Howdy,
This week, I continued to learn about more plugins for the block editor. They might be new to the WordPress repository or just new to me, haha. Also, Playground came up in the last couple of weeks, and I share two tutorials and a video about my workshop at WordCamp Europe. And via the Feature API you can prepare your plugins for AI Agents.
As every year, WordCamp Europe will also have a Live stream for the talks and keynotes. Just check out the website on Jun 6th, 2025. The next Weekend Edition will drop in your inbox after WordCamp Europe and I will share some cool talks from the live stream.
Until have a great time!
Yours, 
Birgit
WordCamp Europe is just around the corner! 
If you want to meet up in Basel (June 4–7), grab a slot on my calendar or send me your link. #WCEU
ICYMI: WordCamp US Call for Speaker is now live the deadline is June 20, 2025. WordCamp US will take place from August 26 to 29th, 2025. Similar to last year, there are no lightening talks, only long form talks, workshops, or campfire sessions. August 26 will be Contributor Day. Sessions start on August 27 in three tracks. You need to have a WordPress.org account to enter the form. The Call for Sponsors has also been published.
Developing Gutenberg and WordPress
George Mamadashvili just dropped the Gutenberg 20.9 RC1 for everyone to test out, and we’re expecting the final version to go live next week! After WordCamp Europe, I’ll catch up with Anne McCarthy to record our next Gutenberg Changelog, where we’ll chat about a bunch of stuff, including those two Gutenberg plugin releases, 20.9 and 21.0.
The latest episode Gutenberg Changelog 117 – WooCommerce Starter Theme and Blocks, WordCamp Europe, and Gutenberg 20.7 and 20.8 I sat down with Ellen Bauer, WooCommerce product lead and discussed what she is working on, WordCamp Europe, Create Block Theme, WP-CLI, Gutenberg 20.7 and Gutenberg 20.8 releases.
Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners
Johanne Courtright explains how Gutenberg is a game-changer — and clients actually love it (when done right). When implemented thoughtfully, she found, the Gutenberg editor revolutionizes WordPress by empowering clients with intuitive, flexible content creation. In her experience, clients express genuine satisfaction, as Gutenberg’s block-based approach simplifies editing and design, making website management more accessible and enjoyable for non-technical users.
Kevin Batdorf updated his plugin Pattern CSS . It lets you add CSS scoped to a block, and recently added a floating editor as well as a global CSS editor, making it easy to add custom animations or anything. It’s parsed via Lightening CSS in WebAssembly as you type, and works well with synced patterns.
Thorsten Landsiedel published a plugin called “Hide Block in RSS feed,” which adds a toggle switch to block sidebars for suppressing content in RSS feeds. In his talk at WordCamp Leipzig, he noted that decorative icons/images may display differently in RSS readers. Using this block you can improve readability by suppressing specific blocks in the feeds. The plugin is available on GitHub.
Weston Ruter, a long-time WordPress Core committer, explains step-by step how he added caption and lightbox to the featured image block. When Weston Ruter rebuilt his site with the Twenty Twenty-Five theme, he noticed the Featured Image block lacked caption and lightbox features. Both features are available for the Image block. Ruter shared code examples on how he implemented these features in a plugin. Then he also suggested future improvements for WordPress core.
WM Animations plugin by Widescreen Media, a company from Sweden, helps users to add entrance animations like fade-in and slide-in to core blocks. “You can select animation type and adjust duration/delay per block, directly in the block inspector. Works well with all core blocks and most custom blocks.” Widescreen Media’s website might be the best demo for this plugin.
Andy Fragen, core contributor and trauma surgeon, authored quite a few plugins. The oEmbed for GitHub Gist plugin enables writers to add code from GitHub Gists via the Embed block to their posts. For classic editor users, you just put the URL on a new line.
“Keeping up with Gutenberg – Index 2025”
A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test, and Meta team from Jan. 2024 on. Updated by yours truly. The previous years are also available: 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024
Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor
Video recordings from Lisboa’s WordCamp 2025 are already available on WordPressTV
- WordPress gems for devs: Interactivity API with Milana Cap
- Connecting custom fields: From meta boxes to blocks and beyond with Ryan Welcher
- WooCommerce Checkout block, what you missed! with Nadir Seghir
Seth Rubenstein, lead engineer at Pew Research Center, decided to take a break from regularly scheduled work to play around with an Interactivity API (iAPI) Inspector Chrome Extension. This tool offers dev tools to highlight iAPI directives and context associated with a block as well as map connections between iAPI stores on a page.
Jonathan Bossenger has spent some time the last couple of weeks learning more about Feature API, the WordPress MCP plugin and the MCP WordPress remote package. In his latest video, Are your WordPress plugins and themes ready for AI? he puts it all together using one of his plugins and shows the various steps:
- Registering Features with the Feature API Plugin
- Converting Features into Tools with MCP Plugin
- Configuring AI Tools to Use MCP Features
Once you watched the video a couple of times, it might be helpful to also read Jamie Marsland‘s post on LinkedIn again: WordPress Is Sitting on a Goldmine — And the Feature API Just Dug the First Tunnel
In this week’s live stream, Ryan Welcher also took a A first look at the new WordPress Feature API. He calls the Feature API “a powerful new way of exposing WordPress functionality in a standardized, discoverable way for both server and client-side use.”
What is new in Playground?
Roger Williams and I spoke about my upcoming WordCamp EU workshop.” “From Zero to Demo: Mastering WordPress Playground Blueprints“. The recording is available on YouTube WordPress Playground Workshop Preview with Birgit Pauli-Haack
Karthick Murugan, from the Multidots team, updated documentation with everything you want to know about the current web instance: WordPress Playground web instance.
Earlier this week, I wrote about the early version of the Playground CLI and how to use it to test your plugin and theme in development or your blueprints locally. Early version Playground CLI testing.
In Automating WordPress Playground Screenshots with Node.js and Playwright I shared the context and code using the JavaScript API to call a with a playwright browser instance to take a screenshot of the Playground site configured with a blueprint.
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
Featured Image: Photo by Ivan Bandura on Unsplash
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The post Gutenberg Times: Feature API, Playground, Gutenberg 20.9, Interactivity API, #WCUS and moar — Weekend Edition 331 appeared first on MCNM Digital Media Marketing.
