In this 130th episode of the Gutenberg Changelog podcast, Birgit Pauli-Haack is joined by Tammie Lister to discuss the latest developments in WordPress, Gutenberg, and the broader ecosystem. The conversation opens with Tammie sharing insights from her new role at Convesio, where she works on product collaboration within hosting and payments.<\/p>\n
The episode highlights Tammie\u2019s upcoming WordCamp Europe talk, focusing on the concept of \u201chuman in the loop\u201d with AI. She emphasizes the importance of integrating humanity into AI processes, ensuring that humans are involved throughout, not just at the beginning or end. Both speakers reflect on how AI empowers learning and creativity, with Tammy sharing personal stories about using AI for education and art.<\/p>\n
A significant portion is devoted to the anticipated release of WordPress 7.0, which was delayed to accommodate more thorough testing for real-time collaboration features, especially in less powerful hosting environments. Birgit Pauli-Haack and Tammie commend the community for developing a comprehensive testing suite and discuss the challenges and importance of performance, infrastructure, and backward compatibility.<\/p>\n
Other highlights include community plugin updates, especially around AI, collaborative editing with Claude by Gary Pendergast, and the growing list of AI providers and skills for WordPress. The duo reviews notable Gutenberg plugin updates (22.9 and 23.0), exploring enhancements such as improvements to the UI component packages, block library features, command palette, and upcoming media editing tools.<\/p>\n
The episode wraps up with excitement about continued innovation, the empowerment AI brings to different skill levels, and the ongoing evolution of WordPress as a robust content management and collaboration platform.<\/p>\n
Show Notes<\/a> \/ Transcript<\/a><\/p>\n Show Notes<\/strong><\/p>\n Gutenberg Releases<\/p>\n Stay in Touch<\/p>\n Transcript<\/strong><\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack: <\/em>Welcome to our 130th episode of the Gutenberg Changelog podcast. In today\u2019s episode, we will talk about WordPress 7.0, Gutenberg 22.9 and 23.0 WordCamp Europe and block themes and so much more. I\u2019m your host, Birgit Pauli-Haack, curator at the Gutenberg Times and a full core contributor at the WordPress Open Source project sponsored by Automattic. And with me on the show is my longtime friend and regular guest Tammie Lister. And she\u2019s a core committer, chief product officer at Convesio and was the co-lead of the first phase of Gutenberg. Tammie, it\u2019s wonderful to have you in on the show.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> I\u2019m so pleased to be here.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> Thank you. Thank you for the time. So how are you today?<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> I\u2019m great, thank you. How are you?<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> I\u2019m good, I\u2019m good. You started a new job. So what are you working on in your new position?<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> I\u2019m incredibly lucky that I get to facilitate and collaborate on products within Convesio hosting, and we\u2019re working on a range of different things. We work on both hosting and payments along with some other products. And I\u2019m really excited to be able to do that and kind of grow with that team.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack: <\/em>That\u2019s wonderful. Wonderful. Yeah. Well, congratulations. So. And you are also a speaker at WordCamp Europe. Your title is Human in the Loop means something and we probably learn what it means.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> Yeah. So we always kind of had this idea with AI that the human in the loop, maybe it\u2019s just like the prompting that you start with doing and you\u2019re like at the start of the being the human in the loop. And I think as kind of we\u2019re learning to be with AI and we\u2019re learning to see AI as more of integrated. My talk is about how when we use the term human in a loop and I think kind of people just drop it now into product making processes and they drop it into anything that they\u2019re doing. It should be various points in that loop, should be where humans are not just at the start and then having something kind of chucked out of them by AI just produced. That\u2019s not the human being actually in the loop. That\u2019s the human being at the beginning and the end of the loop. Rather than being integrated. That\u2019s kind of the one angle of it and the other is that AI really needs to kind of be integrated in our lives. It already is, but it actually needs to be integrated, not just forced and therefore it needs to learn to kind of integrate with us and it needs to learn to be with us. There are various technologies that are doing that and in that talk I\u2019m going to kind of explore how that happens and how that happens from a product perspective as well.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> Yeah, well, that\u2019s going to be really interesting because I, what I, my experience is more like the, all of a sudden the humans become the bottleneck and then some programmers try to work around that and say, okay, we need to get AI, be smarter, but you\u2026<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> still do the opposite. I think if we take the best of humans and combine it with the best of AI, we have the best future.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> Yeah, I think so too. Yeah. Because humanity is all that\u2019s left. Right. And that needs to serve that.