WordPress News

This Group Pays Bounties to Repair Broken Devices—Even if the Fix Breaks the Law

  

​Fulu sets repair bounties on consumer products that employ sneaky features that limit user control. Just this week, it awarded more than $10,000 to the person who hacked the Molekule air purifier. 

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 Gear, Gear / Gear News and Events, right to repair Gear, Gear / Gear News and Events, right to repair

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why you should start a blog 03FmgM
WordPress News

Why Start a Blog in 2026? 9 Solid Reasons From a Blogger

A blog is one of the best investments you can make — personally and professionally. 

It can drive traffic to your website, boost your career or business, help you learn valuable skills, or simply give you a creative outlet.

Even after 10 years of blogging for myself and others, I still find it enjoyable, meaningful, and one of the most effective ways to earn web traffic.

So come along and see why you should start a blog in 2026.

1. Be visible in search engines

Search is changing in 2025 — but blogs are still one of the best ways to ensure people find you online.

Traditional search engines like Google still send huge amounts of traffic to the posts and pages that rank — and the same content often gets cited or summarized by AI tools like ChatGPT.

Here’s a quick snapshot:

Estimated value of LLM vs organic search traffic

Consequently, it’s not surprising that 81% of marketers continue to see results from their blog posts, 21% even report strong results. 

Content marketing effectiveness of blogging over time: Survey

Blogging is an essential tool to showcase your expertise, which is key for both Google and AI search tools. 

So, if your goal is to attract website visitors from those sources, starting a blog is definitely a step in the right direction.

2. Attract long-term, sustainable traffic 

Unlike the short-lived bursts of social media content, blog posts continue to create value and bring in visitors long after they’ve been published. 

Blogging efforts compound over time.

On most social networks, your visibility often declines quickly when you stop posting.

However, the content you publish on your blog is a long-term investment that keeps paying off.

For example, below is a screenshot from an article on my own website:

Traffic snapshot

Published at the end of May 2025, you can clearly see that its rank, impressions, and clicks have slowly improved over the months. Six months later, it has become one of my top five pages for organic traffic.

This goes hand in hand with insights from Databox, where nearly half of the people surveyed stated that older blog posts bring in 61-80% of their organic traffic.

The survey showcasing how much traffic is coming from new vs old blog posts

This research also highlights the value of consistency and patience: 32% of survey respondents said it took them four to six months to reach 1,000 monthly visitors. 

Blogging is effective because once you’ve reached a certain level, you can expect your efforts to keep paying dividends.

3. Build a brand and attract clients

A blog helps you sharpen your online profile and build a reputation, both for a personal website and/or for your business. 

It’s the perfect vehicle to demonstrate your expertise, skills, values, personality, and what you want people to associate with you.

According to HubSpot’s 2025 State of Blogging Report:

  • 66% of businesses that blog do so to boost brand awareness
  • 53% do it for customer engagement
  • 49% do it for lead generation

Half of marketers said their ROI from blogging increased in 2024, and 45% were planning to expand their blogging budgets in 2025.

Blogging isn’t just for companies, though. 

Even a personal blog can create real-world opportunities. Think paid writing gigs, speaking engagements, consulting jobs, or media and brand partnerships. 

Some bloggers, like Chris Guillebeau and James Clear, even translate their blogging into book deals:

James Clear's book

I’ve experienced this myself. 

In my 10+ years as a freelance writer, I rarely had to do active outreach. I got my start by writing a blog, then used that body of work to land my first client. 

For the past decade, I have continued to find work because of articles I had already published on my clients’ sites, as well as my own. 

Blogging has allowed me to demonstrate my expertise and build a reputation — and it can do the same for you.

4. Generate a stable income

Besides opening doors to paid opportunities, a blog itself can be a direct source of income. 

Blogging has low overhead, can be done from anywhere, and offers many paths for monetization.

Here are the most common ways bloggers earn money:

  • Services: Write about the problems your target audience faces and let them hire you to help. For example, SEO agencies and consultants may publish SEO tutorials and upsell their services.
  • Affiliate marketing: Recommend products or services using special links. When someone buys through your link, you earn a commission.
  • Digital products: Create and sell your own ebooks, templates, courses, or downloads. You keep 100% of the profit.
  • Advertisement: Reserve space on your site for ads, either through ad networks or direct deals, and earn money through clicks or impressions. For example, users on the WordPress.com Premium plan and above can join WordAds — the platform’s built-in ad network for monetizing site traffic.

You can see this in action in the food blog The Fig Jar.

In the last quarter of 2024, its owner earned nearly $7,000 in net profit from a mix of display ads, affiliate marketing, and digital products.

The fig jar blog

Another example is Meal Prep Manual, which, you guessed it, mainly publishes meal prep recipes.

It’s monetized through affiliate marketing and digital products. 

While the site doesn’t publish income reports, Semrush’s Traffic Analytics tool estimates it received over 120K total visitors in September 2025 alone:

The Fig Jar blog: Traffic snapshot

That’s a solid traffic base for a blog that has been around since 2020, especially when paired with its YouTube channel.

Josh Cortis YouTube channel

Using these tactics, a blog can grow into an income stream — or even a full-time business — that gives you independence and the ability to be your own boss. For example, you could start a content writing or web design agency.

5. Own your presence and audience

Unlike a social media profile, your blog can’t be taken from you. It’s an online presence you actually own, which makes you far more resilient to changes.

Influencer culture has made it seem like being present online means massive followings on Instagram, TikTok, or other social networks. 

You should never lose sight of the fact that your profiles on these platforms are assets you don’t really own:

  • When platforms change their algorithms, designs, or priorities, your reach can evaporate.
  • Your account could be suspended for an accidental violation of the terms of service.
  • Legislation or policy changes could shut the network down — or block access in your region.
  • A company or person you don’t want to support might acquire your favorite platform.

In simple terms, when you don’t own the infrastructure, everything you’ve built can disappear overnight, including your audience, income, and archive of work. 

Just look at the responses in this Reddit thread about a potential ban of TikTok in the US:

Reddit thread about the value of blogging

Owning your blog gives you complete control over your content. That said, you can always combine multiple channels and grow your presence — just don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

With a WordPress-based site, you own both your content, data, and design. You can export it, download it, and take it with you wherever you want. Including your audience, especially if you build an email list alongside your blog.

6. Build a content foundation for repurposing

A blog not only gives you a hub for all your content efforts — every post you publish is raw material for dozens of other content pieces. 

Blogging allows you to do the hard work once and then repurpose it for the rest of your marketing channels.

This is why so many creators, marketers, and businesses build their content strategy around long-form blog posts. One article can become:

  • One or more YouTube or TikTok videos
  • A series of Bluesky or Threads posts
  • An email series for your newsletter
  • The basis for an infographic
  • Podcast material

For example, I turned a book summary I wrote for my own blog into a LinkedIn carousel:

Nick's LinkedIn posy

Sure, repurposing takes time — but a large share of the work is already done. 

Why waste it? Each new article you publish can fuel your social feeds, nurture your email list, and reinforce your expertise across platforms.

7. Learn, grow, and inspire others

Running a blog is a powerful tool for learning — and teaching. It forces you to truly understand the topics you cover and also lets you contribute to the success of others in a meaningful way.

If there’s something you are deeply interested in or passionate about, starting a blog about it is a great way to expand your knowledge and competence in that area. 

It takes a lot of research to understand something to the point where you can explain it to other people.

For example, much of what I know about SEO, CSS, or how to customize WordPress through code comes from writing blog posts about these topics.

In addition, sharing what you learn is very satisfying. It allows you to help other people. In fact, many bloggers start out because they want to make a difference and contribute to society.

Reddit thread about the value of blogging

8. Build a valuable skill set

Besides expanding your knowledge, running a blog teaches you a wide range of valuable skills, both technical, creative, organizational, and interpersonal. 

Many of these make you a stronger employee, collaborator, freelancer, or creator.

Naturally, one of the main skills you’ll sharpen is your writing ability. 

In addition, here is a sampling of the design and marketing skills you’ll use regularly when producing blog content:

Besides that, you also learn a surprising number of soft skills: self-motivation, goal setting, discipline, time management, and putting yourself in your readers’ shoes. 

Running a blog is an education in its own right.

9. Enjoy yourself

You don’t have to blog with a financial goal in mind or to achieve a strategic outcome. 

Blogging can also be a deeply personal activity you simply do because it’s fun, meaningful, or provides you with a creative outlet.

For example, you might start a blog to:

  • Share your ideas
  • Document a journey (emotional or physical)
  • Chronicle your everyday life
  • Build a creative habit
  • Claim your own little corner of the web
  • Clarify your thinking
  • Explore hobbies
  • Confront fears or shyness
  • Share your passions
  • Grow as a person
  • Champion a cause you care about

These are just a few examples. When you look online, you will find that people have many reasons to start a blog. 

For example, this blogger turned to writing and sharing recipes online after losing her restaurant during COVID, using a blog to keep her passion alive and reach people worldwide:

Reddit comment about starting to blog

How to easily start a blog with WordPress.com

Does the list above have you feeling motivated and wanting to start a blog right away? 

Good news: You can have one up and running in less than 15 minutes. 

Just click on Get started in the top right corner of this blog or the WordPress.com homepage.

Starting a blog with WordPress.com

Every WordPress.com hosting plan comes with automated backups, updates, performance optimization, and security features

That way, you can fully concentrate on creating content, learning, and connecting with your audience.

Once signed up, pick a blog theme in your admin panel under Appearance → Themes to choose what your blog will look like.

Choosing a WordPress theme for your blog

Customize your design using the Site Editor — from colors and fonts to individual page elements. Access it under Appearance → Editor.

Editing your blog pages

You can also create new pages, add them to a menu, and define your blog page if you don’t want your posts to appear on your front page.

Creating new blog pages with WordPress

That’s basically it. All that’s left is to start creating blog posts and putting them online.

If you want more details and step-by-step instructions, check our detailed article on how to start a blog. We also have instructions for how to properly write a blog post and how to increase blog traffic.

Your blog starts here

So, why should you start a blog, even in 2026? 

The better question is: Why not? 

Everything that made blogging successful is still relevant today, even if the online environment is changing.

Running a blog allows you to attract long-term traffic, make a name for yourself or your business, and monetize your audience.

It’s also a way to build knowledge, learn valuable skills, or simply do something enjoyable.

If you want a partner that makes it easy to start a blog at any skill level and without a technical background, sign up for WordPress.com.

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WordPress Global Partners Program 2026 tYhPSN
WordPress News

2026 Global Partner Program Announcement

Become a driving force behind WordPress innovation by joining the Global Community Sponsorship Program: a comprehensive initiative that supports the events and people powering our open source mission. As a Global Sponsor, your organization gains meaningful visibility across the international WordPress ecosystem while helping to fund events that foster growth, collaboration, and community.

WordPress Global Partners Program 2026

Why Choose Global Sponsorship?

Instead of managing multiple individual sponsorships, this streamlined program consolidates your efforts into one efficient and impactful partnership.

Efficiency and Simplified Administration

Skip the complexity of coordinating invoice payments with numerous volunteer teams. Our centralized approach saves time and resources. In 2026, sponsors will benefit from:

  • A dedicated Slack channel for direct communication with the WordPress Community Support team and Community Program Managers
  • Monthly updates listing upcoming WordPress events, their current planning stages, and scheduled dates

Expanded Reach and Impact

Your sponsorship amplifies your presence worldwide, ensuring consistent visibility across global WordPress community events.

