WordPress 6.9 is coming. Should you worry?
WordPress 6.9 RC2 is out. Here is what I test before updating client sites, the heading CSS change developers should watch, and why I wait for the .1 release.
Category: Development
WordPress 6.9 is fast, but is your theme?
A client’s PageSpeed score was stuck in the low 80s. WordPress 6.9 finally gives developers real control over script loading, but only if the theme uses it. Here is what changed and why the theme matters.
How to write WordPress AI prompts that don’t suck
A client’s AI-built WordPress site looked generic because his prompts were vague. The fix is to treat the AI like a junior developer and write a detailed brief, not a wish. Here is what that looks like.
How WordPress 6.9 fixes email reliability
A client’s WooCommerce order emails kept landing in spam, even with SMTP set up. WordPress 6.9 fixes the deeper causes: the sender address mismatch, garbled encoding, and a 17-year-old multipart bug.
The new WordPress Abilities API, explained
A client wanted the same URL list on an admin page, a homepage block, and an external API. The old way meant duplicating logic. The WordPress Abilities API lets you define the feature once and reuse it everywhere.
Why great code isn’t enough to sell your plugin
A developer with a clean WooCommerce plugin sold almost nothing in six months. The problem wasn’t his checkout or his code. Nobody knew who he was, because he kept writing for other developers instead of the people with the problem.
Why the WordPress singleton pattern can burn you
A reporting plugin built entirely on the Singleton pattern served stale inventory data across a client’s site. Here’s why singletons hide global state in WordPress, and the static init() method that keeps your classes testable.
WordPress 6.9: what matters and what’s just noise
A rundown of what’s worth caring about in WordPress 6.9: the new Block Processor for faster block parsing, experimental PHP-only blocks, a theme.json fix for Gallery aspect ratios, and why it pays to wait for 6.9.1.
Adding Schema.org microdata to Accordion block FAQs
A client needed FAQ rich snippets from the native WordPress Accordion block, without switching to a plugin’s custom block. This shows how to inject Schema.org FAQPage microdata server-side with a render_block filter and WP_HTML_Tag_Processor.
I built a custom WordPress block with AI in five minutes
A client wanted an auto-updating copyright block they could edit in the Site Editor. Instead of a full React build, I tried Automattic’s Telex and had an installable plugin in about five minutes. Here’s how it went and where the tool fits.