Hi there,
In most European countries, Easter is a four-day weekend with two bank holidays, on Good Friday and Easter Monday. It’s a welcome occasion to unplug and enjoy the life right in front of you. For me, that’s organizing my home, celebrating Spring in the English Garden, friends coming over for a card game and lots of art. What are you doing to unplug?
A huge shoutout to Simon Kraft, Krautpress 
for inviting me to the WordPress Meetup in Konstanz this week! I had an awesome time and loved connecting with the German WordPress community. Plus, I’ve now got the German version of the slidedeck from my WordCamp Asia presentation!
This week, the final release of WordPress 6.8 came out “Cecil”, the last major WordPress version for 2025. We will see more minor releases for sure, the first one is scheduled tentatively for April 29, 2025.
And now, if you celebrate it or not, I wish you and yours a Happy Easter! 
CU next week again, 
Birgit
WordPress 6.8
WordPress 6.8 “Cecil” is out! It honors the legendary pianist and jazz pioneer Cecil Taylor. Congratulations to the release quad and the over 900 contributors from over 60 countries, 250 of them were first timers.
Jeff Paul wrote in the release post: “WordPress 6.8 polishes and refines the tools that you use every day, making your site faster, more secure, and easier to manage. The Style Book now has a structured layout and works with Classic themes, giving you more control over global styles. Speculative loading speeds up navigation by preloading links before users navigate to them, bcrypt hashing strengthens password security automatically, and database optimizations improve performance.”
If you want to take a deep dive into all the updates, here are the couple of links, I shared before:
- The WordPress 6.8 Field Guide has all the cool updates that matter to developers.
- Don’t miss the Source of Truth (WordPress 6.8) for the latest on Block editor updates.
More articles covering 6.8 from different point of views:
- In WordPress 6.8: Feature Highlights and Improvements, Jonathan Bossenger compiled a comprehensive list of the user facing changes of the new version.
- Bud Kraus discovered 6 key changes in WordPress 6.8 for the Hostinger Blog.
- Justin Tadlock published The Developer’s Guide to WordPress 6.8
- Gianna Legate, HumanMade explained What WordPress 6.8 means for enterprise: Features and benefits
- Jeff Paul recounts how Fueled+10up Leads the Way in the Making of WordPress 6.8
Latest episode: Gutenberg Changelog 116 – WordPress 6.8, Source of Truth, Field Guide, Gutenberg 20.5 and 20.6 with special guest JC Palmes, WebDev Studios
Plugins and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners
Last week, I mentioned the new AI builder at WordPress.com. Matt Medeiros, WPMinute, took it out for a spin and in his video you will be right there with him, getting a first impression. I Tried the WordPress.com AI Builder.
Troy Chaplin continued his work on the Block Accessibility Checks plugin. For the new features he added to the existing image conditions a check for the alt text length and matches with captions, plus tools to help follow WP coding standards. Version 1.2.0 now is ready for download from the WordPress plugin repository.
Jean-Baptist Audras, a core committer and engineer at the Whodunit agency, just dropped the Inline Quote Format Button for the Block Editor plugin in the WordPress repository. With this plugin activated, content creators can easily mark inline citations using the q HTML element right from the Format toolbar in the block editor. This way they make sure that assistive technologies get that the sentence is a citation, keeping things clear for everyone! Using this plugin keeps your site inline with one of the European Accessibility Act’s (EAA) criteria to properly indicate inline citations, according to Audras. To style the inline quote use the Editor > Styles > Additional CSS and add CSS for the element q, i.e., q {color:purple}.
In his latest video, Jamie Marsland shows you how to create beautiful Stacking Cards in WordPress. “You’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at the process so you can understand how it works and tweak it for your own needs.” he wrote in the description.
“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
JuanMa Garrido, developer advocate at Automattic, takes you with him on A deep dive into a block’s “attributes”. He explores how attributes work within WordPress blocks, focusing on their role in storing and managing block data. Garrido explains the different types of attributes, such as string, number, array, and object, and demonstrates how to define them in a block’s code. The article also covers how attributes are sourced from HTML, how they persist in the block’s markup, and how developers can use them to control block behavior and appearance. Practical code examples illustrate best practices for defining, accessing, and updating attributes in custom Gutenberg blocks.
Riad Benguella announced new features for Studio app. Add Custom Domains and HTTPS Support to Your Local WordPress Development. User can now make local WordPress development more closely mirror live production environments. Developers can now assign custom wp.local domains and enable SSL for their local sites. It helps developer with better testing of plugins and themes that require specific domains or secure connections. The process is streamlined, with Studio handling most technical details automatically, though macOS users must manually install the SSL certificate. These updates aim to enhance flexibility and realism in local development workflows, based on user feedback, as Studio continues to evolve. You can download open-source Studio for free.
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, email to changelog@gutenbergtimes.com
Featured Image: Skyline Chicago by Birgit Pauli-Haack
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The post Gutenberg Times: WordPress 6.8 released, Block Accessibility checks, Stacking cards layout, and more — Weekend Edition 326 appeared first on MCNM Digital Media Marketing.