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> And if we don\u2019t have AI with that splash of humanity, one where some of us aren\u2019t going to use it and we, we can evangelize as much for people to use it as possible, but people are going to have a bit of reaction to it and also it\u2019s, it\u2019s going to be kind of that friction when we do use it and going to be like talking to kind of a calculator or a fridge all the time. It\u2019s not going to kind of. And I\u2019m not talking about giving it a cute name or making it kind of that or anthem performance. I can never say that word, that word. That\u2019s not what I\u2019m talking about, talking about and talking about just being able to have a splash of humanity with it and, and how that AI can learn from us as much as we can learn from AI. <\/p>\n And we also, it\u2019s that augmentation as part of it. So I think we\u2019re all learning about how AI can be used both in part of our process as well and how it can make us better at what we do. And you know, there\u2019s this kind of 10x all these kind of things. I think that\u2019s quite a flippant thing because that\u2019s like, well no, we were doing the best we could do before. It just means that we now have the abilities through doing this. So yeah, I\u2019m kind of forming it at the moment and it\u2019s going in lots of different angles and I\u2019ve got to kind of try and take it in one straight angle. But I know for me and many other people, AI in particular the last year it\u2019s been very empowering both from the work that they do and in the kind of personal life. So hopefully there\u2019ll be some take home on things you can use as much as kind of sharing the maybe a more optimistic future perspective.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack: <\/em>Yeah. Yeah I feel the same way. I feel totally empowered to. Yeah. To submit PRs, create more documentation and all that and. And also for writing. Yeah. With English as a second language it\u2019s so much richer when you learn from. From AI to kind of different angles and all that. So it\u2019s a. It\u2019s a really interesting.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister: <\/em>The point you said about learn from and I think that that\u2019s something really important that we can learn from AI and sometimes we. I cannot remember. I was actually found an article I cannot remember again but there was an article about like it being unlocking education for people. And I know there\u2019s like different conversations about where that is and where your sources are for that, but it actually can like the things that I have learned and the things that I have been able to expand my knowledge base with because I now have access to it that I didn\u2019t have access research PA different things. I\u2019ve been able to. I have one of these things I use in my open claw that\u2019s called Explain this. It\u2019s a skill but it explains it how I understand it. As for me which is a very unique way that I understand things. But it will say it like that. Then it will relate to the job I do. Then it will lead to the areas of interest that I have and I\u2019ve refined that skill to talk to me. Not many people nobody else can do that and I hadn\u2019t got that before so been able to do that and give it things initially do that and then help me break things down has been really really, really important to me.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> Yeah that\u2019s the most. The application that I use it most is actually to learn things .<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> Explain this as I would understand this.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack: <\/em>So I. I had on my flight to. So I was in Costa Rica and I was on a flight that didn\u2019t have any WI fi and But I still was able to. To take my laptop and open it up and ask a question because I had Olama installed and I had one of the. One of the LLMs there and I learned about Transformers and all that and you can actually ask it to explain it to me like I\u2019m a five year old. And then it gets further and further. There is a whole education school out there that wants the kids to go and learn for themselves and not in a. In a complete setting. I think I would thrive in that because I could they had yeah. Dive deeper into topics that I\u2019m interested in and never Come out. Yeah.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> I think even, even for me from personal, like creating art with it, doing all these kind of different things like it has been to me. Yeah. So I\u2019m hoping like I\u2019m still forming my talk because I\u2019m a bit of a last minute in that sense. It\u2019s not that last minute, but yeah, five weeks, right? Yeah.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> You always do your own pictures, right?<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> Well, I may not. I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> You may not.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> I\u2019m curious about could, could I get AI to create like me? That\u2019s something I\u2019m exploring because it feels like it might be right if it took my pictures. If it took. I don\u2019t know. I have not decided yet on that angle. So more to come on that I\u2019ve been exploring how AI can take my art as a source. I already paint with AI what AI creates. I paint that. So the full circle might be that AI creates from my artwork.