I recently looked at a client site that was a total mess. Their previous developer had hard-coded breadcrumbs into a header template using logic that didn’t even account for search pages or 404 errors. When the client started adding nested categories for their holiday promos, the whole navigation just… collapsed. It was a maintenance nightmare that could have been avoided if they weren’t fighting the platform.
This is exactly why I’m excited about the WordPress 6.9 features that dropped this December. We finally have a stabilization path for the experimental breadcrumbs block. Instead of writing custom PHP to handle edge cases for paged archives or attachments, you can just lean on the core implementation. Trust me on this: stop building custom nav logic from scratch. It’s not worth the technical debt.
The Power of the New Abilities API
The standout for me in this release is the Abilities API. If you’ve ever had to manage complex user permissions beyond simple roles, you know how brittle current_user_can can feel when things get granular. The new API provides a much more robust framework for registering and checking capabilities. It’s cleaner, it’s standardized, and it’s already documented in the Common APIs handbook.
Here’s the kicker: I actually tried to build something similar for a large WooCommerce store a few years back. I used a mix of custom meta fields and some really ugly filters to hide blocks from specific vendors. It worked, but it was a total nightmare to debug when race conditions started showing stale data. If I had the 6.9 Abilities API back then, I would have saved about forty hours of hair-pulling. Now, we can just do it the right way.
// A simple way to check permissions using the new logic
function bbioon_check_user_ability( $user_id, $action ) {
// This is just a conceptual wrapper for the new API approach
if ( ! function_exists( 'wp_user_can_perform_action' ) ) {
return false;
}
return wp_user_can_perform_action( $user_id, 'bbioon_manage_inventory' );
}Small Tweaks, Big Impact
One more thing that’s going to save you a lot of time: theme.json now handles pseudo-classes like hover and focus for the Button block. No more digging into CSS files or adding !important tags just to change a button color on hover. It’s all handled at the block level now. Also, the HTML block got a modal-based makeover that makes editing CSS and JS inside the editor much less of a headache. No more horizontal scrolling in a tiny sidebar. Total win.
You can see the full breakdown of these changes in the official WordPress developer news. It’s worth a read before you start your next build.
What’s the move for 2026?
The lesson here is simple: stop over-engineering. WordPress is moving fast toward a more standardized, API-driven architecture. Whether it’s the removal of legacy Flash scripts or the new routing support in the @wordpress/boot package, the platform is shedding baggage. Stick to the core APIs. Your future self (and your clients) will thank you.
Look, this stuff gets complicated fast. If you’re tired of debugging someone else’s mess and just want your site to work, drop my team a line. We’ve probably seen it before.
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