7), and got a complete minimalist dark-mode block theme generated in one shot, with only a couple of hours of refinement before pushing straight to production. Studio Code is still in alpha, there will be dragons

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

Featured Image:

If you run a WooCommerce store, then you’ve probably heard that ChatGPT now lets users shop for products directly inside the chat interface. A user asks something like “I need a blue yoga mat under $40” and ChatGPT responds with actual products from registered merchants,… Read More »
The post How to Sell on ChatGPT with WooCommerce (Agentic Guide) first appeared on WPBeginner.

Welcome to the Source of Truth for WordPress 7.0!

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 questions, leave a comment or email me at pauli@gutenbergtimes.com.

Huge Thank You to all collaborators on this post: Anne McCarthy, Sarah Norris, Ella van Durpe, Maggie Cabrera, Ben Dwyer, Jonathan Bossenger, Justin Tadlock, Dave Smith, Courtney Robertson and a lot more. It’s takes a village…

Estimated reading time

21–31 minutes

at

4,911 words

Table of Contents

ChangelogImportant note/guidelinesOverview Important links:Assets TagsPriority items for WordPress 7.0 Real-Time Collaboration (RTC) [enterprise][site admin]Navigation Overlays and more [theme builder][plugin author] [site admin]Treating patterns like a single block [all]AI in WordPress [enterprise][developers][site admin]Visual Revisions [all]New BlocksBreadcrumbs Block [all]Icon Block [all]Block Editor enhancementsCustom CSS for Individual Blocks [enduser][site admin] [theme builder]Control viewport-based block visibility [all]Anchor support for dynamic blocks [developer][plugin author]Paste color values in the color picker [end user][theme builder] [site admin]Dimension support for width and height [theme builder][site admin]Email notifications for Notes [all]Block Attributions Groups in the sidebar [all]Link Control validation [end user] [site admin]Improved Blocks and Block handlingPseudo Styles for Button Blocks [theme builder][site admin] Extra divs removed from blocks in the editor [theme builder][developer][site admin] Universal Text Alignment [all]Cover Block Video Embeds [site admin][end user]Gallery Block Responsive Grid Block [site admin][end user][theme builder]Heading block variations [site admin][end user]HTML Block Enhancement [site admin] [themebuilder] [end user] Image block inline editing and controls [site admin][end user]Math Block Improvements [end users][site admin]Paragraph [all]Query Loop Enhancements [all]Verse Block, renamed to Poetry [all]Admin / Workflow updates Manage fonts for all themes in a dedicated page [site admin][theme builder] [enterprise]Command Palette in Adminbar [all]View Transitions  [all]Improved screens across WP-Admin  [all]Developer Goodies [developer][enterprise]PHP-only block registrationPattern Overrides for custom blocksDataViews, Data Form components and Fields API UI Primitives and Components

Changelog

Any changes are cataloged here as the release goes on.

April 23, 2026

WordPress 7.0 has a new release date: May 20th, 2026! (see post).

The RTC performance testing script automatically tests all 4 possible architecture approaches. Follow the instructions on the repository. Still under development, though. Release and Call for hosting testing planned for Friday April 24. (See Slack discussion)

April 17, 2026

Update on new release date no later then 4/22.

April 1, 2026:

Added information from Extending the 7.0 Cycle by release lead Matias Ventura

Changed release date to TBD

Updated Real-Time Collaboration section with additional information.

March 30, 2026:

Fixes for clarity and grammar.

Changed feature image of the post.

RTC: Added Introduce filters for the polling intervals (76518)

March 27, 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 

Note: As always, what’s shared here is being actively pursued but doesn’t necessarily mean each will make it into the final release of WordPress 7.0.

WordPress 7.0 introduces several new features and performance enhancements.

Key new features include:

Real-time collaboration: multiple users can now work on the same post.

Navigation overlays: Customizable mobile menus for more flexible styling.

