Gutenberg 22.3 is the first clear look at the WordPress 7.0 developer features: combined grid controls, a dedicated Fonts screen, and PHP-only block registration. Here is what each one changes on a production site.
The January 2026 Dev Chat confirmed WordPress 7.0 will drop PHP 7.2 and 7.3. Here is what that frees up in core, where the filter extension argument stands, and how to get on the release squad.
WordPress Playground spent 2025 getting 42% faster and reaching 99% compatibility with the top 1,000 plugins. Here is what changed in Blueprints and database support, and why it now works for real testing.
WooCommerce 10.5 fixes two decoding bugs that broke Arabic, Persian and Chinese attribute names and values on variation writes. What changed, how to test it with cURL, and which old workarounds to pull out.
WooCommerce 10.5 changes which category ends up in a product URL: the deepest one in the hierarchy now wins instead of the lowest term ID. Here is what that does to existing URLs and how to put the old sorting back.
WordPress 7.0 drops PHP 7.2 and 7.3 support. What the new floor lets core use, where the filter extension debate stands, and how to check for the extension before it throws a fatal error.
The January 2026 core performance chat: speculative loading may default to moderate eagerness on cached sites, the admin view transitions PR is stuck on E2E failures, and modern image formats still have rough spots.
WooCommerce 10.5 swaps full object serialization for stable signatures from a new CallbackUtil class, taking an 800-variation price lookup from about 500ms to 40ms. Dynamic pricing plugins now have to add their own factors to the cache hash.
WordPress 7.0 drops PHP 7.2 and 7.3 in April 2026 and makes 7.4 the minimum. What that means for older sites, why the project is doing it, and why 8.x is the version you actually want.
The latest dev chat turned into an argument over whether WordPress Core should require PHP’s filter extension. PHPMailer uses it today. Here is what that costs you on hosts that compiled PHP without it.