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WordPress Podcast (English)
WPpodcast Team
WordPress Community Information
- 20 episodes
- weekly
- Avg 6 min
- English
- WP#153August 25 · 8 min
Accessibility Lab Plugin
We now have a prototype of the upcoming Accessibility Lab plugin, in the style of what the AI and Performance plugins do. Remember that you can listen this program from: Program transcript Hello, I’m Alicia Ireland, and you’re listening to WPpodcast, bringing the weekly news from the WordPress Community. In this episode, you’ll find the information from August 17 to 23, 2026. WordPress 7.1 finally launched on August 19, with codename Mary Lou, after going through four release candidates, as RC4 arrived with over 26 additional fixes over RC3 and an extended code freeze beyond the usual 24 hours, at the express request of committers, to give time to properly verify the final package before publishing it. The Core team is already seeking volunteers for the 7.1.x maintenance releases, with 7.1.1 planned for early September depending on the severity of bugs that appear. For server administrators: WordPress 7.1 maintains the PHP 7.4 minimum and is fully compatible from PHP 7.4 through PHP 8.5. PHP 8.3 is already in security-only support and PHP 8.2 reaches end of life on December 31 of this year, so if you have sites on those versions, it’s worth planning the migration. The launch wasn’t without drama. Anne McCarthy, release lead for the version, has published an extensive decision log of the cycle detailing, among many other things, what actually happened at WordCamp US during launch day: a commit triggered automatic updates prematurely, with roughly 300,000 sites already updated and a WP Rocket compatibility issue reported live, while Matt Mullenweg was still on stage without confirming whether he wanted to “press the button” for the release personally. Faced with lack of communication from Mullenweg and automatic updates already underway, McCarthy made the decision to publish the announcement directly without waiting for the on-stage event, publicly taking responsibility for the decision. Gutenberg 23.8, released the same day as WordPress 7.1, includes Visual Revisions, which take another step: you can now link directly to a specific revision, as the URL updates itself as you navigate through history, so sharing an exact change with a colleague is as simple as copying the link, and a code diff view is added within the editor itself. Notes, for their part, complete the circle of mentions: when someone mentions another user with an at-sign, they now receive an email in their own language with a direct link to the conversation. The other major update is pure performance: the list view receives a batch of improvements that, combined, make it dramatically faster in long posts; on a 1,000-paragraph post, selecting all blocks goes from 16.8 to 0.4 seconds. The empty editor canvas also stops showing a block mockup and renders a real block by default instead, so what you see before writing is exactly what you get. The Playlist block, still experimental, improves its conversion flow from Audio and allows selecting multiple files at once from the Media Library, and the Tabs block gains keyboard navigation with Home and End keys. The AI team has launched the AI plugin 1.3.0, with two new editor experiments: content translation, which translates paragraph, heading blocks, and optionally the title without leaving the editor, always leaving the result for review before publishing; and slug generation, which suggests concise permalinks based on the title and content, available both in permalink controls and in the pre-publish flow. There’s also a notable security reinforcement: nonce verification before generating alt text or block summaries, validation that external image URLs are public and of allowed type, and configurable size and timeout limits for custom image downloads. Additionally, there’s a pointer to where all this is heading: toward WordPress 7.2, the team wants to bring a CRUD-style Abilities pattern to core rather than exposing the REST API directly, so each ability can be precisely annotated on whether it’s read-only or performs a destructive action. The Developer Blog has published a practical and comprehensive tutorial on 7.1’s new public icons API. It builds step by step a sample plugin with restaurant icons, and though it’s very developer-focused in detail, it summarizes the basic flow well: register a collection, register each icon by passing it a label and SVG content or path to a file, and use the result directly in the Icon block. As a style note, it recommends relying on PHP enums with values, available since PHP 8.1, instead of loose arrays, to avoid silly typos and gain autocomplete in the editor. And there it is. The first prototype of the Accessibility Lab plugin is here, just days after being discussed. It follows the already-known model of the Performance Lab plugin and AI plugin: bringing together in one place experiments headed for WordPress core and practical tools already tested by the community, with the difference that everything stays grouped in a single plugin rather than spread across several small ones. The team