A client came to me last month with a project that was honestly a total nightmare. They had this massive custom inventory system—about 60,000 SKUs tucked away in custom database tables—and their admin dashboard was basically unusable. The previous developer had tried to build a custom React application inside the WordPress admin to manage it all. It looked okay, but it was a silo. Every time a WordPress core update rolled out, the whole thing would just break. Total mess.
I’ll be honest with you. My first thought was to just scrap it and build a standalone headless app. I figured it was the only way to get the performance they needed without fighting the CMS. But that’s a maintenance burden most small teams can’t handle. They wanted to stay in the familiar WordPress environment. That’s when I started looking at the developer updates in WordPress 6.9, and it clicked. This release isn’t just a minor bump; it’s a fundamental shift in how we handle data and AI integration.
Building Custom Dashboards with DataViews
The real heavy lifter in this release is the expansion of DataViews and DataForm. If you’ve ever tried to build a custom table in the WordPress admin, you know how painful it is to get filtering and pagination right without it feeling like it was built in 2005. WordPress 6.9 brings infinite scroll and locked filters directly into the framework. I used this to replace that client’s broken React dashboard. Instead of hundreds of lines of custom state management, I’m now using core components that inherit the native UI.
The new Fields API is the kicker here. We went from three field types to thirteen. Dates, emails, passwords—it’s all there now with rule-based validation. This is exactly what I saw discussed in the latest developer breakdown from WordPress.com, and trust me, it saves hours of boilerplate code.
Standardizing AI with the Abilities API
Everyone is shoving AI into WordPress right now, but most of it is just glorified chat boxes. The Abilities API in 6.9 actually makes your site “intelligible” to AI agents using the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Instead of just generating text, an AI can now understand that your plugin has the “ability” to, say, generate a sales report or audit a specific post’s SEO. Here is how you might register a custom ability for an inventory audit tool:
function bbioon_register_inventory_audit_ability() {
if ( ! function_exists( 'register_block_ability' ) ) {
return;
}
register_block_ability( 'bbioon/inventory-manager', array(
'name' => 'audit_stock_levels',
'description' => __( 'Audits stock levels for specific categories.', 'bbioon' ),
'parameters' => array(
'category' => array(
'type' => 'string',
'required' => true,
),
),
) );
}
add_action( 'init', 'bbioon_register_inventory_audit_ability' );By defining these capabilities, you’re future-proofing your work. You aren’t just building a feature; you’re building a tool that an AI assistant can actually use. It’s a huge step toward what some are calling “Agentic Commerce.”
Wait, There’s More: Block Bindings
We finally have a simplified UI for switching data sources in the editor. I used to have to write custom blocks just to display a dynamic caption from a meta field. Now, with the updated Block Bindings API, you can register custom binding sources and the user can just pick them from a dropdown in the sidebar. It’s cleaner. It’s faster. And it doesn’t break when the user decides to change the layout.
Why This Release Actually Matters
The lesson here is simple: stop fighting the core. For years, we’ve been building custom workarounds because the WordPress admin was too rigid. With 6.9, the core is catching up to the needs of complex, modern applications. Whether it’s the Interactivity API getting faster client-side navigation or theme.json finally supporting form element styling, the platform is becoming a legitimate application framework.
Look, this stuff gets complicated fast. If you’re tired of debugging someone else’s mess and just want your site to work with these new standards, drop my team a line. We’ve probably seen it before.
So, are you planning to migrate your custom admin tables to DataViews, or are you sticking with your custom React builds for now? I’d love to hear which way you’re leaning.
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