Stability and Reliability

Your commitment strengthens locally organized events by providing predictable funding that supports venues, logistics, and growth.

Flexible Branding Options

Adapt across your portfolio—Global Sponsors can represent different brands at different events (subject to approval and advance notice).

Program Benefits

Global LeaderRegional PowerhouseCommunity Builder

Best for:

Established brands seeking global reach and year-round visibility.Companies aiming for regional dominance and strong brand recognition.Organizations supporting the next generation of WordPress education.
Sponsorship payable in full or through quarterly installments$180,000$110,000$60,000
Top tier sponsorship benefits at all local WordCamp events (excludes flagships) with priority access to claim a sponsor table at in-person WordPress events✔
Option to feature multiple brands across events✔
Dedicated sponsor landing page✔✔
Complimentary WordPress event tickets for your team✔✔
Recognition across all WordPress events✔✔
Sponsor Spotlight post on WordPress.org/news featuring highlights from recent WordCampsQuarterlyAnnually
Inclusion of your company logo in signage and materials for WordPress Campus Connect eventsAll signage & materials for the year (digital and printed)Signage & materials for 5 events per year (printed only)All signage & materials for the year (digital and printed)
Opportunity to be featured in an exclusive digital binder for WordPress Campus Connect event organizersPriority placement (logos & text)Feature listing (text only)Feature listing (text only)
Regular recognition in monthly education buzz report✔

How Sponsorship Funds Are Used

Global Sponsorship funds directly support:

  • Local WordPress events worldwide (venue rental, catering, A/V, and more)
  • Meetup.com license fees for over 671 WordPress Meetup groups globally
  • Administrative costs like insurance, banking, and annual financial audits that ensure transparent operations

Your partnership helps sustain the community that powers more than 43% of the web. Together, we can keep the WordPress project thriving and expanding for years to come.

If your company is interested in joining the Global Sponsorship program or you would like to know more, please reach out.

Please see Rules for Sponsor Materials for more details about terms of sponsorship. Please also see our sample sponsorship agreement.

If you’d like to go one step further, please consider donating directly to the WordPress Foundation. We operate lean—every dollar goes toward keeping WordPress free, supporting education, and funding the community that makes the web a better place. In short, your donation helps us keep the lights on and the mission alive.

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wordpress holiday plugins 1 S9rZzU
WordPress News

10 Best WordPress Holiday Plugins for a Little Holiday Cheer

The holidays are here, and your website deserves a glow-up to celebrate the season. 

Whether you run an online store or a blog, plugins can transform your site into a festive experience that delights visitors and boosts engagement.

From falling snowflakes to advent calendar giveaways, we’ve rounded up 10 holiday plugins that add seasonal charm and set you up for holiday success. 

1. Christmas Panda

Christmas Panda - a holiday WordPress plugin

Christmas Panda lets you add festive Christmas decorations to your site with just a few clicks. 

In the Christmas Panda tab in your WordPress admin panel, you can select from a variety of decorations.

The plugin offers a merry mix of header and footer banner designs, bold snowflakes that drift down your pages, and holiday pop-ups. 

Using Christmas Panda, a holiday plugin on WordPress.com

You have the option to add just one Christmas design element, or you can add all three for a maximalist Christmas extravaganza.  

Our favorite features 

  • Intuitive admin panel: Christmas Panda’s admin tab is extremely intuitive, with just a few buttons to configure. Even beginning website owners can set up decorations within minutes.
  • Lots of banner options: Whether you want garlands, bows, or plain pine needles, Christmas Panda’s banners will suit many different site designs. 
  • Snowflakes: If your site has a background color, the snowflakes feature adds a bit of cheer without overwhelming your content. 

How to use Christmas Panda on your site

  • Add a Christmas mood to your site: Create a small seasonal moment that turns static layouts into something visitors instantly recognize as festive and intentional.

2. Super Advent Calendar

Super Advent Calendar: A holiday plugin on WordPress

The Super Advent Calendar plugin adds a customizable block featuring flippable cards for each day leading up to Christmas. 

You can add as many days as you’d like to your advent calendar — e.g., the traditional 24 days of flippable cards or a custom number.

You can also customize both the front and back text, as well as the colors, creating a calendar that matches your site’s styling. 

Using the Super Advent Calendar plugin

Our favorite features

  • Calendar Customization: We like that this holiday plugin lets you customize each Advent card individually. Because you control the text on both card sides and can add as many days to the calendar as you’d like, you can create a truly unique experience.
  • Opportunities for daily engagement: You can set each Advent block’s start and end dates to offer site users daily perks. The 24-hour window for each gift can incentivize shoppers to complete their orders and encourage them to return for more.  

How to use the Super Advent Calendar on your site

  • Create an Advent Calendar of deals: If you run a WooCommerce or other digital store, you can create a “12 (or 24) Days of Deals” page with your calendar. This seasonal addition gamifies the shopping experience and rewards daily visitors. 
  • Share other fun content behind each card: If you don’t sell anything on your site, you can still get creative with the advent calendar. Consider sharing subscriber-only content, fun facts relevant to your blog topic, and more.

3. Woo Store Vacation

Woo Store Vacation holiday plugin on WordPress

Woo Store Vacation is a plugin that automatically pauses your WooCommerce store for a set vacation period, because website owners deserve a break over the holiday, too! 

It’s meant to support a variety of business needs. You can close your store completely (don’t worry, this won’t affect your SEO thanks to the plugin’s settings) or simply alert customers that there will be a processing delay before their order is fulfilled. 

Using the Woo Store Vacation plugin

Our favorite features

  • Site banner: You can customize the text and color of your vacation announcement. This banner shows up at the top of all of your store pages. 
  • Customize what products are disabled: You can also decide which products and shipping options are disabled during your vacation. Find this option in the “Conditions page,” which shows up once you’ve disabled purchases. 
woo vacation

How to use Woo Store Vacation on your site

  • Add a banner with vacation dates in advance: Transparent communication with customers is vital. If you fulfill orders manually or need to do backend admin for fulfillment partners, communicating your vacation dates sets clear expectations and keeps customers happy.
  • Only disable products you fulfill manually: If external providers fulfill some of your orders automatically or you offer digital products and gift cards, you can continue earning income on these items while you’re away.

4. Weather Effect

The Weather Effect holiday plugin

The Weather Effect plugin is another way to add a holiday twist to your site with falling holiday emojis. 

Choose from several sets of icons, including a Christmas set — snowmen, ornaments, candy canes, and more — or customizable snowflakes. 

Our favorite features

  • Multiple holidays included: There are various occasion sets available, giving you multiple opportunities throughout the year to add a little movement to your site.
Using the weather effect WordPress holiday plugin
  • Works well on white backgrounds: Because most of the icons are colorful, you can use this plugin even if your site has a white background (though the round snowflakes are only available in white). 
  • Adjust speed and density: You can also adjust how fast your holiday icons fall and their density for greater customization.

How to use it on your site

  • Add Christmas or winter decor: Dust your site with snowflakes or snowmen for a touch of winter charm. 
  • Keep it clean: Keep the density and speed low to minimize clutter.
  • Add effects for upcoming holidays: Then, change up the icons to celebrate New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, or to mark the start of Spring. 

5. Santa’s Christmas Countdown

Santa’s Christmas Countdown holiday plugin

Santa’s Christmas Countdown is a simple plugin that lets you display the number of days until Christmas on any page of your site. 

On Christmas Day, the Santa icon wishes visitors a Merry Christmas.

Use a shortcode block with the code [countdown] to add Santa and the number of days until Christmas to any page.

You can also format the element to the center, left, or right by expanding the shortcode to [countdown-center], etc.

How to use the Christmas Countdown plugin

Our favorite features

  • Simple and lightweight: This plugin has just one preset icon (Santa) and his countdown. This simplicity means it’s easy to set up and lightweight to run. 

How to use Christmas Countdown on your site

  • Add a countdown across your site: Use the countdown as a header or sidebar widget to keep visitors excited about the upcoming holiday. 
  • Use the countdown year-round on relevant pages: If you have Christmas-themed content pages — like a Christmas recipe collection or Christmas DIY — leave the widget up year-round. 

6. WooCommerce Gift Wrapper

WooCommerce Gift Wrapper

WooCommerce Gift Wrapper lets WooCommerce stores offer holiday wrapping services as an add-on purchase. 

This is a great upsell opportunity for e-commerce stores, which adds convenience for shoppers who may prefer to ship gifts directly to friends and families. 

You can also add a gift note to complete the Christmas package.

Adding a gift note to complete the Christmas package.

Our favorite features

  • Flexible add-ons: While the plugin is called “Gift Wrapper,” it doesn’t limit you to offering just gift wrap. You can also use it to sell other holiday add-ons such as greeting cards, gift messages, and more.
  • Seamless setup: The plugin integrates seamlessly into your WooCommerce checkout flow, making the upsell more helpful than pushy.

How to use WooCommerce Gift Wrapper on your site

  • Offer seasonal gift wrapping services: Offer gift wrapping at checkout to increase your average order value during the holiday shopping season. You can set a flat fee for wrapping or create tiered pricing for different wrapping styles, like basic, premium, and luxury.
  • Plan your wrapping services accordingly: You can also choose whether you want to charge for wrapping the whole order or per item.

7. Snow Fall

The Snow Fall holiday plugin

If you’re looking for a subtle holiday addition, the Snow Fall plugin adds just a glimmer of snow to your web pages.

Simply activate the plugin, and a light dusting of shimmering white flakes will appear across your site — no configuration required.

Our favorite features

  • A lightweight plugin: Snow Fall is just a few lines of code, so you’ll get snowflakes without any freeze on your load time.
  • One-click activation: Once you activate the Snow Fall plugin, you’re all set! No additional configuration is required.  

How to use Snow Fall on your site

Because the snowflakes are white and it’s not possible to adjust the color, this plugin will only work on sites with a colored background. 

If that applies to your site, activate Snow Fall and enjoy a little holiday spirit on every page. 

8. Poptin Popups

Poptin Popups - a holiday plugin for WordPress

Poptin Popups offers customizable, gamified popups and forms that can be triggered on a variety of customer clicks or views. 

Use these pop-ups to encourage users to sign up for your mailing list or to complete checkout from your store. 

While Poptin Popups is a powerful integrated marketing tool that can be used year-round, a holiday-themed campaign is a great place to start. 

Our favorite features

  • Powerful feature set: Poptin is extremely powerful and flexible, which makes it a great tool for marketing teams who want tons of control. 
  • Pre-made templates and campaign ideas: Poptin offers a ton of pre-made templates and resources, including a list of Christmas pop-up ideas.
  • Intuitive dashboard: Poptin’s simple dashboard, template collection, and built-in WordPress integration make it easy for first-time users to experiment with smaller campaigns. 
Poptin Popups - interface

How to use Poptin Popups on your site

  • Design a holiday-themed campaign: The sky is the limit when it comes to building a holiday pop-up campaign. For example, create a pop-up offering 15% off for visitors who sign up before Christmas Eve, or use a countdown timer pop-up to remind shoppers of your shipping cut-off for holiday orders. 
  • Continue using pop-ups for future events: After the holidays, consider other themed campaign opportunities.