Content focused pattern editing: Pattern editing now prioritizes the content editing experience with more available options when needed.

Visual revisions: A new revisions screen inside the block editor gives a visual preview of the changes with an easy-to-understand color-coded system.

AI Foundation in WordPress: User can connect their site to an AI agent of choice to use the AI experiments plugin. Plugin developers can use the Connectors API to register connections to external services.

Furthermore, WordPress 7.0, entails:

Two new blocks: the Icon block and the Breadcrumbs block.

Viewport-based block show/hide: Block visibility extended to customize display according to screen-sizes.

Gallery lightbox navigation: improved browsing through images placed in a gallery.

Font management for all themes: The screen to upload and manage fonts is now available in the Appearance menu for classic and block themes.

Many more quality of life changes for workflow and design tools made it into this release. You’ll find the complete list below.

WordPress 7.0 is set to be released on April 9, 2026 at Contributor Day of WordCamp Asia. The new release date will be announced no later than April 22. (see Ventura’s announcement)

Of note, this release consists of features from the Gutenberg plugin version 22.0 – 22.6. Here are the release posts of those plugin releases: 22.0 |  22.1 |  22.2 | 22.3 | 22.4 | 22.5 | 22.6. Later Gutenberg releases contain bug fixes, backported to WordPress 7.0. release branches.

Important links:

Planning for 7.0 + update on Beta 1

WordPress 7.0 Development Cycle

What’s new for developers: December, January, February, March

7.0 Field Guide

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.

Short video on how to use the tags to navigate the post.

Priority items for WordPress 7.0 

Real-Time Collaboration (RTC) [enterprise][site admin]

Multiple users can now work on the same page at the same time, seeing each other’s changes as they happen. No more “someone else is editing this” warnings. Whether you’re co-writing a post, reviewing a layout, or making last-minute edits before publishing, everyone stays in sync without leaving the editor.

It represents the biggest step toward achieving full collaborative editing, not only for newsrooms and big publishing houses. It also simplifies working on a site editing for agencies and their clients as well as designers and writers working together on a post.

A presence indicator in the editor header shows who’s currently editing. Under the hood, title, content, and excerpt now sync via Y.text for more granular conflict resolution, and numerous reliability fixes address disconnection handling, revision restores, and performance metrics. (75286, 75398, 75065, 75448, 75595).

You can enable the feature via Settings > Writing. Check the box next to Enable early access to real-time collaboration, in the Collaboration section.

The infrastructure implementation uses HTTP polling for universal compatibility,  CRDT (Conflict-free Replicated Data Type) update data is stored persistently in post_meta on a special internal wp_sync_storage post type (one per “room”/document).

The sync provider architecture is designed so that the storage and transport layer can be swapped out. Updates are batched and periodically compacted. WordPress code initially limits simultaneous collaborators to two to protect hosts. (64622).

Hosting companies have the option to add a different provider. There will be a wp-config constant that can be used to change the defaults. 

Introduces JavaScript filters to allow third party developers to slow down or speed up polling via the RTC client. (76518).

For more details, check out the Dev Note Real-Time Collaboration in the Block Editor.

Update:

Since October, WordPress VIP beta participants — spanning newsrooms, research institutions, and enterprise publishers — tested the real-time collaboration against live editorial workflows, reporting back what worked, what broke, and what they couldn’t live without. Their voices didn’t just validate the feature — they shaped it.

Matias Ventura explains why the WordPress 7.0 cycle is being extended by a few weeks: the real-time collaboration feature needs more time to nail its data architecture. After Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress, expressed a preference to revisit the proposed custom table for syncing presence and content changes, the team is refining the design before committing.

The proposal for custom table to keep a record of the changes to a post/page from each browser window, was discussed in the trac ticket (64696)

Plugin developers relying on metaboxes will want to take note — collaborative editing is disabled when metaboxes are present, making this cycle your window to migrate.

