Gutenberg Times: Plugin Security, Divi to Gutenberg, Internet Archive, — Weekend Edition 347

Hi there,

On All Saints Day, November 1st, we honor dear people who passed. I wanted to take the occasion and point you to the WordPress Remembers page where accomplished contributors who passed have a permanent home. Their work lives on in every new story, every new website, and every new idea made possible by WordPress.

And it’s a long newsletter today with lots of great blog posts, videos and tutorials. I also included two ecosystem-related developments that would be normally out of scope for this niche newsletter. They have huge implications for the security and longevity of WordPress, and I definitely thought you shouldn’t miss.

Have a lovely weekend,

Yours,
Birgit

PS: Voting for the WPAwards already started. Vote for your WordPress favorites, hopefully among them the blog Gutenberg Times and the podcast Gutenberg Changelog. Hat Tip to Davinder Singh Kainth for putting the WPAwards together every year.

WordPress Ecosystem updates

David Perez, a Hostinger sponsored contributor, posted a new milestone from the Plugins Review team that will have broader impact throughout the WordPress ecosystem: The Plugin Check Plugin now creates automatic security reports after each plugin update. It reports on the update of the Plugin Check plugin that not only screens new plugin submissions but also expands the screening to subsequent versions of plugins for security, compatibility, and compliance.

Currently, the team evaluates internal information and sends reports to authors as needed. They observe PCP behavior during updates for refinement. After this phase, automated security reports will be emailed to authors right after plugin updates.

With Plugins accounting for 96% of WordPress vulnerabilities in 2024, this increased scrutiny on the WordPress plugins repository submissions will have a huge impact on the health of the whole WordPress ecosystem. And it will make the web a better place.

Rae Morey, The Repository, has the details in her report: WordPress Plugins Team Rolls Out Automatic Security Scans for All Plugin Updates

The second development is a plugin to eliminate link rot on the internet and was brought to you by the Internet Archive– “a non-profit library of millions of free texts, movies, software, music, websites, and more.” It also runs the Wayback-Machine, surfacing previous version of websites. The plugin Internet Archive Wayback Machine Link Fixer made its debut in the WordPress repository. It’s came to pass in a collaboration between the Internet Archive and Automattic’s Special Projects team.

Matt Mullenweg wrote on his blog, “When a linked page disappears, the plugin helps preserve your user experience by redirecting visitors to a reliable archived version. It also works proactively by archiving your own posts every time they’re updated, creating a consistent backup of your content’s history.”

The plugin is free, you do need a free account on the Internet Archive and obtain API keys to connect your site to the Internet Archive, on step 2 and 3 you’ll have to make some addtional decision.

As a side note, scrolling through Gutenberg Times history on the Wayback machine is fascinating. I am person you lives solidly in the moment and often forgets what happened in the past. (or it’s just old age, don’t say it). I am working on a block theme for the site, and going back to previous versions of the site helps to educate the future. Anyway, back to block editor stuff and more.

Developing Gutenberg and WordPress

WordPress 6.9 Beta 2 was released this week. Release coordinator Akshaya Rane has the details in the WordPress news post. A description of what this next version will bring is available in the announcement of the Beta 1 release.

Release Test co-lead, Krupa Nanda posted great instructions on how you can Help test the Beta 1 release of WordPress 6.9 . It’s the best way to learn how to use the new features and report quirks and bugs back to the contributors, so they can be fixed before Release Candidate 1 which is scheduled for November 11.

The Gutenberg 22.0 RC 1 is now available for testing. It contains 53 Bug fix PRs that are backported to WordPress Core and will make it into WordPress 6.9, too.

Hector Prieto published the release post for Gutenberg 21.9 version. He highlighted:

• All the blocks!
• Direct drag and drop
• DataViews customization persistence

The latest episode is Gutenberg Changelog #123 – WordPress 6.9 and Gutenberg 21.9 with Isabel Brison, core contributor.

The Editorial Staff at WPBeginner already let you know What’s Coming in WordPress 6.9? (Features and Screenshots). They highlight block-level Notes for collaborative feedback, block visibility controls to hide content from front-end visitors, and improved template management across theme switches. New blocks include Accordion, Terms Query, Math, and Time to Read, alongside enhancements like text-fitting typography and a dashboard-wide Command Palette. Performance gains include on-demand block-style loading, faster emoji detection, and optimized cron execution. The foundation for AI workflows arrives through the Abilities API, enabling machine-readable WordPress capabilities for secure automation.

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

Amadeu Arderiu, co-founder of Ploogins and explorer of all things AI and WordPress, was interviewed by Nathan Wrigley on the WPBuilds podcast episode 443. They discussed AI-powered WordPress projects: a smart plugin search, an AI website chatbot, and AI-driven block editor tools. In the chat they touched on three tools:

• Ploogins – a natural language search engine for WordPress plugins. Just tell it the functionality you need and it gives a list of free and premium plugins.
• Joinchat, a plugin known for its iconic floating WhatsApp button on countless WordPress sites. This chatbot answers user questions using only the content from your site, some setting to fine-tune the scope.
• Suggerence, an experiment that places conversational AI directly into the Gutenberg block editor. A site owner can simply describe a task and the robot executes. Example: “Create a hero section with a button”.