9. RS Christmas Trees

The RS Christmas Trees plugin

Like Christmas Panda, the RS Christmas Trees plugin offers holiday-themed banners and snowflakes.

If your Christmas style is truly maximalist, this holiday WordPress plugin might be perfect for you. 

It’s the most robust decor plugin on this list, offering a trove of banners, countdowns, snowflakes, and more — including holiday music.

Our favorite features

  • Automatic scheduling: If you upgrade to Ultimate, you can decide how many days you want to activate your Christmas features. Once it’s set up, you’ll get automatic Christmas cheer without any admin.
  • Snowflakes that work on white backgrounds: We like that their snowflake colors can be customized, so even sites with white backgrounds can get in on the holiday fun.
Changing colors in RS Christmas Trees

How to use RS Christmas Trees on your site

  • Create a cohesive design: Add header and footer banners to your site in coordinating styles and match your snowflake color to your brand palette for a polished look.
  • Test your banners: If you’re using sticky footer banners, be sure to test them on multiple pages to ensure they don’t block critical text.

10. The Events Calendar

The Events Calendar holiday plugin

The Events Calendar plugin lets you publish events and offer tickets directly on your site.

It includes features like custom ticket types, venue details with maps, multiple organizers, and event search — all available in the free version.

Our favorite features

  • Easy setup: The Events Calendar walks you through setup in five simple steps, including adding a venue, an organizer, and ticketing. You still need to navigate the WordPress admin, but the onboarding makes each required field clear.
Using the Events Calendar plugin
  • Ticketing: You can create free tickets or enable paid ticketing with the free Tickets Commerce. Ticketed events can be a great source of income, and using an integrated app like The Events Calendar helps you keep all your data in one place. 

How to use Random Christmas Facts on your site

  • Add upcoming holiday events: Whether you host in-person or virtual events for the holidays, you can add them directly to your website with the Events Calendar. 
  • Create a discount or deal calendar: If you prefer a true calendar-style layout instead of the simpler Advent-style list, you can use The Events Calendar to showcase holiday discounts or daily deals. It takes a bit of creativity, but one approach is to create a “deal event” for each day, limit RSVPs to that date, and then send everyone who RSVP’d a special discount code.
Creating a deal calendar with the plugin

Light up your site for the holidays

Preparing your site for the holidays doesn’t need to be as complicated as untangling your Christmas lights. 

You can add plugins to any WordPress.com site on a plugin-enabled plan, so choose just one or multiple ideas from this guide to experiment with this December.

Don’t forget to check your site analytics afterward: Did your calendar giveaway increase repeat visitors? Did the sprinkle of snowfall increase your average user session? If you’re a WordPress.com user, you can explore these stats right in your admin panel using Jetpack stats.

Consider these plugins your gift to your visitors — a festive site means happier users, better engagement, and a merrier holiday season.

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ai website building separating hype from reality bAhvax
WordPress News

AI Website Building: Separating Hype from Reality

I built my business site on WordPress and often recommend it — along with tools like Jetpack and the new AI website builder — to people in my network.

I’m an experienced website designer, but I’m not a software developer. 

Vibe coding has been a fun, seemingly magical way to turn ideas into working mini-apps, but that “magic” comes with limits. The tools I’ve created work well for my internal team, yet I don’t understand the backend deeply enough to share them publicly or monetize them safely.

After building dozens of prototypes, I’ve learned that AI prototyping tools are great for fast experimentation — but some fall short in powering the backend of long-term business websites.

In this article, I’ll break down what AI site generators can do, where their limitations show up, and why WordPress.com’s AI website builder takes a very different approach.

What are AI website builders?

The term “AI site builder” refers to the use of AI tools and plain-language prompts to generate a website.

There are two major categories of these tools:

  • Lightweight AI builders: Similar to Lovable and Framer, which are also referred to as AI prototyping tools. They’re great for simple landing pages or MVPs, but their limitations show quickly when you need security, SEO, integrations, or room to grow. This is what people refer to when talking about “vibe coding.”
  • Full-featured AI builders: Similar to WordPress.com’s AI website builder. They package prompt-based website generation backed by the stability and proven track record of managed platforms like WordPress.

The reality is: If you want something more than an MVP or single landing page, vibe coding alone isn’t enough. 

You need a platform that can support performance, reliability, security, and growth.

The limitations of AI prototyping tools

AI prototyping tools are great for quick ideas — but not for lasting websites.

They deliver instant results: Describe what you want, and a site appears.

That speed makes them perfect for brainstorming, testing concepts, or validating ideas without friction.

Unfortunately, that’s also their limitation.

These tools hide much of the complexity behind building a dependable site for your business, making it hard to spot problems until something breaks. 

When you add new features or generate a site, you often end up troubleshooting issues you didn’t even know existed.

For example:

  • You can’t see or control the underlying systems.
  • Integrations break without clear reasons.
  • Downtime is difficult to diagnose.
  • Security isn’t guaranteed or built in.

Your website represents your brand — and you shouldn’t rely on something you can’t fully understand or maintain.

What makes WordPress.com’s AI website builder different

The WordPress.com AI website builder

WordPress.com’s AI website builder gives you the “type a prompt, get a site” experience on a platform that actually scales.

What makes it special?

Your site is built on WordPress — the CMS powering 43% of the web — and hosted on WordPress.com’s fully managed infrastructure.

In other words, you get fast generation plus the customization, plugins, performance, and security needed to actually run and grow a real website.

Security

Many AI-generated sites are rife with security issues precisely because they simplify everything so heavily.

You can accidentally expose API keys, break authentication, mishandle user data, or leave vulnerabilities without knowing.

For any site hosted on WordPress.com, security and infrastructure are managed by a 20-plus-year ecosystem and a dedicated team that continually hardens code, patches vulnerabilities, and maintains platform standards.

With vetted plugins, managed WordPress hosting, and standardized best practices, most of the security risk is taken off your plate.

Performance

SEO isn’t something you can just bolt on later. Many vibe coding tool brands are realizing they need to offer SEO features, but WordPress has been building toward this for decades.

WordPress has long been considered an SEO-friendly platform because of its clean baseline code, fast rendering, and structured content. 

WordPress.com also includes managed hosting and performance-focused infrastructure across its paid plans: high-frequency CPUs, a global CDN/edge cache, unmetered traffic, and automated burst-scaling.

In other words, you’re not just getting features — you’re getting faster, more resilient hosting by default.

Extensibility

Speaking from experience, vibe coding and using external APIs or third-party services is harder than it looks, even for semi-technical users. 

Access to WordPress.com’s plugins means your site can grow with you instead of boxing you in.

You don’t have to build everything manually or worry that your integrations will silently fail.

WordPress.com plugins

Hosting

When using vibe coding tools, the web hosting layer is often hidden from you, so you have little visibility or control.

With these tools, if your site goes down or integrations fail, you’re the one responsible for troubleshooting, often without the tools or access needed to fix the issue.

Moreover, if you don’t know what you’re dealing with, it’s also likely that you don’t know how to get assistance at a reasonable price — costs spiral quickly.

With WordPress.com, hosting is managed for you in a way that’s optimized, secure, and monitored. If something goes wrong, you’re not left guessing — you have the peace of mind that comes with access to 24/7 support from the human Happiness Engineers.

Design

Vibe-coding tools feel instantly creative, but that freedom usually comes without structure — and if you’re not a designer, it can get overwhelming fast.

WordPress.com’s AI website builder is different. 

It lets you create websites using AI prompts, but with a real block-based WordPress foundation behind it. 

Building a website with WordPress.com AI website builder

You can edit every section cleanly with blocks (alongside the AI chat), keep your layout consistent, and avoid the chaos of loose, AI-generated code.

Costs

No AI site builder stays completely “free” once you move past the free trial.

If you want to publish, update your site regularly, or add essential features, you’ll need a paid plan with any platform.

However, vibe coding (especially for a non-technical user) can obscure hidden costs like dealing with:

  • Downtime
  • Broken integrations
  • Manual debugging
  • Data exposure

A managed platform like WordPress.com reduces the likelihood of costly failures and handles maintenance for you. Once you’re happy with your AI site, you can simply pick a plan and publish it.

How to use WordPress.com’s AI builder

You start with a simple prompt: describe your idea, your tone, your brand, and your purpose.

As an homage to a blog I created after graduating college, which solidified my love for writing and SEO, I went with this prompt:

“Create a lifestyle blog called ‘ChiTown on a Dime’ for young professionals in Chicago living large on a budget. It will feature affordable restaurant reviews, budget-friendly events, insider local guides, and personal reflections on city life. Design pages for Home, Eats & Drinks, Things to Do, Living in Chicago, About, and Contact. Use a modern, minimalistic layout with vibrant photos and easy navigation. Tone should be energetic, stylish, and relatable.”

The result? 

A full block-based website that would’ve taken hours to create from scratch — not loose code you can’t maintain. 

The builder definitely understood the assignment, creating the following site with a photo of Chicago deep-dish pizza, front and center:

A homepage of a website created with the AI website builder

With the foundation in place, you can refine the site using conversational language with the AI copilot:

  • “Adjust the layout.”
  • “Change these colors.”
  • “Rewrite this section.”
  • “Suggest improvements.”

Here’s what it suggested when I prompted the assistant to show me new fonts for my site, and what it looked like to apply changes from chat:

Here’s the helpful advice it shared for making my new creation more SEO-friendly when I asked it for tips:

The AI builder gives you a full trial to create and refine your site without paying up front. 

When it’s time to launch publicly and rely on managed hosting, security, and performance, you can move to a paid plan.

Can your site grow with you?

These are the questions you should ask before choosing your ideal AI website building solution:

  • Can this site evolve?
  • Can it scale?
  • Can it handle more pages, products, languages, or additional features?

WordPress.com’s AI website builder blends the speed of modern AI with the maturity of a platform that has supported millions of websites for 20 years. 

Your site can grow indefinitely with plugins, SEO tools, plugins like WooCommerce, and reliable hosting.

Try WordPress.com’s AI website builder for free, then publish it for the world to see with a paid plan.

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AI Website Building: Separating Hype from Reality Read Post »

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WordPress News

State of the Word 2025 Recap: The Top Highlights

On December 2, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, Executive Director Mary Hubbard, and Lead Architect Matías Ventura took the stage in San Francisco — joined by contributors and guests from around the world.

And for the first time, a major WordPress release launched live during the keynote — WordPress 6.9 went out to the world as the audience watched.

If you missed the livestream, you can watch the full recording below:

Our favorite highlights from 2025

2025 was a milestone year for WordPress. The project shipped two major releases, welcomed record numbers of first-time contributors, and saw global adoption accelerate — especially in non-English markets. 

Here’s what stood out:

  • WordPress continues to power the open web. About 43% of all websites run on WordPress, with roughly 60% CMS market share. Among the top 1,000 sites, adoption grew to 49.4% — up 2.3% from last year.
  • A truly global community. For the first time, over 56% of WordPress sites are in languages other than English. Japanese became the second-most-used language, with Japan reaching 58.5% website share and 83% CMS share.
  • A thriving ecosystem. Over 60,000 plugins are now available, with downloads on track to hit 2.1 billion by year’s end. Block theme adoption grew over 40%, passing 1,000 themes.
  • Record contributor numbers. WordPress 6.8 had 921 contributors. WordPress 6.9 brought over 900, including 230 first-timers.
  • WordPress 6.9 launched live on stage. By the end of the keynote, over 700,000 sites had already been updated. 