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack: <\/em>Interesting thing. Interesting. Yeah. <\/p>\n All right, so let\u2019s dive back to WordPress. We have a few announcements. One, the biggest one is last time we talked here on the podcast WordPress 7.0 still had was scheduled for April 9th. That obviously didn\u2019t happen. And before we get into more details here, the good news, we have a new release date and updated information about WordPress 7.0. May 20th is the latest date. And I also put in the show notes the post that kind of announced that beta release candidate cycle resumes with the next release party that\u2019s scheduled for May 8th at 1500 UTC. And then that kind of starts I think it\u2019s two releases that are quasi beta and then two releases that are quasi release candidates. And also in that discussion, there\u2019s also a discussion that the RTC performance testing script that automatically tests for possible architecture approaches for hostings is about to be released and I\u2019ll share the link to the repository. Dorin, not everybody would need that, mostly hostings. But that was also the reason why things got a little bit delayed. So Tammie, I\u2019m going to try to explain this, how I understood it and the reasoning behind it and you can correct me and elaborate what you feel is important. <\/p>\n So if I understood it correctly, the delay was actually requested by Matt, but in coordination with core committers and the hosting team, because WordPress 7.0\u2019s main feature is a real time collaboration project, and collaborators worked on it for over a year and the goal was to get it into best shape in what it can be for the first release. But it had been a whole wide testing done but it was only on enterprise infrastructure. So with the inclusion into core it also needs to work in less powerful hosting environments and hosting companies didn\u2019t have enough time or tools to actually test it. So during the release cycle there was this feedback that they needed more time and test the feature more so they can enable it for many, many clients. They couldn\u2019t they needed to switch it off and that was not the purpose of that. It should be a wide enough application. So the team created a test suite for the hosting companies and also published a death note on how to create an external provider for this offloading of the resource heavy sync process. Because that\u2019s all of a sudden you have not one person on the. On the screen, you have five maybe. And that increases stuff. Yeah. So that\u2019s my understanding.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> Correct, it was also not necessarily the delay, but there were also kinds of pieces of it table and kind of all right, the pieces were kind of needed to be done or. Or were done and kind of like that. That has implications. I think the too long don\u2019t read is real time collab is complicated. Real time collab is very complicated from an infrastructure perspective and we need to have thorough testing across every implementation. And one of the things which when you think about it, it\u2019s for humans to do real time collaboration. But actually one of the most interesting things is not humans doing real time collaboration. <\/p>\n And actually now we have the testing suite we can actually test with not humans doing it. That\u2019s why I\u2019m kind of fascinated to do some of this testing and that can be even more load bearing. So if you think about like someone like I think one of the cases was like if it\u2019s on a small hosting I only have one person. Well not if that one person gets very excited about agents because that person could have suddenly lots of agents even though their own like a tiny little bit of hosting and they\u2019re not enterprise. They could have made themselves enterprise and they couldn\u2019t have made themselves into that situation just by being at the forward of like agentic work. So we had that balance like on in 7.0 we\u2019re promoting be forward with AI. Agentic is like a word. You might as well like to take a sip of tea every time you hit the word agentic. I don\u2019t think alcohol would be super tissue.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> Oh, what a thinking game.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> I\u2019d be tea drunk. I really would. But it. So people are going to want to push and test it. Right. So I think it is. I would much rather people were cautious with something that someone that works in hosting that would bring down hosting. But I think it is hard for everybody involved when we have to pause a release, when we have to say oops, we\u2019re not doing it now. And oops is one way but hey, we\u2019re not doing it now kind of help. It\u2019s hard. People do not do this lightly. They do not say we\u2019re not going to do release lightly. So, you know, yeah, there\u2019s a lot to be kind of thought about that having been involved with one of the longest ones that was stopped before. It\u2019s a lot for humans to have that. I love that we have a testing suite now. I love that we can have that. This feature is going to potentially in 7.1 and in the patches and in the point release afterwards. And I don\u2019t want to be a doomsayer, but we\u2019re going to have to adjust it, we\u2019re going to have to perform it, we\u2019re going to have to get that feedback. So it needs to be the best bet to go live with and then we need to take it from there. So. But this is now it\u2019s in the best shape it could be, so it can kind of go from there.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack<\/em>: So. Yeah, yeah. And you just mentioned that there\u2019s also for the updates and coordination, there\u2019s an. There will be an extra table added to WordPress as well to manage that polling and the intermediate storage of things.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> That\u2019s not a light thing to do that. That is like, like I, I said it very flippantly, but it\u2019s not a flippant thing.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack<\/em>: No, no. And there needs to be really thought process in there because it\u2019s gonna be in WordPress for the next 20 years.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> That\u2019s like building something to the house, right?<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> Yeah. So you cannot just tear it down because you don\u2019t like it anymore.