DEV: Commit to the Bit

Welcome to DEV, your monthly WordPress deep dive.

Before you clock off and lie in a rectangle of sunlight, let’s see what’s been happening in WordPress.

Stick around to the end to see the hamster who’ll absolutely annihilate your fitness goals.

In today’s edition:

• How 1,100+ WordPressers got into the zone in Arizona.
• Responsive styling! Better collaboration! Less media-processing misery! WordPress 7.1 has arrived.
• WordPress starts asking the important questions: “Should we actually let AI do that?”

Hot Off The Presses: What’s New?

 
Sometimes the only valid debugging technique is stretching out on the floor in a patch of sunlight, am I right?

This pup knows what’s up. I’m jealous.

While this very good doggo works on its background-color, here’s what’s been happening in WordPress this month.

WordCamp US was Arizona-nother Level

More than 1,100 sunscreen-ed and well-hydrated folks braved the 111ºF (44ºC) Arizona heat and gathered in Phoenix to talk all things WordPress, and from all accounts the four-day event was a great success.

To honor the occasion, August 19th has been officially proclaimed “Phoenix WordPress Day”, according to the city’s Chief Innovation Officer, Michael Hammett.

So, what did you miss if you didn’t make it to Arizona?

• Contributor Day, with 425 participants and more shipping than a Tumblr fanfic.
• A fireside chat (with no actual fire, thankfully. I’m sweating just thinking about it) where the Big M and Robert Jacobi discuss how the web is changing, where open source stands today and how WordPress is evolving alongside AI.
• The chance to get your hands messy at Paint-a-Wapuu classes with local Phoenix artist Dina Murphy.
• Official screenings of Code for the People, a short documentary by Bao Nguyen, which you can watch here.

Oh, not to mention the childlike joy of collectively building a massive WordPress logo out of Lego bricks. (If that isn’t a metaphor for Open Source, I don’t know what is!)

Were you there? What was it like? We’d love to hear about your favorite part.

WordPress 7.1: Mary Lou

WordPress 7.1 “Mary Lou” has landed, named after jazz pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams.

And unlike my attempts at learning piano, there’s quite a lot here worth paying attention to:

• Responsive styling is now baked further into the Site Editor, so you can change how blocks look across different screen sizes without reaching straight for custom CSS.
• Block themes can also define their own mobile and tablet breakpoints in theme.json.
• Notes got a collaboration upgrade too. You can format them, @mention people, attach a note to a specific bit of text, and keep multiple conversations going on the same block. Basically, fewer “which paragraph did you mean?” messages in Slack.
• Media is getting lighter on your server. Image compression, resizing, and thumbnail generation can now happen in the browser, helping dodge the PHP memory limits and timeouts that tend to appear precisely when you’re uploading something enormous five minutes before launch.
• There are also two new blocks, Tabs and Playlist, plus interactive Button styles for hover, focus, and active states, custom icon registration, and an admin bar that now follows you across every editor.

These are all pretty small changes individually. But when you add them all up, 7.1 feels like another sizeable step toward doing more of the stuff we used to reach for CSS, plugins, or mild profanity to accomplish.

👉 Check out the official release announcement here.

P.S. WordPress 7.0.4 also landed with a security fix, so make sure to update!

The Big Question: How Do We Keep the AI in Check?

Consumes an alarming amount of water, remembers every stupid thing you’ve said, and is confidently wrong all the time.

But enough about my ex. Let’s talk about AI.

AI 1.3.0 was released on August 18th and the canonical plugin that powers AI features in WordPress now has even more controls and abilities, including content translation, slug generation and category and tag suggestions.

As AI agents become increasingly integrated into how we use WordPress, an important conversation has begun about designing systems to prevent as many HAL 9000 moments as possible.

Writing about Defensive Data Design on the Make WordPress Core blog, Matt asks, “How can we make the defaults as safe (and secure) as possible?” and suggests settings that make deleting things more difficult, and changes always visible and reversible.

The comments add some interesting ideas too, like:

• Adding a “last edit date” on all content, so it’s easier to see when something was updated.
• Flagging certain tasks as sensitive, ensuring they can only be completed by a human.
• A copy-to-clipboard option on error messages, so users can quickly look up the problem.

Where the human belongs in the loop isn’t a new debate, it’s been part of the conversation for a while. For example, WordPress has already designed its support assistant so that it recognizes the moments when it can’t help and offers to connect the user to a human instead.

The question of where AI should end and human oversight should begin is a complicated one, so you can bet this will be one of many discussions we’ll have about this in the coming years as AI and WordPress continue to integrate.

Mind Bloggling Facts & Stats

• Sometimes the little things really add up. Ella van Durpe made a list of 48 “papercuts” that annoy her about the Block Editor, from writing-flow improvements to drag & drop fails to stuck scrolling. If any of these papercuts are driving you up the wall, why not jump in to see if you can help? (Source)
• Matt Cromwell from Roots & Fruit analyzed 3,354 plugin reviews and found out monetization headaches (surprise paywalls, crippled free tiers, nagging upgrade pop-ups) made up 29% of one star reviews. Turns out people get annoyed when they think they’re downloading a free fix, only to find out the real limits after they’ve built on top of it. (Source)
• What’s the hardest thing about contributing to WordPress? 31% of WP Credits students say unclear instructions is what tripped them up in the beginning. (Source)

Blogs & Resources You Shouldn’t Miss

86 comments & counting on “What UX mistake do you notice even on polished websites?” Is your site guilty of any of these?

So your site is a masterpiece on desktop, but a hot mess on mobile? Here’s how to hide certain blocks based on device.

Adrian Sticea used to get nearly all his freelance WordPress leads via Upwork. In 2026 that number hit zero. What’s changed?

Before you write another 2,000 word blog post, maybe try rescuing one that used to rank. Here’s a guide to salvaging URL equity you already earned.

Jared Rethman makes the case for real-time technology and why WordPress becoming more like Google Docs is the future.

Nothing takes the shine off a juicy impressions graph quite like finding out your biggest fans are bots.

Jonathan Bossenger makes the case for websites you can actually, you know, own.

Coffee Break Distractions

Did you know the last time the entire human race was on earth was November 2nd, 2000? Right now, there’s 10 of us in space.

If you need someone who knows a song so well he can play it backwards, this guy won’t let you down.

What’s your WPM? ReadnType is a free “typing & speed-reading gym” – with a leaderboard so you can challenge your friends.

Centering a div stressing you out? Take a tranquil ride on a scenic tram driven by a cat.

I’ve seen some bad takes on the internet… but this one is just so wrong it actually hurts.

Was Frutiger Aero the Vaporwave of the early 2000s? (Remember when every website and OS looked like this?)

And finally…

I felt pretty good about my Strava stats, until Mollie the Hamster absolutely left me in the dust.

Love this mix of nerdery and nonsense? Share it with your favorite WordPress weirdo. 💗