Hi there,
Welcome to the WCUS Part 2. The workshop recordings are online, and my chat with other dev advocates has also been published. You can read about it in this article, which includes the video: WordPress, AI, and the generational shift: insights from #WCUS Creators Studio.
A few publishers assembled to come up with a license standard for machines, aka AI. As site builders, or owners, you’ll be interested that there has been some work on the way. More below.
Have a splendid weekend ahead!
Yours, 
Birgit
WordCamp US
As mentioned, the recordings of the Workshop are now online. The block and site editor related ones are:
If you are more interested in AI and development, these might be for you:
Developing Gutenberg and WordPress
It was Ryan Welcher‘s turn to publish this month’s What’s new for developers? (September 2025). The updates include:
- Composer package for the Abilities API now available for early testing ahead of WordPress 6.9
- Four experimental Accordion blocks (Accordion, Accordion Item, Accordion Header, Accordion Panel) powered by the Interactivity API.
- Theme.json now supports styling form elements, including text inputs and select dropdowns.
- Data Views received multiple enhancements, including infinite scroll and card layouts.
- The Date block now supports custom dates and block bindings
- A new Query Loop Title block variation displays post type labels.
- WordPress Playground added support for multiple theme installations and new CLI flags, plus PHP debugging improvements through XDebug Bridge.
- The AI team released stable versions of core libraries and introduced new development tools.
For details and more, you need to read the post. 
Don’t miss a new article on the WordPress developer blog again. Subscribe!
Carlos Bravo managed the release of Gutenberg 21.6 and highlights in his post What’s new in Gutenberg 21.6? (10 September):
Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners
In her latest post, The Pattern System: Publish Faster with Reusable WordPress Layouts, Anam Hassan breaks down how WordPress Patterns can save you tons of time by letting you reuse the same layouts over and over instead of rebuilding them from scratch. She explains three types: synced patterns that automatically update everywhere when you change them once, unsynced patterns that give you the same starting template but let you customize each one differently, and locked patterns that keep your design safe when other people are writing content.
Synced pattern overrides are however missing from the post.
Tune in to the latest episode of the WP Behind the Builds podcast on Open Channels. The Founders of Podcaster Plus Share Product Development Experiences and Community Insights. Host Mark Westguard speaks with Dan Maby and Nathan Wrigley, founders of Podcaster Plus, about their new WordPress plugin designed to simplify podcast publishing and customize audio players. The plugin uses the Interactivity API for modular blocks like play buttons and volume controls, enabling users to create personalized audio players. Podcaster Plus automates publishing by generating posts for new episodes in RSS feeds and offers add-ons for custom post types, SEO, and automation.
You can sign up for the beta of the new plugin at the website PodcasterPlus.
At WordCamp Sofia last year, Jordan Hlebarov explored in his talk how the Gutenberg block editor simplifies the workflow for both agencies and clients, by making content management more intuitive and efficient, as well as how it benefits both clients and streamlines agency operations. The video is now available on WordPressTV and also offers a link to the slides.
Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks
On the WordPress Developer Blog, Justin Tadlock published an in-depth tutorial on Building a light/dark toggle with the Interactivity API. He demonstrates creating a toggle that works without custom blocks using modern CSS techniques and WordPress APIs. The tutorial covers theme setup, color scheme storage using user meta and cookies, implementing the toggle button with interactivity directives, adding JavaScript functionality, styling with icons, and registering a block variation for easy editor insertion, resulting in a complete light/dark mode toggle for block themes. You can follow along on the Block Developer Cook Book website.
Rino de Boer used to work with Elementor to build sites. Recently he explored Block themes and the 2025 default theme. You can follow along via his YouTube video Exploring WordPress Block Themes (Spectra, Raft, Ollie, TT5 & more) — Live Test
Jason Crist published a new plugin: Synced Patterns for Themes. He writes in the description, “This plugin enables theme developers to ship patterns that behave as synced patterns (reusable blocks) while maintaining the benefits of theme-bundled patterns. When a theme pattern is marked as synced, it automatically becomes available as a reusable block that updates across all instances when modified.” The plugin description also elaborates on the features and how to use it.