Tip: Learn more about the most exciting WordPress 6.9 features for website owners and developers.

AI takes center stage

This year’s AI panel featured James LaPage (Automattic), Felix Arntz (Google), and Jeff Paul (10up).

And here’s one of the central themes from the keynote: AI is becoming foundational to WordPress.

Matt Mullenweg announced that a dedicated AI team was formed earlier this year. In just six months, they shipped all four planned “building blocks”:

  • Abilities API: Exposes the capabilities of plugins, themes, and WordPress core to AI agents in a standardized, machine-readable format.
  • WP AI Client: An abstraction layer for communicating with any generative AI model — OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or others — so developers can write prompts without locking into one provider.
  • MCP Adapter: Bridges the Abilities API with AI providers through the Model Context Protocol, letting AI assistants understand and act within WordPress.

Besides, the keynote featured a demo of Telex, a tool that generates Gutenberg blocks from natural language. 

During the keynote, Mullenweg showed how Nick Hamze used it to build a Lego price calculator and Google Calendar integration — without writing any code.

Telex block example

All these building blocks set the stage for what the AI panel previewed for 7.0: a Workflows API for stringing abilities together, collaborative editing with AI assistance, and the WP AI Client moving into core. 

AI features aren’t visible in the interface yet, but WordPress is now intelligible to AI systems — and the groundwork is laid for what comes next.

Tip: WordPress.com users can also explore our AI website builder, which helps you create, design, customize, and launch your site much faster and more easily.

WordPress around the world

The keynote also highlighted the increasingly global nature of WordPress:

  • 81 WordCamps — community-organized conferences for WordPress users and contributors — took place across 39 countries this year. Over 5,200 volunteers organized them, reaching more than 100,000 people in person. And there are still 16 more scheduled before year’s end.
  • Learn.wordpress.org served over 1.5 million users, with average engagement time up 32% after WordCamp US 2025.
  • Education programs are expanding, too. Campus Connect is bringing WordPress into universities — Stephanie Garita Johnson from Universidad Fidélitas in Costa Rica spoke about how students there now earn academic credit for contributing to open source.
  • And in Nicaragua, Youth Day brought together 75 kids ages 8 to 20 to build their first WordPress sites — with teenagers teaching teenagers.

Ecosystem and infrastructure updates

WordPress is also getting faster to ship, easier to test, and safer to update. 

This year’s improvements focused on reducing friction for plugin developers and making it easier to spin up new sites and migrate existing ones:

  • Plugin reviews now take under 7 days thanks to AI-assisted review processes. The team is also handling about 100 more submissions per week than last year.
  • A new 24-hour safety window for auto-updates gives developers time to catch issues from early adopters before updates roll out widely.
  • WordPress Playground hit 1.4 million users from 227 countries this year. It now includes a file browser, a visual gallery of blueprints, and a stable CLI.

Q&A session

The community Q&A touched on several topics:

On domains and owning your online presence

Mullenweg emphasized that a domain is “your real estate on the web” — the thing that truly belongs to you. He encouraged everyone to get their own domain, even buying one for kids at birth. Without one, “you’re kind of like a digital sharecropper.”

On the “agentic web” and AI

As AI tools start browsing and acting on websites, Mullenweg shared ideas about serving markdown versions of pages for easier AI consumption and embedding micropayments for content attribution.

On open social platforms

He pointed to Bluesky as a positive example — where you can use your own domain as your username — and noted that X has improved its handling of external links.

Explore WordPress 6.9 on WordPress.com

This year’s State of the Word made one thing clear: WordPress is evolving fast — with AI foundations in place, a growing global community, and tools that make building and collaborating easier than ever.

WordPress 6.9 is also live on WordPress.com. Explore the new features in our detailed posts:

And if you missed the livestream, the full recording is available above.

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State of the Word 2025 Recap: The Top Highlights Read Post »

wordpress 6.9 for developers 3XRZnJ
WordPress News

WordPress 6.9: What’s New for Developers

WordPress 6.9 is a pivotal release that strengthens the foundation for where WordPress is heading next.

The updates to the Abilities API, Interactivity API, Block Bindings, DataViews, and DataForm make the platform more connected and easier to customize.

This release also puts developers in a better position to build interactive and intelligent features as WordPress moves into an AI-assisted future.

Read on to learn about key updates, see what’s possible, and get excited to start building with WordPress 6.9.

1. Register AI‑ready functions with the Abilities API and MCP

One of the most exciting additions to WordPress 6.9 is the new Abilities API. 

When paired with the Model Context Protocol (MCP), the Abilities API opens the door to AI orchestration — intelligent agents that can understand, extend, and act inside WordPress itself.

Abilities API

The Abilities API makes it possible to expose the capabilities of plugins, themes, and WordPress core to AI agents and automation tools in a standardized, machine-readable format.

This lets AI systems such as Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and other assistants understand precisely what a particular WordPress site can do.

For example, users could give an AI assistant a natural language request to complete a range of tasks, such as:

  • Create a post: An AI assistant, together with external tools, could generate and schedule content, leveraging the site’s full capabilities. 
  • Audit site content: Using a site’s SEO plugin and connected tools, an AI assistant would analyze content and suggest updates.
  • Generate sales reports: Using the ecommerce solution, an AI assistant could review sales data and produce reports.

See the Abilities API in WordPress 6.9 post for more information. 

Model Context Protocol (MCP)

Model Context Protocol (MCP) - how it works
Source: https://modelcontextprotocol.io

The Abilities API works in conjunction with the Model Context Protocol (MCP)

MCP is an open standard that lets AI assistants and apps, including WordPress, understand each other. 

It allows a WordPress site’s functionality, exposed by the Abilities API, to connect to AI assistants and other servers and tools in the MCP ecosystem.

Developers can install the MCP Adapter plugin to bridge their Abilities API registry with AI providers, paving the way for intelligent agents that can create posts, audit content, or generate reports from within WordPress.

Learn more about the MCP adapter for WordPress.

The AI building blocks vision

The Abilities API and the MCP Adapter are part of the AI Building Blocks initiative to allow users and developers to create powerful AI implementations within WordPress.

While AI features aren’t yet visible in the interface, the foundations being built mean WordPress is now intelligible to AI systems.

It’s still early days, but it’s the start of something meaningful. 

Looking ahead, this could enable AI agents to perform real actions within WordPress, such as generating content, automating workflows, and dynamically connecting to external data sources, all through standardized APIs.

Besides, using MCP future-proofs WordPress for an AI-driven world. It allows for quick adaptation to new AI systems and protocols without requiring a restructuring of core functionality. 

From that perspective, WordPress 6.9 doesn’t just set the stage for 7.0; it begins to redefine what the platform can become.

2. Build custom dashboards with DataViews and DataForm

WordPress 6.9 also strengthens the data‑management infrastructure in WordPress. 

While there are no visible changes for end users, the updates to DataViews, DataForm, and the Fields API give plugin developers more control and flexibility when building custom dashboards or admin interfaces.

DataViews: more robust data displays

The DataViews component has gained several powerful enhancements:

  • Infinite scroll
  • Locked filters
  • Filtering with type-specific operators (e.g., less than, contains)
  • Alignment and action column pinning for table layouts
WordPress 6.9 Data ViewsExample

These improvements make it easier for developers to create consistent, flexible interfaces that display data from any source. 

If you’re not yet familiar with DataViews, the component provides a powerful API for plugin developers to create interfaces that display items from a data source. 

For example, an e‑commerce plugin can use it to display orders inside WP Admin. You choose which fields appear, and whether to show them as a table, grid, or list. 

Users can then filter, search, paginate, and act on that data, and WordPress 6.9 adds finer control over those interactions through features like infinite scrolling and locked filters.

If you’re interested in getting started with the DataViews component, read this article on how to display and interact with data in plugins.

DataForm: flexible layouts and real‑time validation

In 6.9, updates to DataForm allow developers to choose from a number of new layout options. 

These new layouts, including a new modal panel and customizable card designs, give developers more control over how complex forms are structured and presented.

Here’s what’s new:

  • New card and row layouts: display form fields in cards or side‑by‑side rows, rather than a single long list.
  • Modal or dropdown panels: choose how secondary panels open—either as dropdowns or modal dialogs.
  • Asynchronous validation: real‑time, rule‑based field validation means you can validate inputs both synchronously and asynchronously.
In 6.9, updates to DataForm allow developers to choose from a number of new layout options. 

These updates give developers more control over how forms look and behave, making interfaces cleaner and more intuitive.

DataViewsPicker: easier item selection

A new DataViewsPicker component extends the DataViews API with selection management and action buttons.

It’s ideal for building media pickers or any interface where users need to choose multiple items from a dataset. 

End users can browse, filter, and select items in one place, improving usability.

WordPress 6.9 DataViewsPicker Example

Fields API enhancements

Finally, the Fields API has been expanded from three to 13 field types, adding support for arrays, booleans, colors, dates, email addresses, media, numbers, passwords, telephones, and URLs.

Validation is now rule‑based and supports both synchronous and asynchronous checks, making it easier to build and verify custom forms. 

Together, these enhancements mean developers can define richer forms with less boilerplate and ensure data quality more easily.

3. Inject dynamic data and interactions with Block Bindings and the Interactivity APIs

Updates to the Block Bindings API and the Interactivity API in WordPress 6.9 give developers more power and flexibility to build dynamic, interactive experiences. 

Block Bindings API improvements 

Another change is that WordPress developers can now control which block attributes are eligible for data binding.

The Block Bindings API introduces a new filter, which lets you specify the bindable attributes of any block:

block_bindings_supported_attributes_{$block_type}

Beyond that, the API has been expanded in three important ways:

  • Custom binding sources in the editor: You can now register your own data sources by adding a getFieldsList() method to your source registration. This method returns an array of objects (each with a label, type, and args) to populate the binding dropdown.
  • More blocks support binding: Binding can now be enabled for additional core blocks, including the Date block and the Image block caption, extending the range of dynamic data you can inject into content.
  • Simpler UI for switching sources: The updated interface in the block editor makes it easy for users to switch between data sources and bind or unbind attributes with a single click.
Block Bindings API improvements 

Interactivity API updates

The Interactivity API has been significantly enhanced in WordPress 6.9, making interactive features faster and more reliable.

Updates include:

  • Reusing shared stylesheets: 6.9 speeds up client-side navigation. Loaded stylesheets are reused where possible, with new stylesheets only loaded when needed. 
  • Script modules for interactive blocks: JavaScript modules for interactive blocks are dynamically loaded, and dependencies are automatically managed, ensuring blocks stay fast and responsive. 
  • Support for router regions: Interactive blocks can now include nested router regions and can dynamically render overlays anywhere on the page. This makes interactive features like modals, pop-ups, and dropdowns more flexible and reliable.
  • Improved getServerState and getServerContext functions: These functions now reset properly between page transitions to ensure interactive blocks start with the correct data. 
  • New TypeScript helpers: AsyncAction and TypeYield have been introduced to help developers address potential TypeScript issues when working with asynchronous actions.