strongly emphasizes what it is NOT: it doesn’t replace fixing accessibility directly in core, and obvious bugs like misplaced ARIA attributes, missing labels, or keyboard issues continue to be fixed where they are, without first passing through this plugin. The prototype already brings three working modules. The first expands Media Library view options beyond the simple infinite scroll toggle that arrived with 7.1, adding control over how many items show, density, and whether filename is always visible — explicitly designed to gather real feedback on how this should be resolved in core. The second incorporates the existing work of Troy Chaplin with his Block Accessibility Checks plugin: real-time validation of blocks, meta fields, and document structure against WCAG, with a three-level warning system and hookable by third-party blocks too. The third is a heading hierarchy validation that alerts in the moment if a Heading block skips a level — for example an H2 followed directly by an H4 — something that’s been requested for years in Gutenberg without being resolved. Looking ahead, the idea generating the most excitement is making image alt text searchable, which currently lives in post meta and so can’t be indexed or searched at scale — a Trac ticket open for years. And finally, this podcast is distributed under a Creative Commons license as a derivative version of the podcast in Spanish; you can find all the links for more information, and the podcast in other languages, at WPpodcast .org. Thanks for listening, and until the next episode!
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- WP#152August 18 · length unknown
Accessible Themes-For What?
A new controversy has surfaced regarding accessible themes, with the WordPress community taking a very clear stance. Remember that you can listen this program from: Program transcript Hello, I’m Alicia Ireland, and you’re listening to WPpodcast, bringing the weekly news from the WordPress Community. In this episode, you’ll find the information from August 10 to 16, 2026. The Accessibility team spent two years updating, for the first time in fourteen years, the criteria for the accessibility-ready label on WordPress repository themes, moving from WCAG 2.0 to WCAG 2.1 Level AA and reviewing over a hundred themes in the repository. The work was scheduled to be finalized before September 30 until Matt Mullenweg intervened directly to declare the initiative “permanently postponed” and added that any committer can override suggestions from the Accessibility team. The response from Joe Dolson, the team lead, was immediate: the program is voluntary and will continue until the scheduled date. Amber Hinds, who had led the rewrite, asked Mullenweg to clarify whether the intent is for any theme to use the label without review — something that technically already happens, precisely because of the problem the team has spent years trying to solve. The question remains unanswered. Mullenweg’s ambiguity isn’t just an internal matter. EU Directive 2016/2102 requires public sector websites to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA, and WordPress powers a huge proportion of those sites in Europe. If the accessibility-ready label stops having verification, whoever installs a theme marked as such on a public website could be breaking their country’s law. Ryan Boren, a heavyweight former committer, called it a way to end a discussion without arguing. Eric Eggert, an accessibility expert with experience in transposing EU directives, directly questioned the leadership style and treatment of volunteer contributors. Elena Brescacin, a blind user and regular WordCamp speaker, reminded everyone that accessibility isn’t just for people with permanent disabilities: anyone can need keyboard access, high contrast, or voice navigation at any point in their life. The result is an unusual impasse: Dolson says the team continues, Mullenweg says it’s over, and what happens on October 1 with themes that haven’t requested review remains unresolved. In parallel, Anne McCarthy, release lead for 7.1, proposed creating a canonical “Accessibility Labs” plugin, following the Performance Labs model, as a space to test accessibility features before integrating them into core. Dolson has expressed support, with one condition: that there be a real path to core. Without that guarantee, the plugin could become a repository of features that never get integrated — precisely what’s happened with other accessibility initiatives over the years. The first version of the WordPress Contributor Toolkit is here, the desktop app that started in April as the “Core Dev Environment Toolkit” and solves the biggest barrier to taking the first step in core development: setting up a complete wordpress-develop environment without having to install Git, Node, or Docker by hand. Available for Windows, macOS with Apple Silicon, and Linux, this version is a leap from the previous one: it doesn’t just leave the environment ready, but accompanies you through the entire contribution journey, from linking a Trac ticket to submitting your final work. Another practical update is that the same site can now host work on multiple tickets at once, each in its own branch, without