Navigation Overlays and more [theme builder][plugin author] [site admin]

Navigation blocks now have customizable overlays and give user full control over mobile hamburger menus. A prominent Create overlay button in the side bar guides you through the setup, providing a selection of patterns to achieve various designs for your overlay. WordPress 7.0 comes with multiple built-in patterns including centered navigation, accent backgrounds, and black backgrounds. New blocks default to “always” showing overlays. The Navigation block sidebar section also shows a preview of the selected overlay template parts. You can also access the list of Navigation Overlays via Appearance > Editor > Patterns > Template Parts.

On GitHub you’ll find a list of all the Navigation Overlay enhancements.

The dev note Customizable Navigation Overlays in WordPress 7.0 has everything you need to know.

To make it easier for users to create custom overlays for their mobile navigation, four new patterns are now available for the navigation overlay template parts:

Overlay with black background

Overlay with accent background

Centered navigation with info

Centered navigation

Submenus: Always visible option: Users can now add navigation blocks to their overlays and toggle if they’d like to have the submenus always visible or not. (74653)

Page Creation in Navigation: Create pages directly from the Navigation block with helpful Snackbar notices and improved parent page search using relevance matching (72627, 73836).

Treating patterns like a single block [all]

Get ready for a smoother, more intuitive experience when using patterns in WordPress 7.0. It’s becoming much easier to customize your site’s design sections with a simplified editing workflow and an improved content-focused mode. 

Users naturally stay in the safe lane without accidentally breaking designs. Agencies can hand off a site knowing clients can’t wreck the layout by default — they’d have to deliberately choose to go deeper.

What’s New for Patterns:

Quick Content Edits: When you select a pattern, instead of seeing a list of individual blocks, you’ll see a clean, expanded inspector panel. This panel exposes all the editable text and image fields directly, organized for easy access.

Content-Only Focus: Patterns will now default to a Content-Only editing mode. This simplifies the experience by letting you quickly fill in the content without seeing all the underlying design tools.

Full Customization (If You Need It): If you do need to change the structure or design of a pattern, you can simply “detach” it. This gives you full access to all the individual blocks, just like before. Use the Edit Pattern button from the sidebar.

A Unified Experience: This new approach makes patterns feel like single, smart design objects with easy-to-update attributes, whether you’re using a pattern, a design section, or a partially synced pattern.

Head over to the dev note Pattern Editing in WordPress 7.0 for the full picture. 

AI in WordPress [enterprise][developers][site admin]

WordPress 7.0 ships with a WP AI client API and a built-in Connectors screen — a centralized hub for managing all kinds of external service integrations, not just AI providers. Connect to OpenAI, Claude, or Gemini and WordPress automatically installs the right plugin and prompts you for your API key. Developers get a consistent framework to build on—enabling features like content generation, block building, and theme creation without reinventing the plumbing every time.

The new Connectors page also sports a shout-out to the AI Experiments plugin if users want to see AI features, like title, excerpt, or alt-text generation, in action.

But the real value of this Connectors API is broader: any plugin that needs to connect to an outside service via API keys or other credentials can tap into this standardized connection management system. Users get one place to maintain all their integrations. And plugin developer a standardized way to tap into the plumbing.

Read the dev note Introducing the Connectors API in WordPress 7.0 for all the salient details.

The Core AI team also published a Call for Testing: Community AI Connector Plugins.

Visual Revisions [all]

How revisions work for the block editor was completely reimagined. The visual Revisions screen keeps you in the editor the entire time, activating a subtle revision mode right where you work, eliminating the need to jump to a separate screen. A timeline slider in the header allows you to browse through different versions, seeing content updates in real-time.

The system highlights visual differences, showing added and removed text, formatting changes, and outlining modified blocks instead of raw code. For long documents, a mini-map along the scrollbar indicates where changes exist, letting you jump directly to them, and the sidebar remains useful with a summary of the changes for the current revision. To simplify reverting, the “Update” or “Publish” button is replaced by a “Restore” button when you are browsing the history (74742).