Want to jump in and start experimenting with 6.9? Try binding a custom field to a caption of an Image block or using the Interactivity API to load comments or search results without reloading the entire page.

4. Style your themes faster with form controls and border-radius presets

Finally, WordPress 6.9 brings a set of practical updates for theme developers.

You get better form styling, button typography that now inherits correctly, and new options for setting border-radius size presets.

Together, these changes give you more flexibility when designing and refining themes.

Theme.json form styling

Theme.json now supports styling for form elements.

With the styles.elements property, you can target inputs and select fields to set colors, borders, and typography.

These styles apply across the entire site — including third-party plugins — giving theme developers much more control and consistency.

For more information on styling these form elements, read this blog post on how WordPress 6.9 gives forms a theme.json makeover

Border-radius size presets

Theme creators can now define border-radius presets using human-readable names like Small, Medium, and Large.

Users can then choose these presets from a dropdown in the Block Editor and apply them to supported blocks.

This replaces repeated manual input with simple, reusable options, making designs more consistent.

WordPress 6.9 Border RadiusSize Presets

Explore a step-by-step guide to creating these presets in the WordPress Developer Blog post Border radius size presets in WordPress 6.9.

Button typography inheritance

Buttons can now inherit typography from their parent styles when defined in theme.json, making it easier to maintain a consistent look across a site.

When users adjust typography in Global Styles — such as font style, text transform, letter spacing, or font weight — the wp-element-button class now picks up those changes automatically.

The before-and-after image below demonstrates how the button text has inherited the typography styles:

WordPress 6.9 Button-Inheritance Before After

Try out 6.9 and help shape the future of WordPress

WordPress 6.9 brings a range of useful updates for developers — from the Abilities and Interactivity APIs to improvements in DataViews and more.

The best part: It’s easy to start experimenting with them.

The fastest way to start is with WordPress Playground, a browser-based sandbox with no setup required.

Alternatively, use WordPress Studio to quickly spin up new local sites that can sync with the developer-ready managed hosting from WordPress.com. Business and Commerce plans include staging sites, SFTP/SSH access, WP-CLI, and GitHub Deployments. 

Let us know how you get on and help shape the future of WordPress. 

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WordPress 6.9: What’s New for Developers Read Post »

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WordPress News

State of the Word 2025: Innovation Shaped by Community

State of the Word 2025 brought the WordPress community together for an afternoon that felt both reflective and forward-moving, blending stories of global growth with technical milestones and glimpses of the future. This year also marked the twentieth State of the Word since the first address in 2006, a milestone noted in the WordPress history book Milestones: The Story of WordPress as the beginning of a tradition that has helped the project tell its own story.

From the outset, the keynote carried a sense of momentum shaped by thousands of contributors, educators, students, and creators whose steady participation continues to define the open web. It was a reminder that WordPress is more than software. It is a community writing its future together.

What we have is more than code. It’s momentum, it’s culture, and it’s a system that lets people learn by doing and lead by showing up.  — Mary Hubbard, WordPress Executive Director

Mary opened the evening by reflecting on her first full year as Executive Director, a year spent listening deeply and seeing firsthand how people across regions learn, contribute, and lead. Her remarks grounded the keynote in the lived reality of a community that grows because people invest in one another, teach openly, and build trust through contribution.

I’ve met people using WordPress to unlock new careers. I’ve met contributors who started a single translation or forum post and are now leading major pieces of the project. In LatAm, Europe, and the States, I’ve seen students get access to WordPress tools and start building faster than we could have ever imagined. I’ve watched communities build in public, resolve disagreements in the open, and collaborate across languages and time zones.

That reflection offered a clear reminder of what makes WordPress resilient through change: a culture of showing up, learning by doing, and supporting others along the way. The project moves forward because people choose to participate in ways both large and small, strengthening the foundation that has carried WordPress for more than two decades.

With that foundation in place, the keynote moved through a series of stories and demonstrations that highlighted where WordPress stands today and where it is headed next — from a historic live release of WordPress 6.9 to expanding global education pathways, emerging AI capabilities, and deeper collaboration across the entire ecosystem.

WordPress by the Numbers

Project Cofounder Matt Mullenweg began with a wide-angle view of the project’s growth. WordPress powers over 43% of the web, with 60.5% of the CMS market. Shopify, its nearest competitor, holds 6.8%. Among the top 1,000 websites, WordPress’s share climbed to 49.4%, up 2.3% from the previous year.

Globe graphic noting 43% of websites and 60.5% CMS market share

Multilingual usage continued its strong rise. Over 56% of WordPress sites now run in languages other than English. Japan stood out, with WordPress powering 58.5% of all Japanese websites and 83% of the CMS market. Japanese became the second most-used language on WordPress at 5.82%. Spanish followed, then German, French, and Brazilian Portuguese.

The plugin ecosystem saw explosive growth. The directory surpassed 60,000 plugins, and plugin downloads were on pace to reach 2.1 billion by year-end. Over 1,500 themes have been released this year as well.

Contributors also hit new highs. The 6.8 release included 921 contributors, the largest group yet. WordPress 6.8 saw 79.5 million downloads, up 13%, and WordPress 6.9 included contributions from 230 first-time contributors and more than 340 enhancements and fixes.

A Release Moment to Remember

This year’s keynote delivered something WordPress had never attempted before: a live on-stage release of WordPress 6.9.

WordPress 6.9 Gene album cover art

Mary set the moment up earlier in the program, calling WordPress 6.9 “fast, polished, and built for collaboration.” She explained that it reflected a year of intentional iteration, improved workflows, and deeper cross-team participation. 

Matt took the stage with some of the release leads, the release button in hand. The room counted down, and then WordPress 6.9 shipped live, instantly updating millions of sites around the world. It was both a celebration and a testament to the reliability and trust the WordPress community has built into its release processes. Shipping a major version of WordPress in real time, on stage, without drama, is something the early contributors could hardly have imagined.

Photo of WordPress release leads pressing the button to release 6.9

That reflection connected back to WordPress’s origin story. Matt talked about discovering the B2 forums, asking questions, and eventually reaching the point where he could answer someone else’s. That transition from learner to contributor remains at the heart of the project today. Two decades later, WordPress has grown from those early interactions into a platform that can ship a major release in front of the world, powered by thousands of contributors building together.

WordPress and the Future of AI

As the keynote shifted toward the future, Matt acknowledged what has become an essential truth of the moment: it would be impossible to talk about the next chapter of WordPress without talking about AI. He reminded the audience that in 2022, long before ChatGPT entered global conversation, he encouraged the community to “learn AI deeply.” The speed of change since then, he said, has exceeded every expectation, and WordPress has been preparing for it in ways both visible and behind the scenes.

Timeline of AI: 2022 ChatGPT launches, 2023 GPT-4 and Claude launches, 2024 Multimodel and video generation, 2025 AI everywhere

Matt introduced one of the most important architectural developments of the year: the Abilities API and the MCP adapter. The Abilities API defines what WordPress can do in a structured way that AI systems can interpret, while the MCP adapter exposes those abilities through a shared protocol. This means AI agents — whether built by individuals, companies, or larger platforms — can understand and interact with WordPress safely and predictably. Instead of relying on one-off integrations or brittle interfaces, WordPress now participates in a broader ecosystem of tools that can query its capabilities and perform tasks using a standard, governed approach.

Matt then highlighted how developers are already using AI in their everyday work through tools like Cursor, Claude Code, and next-generation CLIs. These tools can explore entire codebases, generate documentation, produce tests, refactor large components, and even coordinate sequences of WP-CLI commands. For many developers, they expand what a single person can accomplish in an afternoon. They don’t eliminate the need for human judgment — they amplify it.

With that foundation laid, Matt turned the audience’s attention to Telex, the experimental environment designed to turn natural-language prompts into Gutenberg Blocks. Telex has already moved beyond experimentation and into real use. Matt showed examples from community creator Nick Hamze, who uses Telex to power micro-business tools that represent practical, revenue-generating workflows that previously required custom engineering.

Matt then widened the lens to show what companies across the ecosystem are building with AI. Hostinger’s Kodee can generate a complete WordPress site from a single description. Elementor AI demonstrated similarly rapid creation inside its own editor, producing full sections and layouts in seconds. WordPress.com showcased how its AI tools help users draft, rewrite, and refine content while keeping language aligned with the site’s voice. Yoast demonstrated how AI can support SEO workflows by generating structured suggestions and improving readability. Together, these examples illustrated that AI is not arriving in one place — it is arriving everywhere.

Experimental browsers can navigate WP Admin autonomously, performing tasks such as clicking buttons, opening menus, changing settings, and performing multi-step tasks without requiring any custom plugins or APIs. This raised a key question that Matt encouraged the community to consider: Which AI capabilities should live inside WordPress itself, and which should remain external, operating through the browser or operating system?

Matt closed the section by discussing WordPress-specific AI benchmarks and evaluation suites. These shared tests will measure how well AI systems understand and execute WordPress tasks, from enabling plugins to navigating WP Admin to modifying content and settings. The goal is to create a foundation where future AI tools behave predictably and responsibly across the entire ecosystem, giving creators confidence that intelligent tools understand the platform deeply.

A Global Community Growing Together

Mary then returned to the stage to celebrate the ecosystem that supports WordPress’s growth. Across continents, diverse groups of people have hosted WordPress events, training new contributors and welcoming newcomers into the project. WordCamp growth in 2025 reflected that: more than 81 WordCamps across 39 countries, powered by over 5,000 volunteers and attended by nearly 100,000 people, with sixteen more events still underway.

State of the Word 2025 wordcamps

Education played a major role in this community expansion. Learn.WordPress.org served over 1.5 million learners this year, with clearer pathways into more structured programs like Campus Connect and WordPress Credits. This bridging was deliberate. Many learners arrive through tutorials or workshops but need clearer guidance on how to deepen their skills. By reshaping navigation and improving wayfinding across WordPress.org, the project began closing that gap.

She spotlighted Costa Rica’s Universidad Fidélitas, where WordPress moved beyond extracurricular interest into formal academic integration. Long before signing an agreement with the WordPress Foundation, their students were hosting WordCamp San José, forming student clubs, and treating WordPress as a crucial part of digital literacy and professional development.

State of the Word 2025 photo
Students of the WordPress Fidélitas Club

Wapuu appeared across events as a familiar companion and a cultural thread running through contributor tools and community projects. Its presence was a reminder that creativity and playfulness are as essential to open source as documentation or code.

Various Wapuu artwork examples

Matt highlighted the story of Youth Day in Managua, Nicaragua. Seventy-five young people spent a full day building their first WordPress sites. Sessions were taught by teenagers, for teenagers. They learned to pick themes, customize layouts, create contact forms, and publish content. Contribution often starts with a simple moment of confidence, and those early sparks can shape entire careers.

Together, these moments illustrated a project expanding not just in numbers, but in depth, diversity, and global reach. WordPress is growing because communities are finding their own ways to embrace it.