having to repeat the full install each time, and there’s a button to update to the latest development version without losing in-progress work. This version arrives just in time for the Contributor Day at WordCamp US, explicitly designed so both first-time contributors and those facilitating those sessions can focus on the ticket itself rather than wrestling with environment configuration. Third round of security patches in just over a month: WordPress 7.0.4 fixes a remote code execution vulnerability for authenticated users with Author role or higher, through malicious file uploads on sites using Imagick and Ghostscript to process images. The flaw was reported, again, by the pwn.ai team, and has CVE-2026-65640. As has become routine, patches are being backported to the 4.7 branch, and WordPress 7.1 RC3, released the same day, already incorporates them. Speaking of that RC3: the 7.1 beta continues on schedule, with over 90 fixes since RC1 — 37 in the editor and 57 in core — and coincides with an important cycle milestone: a complete string freeze, so from now on Polyglots can translate the final version without fear of text changes. The release date remains August 19. Looking ahead, official planning for WordPress 7.2 has kicked off, with a proposed release date between December 8-10, coinciding with the State of the Word. The Core team is seeking volunteers for the Release Squad: Release Lead, coordination, Tech Leads, Triage Lead, and Test Lead, with a deadline to apply by August 28. The Training team has announced that hands-on activity kits are now available on Learn WordPress: complete, ready-to-use packages for anyone wanting to run a WordPress training session without preparing materials from scratch. Each kit includes a facilitator’s guide and slides, all designed to work on WordPress Playground without needing to install anything or create accounts, with a duration of 60 to 90 minutes and a tangible result by the end of the session. Eleven kits are available, with highly varied topics: from first steps in contributing to the project or creating content with blocks, to more technical sessions like debugging for developers with tools like Query Monitor and Xdebug, or ecommerce with WooCommerce. There are also two kits focused on AI — one for managing a local site with Claude Desktop via natural language through the MCP adapter, and another for using the WordPress AI plugin directly from the desktop — plus accessibility, SEO, security, and Playground kits. WordPress Credits, the year-old program connecting students worldwide with real WordPress contributions, has debuted a public dashboard with data updated weekly: enrolled students, participating institutions, contributions flowing into the project, built sites, and testimonials from those experiencing it firsthand. In parallel, a proposal has been launched to address an obvious gap in the program: right now, when a student graduates, there’s no defined next step, and all the momentum built up gets cut off just when that person is most equipped to keep contributing. The proposal suggests turning WordPress Credits into the first rung of a longer journey, with a clear path toward official WordPress Developer certification and WordPress Jobs, plus concrete contribution projects specifically designed for graduates who want to return, in collaboration with the Make teams themselves. The ecosystem-level piece most worth noting is a model already being explored with companies: they finance certification exam seats for graduates, unlockable when the student completes a verifiable contribution after graduating, in exchange for preferential access to that talent. The plan executes in three phases: basic infrastructure first, a pilot focused on the development track next, and expansion to other tracks later, with a 25% retention target for that pilot. The official WordPress browser extension is now available for Chrome and Chromium-based browsers through the Chrome Web Store, and for Safari on macOS from the Mac App Store. It’s an open source project that solves a well-known problem: the WordPress admin bar, always visible at the top of the screen when you’re logged in, gets in the way on sites with fixed headers or scroll effects, and disabling it from your profile also loses its quick access shortcuts. The extension hides that bar but keeps the most-used shortcuts one click away in the browser bar icon itself, with the full bar back in just two clicks if you need it. The extension’s icon alerts while browsing whether the site runs WordPress and whether you’re logged in, without being intrusive. On a site you administer, it takes you directly to the dashboard or to the editor of that specific page, post, taxonomy, or template you’re viewing — including block theme templates, which open directly in the Site Editor. It locally saves the list of sites you’re logged into, so they’re available even when browsing a completely different website. And finally, this podcast is distributed under a Creative Commons license as a derivative version of the podcast in Spanish; you can find all the links for more information, and the podcast in other languages, at WPpodcast .org. Thanks for listening, and until the next episode!