Yellow marks a changed section/block, in red you’ll find deletions and green are additions compared to the early version. 

Wes Theron has a short video on How to restore previous versions of a page or post in WordPress.

Anne McCarthy also gives a great walk through the screens on Youtube:

New Blocks

Breadcrumbs Block [all]

The new native Breadcrumbs block in WordPress 7.0 provides dynamic navigational trails for the Site Editor. It automatically generates paths from the homepage to the current page, adapting to context.

The block handles hierarchical pages (e.g., “Home / Services / Web Design / Portfolio”) and includes taxonomy for blog posts (e.g., “Home / Technology / Your Post Title”). Beyond simple pages, it correctly constructs paths for archive pages (category, tag, author, date), search results, and 404 errors. For Custom Post Types, it includes the post type archive in the trail.

The block offers alignment options (left, center, right, wide/full), as well as other block design options. Additional settings are available for showing the last item as text or a link and consistent homepage handling (72649).

The dev note Breadcrumb block filters has the details. 

Icon Block [all]

The new Icon block empowers users to add decorative icons from a curated collection to their content. It utilizes a new server-side SVG Icon Registration API, ensuring icon registry updates propagate without block validation errors. 

The initial release is limited as it doesn’t yet allow registering third-party icon collections. Extensibility for third-party icon registration is planned for future release in 7.1, following further development on the Icon registry API architecture. A REST endpoint at /wp/v2/icons supports searching and filtering. The initial set draws from the wordpress/icons package (71227, 72215, 75576).

Block Editor enhancements

Custom CSS for Individual Blocks [enduser][site admin] [theme builder]

Previously, applying custom CSS to a block instance required adding a custom class name and then writing a rule in the Site Editor’s global Custom CSS. This two-step process was complex for most users and inaccessible to content editors without Site Editor access.

A new custom CSS block support introduces a Custom CSS input to the Advanced panel within the block editor sidebar, conveniently placed next to the familiar “Additional CSS Class(es)” field. You only need to add the CSS declarations (no selectors!) If you do need to target nested elements, use the & symbol (for example, & a { color: red; }). This field is focused purely on styling and will reject any HTML input. The field is guarded by the edit_css capability to see and use this powerful new field. The editor automatically adds a has-custom-css class for styling consistency. #73959, #74969.

Dive into the dev note Custom CSS for Individual Block Instances for the complete rundown.

Control viewport-based block visibility [all]

When you’re editing a post or page, you can now choose to show or hide any block depending on the visitor’s screen size. Select a block, click Show in the toolbar, and pick which devices — desktop, tablet, or mobile — should display it. You can also hide a block from the document entirely through the same modal.

For the nitty-gritty, see the dev note Block Visibility in WordPress 7.0.

Anne McCarthy walks you through the feature:

Anchor support for dynamic blocks [developer][plugin author]

Dynamic blocks now support Anchor (id attribute) functionality. The anchor reference is consistently stored within the block comment delimiter, enabling dynamic rendering on the front end. (74183)

Paste color values in the color picker [end user][theme builder] [site admin]

Color pickers throughout the block styles sidebar, now offer support for pasting complete color values. You can now copy/paste the brand colors from a design document or website into the color picker box and don’t have to go through the process of selecting the right color and hue (73166).

Dimension support for width and height [theme builder][site admin]

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

The Dev Note Dimensions Support Enhancements in WordPress 7.0 has the details for block.development and theme builders.

Email notifications for Notes [all]

Collaborators can now get notified when someone leaves a note on their content. No more checking back constantly (73645).

Block Attributions Groups in the sidebar [all]

The block editor sidebar is being reorganized to make controls easier to find. Block settings will be grouped into four clear sections: 

Content (text, images, captions), 

List (reordering and nesting for blocks like Lists and Social Icons), 

Settings (block-specific options), and 

Styles (typography, colors, spacing). 

