Gutenberg Times: PHP-only blocks, WordCamp Asia, Dev Notes for WordPress 7.0 — Weekend Edition #360

Hi there,

I held my first walk-through of WordPress 7.0 with friends at the Santa Clarita WordPress Meetup. The group was really excited about all the big new features and the small quality-of-life (QoL) improvements.

Jessica Lyschik and I also discussed many features coming to WordPress 7.0 on our latest podcast episode. Listen in if you are curious.

Below you also find the links to the first set of Dev Notes for WordPress 7.0. Beta 4 will come out next week (3/12). Release candidate 1 is scheduled for March 19. It is now time to help test WordPress 7.0

Enjoy your weekend and these notes.

Yours,
Birgit

WordCamp Asia heads to Mumbai on April 10–11, and I shared my personally curated session picks — leaning heavily into block editor, themes, and AI. Highlights include Ryan Welcher on the Interactivity API, a Playground + AI testing pipelines talk by Fellyph Cintra, and a closing keynote from Matt Mullenweg. I will also be leading a Contributor Day workshop on building a block theme from scratch. The schedule still has several TBD slots, so it’s worth checking back.

Get your WordCamp Asia 2026 event pass and join the WordPress community in Mumbai on April 9–11!

Developing Gutenberg and WordPress

WordPress 7.0 Beta 3 is now available for testing. The final release is coming closer. It’s the time of the release cycle when Developer Notes are published ahead of Release Candidate 1.

For the new Breadcrumbs block, Nik Tsekouras documents the two PHP filters developers will want to know. block_core_breadcrumbs_items lets you modify, add, or remove items just before rendering — handy for prepending a custom “Shop” crumb in WooCommerce. block_core_breadcrumbs_post_type_settings gives you control over which taxonomy and term appear in the trail, with sensible fallback behavior when your preferred term isn’t assigned. Props to Karol Manijak for the implementation.

Dave Smith details one of the more exciting 7.0 additions for theme developers: Customisable Navigation Overlays. Mobile hamburger menus were previously locked to a fixed default design — now you can build your overlay from any blocks and patterns directly in the Site Editor. Themes can bundle overlays as template parts registered with a new navigation-overlay area in theme.json. The feature is opt-in currently full-screen only, and props go to Mike McAlister, whose Ollie Menu Designer plugin helped validate the community demand.

Luis Herranz outlines key updates in the Interactivity API changes in WordPress 7.0. The main highlight is the new watch() function, which helps developers to track state changes outside the DOM for tasks like logging and analytics. Additionally, state.url in core/router will now be filled by the server, improving navigation tracking. Note that the state.navigation properties are outdated and will be removed in a future version.

André Maneiro rounds up 166 contributions from 35 authors landing in the DataViews space for WordPress 7.0. Highlights include a new activity timeline layout, expanded field validation rules, a combobox control for large datasets, and a groupBy object replacing the old groupByField string — a breaking change worth noting. DataForm gains a new details layout and collapsible card controls. A lot here for plugin developers building data-rich admin interfaces.

Miguel Fonseca documents one of the most warmly received 7.0 additions: PHP-only block registration. Pass 'autoRegister' => true in the supports array alongside a render_callback, and your block appears in the editor without a single line of JavaScript. WordPress automatically generates Inspector Controls for supported attribute types — string, integer, boolean, and enum. Implemented by Ricky Pena, the comments section alone tells you how long PHP-first developers have been waiting for this one.

Ryan Welcher and Ciprian Popescu went deeper on this topic and provided you with examples and explanations on their personal blogs. (See links below.)

The latest episode is Gutenberg Changelog #127 – WordPress 7.0 Beta and Gutenberg 22.6 with special guest Jessica Lyschik, senior developer at Greyd

In the video, 7.0 Beta, Gutenberg 22.5, Studio & AI: WordPress for Developers in February Ryan Welcher walks you through the February edition of the round-up series What’s new for Developers. You’ll get the highlights from Gutenberg 22.4 and 22.5: per-instance custom CSS, viewport-based block visibility, anchor support for dynamic blocks, and the long-awaited removal of extra editor wrapper divs. The iFrame enforcement planned for 7.0 has been delayed — more breathing room, but time to prepare is now.