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister: <\/em>No, that\u2019s. That\u2019s definitely.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> People build on it. Yeah. Yes. So May 20th is the next release date and whoever hasn\u2019t tested their plugins and themes with a you get another. Almost a month of grace. Time to do it now. Yeah, don\u2019t wait. Do it now. Sometimes I say don\u2019t wait. Procrastinate now. But this is not the case here. No.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> And I think you really, if you don\u2019t ever test your plugins on ever releases, test them on this one. Not just because of editing, but also because of the admin interface changes as well. Not changes in a big way, just in a. Just enough that maybe do some testing.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> Yeah. And there\u2019s Also the minimum PHP version is changed to 7.4. Have a bit of a look. Yeah.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> Just spend half an hour.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> Yeah. See if it blows up or not. Yeah. And there\u2019s only a late addition to the developer notes. The roster of design tools per block that have been since 6.7 I think it\u2019s now updated to version WebPR 7.0. And one of my next projects is that I create. Create a plugin that actually has a few more table block features. So it doesn\u2019t. Is so yeah rudimentary anymore but especially the sticky header when you have 90 rows in a table. Yeah, that would be really helpful.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> Yeah I love that because the table block to me is one that I always end up having to do custom work on or I have to do it. If anything in my work is going to take whenever I\u2019m doing don\u2019t always do sites but whenever I do do sites if there\u2019s anything comparison tables such a common thing we end up doing. Right. Like or even if you\u2019re going to do like pricing or comparison whatever you\u2019re going to do at most sites at some point if they\u2019re a SaaS or if they\u2019re a product based they\u2019re going to have something like that on. You always have to do something with CSS on there or even down to like how you put image. Putting images inside there and it\u2019s a bit nickety and all those kind of ways.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> It\u2019s all. Yeah there are some projects out there that I probably won\u2019t tackle but it\u2019s the sticky header and then that you can. The first column can be styled differently than the rest of it and then also have a sticky first column so when you horizontally scroll that you still have the lines in there and merge and unmerge for cells because that really helps. So. But I will see how far it gets. I submitted it to the first version slightly version tiny version to the blog repository and there are 763 ahead of me. So it probably takes two to three weeks. That\u2019s fine with me. Yeah.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister: <\/em>But I mean that\u2019s a pretty good.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> Compared to three months before, you know. Five months or six months. Yeah. So I\u2019m. I\u2019m not worried about that. And it\u2019s gonna be on GitHub anyway. <\/p>\n So. Yeah, there are other contributions, community contributions. One. I just wanted to let you know that if you have subscribed to the Gutenberg Times weekly edition, you know about that. But it\u2019s the. I have published my workshop resources from the Building a block theme from scratch from WordCamp Asia. And it has all the resources that you need. You have the kind of a little slide deck, but it also has a reference theme and then content that you can put into your studio. Has instructions how to set up WordPress Studio or use Playground and then step by step instructions how to rebuild the theme with the site editor and not touch code. So see how far you get if you want to learn that. But you should be able to do this within an hour or two or three. But you need some familiarity with the site editor, definitely. And the Create block theme plugin. And so that\u2019s for you in the show notes. The next one is maybe you can talk about it. Claudia Borative Collaborative editing with Claude by Gary Pendergast here has a new plugin. Yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> So apparently it\u2019s twice the fun. So it\u2019s kind of what I was saying about like clap of editing is great, but one of the things I think a lot of people have been thinking of is like, oh, yes, so that\u2019s humans. No, no, no.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> What if it could be agents? And this is really worth checking out to have a look at that. Gary is a long time. Is a core committer. Long time worked on. Gutenberg works on in Automattic. So he\u2019s. He\u2019s definitely got the experience to work on it and he\u2019s definitely kind of brewed this up. Super excited about it. It is Claude only at the moment. I think there\u2019s plans to kind of make it a little bit kind of expansive there. Maybe that dropped last night. It\u2019s work in progress and it\u2019s been worked on, so I love that. But to me, this is where I get a bit more excited as someone that\u2019s already trained my. It\u2019s a me problem, but I\u2019ve already trained my open Claude to write like me. Not that it\u2019s going to just write without me being a human in the loop, but because of that, me being able to collaborate with. I call it Exo. With Exo, it means that I can have that conversation, that I can do it within WordPress, which is really powerful for me. I. I do it in Obsidian at the moment. I have been able to take that in and do it in that environment. I was doing something before this plugin. <\/p>\n I was kind of doing like a. A faked version. I had. There was a UK children show called City show and