Howdy,
It has been another evenful week for sure! WordCamp US came to an end and WordPress 7.1 was released.
Your WordPress profile now has a shortcut w.org/@[yourusername]. If you want to check out mine w.org/@bph (don’t forget the @ sign) . Mullenweg mentioned in his closing fire side chat that this could actually work without the redirect in the future. Now that would be cool, right?
Another cool and rather weird thing Mullenweg mentioned are Piplets. One self-contained PHP-file for your notes, no database, no hosting needed, for tinkerers who live in the Terminal window. If that’s you, grab the file from the GitHub repo and try it out. (64-bit PHP 8.1 or newer is required.) There will be 
Apropo WordCamp US: All Talks are already available in the Playlist on YouTube for your on-demand viewing pleasure. Or you organize a viewing party with your local WordPress Meetup. Just a thought. 
Have a great weekend!
Yours, 
Birgit
Nicholas Garofalo’s recap of WordCamp US 2026 in Phoenix covers four days, 1,100 attendees, 111°F, and a Contributor Day where 425 people formed 26 teams around goals they could finish by evening. You’ll get the Showcase Day migrations of The Ankler and Daily Kos, keynotes from Bo English-Wiczling and Loyal Pyczynski on judgment in the age of AI, and Matt Mullenweg’s closing pitch for simplicity, including Piplets, a single self-modifying PHP file with no database.
WordPress 7.1 is out!
WordPress 7.1 “Mary Lou”, names after Mary Lou Williams an American jazz pianist, arranger, and composer who recorded hundreds of records.
The release video is fabulous. WordPress 7.1 Highlights Video
The WordPress 7.1 micro site with the featurettes, tiny videos highlighting the main features is definitely a beauty! What a pleasure to read and experience the most important updates!
Release lead Anne McCarthy kept a WordPress 7.1 release lead decision log, and it reads like the other half of the release notes. You’ll see why real-time collaboration, React 19, inherited-style display, and the Classic block removal were punted, why responsive styling got an opt-out rather than a pause, and how she decided to publish the announcement when auto-updates had already reached 300K sites while Matt Mullenweg was on the WordCamp US stage. Each entry links to the thread where the call was made.
On the WordPress Developer Blog, Justin Tadlock goes hands-on with the WordPress 7.1 Icon Registration API and builds a restaurant icon collection from scratch. You’ll register a collection with wp_register_icon_collection(), add 13 food icons via wp_register_icon(), and see why he prefers a string-backed PHP enum over arrays for naming them. He also lists what 7.1 still strips: only svg, path, and polygon elements survive, and stroke attributes are removed, so stick with fill-based icons for now.
If Justin Tadlock’s walkthrough is more than you need right now, Ryan Welcher covers the same API in five minutes in his video on custom icons in WordPress 7.1. He registers a collection and a single icon in PHP, loads a folder of SVGs from disk the way core does, and renders one in a template with wp_get_icon(). The gotchas matter most: the sanitizer strips fill="currentColor", and a function_exists() check keeps 7.0 sites from fatal-erroring.
The block editor’s single biggest frustration is finally addressed, Jackson argues in his tour of the new features in WordPress 7.1, and he means responsive block styles. Over twenty minutes you’ll see thirteen features in action: hover and active states for buttons and navigation, the Tabs block, the Icon block with Aki Hamano’s custom icon plugin, the Playlist block’s waveform, the in-browser media editor, and a Query Loop checkbox that stops your related posts from recommending the post you’re reading.
Gutenberg 23.8 released
Selecting all blocks in a 1,000-paragraph post used to take 16.8 seconds; in Gutenberg 23.8 it takes 0.4. Release lead Jon Surrell’s post on what’s new in Gutenberg 23.8 covers that List View speed-up alongside the shareable revision URLs and in-editor code diff, and email notifications when someone @-mentions you in a note. You also get a real default block on the empty canvas, Audio-to-Playlist transforms, and, for developers, inner block templates declared in registerBlockType() and public Calendar components in @wordpress/ui.
For the Gutenberg Changelog 134 episode, Jessica Lyschik, senior developer at Greyd, joined me to discuss Gutenberg versions 23.7 and 23.8. We also chatted about WordPress 7.1 and what comes next for the December release of WordPress 7.2 As always the episode with its show notes will come to your favorite podcast app over the weekend.
Plugins and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners
If you build with the Ollie block theme, Gina Lucia‘s WordPress 7.1 walkthrough shows where the new core features meet Ollie’s tools. Responsive styling now lives in core, so Ollie Pro’s Responsive Controls shift to handling column and grid stacking, while its Class Manager picks up where the new hover and focus states for Button and Navigation Link leave off. You’ll also see how the Tabs and Playlist blocks, gradient-over-image backgrounds, and the persistent admin bar fit your Ollie site.
Merging cells is still missing from the core Table block, and Aki Hamano‘s Flexible Table Block plugin fills that gap on 40,000+ sites. Version 3.9.0 adds WordPress 7.1 support and announces row and column selection to screen readers. You can merge and split cells, style the table, cells, and caption separately, and set your own breakpoint for horizontal scrolling or stacking cells on mobile. It also converts to and from the core Table block with rowspan and colspan intact. Aki Hamano is a major contributor to the Gutenberg project from Japan and co-tech lead for WordPress 7.1. There is a lot of crediblity attached to this plugin. And hat tip to Daniel Kossmann, editor of the Portuguese WordPress newsletter PainelWP 374.
The new Tabs block in WordPress 7.1 swaps panels abruptly, since the Interactivity API toggles the hidden attribute. Elliott Richmond‘s Tabs Animation plugin softens that with a fade or a slide from any of four directions, plus a duration up to 3000ms and five easing options under Settings → Tabs Animation. It’s one small inline stylesheet with no JavaScript and no theme changes, and it switches itself off for visitors who prefer reduced motion. One setting applies site-wide for now.
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Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.
On his livestream, Ryan Welcher got back on his son’s hockey team site with WordPress Studio Code, this time handing over the single post template. The first pass got close, then navigation broke, the header came in too tall, and the content width wouldn’t match the homepage, so you’ll watch him go several rounds with Annotate, clicking and describing what’s wrong. Two hours used 2.5 percent of his monthly limit. He also covers the 7.1 iframe change and a twenty-minute custom fields tangent.
WordPress Studio the agentic local development app is still in beta. Help make it perfect!
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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