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- WP#151August 11 · length unknown
WordPress 7.0.3: Second Round of Security Patches in a Month
Following the emergency release of WordPress 7.0.2 for wp2shell, now comes WordPress 7.0.3 as a security maintenance release with 12 security patches heavily affecting the login screen.
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- WP#150August 4 · 11 min
WordPress 7.1: Complete Rundown Before Release Candidate
WordPress 7.1 is about to enter release candidate phase, and the calendar still points to August 19 for the final version. With most updates confirmed, it's time for a complete rundown of this feature-packed release.
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- WP#149July 28 · 9 min
Playlist and Tabs Blocks
WordPress 7.1 will include two new blocks: Playlist, an expansion of a media list, and Tabs, which after several iterations achieves enough maturity to be released.
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- WP#148July 21 · 10 min
Urgent Update for 6.8, 6.9, and 7.0
A security release has been published for versions 6.8, 6.9, 7.0, and 7.1-beta that fixes 2 critical security issues in WordPress core.
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- WP#147July 14 · 10 min
GatherPress Will Become a Reality
The event creation plugin, designed specifically for the WordPress community, has been approved to begin its rollout on WordPress.org and replace Meetup.com.
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- WP#146July 7 · 7 min
WordPress 7.1 Release Schedule
In just over a month and a half, WordPress 7.1 will launch, and its release has already been scheduled, starting with beta on July 15.
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- WP#145June 30 · 4 min
Say Goodbye to the Classic Editor
Since WordPress 5.0 and the launch of the block editor, the classic editor has been there... but now the countdown to its farewell has begun.
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- WP#144June 23 · 11 min
The WordPress 7.1 Team and Everything That's Coming
The team preparing WordPress 7.1 is already in place, and at the same time a clear roadmap of what the version will include has been revealed.
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- WP#143June 16 · 5 min
Bring Your Local Community to the Global Chat
If you have your own local community and want to take advantage of the benefits of global communication, WordPress has already begun integrating multiple communities into the global Slack.
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- WP#142June 9 · 11 min
WordCamp Europe 2026
Following the launch of WordPress 7.0, the largest WordPress event on the planet took place, bringing together 2,500 people from the ecosystem to review the state of WordPress and the upcoming WordPress 7.1 version.
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- WP#141June 2 · 6 min
WordPress Turns 23
It’s been 23 years since May 27, 2003, when version 0.70 of new software known as WordPress was released. Remember that you can listen to this program from Pocket Casts, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts or subscribe to the feed directly. Program transcript Hello, I’m Alicia Ireland, and you’re listening to WPpodcast, bringing the weekly news from the WordPress Community. In this episode, you’ll find the information from May 25 to 31, 2026. WordPress celebrated its 23rd birthday on May 27, and Matt Mullenweg marked it with a post on the official blog reflecting on a year he describes as the strongest and most precarious in the project’s history. On the positive side, he highlights the launch of WordPress 7.0: within just seven days, 46% of all installations worldwide had already updated automatically and without incident. On the darker side, Matt spends much of the post on the legal conflict with WP Engine and its parent company Silver Lake, which he says is consuming time and energy from key project people and has reached the point of attempting to dissolve the WordPress Foundation. Matt publicly calls on Silver Lake to end the litigation, and closes the post on a very personal note, acknowledging the human cost it’s taking on him and those around him. The Core team has announced that WordPress 7.1 will upgrade React: moving from version 18 to 19, a change that will arrive first in the Gutenberg plugin in version 23.3 and will be integrated into Core with WordPress 7.1. WordPress 7.0.1 is being planned for mid to late June. The most urgent bug found after the 7.0 launch affects the classic editor publish screen when there are additional action buttons added by plugins or custom post types, causing the interface to appear visually cluttered. The temporary fix is available from the Classic Editor plugin in version 1.7.0. As for the AI plugin, the team announces a cadence change: instead of releasing every two