bear with me on this. And I ended up with the characters like doing agent work together just to test collaborative editing for myself because I wanted to see if it could be done and it\u2019s pretty effective to be able to have agents talking to each other and testing. So it is a really good experience. Maybe you\u2019ve got one. Again, it doesn\u2019t have to be that you are as a human doing it. Maybe you have an agent that is looking at your grammar. Maybe you have an agent that is specializing in images. Maybe have a. So you can have agents that are specializing in different things or you can even have someone else\u2019s agent come and do different things for SEO or different. Different stuff. So I think that\u2019s the thing. Like if you are enterprise, you probably have agents that work across the company that do very specialist skills and then you could have them come into the editor. So projects like this are really interesting for that.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> Yeah, yeah. No, it\u2019s absolutely fascinating, the whole thing. Yeah. And if you really want to go really, really deep in AI across the.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> You need snacks for this post.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack: <\/em>Yeah, yeah, definitely. So there is a James LePage who is the head of AI at Automattic, but also the team rep or team lead for the core AI team. He has put together a blog post with. I haven\u2019t counted it, but I\u2019m thinking more than 70 or 80 links about anything and everything that\u2019s done with AI in the WordPress ecosystem from the community AI providers. So WordPress 7 has this connector page where there are three AI providers by default that you can install. But the community also came very fast up with the providers for other LLMs like Mistral for Europe or Open Router provider or Olama provider or Alibaba. So you get a link for all those. Those will not be displayed in default, but once you install the plugin you can connect them to the things and then a lot of plugins that have already implemented the Abilities API. Yeah. From ACF to Jetpack to Fluid Design System for Elementor, Divi, WP and main WP maintenance kind of dashboard. They all come up with mcps. So you can connect your agents with them if you want to. You totally can ignore that segment on the podcast if you\u2019re not interested. Agent skills. They\u2019re not only the WordPress agent skills, but others have also automatic, for instance, published agent skills.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> Or those skills are invaluable. I\u2019m just gonna say. Yeah, those skills are absolutely. They should be required in any work.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> that you\u2019re doing, right? Yeah, I don\u2019t do any. Anything WordPress development without those agents. Yeah, they\u2019re definitely required reading for your LLMs, your coding agents. Yeah. And then infrastructure agency, Enterprise Adoption Community. So It\u2019s a really long. And I\u2019m going back to that post multiple times in the last two weeks since. Since it was published. So I wanted everybody to know about that too. Yeah, that\u2019s it. Any thoughts for now or would I forgot.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> Love going there and seeing all the amazing stuff people are building as well, which I think is really important. And to think this is the list today and that list is only going to get bigger.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> Yeah, I think after the last two weeks, the. Since it was published, a lot of things already happened. So I\u2019m kind of thinking it\u2019s the same for me. It\u2019s the same situation like it was when Gutenberg was introduced and I was kind of putting the Gutenberg times together. I\u2019m kind of. Oh, I need to kind of.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> Yeah. Which is I. I love that problem.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> Oh yeah, totally.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> We are being creative and we are creating cool stuff.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah, absolutely. And I\u2019m really amazed by how, how people come up with things and how you work with it, how my co workers work with it, how I explore.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> Enabling people to have ideas that they, the ideas have sat in their brains or they haven\u2019t been capable of doing this. It\u2019s not so they, they haven\u2019t had the either the language to like the skill language to do. It\u2019s not that they\u2019re not capable, is it that they haven\u2019t had the knowledge to do it right. Everybody is super capable. It\u2019s just empowered them to be able to do it for themselves. Maybe they were a designer, now they can do development, but the developer, now they can do some more designer stuff and then also pairing up with people. I\u2019ve seen a lot of that where people be going like, okay, well this has enabled us to collaborate easier and faster as well. So you don\u2019t just have to be isolated on your own, just talking to a group of agents, which is kind of sad if you only do that. But that\u2019s okay. That\u2019s my life. But you know, actually collaborating with people who are also doing this stuff, like the buzz like that you can get from that is really like I went to Cloud Fest a month ago now and just talking with people about this stuff again, getting that kind of vibe about, oh well, here\u2019s the stuff that I use or here\u2019s the stuff that I use where like an instantly you level up your stack, and you level up what you\u2019re doing and come away with some cool ideas. So every week I talk to someone about this, I come up with a ridiculously long list of tools of cool stuff to try out or I see posts like this, I\u2019m like, okay, well now. And one thing I do, I share the bookmarks. So I\u2019m kind of like getting those bookmarks reminded me so I can be like, okay, well now I kind of pull these out and then I explore those bookmarks. You can even give it to your agent and have a look at your bookmarks with your agent. You really want to do that? Just saying.