What’s New in WordPress 6.9

Joining virtually, WordPress Lead Architect, Matías Ventura, shifted the keynote from vision to practice. Matías offered a detailed walkthrough of what makes WordPress 6.9 one of the most refined, collaborative, and forward-looking releases the project has shipped in years. He returned to the four familiar lenses of creation — writing, designing, building, and developing — and showed how each evolved in this release cycle.

He began with notes in the Block Editor, one of the most anticipated features. Notes allow collaborators to comment directly on individual blocks in a post or page. When a note is selected, the surrounding content subtly fades, helping contributors stay focused on context. Because notes are built on WordPress’s native comment system, they integrate seamlessly with existing communication workflows, including email notifications. Matías highlighted that notes development exemplified collaboration at its best, with contributors from various companies working together to bring the feature to life.

From there, he turned to refinements across the writing and design experience. Editor interactions feel smoother and more consistent. Patterns behave more predictably. Spacing and typography controls are clearer, more organized, and more intuitive. Together these capabilioties make the experience of writing and designing inside WordPress calmer, more reliable, and more empowering.

Block bindings now provide a more intuitive, visual way to connect blocks to dynamic data sources. Users can switch or remove bindings with a single click, and developers can register additional sources to support custom workflows. This work lays the foundation for a future where dynamic data flows more naturally through blocks, enabling site creators to build richer interfaces without writing code.

On the developer front, Matías focused on three foundational upgrades that represent major steps forward in how WordPress will evolve over the coming years.

  • The first was the Abilities API, a unified registry that describes what WordPress can do — across PHP, REST endpoints, the command palette, and future AI-driven interactions.
  • The HTML API introduces new ways of working with and modifying HTML server-side. The API ensures safer, more reliable handling, lowering the barrier for theme and block developers who work with dynamic or structured markup.
  • The Interactivity API delivers smoother, faster interactions without requiring heavy JavaScript frameworks. Improved routing, better state management, and clearer conventions help developers create rich, modern interfaces without leaving the WordPress philosophy of simplicity and flexibility.

After Matías wrapped his presentation, Matt stepped back in to highlight several developments that build on the foundations of 6.9 and strengthen the overall WordPress ecosystem. He pointed first to the Plugin Check Plugin, a tool designed to help developers align with current WordPress standards and catch common issues early, making plugins more reliable for users and easier to maintain over time. Matt then spoke about ongoing progress in Data Liberation, noting improvements to the WordPress importer that make it easier for people to bring their content into WordPress without disruption or loss, an important step toward ensuring the open web remains portable and resilient. He also highlighted advances across the Playground ecosystem, including WordPress Studio, the Playground CLI, and an expanding set of Blueprints. These allow developers and learners to spin up complete WordPress environments in seconds, test ideas, and experiment without servers or configuration. Matt closed this portion by emphasizing work on safer updates, which help WordPress avoid partial installs and ensure that updates complete smoothly even in less predictable hosting conditions, reinforcing WordPress’s commitment to stability as the platform continues to grow.

Matt emphasized that WordPress 6.9 is not defined by any single headline feature, but by a broad spectrum of refinements across the entire experience. It is a release that deepens reliability, expands capability, and sets the stage for future innovation.

Insights from the AI Panel

The keynote transitioned into a live AI panel moderated by Mary Hubbard. The panel brought together four perspectives from across the ecosystem: James LePage (Automattic), Felix Arntz (Google), and Jeff Paul (10up), and Matt Mullenweg. Their conversation touched on the philosophy, practice, and future of AI inside WordPress — not as a distant trend, but as an active part of the project’s evolution.

A central theme was AI’s ability to amplify human creativity. James LePage put it plainly:

It’s not that we’re going to just add sparkle buttons everywhere. We’re going to do some crazy stuff here — things we’re going to build into the way you interact with creating content, with expressing yourself digitally. We want to give you more power, more control, and make you more effective at creating.

Jeff Paul echoed this sentiment, emphasizing that AI should make developers more productive by handling repetitive work and freeing them to focus on higher-level decisions. Felix Arntz expanded the idea further, describing how Google sees AI as a way to make the web more accessible and intuitive, especially for new creators who may not have formal technical training.

panel
From left to right: Mary Hubbard, Matt Mullenweg, Jeff Paul, Felix Arntz, James LePage

Looking ahead, the panelists predicted deeper contextual integrations, AI-assisted debugging and scaffolding for developers, and workflows where agents can take on sequences of tasks while remaining directed by human decisions. They also highlighted the importance of standards, shared protocols, and privacy-focused design as essential components of WordPress’s long-term approach.

The next 20 years looks like WordPress remaining what it is today, which is the center of the open web.

The panel closed on a forward-looking but steady note. AI is accelerating, but WordPress is designing its foundations with flexibility and values that endure. The tools may change, but the commitment to openness, agency, and creative freedom remains the compass.

Questions That Push Us Forward

Matt introduced the Q&A as one of his favorite parts of State of the Word because it reveals what people are imagining, struggling with, or eager to build.

Q&A

The first question addressed the growing interconnectedness of today’s web. What happens, a participant asked, when a major provider like Cloudflare goes down? As tools and agents rely more heavily on external services, failures can cascade. Matt acknowledged that outages are increasingly visible, but also argued that each one strengthens the system.

“Every failure, every edge case, everything that you never imagined is just another opportunity to find that new edge case,” he said. Resilience is not avoidance of failure, but the ability to grow stronger after it.

Another question focused on the longevity of web content. With platforms shutting down or links breaking over time, how can creators ensure their work endures? Matt pointed to the Internet Archive as one of the great stabilizers of the open web. He highlighted a new plugin that automatically scans posts and replaces dead links with archived versions, helping preserve the historical fabric of the web even as individual services come and go.

The next question turned to real-time collaboration inside WordPress. A participant asked how co-editing fits into the future of WordPress and how these tools might help creators work more confidently. Matt talked about how collaboration tools can support people who are just starting their creative journeys — whether they are entrepreneurs, students, or first-time site builders. He described real-time editing as part of a broader vision of WordPress “just doing the work for you” in high-pressure or early-stage creative moments.

The final question considered long-term decision-making. Matt noted that predicting what will change is difficult, but identifying what will remain the same is much easier. For WordPress, he said, the invariant is clear: people will always want agency, openness, and the ability to publish on their own terms. These values guide decisions not only in the present, but across decades of future evolution.

TBPN Podcast Appearance

After the Q&A, the keynote shifted gears with a live crossover segment featuring TBPN (the Technology Business Programming Network), a tech-focused podcast. The segment introduced a lively, unscripted energy into the room.

The hosts kicked things off by asking Matt what the “word of the year” should be. He chose “freedom”, connecting it directly to the core philosophy of open source. He described open source licenses as a kind of “bill of rights for software,” giving users inalienable rights that no company can revoke. In a world increasingly shaped by software platforms and digital ecosystems, these freedoms form the heart of what keeps the web open and accessible.

Conversation then moved to Beeper, the multi-network messaging client. Asked whether Beeper aims to “tear down walled gardens,” Matt rejected that framing. Instead, he offered a more collaborative metaphor: bringing gardens together. Most people have friends and colleagues scattered across WhatsApp, Instagram, LinkedIn, Messenger, and SMS. Beeper doesn’t replace those apps — it brings messages together into a unified interface..

The conversation eventually returned to publishing. Matt referenced the same principle he noted earlier: the importance of identifying what won’t change. For WordPress, he said, that means doubling down on freedom, agency, and the ability to publish without gatekeepers. Even as AI evolves, even as platforms shift, even as new tools emerge, these are the values that will guide the project forward.

Building the Web We Believe In

As the keynote drew to a close, Matt returned to a message that had threaded through every section of the evening. The future of WordPress is not arriving from outside forces — it is being crafted, questioned, tested, and expanded by the people who show up. Contributors, students, educators, community organizers, designers, developers, business owners, and first-time site builders all play a role in shaping the platform.

He spoke about the opportunities ahead: new tools that expand what creators can build, collaborative features that make teamwork feel natural, and AI systems that enhance creativity rather than diminish it. Across continents, generations, and skill levels, people are discovering WordPress as a path to learning, empowerment, and expression.

The values that brought the project this far remain the ones that will carry it forward: freedom, participation, learning, and community. These aren’t abstract principles. They are lived every day in the decisions contributors make, the ideas they pursue, and the care they bring to the work.

Future Events

If you’re feeling inspired to revisit past moments from the project’s annual address, the State of the Word YouTube playlist offers a look back at years of community milestones and product progress. The excitement continues into 2026, with major WordPress events already on the horizon: WordCamp Asia in Mumbai, India,WordCamp Europe in Kraków, Poland, and WordCamp US in Phoenix. We hope to see you there as the community continues building what comes next.

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State of the Word 2025: Innovation Shaped by Community Read Post »

Release Edition Featured Image 6.9 8whVgY
WordPress News

WordPress 6.9 “Gene”

WordPress 6.9 Release Edition Featured Image

Each WordPress release celebrates an artist who has made an indelible mark on the world of music. WordPress 6.9, code-named “Gene,” honors the American Jazz pianist Gene Harris. 

A piano veteran, self taught at the age of six, Harris infused mainstream jazz with elements of soul, blues, and gospel, creating a warm, signature sound that is both elegant and iconic. Harris’ bluesy jazz lived at the intersection of worlds, weaving a rich landscape of texture and mood, with a thread of soulfulness that ignited listeners.

Welcome to WordPress 6.9

WordPress 6.9 brings major upgrades to how teams collaborate and create. The new Notes feature introduces block-level commenting when writing posts and pages that streamlines reviews, while the expanded Command Palette makes it faster for power users to navigate and operate across the entire dashboard. The new Abilities API provides a standardized, machine-readable permissions system that opens the door for next generation AI-powered and automated workflows. This release also delivers notable performance improvements for faster page loads and adds several practical new blocks alongside a more visual drag and drop to help creators build richer, more dynamic content.

Download WordPress 6.9 “Gene”

Introducing Notes: Seamless, Block-Level Collaboration

Collaborate Smarter : Leave Feedback Right Where You’re Working

With notes attached directly to blocks in the post editor, your team can stay aligned, track changes, and turn feedback into action all in one place. Whether you’re working on copy or refining design in your posts or pages, collaboration happens seamlessly on the canvas itself.

View of people interacting with notes in a post.

Command Palette Throughout the Dashboard

Your tools are always at hand.

Access the Command Palette from any part of the dashboard, whether you’re writing your latest post, deep in design in the Site Editor, or browsing your plugins. Everything you need, just a few keystrokes away.

Command palette showing the ability to navigate across different parts of the site, including templates, Settings, and all posts.

Fit text to container

Content that adapts.

There’s a new typography option for text-based blocks that’s been added to the Paragraph and Heading blocks. This new option automatically adjusts font size to fill its container perfectly, making it ideal for banners, callouts, and standout moments in your design.

"Novem" text selected and stretching across the interface.

The Abilities API

Unlocking the next generation of site interactions.

WordPress 6.9 lays the groundwork for the future of automation with the unified Abilities API. By creating a standardized registry for site functionality, developers can now register, validate, and execute actions consistently across any context—from PHP and REST endpoints to AI agents—paving the way for smarter, more connected WordPress experiences.

Abstract view of circles around a plugin icon with sparkles, indicating AI functionality.

