Howdy,
After meeting so many people at WordCamp Gdynia, on the plane and then on the train, I caught a nasty cold and struggled all week. I call this stage mushbrain, and everything becomes much harder, especially reading comprehension suffers. I am over it now, though. It also wasn’t the first time that I sounded horsey on a podcast episode.
It’s the time of year now here in Munich when the days get shorter and the weather is cold, drissly and overcast. A time when snow would brighten the sights, with its whiteness covering partly the darkgray, dark brown background.
Enjoy again this weekend edition and stay healthy.
Yours, 
Birgit
Developing Gutenberg and WordPress
Gutenberg 21.8 is now available and release lead Carlos Bravo hightlighed in his release post What’s new in Gutenberg 21.8? (8 October)
- Block Visibility Control Support and UI
- Block Comments Improvements
- Accordion and Time To Read Blocks
This week Gutenberg Changelog 122 recording, Beth Soderberg, lead developer at Bethink.studio and I chatted about the release and other WordPress topics around Block themes and on going change. The episode arrive at your favorite podcast app over the weekend. You can conclude from this photo, that we definitely had fun and you would be right.
It was JuanMa Garrido‘s turn to write the monthly roundup post What’s new for developers? (October 2025) on the WordPress Developer Blog. The 21.6, 21.7, and 21.8 Gutenberg releases add features for developers. The Command Palette now works throughout the admin, the new Terms Query block makes taxonomy layouts easier, and Block Visibility controls allow for conditional display. Notes (that’s how we call Block Comments now) improve team collaboration, while content-only editing maintains design integrity during client handoffs.
Help testing new features for WordPress 6.9
Release test co-leads Krupa Nanda and Jonathan Bossenger, published several calls for testing in preparation in WordPress of the 6.9 release. Each of the post has a detailed description of the feature, and instructions on how to test is with specific scenarios. It’s much easier to follow along with any of the calls for testing, to also learn what’s new in the next release.
Help test changes to template management is probably the most elaborate call for testing, as template management received a completely new feature, and it needs to be working for many different use cases, and has consquences on existing sites.
Call for Testing: Ability to Hide Blocks for this feature it’s the bare minimum of a new feature, that will be in future releases see some refinement and extensiblity.
Call for Testing: Accordion Block lets you dive into a whole new block, many users asked for an several plugins are already available for. Now it will come to core.
Your time spent on testing the new features for WordPress 6.9, has a lot of impact, as the bugs found now, make the release the best it can be for millions of other users.
The latest episode is Gutenberg Changelog 121—Gutenberg 21.6 and 21.7, Block Theme Development, and Block Themes with Anne Katzeff of AskDesign.
If you are listening via Spotify, please leave a comment. If you listen via other podcast apps, please leave a review. It’ll help with the distribution.
Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners
Lesley Sim informed us that EventKoi Lite is now available from the WordPress Plugin Repository. I mentioned the premium version before, Event Koi is modern, WordPress events calendar. Create single or multi-day events and display month, week, or list views via blocks (or shortcodes).
Mike McAlister announced a new product: OlliePro Extensions on Bluesky. He mentions: Animations, advanced grid + column controls, keyboard shortcuts, and more. Watch the vidoe Introducing Ollie Pro Extensions – Supercharge Your WordPress Block Editor
All controls are seamlessly integrated with the Core editor sitebar sections. Mark Howells-Mead commented in the WordPress Slack #outreach channel: ” I’m very impressed with how he’s been able to integrate the little add-ons many of us are integrating to our own projects, but in such a seamless way by extending core controls.” McAlister shared an example Gist on GitHub.
David McCan took a deep dive into the world of Block plugins. In this blog post Performance of Third Party Blocks and Core Compared he tries to answer the questions many site builders and owners have: “Can you add the features Gutenberg is missing yet still be performant like core?”. McCan tested ten third-party Gutenberg block plugins with WordPress core, specifically focusing on performance.
Matt Medeiros, WPMinute, took the Mega Menu Designer, also made by Mike McAlister, out for the spin. He shared his thoughts in the Video How to Build Mega Menus with WordPress Blocks. He provides a detailed walkthrough calls it “Perfect for anyone looking to enhance their website’s navigation experience.” As reported earlier the plugin is available for free in the WordPress plugin repository.
Rae Morey, publisher or The Repository, reported Ollie’s Menu Designer Flagged for Core, With Automattic Developers Set to Help Shepherd It. Automattic’s Anne McCarthy says developers are preparing to review Ollie’s Menu Designer for inclusion in the Gutenberg plugin, marking the start of a collaborative push to bring the plugin’s features into WordPress. This follows WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg’s suggestion that the menu functionality should be part of core. Details and links in Moery’s article.
Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks
This episode of Greyd Conversations show, Switching to FSE from a pagebuilder, covers the story of Buro Staal, a smal dutch agency, which switched from Elementor to Full site editing cold turkey. Greyd’s host Sandra Kurze and agency owner Rosanne van Staalduinen shared why and how her agency switched and the lessons learned along the way.
The biggest hurdles were limited functionality of navigation block, not able to create Mega Menus, and the need for controls for mobile sites and responsiveness. So they augmented their tech stack with Kadence Blocks and Ollie Pro theme.
Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor
Ryan Welcher published another recipe from his Blockdevelopment Cook Book on YouTube. How To Make A Simple Fade In Effect Fast. “In this recipe, we’re adding a little flair by loading custom JavaScript and CSS for the Cover and Image blocks to create a smooth fade-in effect as they scroll into view. To keep things efficient, we’ll only enqueue these files when the blocks are actually on the page.”
What’s new in and around Playground
Nick Diego announces that WordPress Studio version 1.6.0 now supports Blueprints, which are lightweight JSON files that predefine site configurations for quick and consistent setup. Instead of starting with empty sites or using large snapshots, teams can create portable recipes specifying WordPress versions, plugins, and settings. Studio offers three featured blueprints for quick starts, development, and commerce, while users can also upload custom blueprints. The feature integrates into the standard site creation flow and helps streamline workflows for solo developers and teams alike.
Playground documentation now has Ask AI button, to get help finding and understanding feature sets and APIs.
Ajit Bohra of Lubus shared on X “The Visual BluePrint Builder for Playground is shaping up nicely. All the latest updates are in, and it’s feeling solid. Stable version coming soon, but you can already check it out and start building visually.” A blueprint builder with blocks, how nice. You can test it via this Playground link. The code is available on GitHub.
Jamie Marsland also tries to make it easier to create blueprints for Playground sites and open up the WordPress in a browser tool for a broader audience. Details in his post Introducing Pootle Playground — My Experimental WordPress Blueprint Builder.
Adam Zielinski created an online PHP code editor using Playground. It allows developers to test PHP snippets quickly in their browser. The tool supports WordPress functions, enables switching between PHP and WordPress versions, and allows sharing code configurations through links. Built with WordPress Playground, it runs entirely client-side with network access and popular PHP extensions included. He’s currently experimenting with adding CLI and file browser capabilities to support composer packages and frameworks like Laravel or Symfony.
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