This means you won’t need to hunt through toolbars or scattered panels — everything will live in a predictable place in the sidebar. Connected data sources will also appear directly next to the attributes they affect, so you can see at a glance what’s linked and where. It also means that for the transition a reordering of the sidebar and controls to be in different place than before. For instance. For an image block that includes the “Alt” text setting is now to be found in the content tab rather than the settings tab.  (73845)

Here’s an example of the implementation for Patterns:

Link Control validation [end user] [site admin]

The Link Control component in Gutenberg now validates the URLs, you enter helping to avoid broken links (73486).

Improved Blocks and Block handling

Pseudo Styles for Button Blocks [theme builder][site admin]

Theme designers and developers can now style button states (hover, focus, active, and focus visible) directly within the theme.json, making it much easier to keep all design controls centralized and consistent. This reduces the reliance on custom CSS for things like button hover states (71418).

JSON{
«styles»: {
«blocks»:{
«core/button»:{
«color»:{
«background»:»blue»
},
«:hover»:{
«color»:{
«background»:»green»
}
},
«:focus»:{
«color»:{
«background»:»purple»
}
}
}
}
}
}
{
«styles»: {
«blocks»:{
«core/button»:{
«color»:{
«background»:»blue»
},
«:hover»:{
«color»:{
«background»:»green»
}
},
«:focus»:{
«color»:{
«background»:»purple»
}
}
}
}
}
}

More details are available in the Dev Note: Pseudo-element support for blocks and their variations in theme.json.

Extra divs removed from blocks in the editor [theme builder][developer][site admin]

WordPress 7.0 introduced a new HtmlRenderer component, which renders HTML content as React elements with optional wrapper props. For theme authors, this means that several blocks will no longer have an extra wrapping <div> in the editor, allowing for consistent styling with the front end (74228).

Blocks that have been fixed are:

Archives

Calendar

Latest Comments

RSS

Tag Cloud

Universal Text Alignment [all]

Nearly all text blocks now support the standardized text-align block support system, including Paragraph, Button, Comment blocks, Heading, and Verse. Plus, text justify alignment is now available. See tracking issue to follow along on the progress (60763).

Cover Block Video Embeds [site admin][end user]

For the Cover block this release comes with the ability to use embedded videos (like YouTube or Vimeo) as background videos in the Cover block, rather than being restricted to locally uploaded files. Offloading video to 3rd-party services helps reduce hosting and bandwidth costs. Also, the focal pointer is now available for fixed background. (#73023, #74600).

Gallery Block 

Lightbox navigation [site admin][end user]

The Gallery block’s “Enlarge on click” lightbox now lets you navigate between images. When you click a gallery image, back/next buttons appear so you can browse through the rest of the gallery without closing the lightbox. Keyboard navigation (arrow keys) and screen reader announcements are fully supported. It also works with swiping on mobile, however the swiping isn’t yet visual/animated.  (62906) and lightbox items still miss captions.

Content Tab in sidebar [site admin][end user]

For fast access to Alt text box the sidebar of the Gallery block shows a new content tab in the sidebar. 

Responsive Grid Block [site admin][end user][theme builder]

The Grid block is now responsive even when you set a column count. Previously, you had to choose between setting a minimum column width (responsive, Auto mode) or a fixed column count (Manual mode)—a binary toggle that confused many users. Now you can set both: when you do, the column count becomes a maximum, and the grid scales down responsively based on your minimum column width. 

You can set neither, either, or both—the block handles all combinations gracefully. The confusing Auto/Manual toggle is gone entirely, replaced by clearer “minimum width” and “columns” labels with a plain-language description explaining the relationship between the two controls.. (73662)

Heading block variations [site admin][end user]

Each heading level (H1-H6) is now registered as a block variation on the Heading block. These do not appear in the inserter, but the change does add icons to the block’s sidebar for transforming it between variations (73823).

