421 – “At The Core” with Birgit Pauli-Haack and Fabian Kaegy – Episode 3.

·1 hr 18 min·5 clips

WordPress is shifting to one major release per year—what does this mean for developers and users?

The episode begins with host Nathan Wrigley introducing the 'At The Core' series, which focuses on quarterly updates to WordPress Core. He is joined by guests Birgit Pauli-Haack, curator at Gutenberg Times and developer advocate at Automattic, and Fabian Kaegy, director of editorial engineering at 10up and a WordPress core committer. They start by discussing Birgit's 'source of truth' document for WordPress 6.8, highlighting six specific features. These include enhancements to the Details block, which now supports native accordion grouping via a browser standard, and improvements to the Style Book for better design consistency across blocks. The Style Book is now more integrated with global styles and available for classic themes in read-only mode. Next, they cover section styles in zoom-out view, allowing users to cycle through color variations for patterns directly in the editor. The Gallery block update simplifies enabling 'expand on click' for all images with one setting, though lightbox cycling remains a future consideration. Query Loop block enhancements add page order sorting and a new Query Total block to display result counts. A key feature discussed is the persistent 'view template as you edit content' option, which shows template blocks like headers and footers while editing, improving the WYSIWYG experience. The conversation then shifts to WordPress's release cadence change to one major release per year, starting with WordPress 6.8. The guests explore the benefits, such as more time for minor releases to address bugs, accessibility improvements, and UX refinements. They also note opportunities for plugin developers and content creators to deepen their skills without constant updates. Fabian mentions potential behind-the-scenes improvements, like streamlining the backporting process between Gutenberg and Core. The episode also covers 10up's CLASSIF.AI plugin, which integrates AI for tasks like content tagging and alt text generation, with support for self-hosted models like Llama. Finally, they discuss the Theme Switcher Pro plugin, which allows using multiple themes on a single site, facilitating gradual migration from classic to block-based themes. The episode concludes with a brief mention of the Create Block Theme plugin update and plans for future episodes.

As heard by us

A practical WordPress editing discussion about seeing the finished page while keeping template control intact.

This episode looks at a WordPress editing choice that matters beyond preference: whether people should write on a plain canvas or inside the site's full template.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Want WordPress editing to feel closer to the site your client will actually see?

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from WP Builds