WordPress lead developer Dion Hulse has shipped something quietly useful: WordPress.org now serves clean Markdown output for every page, built on Dennis Snell’s html-to-md plugin. You can access it by appending ?output_format=md to any URL or sending an Accept: text/markdown header. The efficiency gains are real — one developer reported a WordPress docs page shrinking from 68k tokens to 11k. It’s a direct response to Mullenweg’s push to make WordPress.org a canonical knowledge source for AI agents. Ray Morey reporting for The Repository

In this brief video, Jonathan Bossenger demonstrates WordPress 7.0 Beta 2’s new WP AI Client and Connectors settings page, explaining how connectors can install plugins and how developers can create AI features without tying users to a specific provider. A live CLI demo showcases this approach. Bossenger also discusses connector discovery UX and areas where core improvements are needed before 7.0 is released.

Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners

WordPress contributor Nick Hamze has quietly improved the Featured Plugins tab in wp-admin, replacing a list that hadn’t changed in eight years with a rotating selection of eight lesser-known plugins, refreshed every two weeks. The goal, as Matt Cromwell reports for The Repository, is to surface genuinely promising newcomers — “not the giants, not the household names” — that you’d never stumble across through search or popularity rankings. Early results are striking; Ollie Menu Designer tripled its biggest download day within hours of appearing in the tab.

Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks

Marko Ivanovic and Noam Almosnino shared their Telex experiments on the Automattic Design blog, showcasing what happens when designers get to build WordPress blocks by simply describing an idea. Telex, Automattic’s AI-powered tool, handles the technical wiring so you can focus on creative exploration. The pair built a text-scrambling interaction inspired by Flash-era pioneer Yugop and an image carousel—all without writing block code themselves. It’s a compelling glimpse at how your design-to-block workflow could change.

Derek Hanson shares how he shipped Tufte Blocks, a WordPress block theme he couldn’t build a year ago, drawing on Edward Tufte’s typography-first aesthetic. After two failed attempts, the right combination — WordPress Agent Skills and Shaun Andrews‘ design-system-first approach — finally unlocked it. You don’t need to be a designer or developer; Hanson’s project management and rhetoric background turned out to be exactly the right skills for directing AI through a complete, polished theme. Does it sound attractive to you? Download it from GitHub

Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.

Ciprian Popescu walks you through PHP-only block registration in WordPress, the new approach landing in 7.0 that lets you build Gutenberg blocks without JavaScript build tools. By setting autoRegister to true in the supports array, WordPress auto-generates inspector controls from your attributes and uses ServerSideRender for previews. You’ll find practical guidance on block supports, asset enqueueing caveats, and where this approach fits best—think author boxes, CTA banners, and theme-specific components rather than richly interactive blocks.

Ryan Welcher also explains how PHP-only block registration in WordPress 7.0 lets you skip block.json entirely and define block metadata directly in your register_block_type() call. You’ll see how to enable it with the autoRegister support flag, define attributes that auto-generate inspector controls, and wire up render callbacks with get_block_wrapper_attributes(). The tutorial covers asset registration via handle arrays and helps you streamline your workflow for server-rendered blocks ahead of the April 9 release.

Paulo Carvajal‘s guide on mastering event handling and DOM interactions with the Interactivity API takes you through the data-wp-on directive for declarative event management. You’ll learn how to handle mouse, keyboard, form, and touch events while connecting them to store actions that update state reactively. The piece covers withSyncEvent() for synchronous access, automatic event delegation, and performance patterns like debouncing and throttling, wrapping up with a complete to-do app that ties it all together.

AI and WordPress

If you use Cursor for WordPress block development, JuanMa Garrido explains how to enable JSON schema validation in Cursor, which is disabled by default due to a security vulnerability where the AI agent could trigger outbound requests via $schema fields. You’ll need to add json.schemaDownload.enable to your settings—ideally at the project level in .vscode/settings.json to limit exposure. A quick fix that restores autocompletion and validation for your block.json and theme.json files.

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