Accessibility Improvements

More than 30 accessibility fixes sharpen the core WordPress experience. These updates improve screen reader announcements, hide unnecessary CSS-generated content from assistive tech, fix cursor placement issues, and make sure typing focus stays put even when users click an autocomplete suggestion.

Performance enhancements

WordPress 6.9 delivers significant frontend performance enhancements, optimizing the site loading experience for visitors. 6.9 boasts an improved LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) through on-demand block styles for classic themes, minifying block theme styles, and increasing the limit for inline styles – removing blockages to page rendering and clearing the rendering path by deprioritizing non-critical scripts. This release comes with many more performance boosts, including optimized database queries, refined caching, improved spawning of WP Cron, and a new template enhancement output buffer that opens the door for more future optimizations.

And much more

For a comprehensive overview of all the new features and enhancements in WordPress 6.9, please visit the feature-showcase website.

Check out What’s New

Learn more about WordPress 6.9

Learn WordPress is a free resource for new and experienced WordPress users. Learn is stocked with how-to videos on using various features in WordPress, interactive workshops for exploring topics in-depth, and lesson plans for diving deep into specific areas of WordPress.

Read the WordPress 6.9 Release Notes for information on installation, enhancements, fixed issues, release contributors, learning resources, and the list of file changes.

Explore the WordPress 6.9 Field Guide. Learn about the changes in this release with detailed developer notes to help you build with WordPress.

The 6.9 release squad

Every release comes to you from a dedicated team of enthusiastic contributors who help keep things on track and moving smoothly. The team that has led 6.9 is a cross-functional group of contributors who are always ready to champion ideas, remove blockers, and resolve issues.

Thank you, contributors

The mission of WordPress is to democratize publishing and embody the freedoms that come with open source. A global and diverse community of people collaborating to strengthen the software supports this effort.

WordPress 6.9 reflects the tireless efforts and passion of more than 900+ contributors in countries all over the world. This release also welcomed over 279 first-time contributors!

Their collaboration delivered more than 340 enhancements and fixes, ensuring a stable release for all – a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress open source community.

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Gupta · Vipul Patil · Vishit Shah · vladimiraus · vortfu · Vrishabh Jasani · Walter Ebert · WebMan Design | Oliver Juhas · websupporter · webwrotter · Weston Ruter · whaze · widhy980 · Will Skora · wplmillet · xate · xavilc · xerpa43 · xipasduarte · Yagnik Sangani · Yash · Yash B · Yash Jawale · Yogesh Bhutkar · YogieAnamCara · Yui · Zebulan Stanphill · Zeel Thakkar · Zunaid Amin · Łukasz Strączyński · 耗子

More than 71 locales have fully translated WordPress 6.9 into their language. Community translators are working hard to ensure more translations are on their way. Thank you to everyone who helps make WordPress available in 200+ languages.

Last but not least, thanks to the volunteers who contribute to the support forums by answering questions from WordPress users worldwide.

Get involved

Participation in WordPress goes far beyond coding. And learning more and getting involved is easy.  Discover the teams that come together to Make WordPress and use this interactive tool to help you decide which is right for you.

 [#item_full_content]

WordPress 6.9 “Gene” Read Post »

wordpress 6.9 for site owners mWt27Y
WordPress News

WordPress 6.9: What’s New for Bloggers, Creators, and Site Owners

WordPress 6.9 is here, bringing a handful of upgrades that make life easier for bloggers, creators, and site owners.

This release speeds up everyday work, improves how teams collaborate, and adds new block options that give you more room to shape your site the way you want.

Here’s a look at the standout WordPress 6.9 features that have arrived since the last update in April 2025, and how they help you build more with WordPress.com.

Collaborate and stage content directly in your posts

Explore the latest Site Editor updates, which make it easier to do more directly inside WordPress without relying on extra tools or touching backend code.

Block-level Notes 

Block-level Notes make collaboration much easier by letting teams leave feedback directly on the block that needs attention.

You can add threaded, resolvable notes from the toolbar or sidebar, and authors automatically get email alerts when new comments come in.

Block-level Notes on WordPress 6.9

This keeps all feedback — pre-launch edits, content fixes, design tweaks, and even post-publication updates like adding new links — in one place, without needing extra tools.

Hide and Show blocks

Hide and Show lets you switch blocks on and off without deleting them, making it easier to manage content you’ll need again.

Use the visibility toggle in a block’s toolbar to temporarily hide sections like seasonal promos or recurring announcements.

Hide and Show blocks in WordPress 6.9

This gives you a simple, built-in way to stage updates without juggling duplicate blocks or storing drafts elsewhere, and your reusable content stays exactly where you left it for when you’re ready to bring it back.

Visual drag and drop

You can now see exactly where a block will land as you drag it.

The live preview makes it much easier to move things around without guessing or fixing mistakes afterward.

Visual drag and drop in WordPress 6.9

It currently works with single blocks, although multi-block dragging is expected in  WordPress 7.0.

Allowed blocks UI and other workflow tools

The allowed blocks UI, found under Advanced settings (with a keyboard shortcut to copy settings: Ctrl/Cmd + Alt/Option + V), lets you specify which block types are allowed within a given container. 

Allowed blocks UI and other workflow tools in WordPress 6.9

Previously, this was only editable through block markup in code view. 

By bringing these controls into the interface, WordPress now makes it easier to build more complex layouts and features without touching code.

Enrich your content with creative blocks for improved storytelling

Take advantage of new ways to display information visually within WordPress without installing additional plugins or using custom code. 

Accordion block

The Accordion block lets you add collapsible sections with headings and panels, creating an interactive reading experience without requiring code or extra plugins.

Accordion Block WordPress 6.9

It’s ideal for adding frequently asked questions (FAQs) or for expanding details and lists to add additional context within your content.

Term Query and companion blocks

The Term Query block simplifies building category and tag pages by offering a built-in way to display them, similar to the Query Loop block

It supports sorting options (e.g., “order-by” sorting), design tools for styling, and a toggle to turn each item into a link. 

Term Query and companion blocks in WordPress 6.9

When combined with the Term Description block, it offers a powerful setup for directory and magazine sites that use structured filtering or subpage navigation.

Supporting (companion) blocks include:

  • Term Template block
  • Term Name block
  • Term Count block

Time‑to‑Read block

The Time-to-Read block sets expectations for readers by providing an estimated reading time (including a range) based on word count. 

Time‑to‑Read block in WordPress 6.9

Although incorporating this information doesn’t directly correlate to better SEO performance, it can have an impact on user engagement, which is tangentially related.

Math block

LaTeX is a markup language and high-quality typesetting system for technical and scientific documentation.

The new Math block implements LaTeX for better visualizing mathematical equations and notations, making it especially useful for technical and educational posts. 

Math block in WordPress 6.9

Comment Count and Comment Link blocks

By separating the comment count from the comment link, the Comment Count and Comment Link blocks let you place comment access wherever it makes the most sense in a post.

It also lets you control which posts allow comments at all. 

Comment Count and Comment Link blocks in WordPress 6.9

This functionality was once exclusive to the Site Editor, but it’s now available throughout the entire editing experience.

Create and manage reusable layouts with safe drafts and flexible templates

WordPress 6.9 introduces several exciting features that make life easier for anyone building across multiple sites — cutting down on repeat work and helping you move faster without recreating the same layouts from scratch.

Starter pattern modal everywhere

All post types containing patterns (previously just pages) now display the pop-up modal for using starter patterns. 

This makes it easier for creators to drop in structured layouts across different content types, especially when working with varied or more complex designs.

Fit Text (stretchy text)

The new Fit Text option in Heading and Paragraph blocks automatically adjusts text to fill its container.

Fit Text (stretchy text) in WordPress 6.9

This gives you precise typographic control without writing custom CSS, making it easier to create eye-catching headers and hero sections that look polished across all screen sizes.

Gallery block aspect ratios and Cover block posters

The Gallery block’s new aspect ratio setting lets you apply a consistent ratio to all images with a single click from the sidebar. 

No more manual edits or custom CSS are necessary to get a clean, unified layout. 

Gallery block aspect ratios and Cover block posters in WordPress 6.9

Besides, you can add poster images to Cover blocks with video backgrounds, giving visitors on slower connections a still image to view while the video loads.

Find anything instantly with the Dashboard-wide Command Palette

You can now use the Command Palette across the entire WP Admin dashboard (not just the Site Editor), making navigation commands universally accessible. 

With a single keyboard shortcut, power users and admins can bypass repetitive menu clicking and streamline their workflows.

Press Ctrl/Cmd + K on any admin screen (Posts, Pages, Media, Settings, the Site Editor, and more) to open the search/command bar and quickly run actions or jump to content. 

Dashboard-wide Command Palette in WordPress 6.9

Developers can also register custom commands through Extensible Commands, giving users even faster access to frequently used features.

Enjoy faster load times with no extra effort

WordPress is known for performance and is constantly raising the standard with new updates. 

The latest technical improvements in WordPress 6.9 work together to boost performance without any extra setup on your part. 

For example, these include:

  • On‑demand block CSS: Loads styles only for the blocks actually used on a page, improving performance for classic themes that normally ship more CSS than needed.
  • Optimized cron execution: Improves Core Web Vitals tangentially through better Time to First Byte, by scheduling tasks to run after the page loads.
  • Template output buffer and hidden block styles: An updated system that template developers can use to optimize HTML outputs, which results in small improvements to page performance — loading block styles only when needed, moving them to the <head> section, and reducing CSS output. It’s enabled by default for classic WordPress themes and skips loading styles for hidden blocks.

Together, these changes help your pages load faster and feel smoother for visitors, all without any extra configuration.

Try WordPress 6.9’s new features today 

WordPress 6.9 is already live on WordPress.com, so you can try the new tools right away and see how they fit into your workflow.

These updates might improve your experience as a content creator, boost user engagement, and ultimately increase blog traffic

Test out Notes, the new storytelling blocks, and the template updates to get a feel for what’s possible.

If you create something you’re proud of, share it and tag us — we’d love to see it.

Want a faster, more reliable setup for everything in 6.9? Get started with WordPress.com.

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how to build a wordpress site with ai OAjWlF
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How to Create a WordPress Website With AI: Step-by-Step Tutorial

Using AI website builders is like having a conversation with a designer, developer, and copywriter rolled into one — anything you describe can be turned into a reality. 

Whether you’re designing layouts, writing copy, or refining appearances, AI handles it all through simple language prompts.

This guide shows you how to build a WordPress website using AI in 12 easy steps. 

Let’s assume we’re creating a site that reviews various snacks to help busy moms and health enthusiasts make purchasing decisions. You can adapt the following prompts to the site you’re building.

Step 1: Define your website’s purpose and content focus

First, list the key details about your site’s foundation. Clearly defining your brand and business details will help you draft specific prompts, which in turn sets up AI website builders for success. 

You don’t need to know everything right away, but try to define the basics:

  • Your business or website name
  • The kind of site you want to build (personal blog, portfolio, business site, etc.)
  • The core focus of your site (sharing detailed articles, selling products, etc.)
  • Your target audience 
  • What success looks like for your site
  • Brand tone (professional, funny, modern, friendly)
  • Key pages and sections for your site (Home, About, Products, etc.)

If you’re unsure about your website’s details, you can also ask AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude for help.

