Gutenberg Times: Livestreams on WordPress 6.9, WordPress Importer Improved, MCP Adapter and more — Weekend Edition #351

Hi there,

In case you celebrated it, I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday, lots of turkey, sweet potatoes, beans, stuffing, gravy and pumpkin pie. Or any kind of pie really . And lots of love and laughter around your family and friends.

I just want to give a huge shoutout to all the WordPress contributors who teamed up to roll out this next big version of WordPress for the hundreds of millions of websites out there and all their users and visitors. Every update is a big deal and only happens because of teamwork, good vibes, honesty, and trust. Not everyone who contributes is a coder; some work on documentation, translate stuff into loads of languages, create tutorials, and so much more. WordPress 6.9 is dropping on Tuesday if everything goes smoothly!

Other contributors have already started on the next version, 7.0. We don’t know yet exactly when it will come out. In their last check-in meeting Core committers discussed a release date in March or April of 2026. They are also thinking of going back to three releases per year.

Have a splendid weekend ahead, and I am so grateful that you are here. Your presence makes me want to write every week. Be well.

Yours,
Birgit

My team mate, Jonathan Bossenger and I were on this week’s panel for This Week in WordPress #356 episode, together with Taco Verdonschot and Nathan Wrigley. It includes “Birgit Pauli-Haack gives a whirlwind tour of her epic WordPress 6.9 Source of Truth “. There was a lot more of course.

Videos and posts about WordPress 6.9 release

WordPress 6.9 Release Candidate 3 is now available! The WordPress 6.9 Field Guide has arrived, too.

Rae Morey, The Repository has the skinny for you in WordPress 6.9 RC3 Arrives as Field Guide Drops and Final Release Nears.

Hector Prieto published the Dev Note Miscellaneous Editor Changes in WordPress 6.9, highlighting various refinements to the block editor. The release improves keyboard navigation, selection, and focus handling, adds small UI polish, and refines patterns and templates behavior. It also updates APIs and deprecations to keep block development consistent, enhances accessibility and stability, and smooths authoring flows, ensuring theme and plugin authors can better integrate with the evolving editor experience.

Nick Diego and Ryan Welcher livestreamed their WordPress 6.9 Walkthrough. They guided viewers through the key updates arriving in WordPress 6.9 ahead of its December 2 release.

In his livestream this week, Jonathan Bossenger tested the Block Bindings coming to WordPress 6.9. He tested the new enhancements in the date and image blocks, as well as custom source registration. Throughout the stream, Bossenger troubleshot and documented his process, exploring how these updates can lay the foundation for future developments. You can join him as he navigates through the intricacies and potentials of these new WordPress features!

In his video WordPress 6.9 New Features, Pascal Claro demonstrates all new features for the Block editor coming to a WordPress instance near you.

Maruti Mohanty held a Learn WordPress workshop on How to Prepare Your WordPress Site for WordPress 6.9. The recording is now available on WordPressTV. You will learn how to use the Beta/RC releases to test your site for the upcoming releases. This will be a practical walkthrough to build your staging, test for compatibility, and plan a safe rollout.

In his post The Foundation for AI-Powered, Composable, and Editor-Friendly Websites, David Levine covers the WordPress 6.9 release and its focus on incremental yet impactful improvements to the site editor and performance. The post highlights refined pattern management, better style controls, and workflow enhancements for building and editing layouts.

The Abilities API will launch with WordPress 6.9. TrewKnowledge has published a simple guide for builders, publishers, and product teams. It explains how “abilities” bring together capabilities and permissions in the editor and admin, allowing for better control over tasks. With examples and clear advice, the article helps agencies and product teams create safer workflows, customize roles, and improve user experiences.

Rae Morey, The Repository, reports on how WordPress 6.9 to Introduce Notes, Bringing Asynchronous Collaboration to the Post Editor. Notes let users comment on specific parts of content, reply in threads, and mention teammates without being online together. The feature builds on Blocks and Phase 3 collaboration goals, aiming to replace scattered feedback via email or chat with contextual, in-editor discussions that improve editorial workflows and multi-author content reviews.

Codeable Expert James Roberts also covered the release for his co-workers in WordPress 6.9: What To Expect, outlining key updates to the Site Editor, patterns, and design tools that make building full sites more intuitive. The article also explains what agencies and clients should do to prepare, test, and safely adopt the new features.

Gutenberg and other WordPress updates

The latest episode is Gutenberg Changelog #124 – Gutenberg 22.0 and WordPress 6.9 with Ellen Bauer, project lead at Automattic.

In his video, WordPress 6.9 and More: Key Updates for Developers, Ryan Welcher gives you TL:DR of the latest What’s new for developers? (November 2025) post from the WordPress Developer Blog.

Gutenberg 22.2 RC 1 is now available for testing. It comprised 161 Pull Requests by 49 contributors, four of whom are first-timers. The release focuses on performance, block editor polish, and a series of accessibility and developer experience improvements. It is intended for testing ahead of the stable 22.2.0 release on December 3 and is not recommended for production sites.

In the next Gutenberg Changelog episode, I had a chat with JC Palmes, the principal technical manager at WebDevStudios, about how their team has totally jumped on the Blocks and block themes bandwagon. It’s been a game changer for their workflow and super helpful for their clients’ editorial teams, too. We also shared favorites features of the upcoming WordPress 6.9 release and the latest Gutenberg updates, 22.1 and 22.2. So, keep an eye out for the episode arriving in your favorite podcast app this weekend!