HTML Block Enhancement [site admin] [themebuilder] [end user]

The HTML block was redesigned to work now as a modal-based editor featuring separate tabs for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Admin can now use it for more powerful customizations, when HTML JS and CSS work on a single block. (73108).  

Image block inline editing and controls [site admin][end user]

WordPress 7.0 comes with a revamp of the image editing feature in the editor. It’s now easier to crop, rotate or zoom in on a particular image corner. (#72414) (#73277).

Advanced Image Controls [site admin][end user]

Image block now supports the focal point control and aspect ratio adjustments for wide and full alignments, plus reorganized inspector controls with a dedicated content tab. #73115, #74519, #74201

Math Block Improvements [end users][site admin]

LaTeX input now uses a monospaced font, and style options are available for better mathematical expression editing (72557, 73544).

Paragraph [all]

A new typography tool has been added for specifying the line indent of paragraph blocks (73114, 74889). Users and theme creators can specify line indentation rules for a single paragraph block and also at global styles / theme.json level for all paragraph blocks. For global styles and theme.json, it’s possible to choose whether all paragraphs or only subsequent paragraphs are indented, which accounts for different indentation standards around the world.

The dev note on the new textIndent block support has all the details for developers working on blocks or themes.

The example code sets a default indent value of 1.5em globally for paragraphs:

JSON{
«settings»: {
«typography»: {
«textIndent»: «true»
}
},
«styles»: {
«blocks»: {
«core/paragraph»: {
«typography»: {
«textIndent»: «1.5em»
}
}
}
}
}
{
«settings»: {
«typography»: {
«textIndent»: «true»
}
},
«styles»: {
«blocks»: {
«core/paragraph»: {
«typography»: {
«textIndent»: «1.5em»
}
}
}
}
}

More details can be learned in the Dev Note: New Block Support: Text Indent (textIndent) 

Columns in Paragraph blocks [all]

Now that there is block support for typographical columns, the paragraph block can now handle text columns by default (74656).

On the front-end only, the Paragraph block now has a .wp-block-paragraph class. This change doesn’t affect global styles, which still use the p selector.(71207)

Query Loop Enhancements [all]

Query loops now support excluding terms. When the block is locked it now hides design change and choose pattern options. #73790, #74160

Verse Block, renamed to Poetry [all]

The Verse Block has been renamed to Poetry block (74722) Also it now utilizes border-box for its box-sizing, which guards against overflow issues and should make it easier to style without additional custom CSS.

Admin / Workflow updates 

Manage fonts for all themes in a dedicated page [site admin][theme builder] [enterprise]

A dedicated Fonts page is now available under the Appearance menu for all themes. Until now, font management has lived deep inside Global Styles, requiring navigation through several panels to install or preview a font. This new standalone page lets block theme users browse, install, and manage their typography collection in one dedicated space. 

Under the hood, this page is built on a new routing infrastructure for the Site Editor, designed to improve navigation and support new top-level pages in wp-admin. View transitions are now wired into this routing layer, providing early zoom/slide animations when navigating between pages (73630, 73876, 73586).

The Font Library and Global Styles also work with classic themes (#73971, #73876). Like the Media Library, you can access the Font Library as a modal or through a dedicated admin section—regardless of your theme type.

Command Palette in Adminbar [all]

Instantly access all the tools you need with a single click using the new Command Palette shortcut in the Omnibar! In 7.0 Beta 5, logged-in editors will see a field with a ⌘K or Ctrl+K symbol in the upper admin bar that unfurls the command palette when clicked. The new command palette entry point streamlines navigation and customization, giving you full control from anywhere on your site – whether you’re editing, designing or just browsing plugins.

