From WordPress 7.0 Beta 5 and Gutenberg 22.7 to WooCommerce 10.6, the WPackagist acquisition controversy, and a long-overdue conversation about self-censorship in the WordPress ecosystem.
Hello WordPressers!
Welcome to this week’s WP More roundup — WP More newsletter issue 39, where you get curated news about WordPress and the WordPress community all in one place.
It’s been a busy couple of weeks in WordPress land. A major release is closing in, the block editor keeps getting smarter, WooCommerce stores are getting faster, and underneath all the product news, a conversation is brewing about who gets to speak up in this community and what happens when they do.
Here’s what you need to know.
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WP More In this Issue:
- WordPress 7.0 Is Getting Close, Here’s What’s New in Beta 5
- Gutenberg 22.7: Real-Time Collaboration, AI Connectors, and More
- WooCommerce 10.6 is here: Smarter Product Blocks, Cleaner Cart, Faster Everything
- WP Engine Acquires WPackagist and Gets Called a “Parasite” for It
- The Silence in WordPress, One Developer Finally Breaks It
WordPress 7.0 Is Getting Close, Here’s What’s New in Beta 5
WordPress 7.0 is on track for an April 9, 2026 release, and Beta 5 is now available for testing. This round brings over 101 updates and bug fixes since Beta 3 and one genuinely useful new feature.
Logged-in editors will now see a Command Palette shortcut in the admin bar (look for the ⌘K or Ctrl+K symbol). Click it and you get instant access to navigation, customization tools, and more without hunting through menus. It’s a small change that should noticeably speed up day-to-day editing.
The WordPress team is asking for help testing before the final release. You can jump in using the WordPress Beta Tester plugin, a direct download, WP-CLI, or even right in your browser via WordPress Playground, no setup needed.
- The final release date is April 9, 2026.
- Beta 5 includes 101+ fixes since Beta 3.
- The new Command Palette shortcut (⌘K / Ctrl+K) is available to logged-in editors from anywhere on the site.
Read the full blog on Official WordPress.org blog here.
The block editor powering 7.0 also got its own major update — and there’s a lot to unpack there too.
Gutenberg 22.7: Real-Time Collaboration, AI Connectors, and More
Gutenberg 22.7 dropped on March 11 with a handful of changes that matter for everyday users and developers alike.
The headline feature: Real-Time Collaboration is now enabled by default. Multiple people can now edit the same post simultaneously without any extra setup. There’s also a new Connectors screen under Settings that lets you manage external integrations, starting with an OpenAI connector demo, with hooks for plugins to add their own.
On the design side, the Grid block Visualizer now updates live as you adjust columns, making layout work much more intuitive. The Playlist block gains a waveform visualizer so your audio content has a visual presence. And style variation transforms now show a preview before you commit, a small but welcome addition for anyone who switches themes or styles.
For developers, there’s phpMyAdmin support in wp-env, custom CSS selector support in block.json, and a new experimental Content Guidelines API for managing site-wide content rules.
- Real-Time Collaboration is now on by default, no plugin or config needed.
- A new Connectors screen lays the groundwork for AI and third-party integrations.
- Style variation previews and a live Grid Visualizer make visual editing smoother.
Read the full blog on Official Make WordPress blog here.
Speaking of smoother experiences, WooCommerce 10.6 has some welcome improvements for store owners too.
WooCommerce 10.6 is here: Smarter Product Blocks, Cleaner Cart, Faster Everything
Released March 10, 2026, WooCommerce 10.6 is a solid quality-of-life update with 299 commits from 80 contributors. Note that this release includes a database update.
Product Collections now start with a proper picker; choose your products, brand, tag, or category right at the beginning instead of hunting for settings after the block is placed. It’s a workflow fix that saves real time.
The Cart and Checkout Blocks got visual polish: the remove button now uses a trash icon, price savings badges are repositioned alongside individual item prices, and spacing throughout is tighter and cleaner.
Under the hood, 10.6 is notably faster. The Recent Reviews widget now loads asynchronously (fixing admin slowdowns), SQL queries are reduced across product, cart, and admin pages, and smarter caching cuts down redundant database calls.
There’s also a new filter for tax-inclusive shipping pricing; important for EU merchants who need to display fixed shipping costs regardless of VAT rates.
- Product Collection blocks now launch with a picker, making setup much more intuitive.
- Cart and Checkout Blocks have improved visuals and layout.
- Multiple SQL optimizations improve performance across the admin and storefront.
Read the full blog on Official WooCOmmerce Developer blog here.
While those product updates are encouraging, not everyone in the WordPress ecosystem is feeling great right now and that brings us to some harder news.
WP Engine Acquires WPackagist and Gets Called a “Parasite” for It
On March 12, WP Engine announced it had acquired WPackagist, a free service that lets developers install and manage WordPress plugins and themes via Composer. It’s been maintained since 2013 by UK digital cooperative Outlandish, and it handles millions of requests weekly. WP Engine said the service will remain free.
Much of the community welcomed the news. Several developers praised WP Engine for stepping up to maintain critical infrastructure that Outlandish had kept running largely on goodwill.