For example, I used this ChatGPT prompt to brainstorm my site’s details:

Act as a website strategist. I run Snack Reviews, which offers detailed reviews of nutrients, taste, ingredients, and more for popular snack options on the market for busy moms and health enthusiasts. Suggest the essential pages I should include, three content ideas for each, and a short list of brand adjectives that describe my ideal look and feel.

As a result, I got several suggestions for key pages and content I could add to my site:

The suggested page and content ideas generated by ChatGPT

It’s tempting to miss this step and jump directly to creating a site, but clarifying your site’s focus and purpose will reduce the number of edits you need to make in the future.

Step 2: Explore your visual and brand style

Next, gather a few rough ideas for your website’s appearance. Think of the words that you’d use to describe your site’s visual feel — cozy, minimalistic, artistic, etc. 

For example, Olipop’s site instantly appears energetic and colorful.

The bright colors, fonts, and elements give the website a playful feel:

Olipop's home page

Bosch’s website, on the other hand, is minimalistic. 

The greys, clean lines, and visuals lend the site an informational and established feeling:

Bosch’s homepage

If you don’t know what direction you want to take your visual asthetic, use AI to brainstorm some ideas.

Here is the prompt I used with ChatGPT to find my site’s brand style:

Suggest three color palettes and font pairings that fit a review website for snacks described as clean and minimalistic. Explain briefly what feeling each palette gives.

I liked the second palette choice, which caters to both segments of my target audience (busy moms and fitness enthusiasts).

Color palette suggested by ChatGPT

Step 3: Choose an AI site builder

Next, choose an AI website builder that helps you create, refine, and launch your site.

There are many AI website builders that can produce a quick layout from a prompt, but creating the initial site is only the first step.

You need a tool that lets you customize your design, edit content, add key features, and take your site live when you’re ready.

Here’s what to look for:

  • Easy editing: You should be able to update pages, layouts, images, and copy using both AI and manual tools (like the Site Editor).
  • Flexible design and content: Make sure you can customize fonts, colors, sections, and regenerate copy or visuals as your site evolves.
  • Being able to go live: Your builder should make launching simple — letting you connect a domain, publish your site, and rely on built-in hosting so everything works without extra setup.
  • SEO and performance basics: Choose a builder that takes care of the technical side for you — like automatic speed and mobile optimization, built-in SSL, a sitemap, and fast loading through caching/CDN. It should also help you improve your pages with simple SEO recommendations.
  • Growth features: Make sure you can add newsletters, analytics, social integrations, or ecommerce (depending on your needs).
  • Ownership and pricing: Choose an AI builder that lets you keep your content, scale affordably, and avoid platform lock-in.

For example, I’m using WordPress.com’s AI site builder. It can create a complete draft site from a single prompt — including webpages, copy, design, and navigation. You can then easily customize your site using AI or the Site Editor.

Step 4: Generate your first AI-built website draft

Next, create a detailed, specific prompt using the information that you’ve gathered in steps one and two. 

I used this prompt to create a website for my review site:

Create a website called Snack Reviews that reviews popular snack options in the market for busy moms and health enthusiasts. The tone should be friendly and helpful. Include five pages: Home, Product Reviews, About, and Contact. Use a bright blue and crisp white color palette and Poppins & Inter fonts in the headings and copy, respectively.

In a few minutes, the first draft of my website was ready.

The tool followed all the instructions given in the prompt — right from the name to the color palette to the font.

Website draft generated by the AI website builder

I will admit it has taken me some trial and error to learn how to prompt. 

The secret is to be as specific as possible — mention the pages you want on your site, who you are making the site for, and the tone you want your site to have. 

If something still doesn’t look the way you hoped, you can always prompt the AI again to work on it.

Step 5: Review and organize your pages and navigation

Next, make sure your website is smooth to navigate for your visitors. 

Once your site’s first draft comes to life, you can see how all the pages appear together — and decide whether to reorder them, add a new page, or delete any unnecessary pages.

For my site, I realized people often have questions about the authenticity of food reviews if they don’t know the methods used and aren’t aware of an affiliate partnership.

So I first made a dedicated new page to address the concern using this prompt:

Add a new page titled “Learn how we pick and review snacks” that shows how Snack Reviews chooses and reviews all the snacks on the website. Include three sections inside this page — the first section is “Our reviewing process,” the second section is “How we choose snacks to review,” and the last section is “Do we earn a commission.” Add a call-to-action button at the end that says “See an example reviewing process in action.

Using a prompt to add a new page in the AI website builder

I picked one layout from three options.

I also added and edited some CTA buttons to ensure the navigation is just the way I want.

The page after editing the CTA buttons

After adding a new page, I wanted to reorder how the pages appeared in the navigation bar.

You can prompt AI to do this, but I chose the manual route:

1. Click on the WordPress icon in the top left corner.

2. Go to Navigation.

3. Click on Header Navigation.

4. Drag-and-drop the pages in the order you want them.

Managing navigation via the Site Editor

Once your site has updated the pages and navigation according to your preference, start zooming in on the design.

Step 6: Customize your site’s design

Adjust the visual design aspects of your site to match your preferences. T

hese can be big changes — like changing your site’s layout — or small ones — such as making all the buttons on your site a particular shape.

Tip: Your site’s visual layout should be consistent across all pages. When your audience navigates between pages, they should feel oriented and familiar — as if they were under the same roof. This builds familiarity and trust.

In my case, I wanted to do three things:

  • Use different fonts
  • Rearrange the homepage
  • Make all the buttons round

Here’s how I did it.

Change fonts

I wanted to check if there’s a different font pairing I could use. The current ones felt too sharp for my taste. I prompted the AI website builder this:

Show me new font pairings that feel softer and more relaxed.

The tool offered me several fonts for headers and body text that worked well together and matched the vibe I was going for.

Generating new headers with AI

I browsed all the options and went with the one that best aligned with the color palette and brand.

Change homepage layout

Next, I wanted to check if there’s a better way to arrange the homepage. 

The homepage is the most important part of the site because it’s the first thing someone sees when they land on your site.

I wanted the site’s homepage to be as striking as possible, but I couldn’t pinpoint which changes would improve it. So I used this prompt to get AI’s help:

Suggest different layouts for the homepage.

The various options helped me identify what I could add or remove from the homepage.

The previews are also helpful in gauging how the changes appear before committing to one option. 

I went with the first choice.

Choosing layout options

Change button shapes

Finally, I wanted to make all the buttons square. Here’s the prompt I used:

Make all the buttons on the site square.

Editing the buttons with AI

Step 7: Refine your copy and on-page sections

The AI website builder will automatically generate the text for each section. Polish it for accuracy until it achieves your styleand goals. 

You can either edit the text directly by clicking on any block, or you can seek AI’s help. 

For example, I selected the text block on the homepage and asked AI to rewrite it in a friendlier tone using this prompt:

Rewrite this paragraph in a friendlier tone.

Rewriting website text with AI

You can also ask the AI website builder to reword a section for brevity, expand descriptions, remove sections, add taglines, and more.

Tip: A good best practice here is to blend AI’s recommendations with manual adjustments. Doing so ensures your site copy doesn’t sound unnatural or dispaly any inaccurate information.

Step 8: Add images, logos, and visual sections

Next, complete the design of your website with additional elements, such as visuals and logos. 

For example, I wanted to update the hero image on the homepage. I prompted the AI website builder to help:

Create a hero image for this page that shows a person in a laboratory conducting a lab test.

Generating website images with AI

You can also use similar prompts to rewire all visuals on your site to match a certain aesthetic — if that’s what you want. 

Image generation is honestly my favorite part of the AI website-building process. 

So many standalone image generation tools give you poor results (six fingers and a gazillion teeth smiles, anyone?), but WordPress.com’s AI website builder always aces the assignment.

It can also help you come up with a logo for your site. I used this prompt to create mine:

Create a logo that says “Snack Reviews” inside of an icon of a chips packet.

Generating a logo with AI

Step 9: Add engagement and monetization features

You can also add elements to your site that will encourage visitors to engage  — e.g., subscribe to a newsletter. 

For example, I used this prompt to add a newsletter form to my site:

Add a newsletter signup form in the last section of the homepage with an ‘Email’ field along with a CTA button to ‘Subscribe.’ Name the new section ‘Stay in touch.’

Adding a newsletter signup to your website using AI

You can also use similar prompts to add monetization features, social media icons, donation buttons, or whatever else you might need for your website. 

AI produces editable blocks of your instructions, which you can configure to meet your requirements.

Step 10: Review SEO basics

Before you publish, check a few simple SEO essentials — titles, descriptions, headings, links, and image alt text. 

The good news is: WordPress.com already covers the technical side of SEO (speed, security, mobile optimization).

For on-page SEO, make sure you:

  • Have a clear H1 (title tag) and clean heading structure
  • Write readable, scannable content
  • Add internal links to related pages
  • Add descriptive image alt text
  • Use a short, logical URL

You can use AI to make your search presence even stronger by asking it to provide SEO recommendations. For example, I used this prompt:

“Review this page for on-page SEO issues and suggest improvements — check my H1, headings, URLs, internal links, readability, and image alt text, then tell me what’s missing, what I should change, and give specific examples of better titles, descriptions, headings, and alt text.”

The tool then provided multiple suggestions related to keywords, headings, internal linking, and more:

Requesting SEO improvement suggestions from the AI website builder

Step 11: Ask AI for improvement ideas

Before launching your site, use the AI website builder to get smart suggestions to improve it. It can recommend:

  • Creating new sections or pages
  • Navigation simplifications
  • Tone or clarity adjustments
  • Content and site section ideas

For example, I asked the tool to provide some broad recommendations to improve my site using this prompt:

Suggest improvements to make this site more engaging for visitors.

It generated lots of ideas, like adding quizzes and images:

Asking AI for more website improvement ideas

The best part: The AI website builder provides recommendations that are specifically tailored to your website.

Step 12: Launch your site

The final step is releasing your site into the world. 

Every new WordPress.com site starts in Coming Soon mode, so you can refine the design and content before going live. 

Once you’re ready to launch, just click on the Launch button in the top right corner.

Launching your website from the AI website builder

After you click Launch, you can choose the pricing plan that fits your goals and set up everything you need to go live (e.g., a domain). 

Choosing the pricing plan

Tip: If you already own a domain, you can also transfer it to WordPress.com.

Once you launch, your website is instantly live on a secure, fast WordPress.com server — no extra setup, plugins, or third-party services needed. SSL encryption, backups, and a global CDN are all included automatically.

You can continue using the AI website builder to customize your site even after launching it. Add new pages, update copy and images, and brainstorm new ideas to improve your site.

Create your new WordPress site with the AI website builder

Building a website used to take hours. With WordPress.com’s AI website builder, you can launch a polished site in minutes and keep improving it as you grow.

Once your site is live, you can continue using AI to refine pages, adjust your design, and publish new content quickly — without touching code.

Tip: Try the WordPress.com AI site builder for free. When you’re ready to launch, upgrade to a Premium or Business plan to take your site live.

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Swatch MoonSwatch Mission To Earthphase Moonshine Gold Cold Moon: Price, Specs, Availability

  

​Swatch will laser unique gold snowflakes on every new “Cold Moon” MoonSwatch, but there’s a catch—you’ll only be able to buy one when it’s snowing in Switzerland. 

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