View Transitions  [all]

View transitions have been integrated into the WordPress admin in 7.0, enabling smooth transitions between screens.  The implementation for the front end is slated for the next WordPress 7.1 (64470) The result is a smoother page-to-page transitions using the CSS View Transitions API — no markup or JavaScript changes required, just a progressive enhancement you’ll notice immediately when navigating between admin screens.

Improved screens across WP-Admin  [all]

WordPress 7.0 is getting a CSS-only “coat-of-paint” visual reskin of the wp-admin, bringing the classic admin screens closer to the visual language of the block and site editors — no markup changes, no JavaScript, no functional changes, and all existing CSS class names and admin color schemes preserved. (64308)

New default color scheme: “Modern” replaces “Fresh” as the default admin color scheme (#64546)

Updated buttons and input fields: primary, secondary, and link buttons, plus text inputs, selects, checkboxes, and radio buttons, now align with the WordPress Design System (#64547)

Updated notices: info, warning, success, and error notices refreshed for clarity and consistency (#64548), including on the login screen

Updated cards and metaboxes: dashboard widgets and metaboxes get modernized styling (#64549)

New wp-base-styles stylesheet handle: consolidates admin color scheme CSS custom properties into a single reusable stylesheet, available across the admin and the block editor content iframe

Login and registration screens: the WordPress logo updated from blue to gray to match the new design, and scheme styles now apply to login, install, database repair, and upgrade screens

Developer Goodies [developer][enterprise]

Client-side Abilities API

WordPress 7.0 ships a JavaScript counterpart to the server-side Abilities API introduced in 6.9. The Client-Side Abilities API arrives as two packages: @wordpress/abilities for pure state management usable in any project, and @wordpress/core-abilities, which auto-fetches server-registered abilities via the REST API. You can now register browser-only abilities — navigation, block insertion, and more — opening the door to browser agents, extensions, and WebMCP integrations directly in the client.

WP AI Client

WordPress 7.0 ships a built-in AI Client, that gives your plugin a single, provider-agnostic PHP entry point — wp_ai_client_prompt() — for text, image, speech, and video generation. You describe what you need; WordPress routes it to whichever AI provider the site owner has configured via Settings > Connectors. Official provider plugins cover Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI. No credential handling, no provider lock-in, and graceful feature detection before any UI is shown.

PHP-only block registration

Developers can now create simple blocks using only PHP. This is meant for blocks that only need server-side rendering and aren’t meant to be highly interactive. When possible this feature also auto-generates sidebars for user input for suitable attributes and design tools.

To do so, call register_block_type with the new autoRegister flag. A render_callback function must also be provided. (71792)

Dev note with all the details. PHP-only block registration

Pattern Overrides for custom blocks

Since WordPress 6.5, Pattern Overrides let you create synced patterns where the layout stays consistent but specific content can change per instance. The catch? Only four core blocks supported it: Heading, Paragraph, Button, and Image.

Not anymore. Any block attribute that supports Block Bindings now supports Pattern Overrides by default. Block authors can opt in through the server-side block_bindings_supported_attributes filter. This closes a long-requested enhancement and opens up synced patterns to custom blocks (73889).

DataViews, Data Form components and Fields API 

A substantial API update introduces new layouts, validation rules, grouping options, and picker improvements affecting plugins using wordpress/dataviews. The Dev Note has all the pertinent details: DataViews, DataForm, et al. in WordPress 7.0

UI Primitives and Components

The WordPress UI package just got a significant update, adding multiple new components and tools to help developers create more polished and accessible interfaces for WordPress users.

A new dropdown menu for creating standardized select controls.

A tooltip component for displaying helpful hints when users hover over elements.

The building blocks for creating form fields with consistent styling and behavior.

A component that hides content from visual display while keeping it accessible to assistive technologies.

A standardized button component for creating consistent interactive elements.

Building blocks for grouping related form controls together (fieldsets).

A component for displaying icons consistently throughout your WordPress interface.

A building block for creating consistent layouts around input fields with standardized appearance and functionality.

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