Crist also authored the Pattern Builder plugin, you can also find in the repository. “Pattern Builder transforms how you work with WordPress block patterns, providing a comprehensive solution for creating, managing, and organizing patterns right from your WordPress admin.”
I have not tested these plugins. Use at your own risk!
Bud Kraus again has a great tutorial to unregister all kinds of core block features, i.e., block styles, blocks, or theme style variations. He shows you example code and also what happens when things are unregistered that were already in use. Check out his blog post on Kinsta: Unregistering style variations in a WordPress block theme.
Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.
Ryan Welcher chips away at his Block Development Cookbook series on YouTube. In the video How To Convert WordPress Blocks Into (Almost) Anything!, you learn how to enable transforms for your blocks, a way to migrate a current block into a different block. The block editor has a few transforms out of the box, like changing the content of a paragraph block into a list block. Or a into a Quote block without losing the content. Ryan helps you solve this using the transform API for your custom blocks.
New in the Playground world
In his post, The future of WordPress? A complete website from nothing but a link, Jamie Marsland explores how WordPress Playground runs entirely in your browser without servers or setup, and Blueprints transform it from a demo into a powerful tool. Blueprints are recipes that create complete professional websites with one click, benefiting agencies, educators, freelancers, and developers. Marsland built PootlePlayground.com and PootleSites.com to expand Blueprint creation capabilities. The future roadmap aims to push these temporary browser sites into permanent hosting.
AI News
In his post, Boosting WordPress Development with GitHub Copilot, Seth Rubenstein explains how GitHub Copilot, an AI coding assistant, helped his team quickly build four WordPress features that would have taken months to complete manually. The AI handled tasks like creating admin panels and fixing SEO titles with minimal human oversight. However, the AI couldn’t test its own work, so Rubenstein integrated WordPress Playground, a browser-based testing environment, allowing the AI to actually browse and check the websites it builds, making the development process more reliable and efficient. Rubenstein shared all the details of how he accomplished it.
Matt Mullenweg shared on his blog, “one of the more interesting things to launch.” this week:
RSL (Really Simple Licensing) is an open standard that helps content publishers protect their rights in the AI era by embedding machine-readable licensing terms directly into web pages using XML markup.
The system supports various compensation models, including attribution-based licensing, pay-per-crawl, and pay-per-inference arrangements. Publishers can specify different terms for different usage types, particularly for AI training applications.
The standard addresses challenges content creators face with AI systems using their work without clear compensation or attribution by providing a structured format that automated tools can understand and respect, giving creators standardized control over their content usage.
The founders are Eckart Walther, who is also the co-creator of the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) standard, and Doug Leeds, former CEO of Ask.com and former CEO of IAC Publishing.
The RSL team has established a collective licensing organization, the RSL Collective, that can negotiate terms and collect royalties, similar to ASCAP for musicians or MPLC for films.
Russell Brandom at TechCrunch has the whole story. RSS co-creator launches new protocol for AI data licensing.
James Le Page, team rep on the WordPress AI team, built a first version of a plugin for publishers using WordPress: RSL Licensing for WordPress.
And I am left to wonder how public LLMs adhere to this standard and more interestingly, if they will pay licensing fees. Brandom wrote, “Without some kind of licensing system, AI companies could face an avalanche of copyright lawsuits that some worry will set the industry back permanently.”
Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg’s master branch?
Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review.
Now also available via WordPress Playground. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? Email me with your experience
Questions? Suggestions? Ideas?
Don’t hesitate to send them via email or
send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph.
For questions to be answered on the Gutenberg Changelog,
send them to changelog@gutenbergtimes.com
Views: 0