Have you been avoiding the WordPress Importer when moving sites? It received a major enhancement from Adam Zieliński and other contributors. Zieliński published the announcement on the Core Make Blog: WordPress Importer can now migrate URLs in your content. This enhancement made it feasible to us the WordPress importer for the Playground blueprint step importWxr and it is now also compatible with content built in block themes, as URL in navigation blocks and image references in background-image css are also converted to the new site.

WordPress for #nocode site builders and owners

If you need to add FAQ schema to your Accordion Block, Andrew Viney, developer from Bristol, UK, has you covered with his accordion-faq-schema-toggle plugin.

If you are a developer yourself, you can use Justin Tadlock’s Snippet: Schema.org microdata for Accordion block FAQs

Mohammad Shoeb announced that the free WPMozo Blocks Plugin for WordPress just got five new Blocks. The update introduces Hero Heading, Logo Showcase, Notice, Highlight Text, and Flipbox blocks, focused on speed, flexibility, and visual appeal. These blocks support layout and style customization, icons, gradients, hover effects, and responsive controls, enabling users to build standout sections, alerts, logo grids, and interactive content without performance loss or complex configuration.

Wes Theron published another nice tutorial for content creators on YouTube: How to add social icons to your WordPress site. He shows “you exactly how to add and customize social icons on your WordPress.com site, making it easy for visitors to connect with you across all your social platforms.”

Designing Block Themes

Bud Kraus wrote a tutorial on Scaling typeface gracefully with fluid typography that explains how to make font sizes adjust smoothly to different screen sizes using CSS functions like clamp(). He elaborates on how to use continuous scaling instead of fixed breakpoints, which helps improve readability and minimizes size jumps. The article provides examples for headings and body text, covers design tips, and shows how to implement fluid typography in WordPress themes.

Karol Król mentioned he was inspired by my talk at WordCamp Gdynia to explore the Create Block theme plugin some more. He created this tutorial on how to easily transfer Block Theme changes to another WordPress site

Elliot Richmond created a Block Theme Cheat Sheet for WordPress that collects key block theme concepts, file structure, and template examples in one place. It outlines essential theme.json settings, common templates and template parts, and useful block patterns for building modern block themes. The resource is designed as a quick reference for developers who want a practical, copy‑and‑paste style guide while learning or refining their block theme workflow.

Building Blocks

Bryce Culp of WebDev Studios created A Developer’s Guide: The Future of the WordPress Gutenberg Block Editor. He explains modern block patterns, theme architecture, and tooling, emphasizing best practices for performance, reusability, and accessibility. The guide helps developers transition from classic approaches to a Gutenberg-first mindset, leveraging React-based blocks, block.json configuration, and evolving WordPress APIs to build scalable, future-ready experiences.

Jos Velasco, DreamHost, found a way to simplify WordPress Plugin development with Telex and shared his workflow in this post. He has some tips and consideration on how to best work with the AI Block builder.

What’s new with Playground

Fellyph Cintra announced that Debugging with Xdebug is now available in WordPress Playground letting WordPress developers better understand what’s happening when something breaks. Now you can pause WordPress, look at what’s going on, and move through each step of the process in a browser. It works with simple tools or code editors, needs little setup, and is great for learning, testing ideas, and fixing problems more easily.

Cintra also published Playground CLI, adds ImageMagick, SOAP, and AVIF support. These additions make it easier to work with images, talk to other online services, and test modern image formats in temporary WordPress sites. Together, they help developers and site builders try more real-world features without complex setup on their own computers.

The latest article by Fellyph Cintra reveals that Playground allows developers to create temporary sites with specific Gutenberg branches in their browser. You can use special Playground URLs or blueprints to access nightly or feature branches, test new editor features safely, share consistent environments, and give feedback earlier in the Gutenberg development process.

Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg’s trunk 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.

AI in WordPress

Jeff Paul announced AI Experiments Plugin v0.1.0 . Team rep in the AI Team, James Le Page wrote on X (former Twitter) “This is a pretty big release. It’s the first time all building blocks are used together and represents a really great reference for developers that surfaces in features that you can use right now.”

Ovidiu Galatan posted the Release announcement: MCP Adapter v0.3.0! This update brings official WordPress support for the Model Context Protocol. Version 0.3.0 is all about making things smoother with transport, better observability, and handling errors. They’ve unified the HTTP transport, put together a standard way to deal with WP_Error for MCP error responses, and revamped the observability handlers. Plus, they’ve standardized hook names, rolled out some detailed migration docs, and squashed some bugs, making sure everything works nicely with Abilities API v0.4.0 as part of WordPress’s awesome AI Building Blocks collection!

On his blog, James Le Page shared a two-part series about the Abilities API. The posts explain how WordPress “abilities” have changed from old permission systems to a clearer way of defining what users and tools can do. They describe abilities as easy-to-understand labels for capabilities used in core, plugins, and the editor. With examples of AI features, the series shows how abilities help developers provide safe actions, manage access, and create smoother user experiences.

• The Promise and History Of Abilities (1/2)
• Using Abilities To Build AI in WordPress (2/2)

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