I am going to miss the steady creation of fun blocks via Automattic’s Telex. This week’s Blocktober.fun creations are also the last ones on the site.

• Trick or treat
• Filter Table
• Bar chart
• Checklist
• Blogroll

Rae Morey, The Repository, reported Blocktober Wraps Up as Telex Inspires a Wave of WordPress Experimentation. Tammie Lister’s daily block-a-day challenge has become part of a growing wave of Telex-powered creativity, showing how AI can make building in WordPress feel playful again.

Telex, Automattic’s experimental AI tool, enables anyone to build custom Gutenberg blocks using natural language prompts, generating downloadable plugins through a chat-style interface. The tool sparked developer enthusiasm with shared creations ranging from summary generators to specialized calculators.

Divi by Elegant Themes has been around for ages with roughly a million users. This month I came across two blog posts from agencies about moving from Divi to Gutenberg and the block editor. Two approaches with the same outcome.

Johanne Courtright shared her team’s approach in Why I Don’t Migrate Divi Sites (I Rebuild Them), arguing that rebuilding Divi sites with Gutenberg is faster and cheaper than migration. Divi’s proprietary format traps users in technical debt and poor performance. Migration plugins, while available, result in messy conversions that still require manual layout rebuilding. Clean rebuilds uphold content integrity and design patterns, enabling faster site delivery within 3-4 weeks versus 6-8 weeks of migration difficulties.

In his post Divi to Gutenberg Migration 2025 – Step by Step Guide, Piotr Kochanowski at DevelopPress outlines a migration strategy using Divi 5’s block-like format and WordPress 6.8+’s features. The guide highlights pre-migration audits, staging environments, and page-by-page transitions through the Divi Layout Block. Key steps include design-system extraction, template rebuilding, and SEO parity verification. Migrations for standard 20–40 page sites typically take 1–3 weeks, while complex projects may require 4–8 weeks.

Cheyne Klein, Happiness Engineer at Automattic, held an online workshop on Learn WordPress on Building top-level menus & sub-menus. You’ll learn the two main ways to create them in WordPress — the Navigation block and the Classic Menu Editor.

Benjamin Intal, Stackable, announced the new version (1.3.0) of the Interactions plugin which gives you controls to add animations and interactions to your site. He lists

• 54 Pre-made Interactions
• DIY Interaction Builder
• GSAP-level performance
• Hero reveals, parallax images, scroll animations & more

GSAP-level performance” refers to the high-speed, smooth, and efficient animations of GreenSock Animation Platform (GSAP).

Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks

Justin Tadlock dives into Styling accordions in WordPress 6.9 with you! This guide is here to help you adapt the design to your or your clients needs. You’ll learn how to apply styling via theme.json, style variations and patterns.

Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.

On his personal blog, Riad Benguella, lead developer on the Gutenberg project, wrote about Debugging WordPress Scripts and Styles. He introduced a vibe-coded tool addressing increased JavaScript and CSS complexity in WordPress admin interfaces and editors. The tool reveals uncompressed file sizes, explicit enqueueing status, ancestor dependencies, and direct parent scripts. Users access it by placing the file in plugins and appending ?debug_script=true to page URLs. Benguella recommends Query Monitor by John Blackbourn for comprehensive debugging solutions.

Shani Bannerjee takes you on the journey to Understand the Interactivity API-driven future for WooCommerce Blocks, explaining how this hybrid approach merges server-side PHP robustness with client-side JavaScript responsiveness. The API enables seamless interactions—cart updates, real-time filtering, interactive galleries—while maintaining block editor integrity. Product Collection, Product Filters, Product Gallery, Add to Cart Options, and MiniCart already implement it. Future WooCommerce blocks adopt Interactivity API from inception. Development shifts toward store-based state management and community-driven extensibility patterns.

Earlier this month, JuanMa Garrido published the monthly roundup post What’s new for developers? (October 2025) on the WordPress Developer Blog. If you missed it or you’d rather watch a video, Ryan Welcher goes over the post in this latest video What’s New for WordPress Developers – October 2025 on YouTube. In either format it’s not a post to miss.

Tammie Lister shared in her blog post Abilities Explorer “The Abilities API is coming to WordPress 6.9 and I have brewed up a little tool to show what abilities you have on your site loaded in core, themes or plugins. It’s very freshly brewed so sip cautiously” she wrote. The experimental plugin visualizes available abilities by origin, enabling testing and detailed inspection. Built rapidly with Claude and Cursor as a learning exercise, it aims to help developers discover and understand WordPress’s emerging Abilities API registry while surfacing potential gaps in site functionality. The Abilities Explorer lives just on GitHub. Check it out.

In this week’s stream Multitasking with GitHub Copilot, Jonathan Bossenger attempts to update two repositories simultaneously. He uses the GitHub Copilot Coding Agent to implement the latest Abilities API and MCP adapter versions. He walks through debugging issues with GitHub Copilot. He covers setting up categories for abilities and testing local environments and tackles real-time coding problems. He leverages AI for documentation and updates. Bossenger also made his WordPress Plugin GitHub Copilot Instructions publicly available on GitHub to give you a head start.

In his livestream, Ryan Welcher was Using every Interactivity API feature in one site. He took a deep dive into the Interactivity API as he wanted to get back up to speed and build something that uses every directive and feature it offers.

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