weeks, they’re moving to monthly releases, with 1.1 planned for late June and 1.2 for late July. On API key encryption, there is an experimental PR under review that introduces programmatic encryption of stored keys — something the community has been asking for since they currently save as plain text in the database. The decision is to merge it to gather real feedback before the code freeze for 7.1, with the possibility of reverting if necessary. Two other topics merit mention. The first is the Connectors API: exploring how to let providers register custom configuration fields — like those needed for local installations with Llama-type models — declaratively from PHP without requiring complex React components. The second is the MCP adapter, which is raising its minimum requirement to WordPress 6.9 so it can rely on the native Abilities API and eliminate old dependencies. The Test team has published a call for testing on an update that directly affects WordPress.org profiles: the integration of job functionality directly into the project’s infrastructure. Jobs.wordpress.net has existed for years as the WordPress ecosystem job board, but it’s now being integrated with profiles in a much tighter way. Profiles gain new sections to add work history, notable accomplishments, and a toggle to indicate you’re open to work opportunities, with the option to also display the “Open to work” badge on your Gravatar. Profiles marked as available appear directly in the candidates section of jobs.wordpress.net, turning the WordPress.org profile into something like a lightweight candidate page within the ecosystem. The Accessibility team has published a detailed summary of all the improvements WordPress 7.0 brings in this area, with 24 fixes and improvements in Core and 16 in the editor. In Core, the most relevant changes affect the media library: it’s now possible to use it with voice recognition software, and alt text embedded in an image’s IPTC metadata is automatically imported and assigned on upload — something photographers and agencies already tagging their files will appreciate. The new “Modern” admin color scheme also resolves several contrast issues that the previous one violated according to WCAG standards, and password reset now pre-fills the username — a WCAG 2.2 requirement that had been pending for some time. In the editor, the most notable updates are keyboard navigation support in DataViews grid views, improvements to the Gallery block so the block list works correctly, and the fact that new interfaces arriving in 7.0 — like Visual Revisions, the gallery lightbox, and the Connectors screen — have all gone through accessibility review before release. The team points to this as part of their commitment to meeting WCAG 2.2 Level AA on all new code. And finally, this podcast is distributed under a Creative Commons license as a derivative version of the podcast in Spanish; you can find all the links for more information, and the podcast in other languages, at WPpodcast .org. Thanks for listening, and until the next episode!
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- WP#140May 26 · length unknown
WordPress 7.0: Louis "Armstrong"
Arguably one of the most complicated versions to launch, but it's finally here. WordPress 7.0 is now a reality, and AI integration in WordPress is too.
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- WP#139May 19 · 15 min
What WordPress 7.0 Brings
WordPress 7.0 arrives on May 20 and brings many updates, though some of the most notable have been left out. Here's a rundown of everything in this new version.
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- WP#138May 12 · 8 min
WordPress 7.0, Without Real-Time Collaboration
Finally, Real-Time Collaboration will arrive in WordPress 7.1 and not 7.0, given the performance issues and the changes needed for its new implementation.
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- WP#137May 5 · 2 min
Presence API
With the Presence API, a column of active editors appears in the post list, an indicator in the admin bar shows avatars of who is on that same screen, and a pair of dashboard widgets rounds out the feature.
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- WP#136April 28 · length unknown
WordPress 7.0 in 3 Weeks
WordPress 7.0 has a release date again — with a 4-week cushion past the deadline when an update had been promised. If everything stays on track, we'll have this new major version on May 20.
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- WP#135April 21 · length unknown
Matt Mullenweg questions the direction of WordPress
Matt Mullenweg has published an extensive and self-critical assessment of the WordPress project's state, questioning a process culture that — in his view — paralyzes decision-making, overshadows individual contributors in favor of companies, and has
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