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> Well, I talk with my husband about it every day. He. He kind of discovered the. Because his company is kind of using Codex and I\u2019m using more clothes so we kind of can combine it. And now I have found a plugin for Claude for Codex. So I\u2019m kind of your interception is there? Yeah, like the. The movie is kind of where your brain kind of clicks a little bit and then you kind of. Okay, moving on. But yeah, his work is totally different than what I do. But we are using the tools that are there and it\u2019s quite an interesting conversation every time.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> Yeah, great space to be working in.<\/p>\n And the WordPress UI package is actually has some empty states for the components and displaying some placeholders content when sections have no data and all that. So that is actually throughout the whole WordPress UI package and interesting for developers who use it. The same with the alert dialogue primitive that you can tab into. And there are a lot of other good things in there. Check out the Storybook for the UI packages. Are you working with those packages?<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> Yeah, to me it\u2019s a general nudge. I think a lot of. So one of the experiences I\u2019ve seen with plugin developers at the moment, not just in the work I do, but in general talking at cloudfest or otherwise, is those that maybe hadn\u2019t used it before now actually we\u2019re talking about like with agentic coding because of the skills and because of the ease that they can point to the skills and there actually is one, they\u2019re starting to be able to use them way more. It\u2019s not no longer a case of go to Storybook, click on a component, be able to pull and then work out from the pace between Figma and that was actually like it seemed easy, but it was quite a gap for people to function in. <\/p>\n And because you can actually use the skill and then you can be like. So one of the plugins I love is Superpowers. It\u2019s a plugin that allows you to do brainstorming. I love brainstorming with the bots. And so I can just be like, okay, this is what I want to do. And now tell me before you do it. I\u2019m a bit of a control freak that way. And then it can kind of come back, but it will. These are the skills I want you to use. Tell me what components you\u2019re going to use. Look at this repo. And you can literally be like, so for me, here\u2019s my. Here\u2019s my dusty plugin. Can you look at my desk? I\u2019m calling my plugin dusty. Can you look at my dusty plugin? Can you come up with my plan of how I would fit these into the dusty plugin that I\u2019ve made? And I\u2019ve done this, some of my older stuff and it\u2019s been like, okay, yes, here\u2019s the newer components that you could do. And I\u2019m like, well, thanks. And it will be able to parse it, come out of a plan. Then you work with it. And that\u2019s. It\u2019s pretty. Very impressive that it can do that and it can pick it. So I think leaning into that being your guide and if you say stay true to. So say like, what is the native use of tabs? What is the native use of these components? It gets it really well. So.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that\u2019s how I approach it too, you know, to kind of point it to the repos and see if you, you don\u2019t have to come up with things. Yeah, it\u2019s kind of.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> Yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack: <\/em>And that\u2019s also for. For plugin developers who have their own interfaces. Yeah. That they have to maintain.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> Yeah. You can get rid of like 80% of your interface that you don\u2019t have to maintain. And to a good point, to that often people think, okay, well, it means that I therefore don\u2019t have any personality or I don\u2019t have any style or I don\u2019t have anything. No, no, no. What you can do is you can bring the buttons in. I\u2019m a little bit of a purist about I still want the primary button to be the primary button and I don\u2019t want to like a secondary and all those kinds of things. But you can bring styling into it. You can bring graphics, you can bring headers, you can bring different tonal stuff into it. But just if everybody knows what a primary button is in WordPress, no matter what plugin they\u2019re using, that is fantastic because it\u2019s also already tested by Accessibility Team. If it\u2019s updated, it\u2019s updated for everybody, which is amazing. And yeah, it\u2019s so much easier going forward. And it\u2019s responsive out of the box.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack: <\/em>Yeah, it\u2019s definitely easier for the user. They don\u2019t have to learn a new interface for every plugin. And if they have.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> Now it\u2019s. Now it\u2019s to this, to the right side, now it\u2019s to the bottom, now it\u2019s to the. No, it\u2019s always. Tabs are here and I think just stabilizing the interface to that. Once we stabilize every experience, we can do some wacky stuff, we can bring some awesome graphics, we can bring some personality back to it, but we have the experience being the same and I think we have to separate maybe the experience from the visual art. And if we do that, we have a thing that works really well, but also is really shockingly beautiful as well.