The official WordPress X account, widely understood to be controlled by co-founder Matt Mullenweg, did not. It called WP Engine “a parasite” and “cancer,” echoing language Mullenweg used publicly in September 2024 that kicked off an ongoing legal dispute between the two companies. A jury trial is currently scheduled for June 2027.
Yoast founder Joost de Valk acknowledged WP Engine’s contribution but raised a pointed concern: what happens to WPackagist if WP Engine loses its court case? He also noted that WPackagist only exists because WordPress.org never built a proper Composer registry and now a private company, currently involved in litigation, owns a critical piece of developer infrastructure.
- WPackagist will continue to operate as a free service under WP Engine.
- Community reaction was largely positive; the official WordPress account was not.
- The acquisition highlights an ongoing gap: the WordPress project has no community-owned Composer registry.
Read the full report on The Repository here.
Other reports from The Repository you might like to read:
- WordPress Launches Playground-Powered Personal Workspace, but Reception Is Mixed
- WordPress Ships Two Releases in One Day as 6.9.2 Security Update Triggers Blank Screen Bug
- WordPress 6.9.4 Arrives as Security Team Discovers Incomplete Fixes From Tuesday’s Releases
- From Experimental Tool to AI Infrastructure: Adam Zieliński’s Vision for WordPress Playground in 2026
- AI Experiments Plugin Gets Two Updates in a Week, With WordPress 7.0 Now the Focus
Don’t forget to subscribe & support them, they do some amazing hard-hitting WordPress journalism.
That tension between official leadership and the broader community points to something a long-time WordPress developer has been sitting with and finally decided to say out loud.
The Silence in WordPress, One Developer Finally Breaks It
Coen Jacobs has been part of the WordPress ecosystem for nearly twenty years. He was one of the first developers on the WooCommerce team, has contributed to core, and has spoken at WordCamps. And for a long time, he kept his opinions to himself, even when he had plenty to say.
In a recent post, Jacobs writes honestly about the culture of self-censorship that has developed in the WordPress ecosystem. The worry isn’t just fear of consequences, he argues, it’s something quieter: the belief that your voice doesn’t matter enough to justify the discomfort of using it.
He points to a concrete example. When several community members publicly called for governance reform, proposing a foundation with a diverse board and shared ownership of community assets, their WordPress.org accounts were deactivated within hours. Not for forking the project or causing disruption. For suggesting things should work differently.
That kind of response, Jacobs argues, shapes who speaks and who stays quiet. And when the only voices that get heard are the ones with the least to lose, the community loses one of its most important feedback mechanisms.
He’s not calling for a fight. He’s making a quiet case that the ecosystem gets better when more people show up to it, honestly.
- A culture of self-censorship exists in WordPress, driven partly by real risks.
- Developers who proposed governance reform had their WordPress.org accounts deactivated.
- Jacobs argues that more voices, including uncertain, unpopular ones, make the ecosystem healthier.
Read the full blog on coenjacobs.com blog here.
WordPress Must Read
→ We’re Building Google Docs Inside WordPress While the AI Opportunity Slips Away (therepository.email)
→ How CloudFest Is Becoming the Most Important WordPress Business Event Nobody’s Talking About (therepository.email)
→ A year of reinvention as we turn 17 (rtcamp.com)
→ AI optimization is replaying early SEO, just faster (joost.blog)
→ Gone (Almost) Phishin’ (ma.tt)
→ I shipped a WordPress theme I couldn’t build a year ago (derekhanson.blog)
→ What it costs to run Drupal’s infrastructure (dri.es)
On other WordPress News
→ What’s new for developers? (March 2026) (developer.wordpress.org)
→ WordPress 7 AI Revealed | Here’s What Actually Works (youtube.com)
→ WordPress Studio: New Debugging Tools for Local Development (wordpress.com)
→ Join us for WooCommerce “Building Ecommerce Community” Live Event (developer.woocommerce.com/)
→ WordPress 7.0 Release on Contributor Day (asia.wordcamp.org)
→ WordCamp Canada 2026 Heads West to Vancouver (canada.wordcamp.org)
→ How WordPress Playground cut PHP.wasm binary sizes by 122 MB (make.wordpress.org)
→ March 2026 stats for the WordPress Photo Directory (make.wordpress.org)
→ Monthly Education Buzz Report – February 2026 (make.wordpress.org)
→ WordPress debuts a private workspace that runs in your browser via a new service, my.WordPress.net (techcrunch.com)
→ WordPress VIP Launches Advanced Professional WordPress Developer Certification (therepository.email)
→ How to Generate a WordPress Theme with Telex (wordpress.com)
From WordPress Community
→ International Women’s Day 2026: The Women of WebDevStudios (webdevstudios.com)
→ Did AI just kill WordPress? Let’s chat about it. (youtube.com)
→ WordPress Community Raises ₹3,50,000 to Honor Zeel Thakkar With Memorial Scholarship (therepository.email/)
Conclusion
That’s your WP More for this issue, new features to look forward to, tools to test, and some honest questions about where WordPress is headed. If something here sparked a thought, hit reply and tell us. And if you know someone who’d find this useful, we’d love it if you passed it along. See you next time.
Nishat, WP More
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