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, yeah. So in the block library we have some additional features. One is that the black ground gradient support can now be combined with the background images. So that\u2019s really cool because then you have an overlay and you can have this really shiny designs there. I love that.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> Now that seems like that\u2019s a kind of small thing just there. But honestly, that\u2019s a major thing for theme design, being able to have that.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack: <\/em>Yeah. And there is an experimental forms block and if you haven\u2019t tried it yet, <\/em>you need to open and open up the Gutenberg Plugin Experiments page and check it. But it now also supports hidden fields and that makes it much more feasible to be used in form if you want to put your forms together. And I don\u2019t know if you can. I need to play around with it some more. I haven\u2019t yet. But what happens with the action and where does it go is definitely something that I need to figure out there. Because that\u2019s the biggest part on form plugins that you can. Where does the data go? Yeah. So what else do we have?<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> Commands. I think we go down to the command block, don\u2019t we? Oh, command palette. I see blocks everywhere. Apparently. So on the command palette we have that we add sections to Command palette and introduce recently used functionality. This is such a quality of life.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. Especially when you can get more commands in, you never find it. So the search is really important.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> This is interesting because I never used to use this. Sorry, confession time. I never used to use this, but I use it all the time now. It\u2019s weird. I think I use it all the time because I use it all the time now on Mac. It is strange and I think it\u2019s just like I now expect everything to have it. It\u2019s. It\u2019s a weird thing. So. Yeah, it makes a lot of functionality to me. Like when it first happened, I was like, nice feature.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> I don\u2019t use it. Yeah. But I think I wasn\u2019t going to use it.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> It was more like. I used to feel that way about voice chat. I\u2019m. I take sometimes some features. I weirdly being that\u2019s my thing, I take a little bit of time to warm up to. But this one I did, I definitely could see the use, but now I. It\u2019s part of my workflow and I can definitely see, like, I find that I know how to hit it and I will hit it and I will use it, so. And I want it in everything now. So.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> Nice. Yeah. Just a way of caution. You need to enable that in the experiments page as well. There\u2019s a workflow palette experiment, one of those. It\u2019s getting longer and longer. I still need to write that post that explains all those experiments because there\u2019s no documentation. So. Yeah.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> Somehow they\u2019re kind of hidden down the back.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> Yeah, they\u2019re hidden because they\u2019re waiting for feedback. But you can\u2019t give any feedback when you don\u2019t know how it works. So it\u2019s all a little bit circular.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister<\/em>: Excursion is features.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> So. And even the description is like. What does that even mean? Yeah. So. And. And then we go down to the experiments in the changelog and the Post Editor is an experiment for. To look like the Page Editor in the Site Editor. And now it also has some field. Yeah. For excerpts and sticky and. And all that revision.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> Full fleshed addition to it.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack<\/em>: Yeah. And I have found that certain things don\u2019t work in the Post Editor, but they only work in the Site Editor. So bringing in the Post Editor to the Site Editor would help with some of those features. So there\u2019s another experiment that we talked a little bit about, the previous release, because it came into 22.8. That\u2019s the experimental guidelines. They were called content guidelines. Now they\u2019re only guidelines because it\u2019s clear it\u2019s content and they have been refactored and improved with Typescript. I just wanted to point that out. That\u2019s something that you. When you have agents coming to your website, you can guide them through your guidelines on how. What to do with it and what not to do and all that. So it\u2019s a really good interface to look at. Well, there are a lot of PRs in here, but I think the next one that I want to point out is Gutenberg 23.0.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> Two versions of one.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> One done. And that was only released this week. We are recording this on February of February we\u2019re recording this.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> I\u2019m not doing March again.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> No March. We are jumping right into April and it\u2019s April 24th. We are recording this. And Gutenberg 23.0 was released on April 22nd. Again. A lot of components updates for WordPress, the UI, they\u2019re really hopping on that. It\u2019s phenomenal.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister<\/em>: And honestly, I\u2019m just gonna say that is needed. If you\u2019re building stuff, you\u2019re building applications or we\u2019ve been talking about like themes. The theme of this is have fun, build stuff, do things. This is what we need. We need this interface to be our LEGO kit to be able to do that. That\u2019s something like I have way too long a list of things I want to play with and me and Exo are going to have some fun time with all these components. So that\u2019s exactly what people are doing. And the more these components we have, the more fun people can have building. And that\u2019s. That\u2019s the cool thing about this.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> Yeah, No, I definitely let my AI soon because I\u2019m building a plugin. Right. <\/p>\n But anyway, so in the block library, there\u2019s one thing to point out that I selected was that the search block has a fix now and the color settings actually apply also to the input fields when the button is disabled. Because sometimes you don\u2019t need a button, but you need the color settings to persist. The tabs block got a few changes. It was actually refactored from the previous version. That\u2019s why it didn\u2019t make it to WordPress 7.0. So contributors are really working on it to get it ready for 7.1. Yeah, we definitely have some more when it gets to. Out of experiment.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> Very wanted block.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> Yeah, it\u2019s a wanted block for everybody. Yeah, or change them. And Here is the. In 23.0 was the name change from the Guidelines Experiments component to. From content guidelines to Guidelines. And it\u2019s out of experimentation.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister: <\/em>Shortcuts for moving blocks via tool tips. Maybe you can explain this one. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve kind of seen this one in Block Editor.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack: <\/em>Yeah, the space shortcuts for moving Blocks via tool tips. Yeah.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> Oh, okay. That\u2019s kind of cool. So it\u2019s actually just kind of visualizing the shortcuts, which is really good. So you actually get the shortcuts rather than having to bring up the shortcut panel. Oh, okay. That\u2019s super good. So I kind of didn\u2019t see that one. I love that. I love finding sneak surprises of cool stuff. I\u2019m just saying, like that is also the cool thing about all these releases. Sometimes you find one that\u2019s pretty cool.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> Yeah. And they\u2019re buried through all the technology one. Yeah. Yeah. So I was at, in. At the meetup in Salzburg and this week and it\u2019s only an hour and a half from here with. With a train. I love going by train. So I did some work. One of the features that people are really talk to or kind of that talk to them is actually the columns block in a paragraph. What\u2019s in 7.0 where you can just highlight the paragraph block and then say give me columns and then you can put it in two columns. And that\u2019s just so, so easy because you don\u2019t have to fiddle around with columns. With the columns block, you don\u2019t have to measure which one is faster because it does it automatically. So that\u2019s a really nice feature.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister: <\/em>And quality of life things is things we always would do. And it just. When the editor does expectations of what you would do, that\u2019s when it\u2019s next level. And it\u2019s also refinement. It shows maturity of the editor, maturity of using it and also listening to user feedback.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> Right. And the other. So we didn\u2019t talk about it, but I don\u2019t want to prolong this, but do you have a favorite feature from Webpoint 7.0 apart from the real time collaboration and the AI connectors?<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> Apart from real time collaboration and the AI, you\u2019re just picking all like my favorite children and then take. Can I actually go a little bit wide and include.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> Yeah.<\/p>\n Tammie Lister:<\/em> Any tiny little quality of life bug fix? Because I think any track ticket we manage to close or quality of life bug fix that comes in that and we don\u2019t necessarily highlight them. And I know we\u2019re talking about features and we\u2019re talking about stuff like that. That. But I would also say apart from that, anything in Storybook or that say or a component or anything like that, that that is going to be my favorite because it just means that we can build more cool stuff. But honestly, like yeah, it\u2019s. It\u2019s not a feature but it\u2019s like any tickets we closed Anything we improved that isn\u2019t visible or seen, that\u2019s amazing for me.<\/p>\n Birgit Pauli-Haack<\/em>: Yeah. So what really got the people excited about 7.0 is the new revisions panel with 23.0 in Gutenberg. It also comes to templates, template parts and to patterns, which is really kind of going through the whole editor and edit screen where you can have the revision screen screen.<\/p>\n\n
Tammie Lister<\/h2>\n
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WordPress 7.0 <\/h2>\n
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Community Contributions<\/h2>\n
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WordCamp Europe<\/h3>\n
WordPress 7.0 \/ Announcements<\/h3>\n
Community Contributions<\/h3>\n
What\u2019s Released \u2013 Gutenberg 22.9<\/h3>\n
Birgit Pauli-Haack:<\/em> Yeah, absolutely. So now we come to the section of what\u2019s released and we have two Gutenberg plugin releases to talk about. One was 22.9 that was released on April 8th and it has a few things. Many of them were actually for the real time collaboration and some of the bug fixes are still there. But yeah, there\u2019s also a lot of work being done in the component space.<\/h3>\n
Enhancements<\/h3>\n
Gutenberg 23.0<\/h3>\n
Enhancements<\/h3>\n