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Gutenberg Times: The WordPress 7.2 release squad, WordCamp World, Playground meets WebMCP, and more—Weekend Edition 376

Howdy, If you’re a regular reader, you might be wondering why I’m in your inbox instead of Birgit. She’s off on a well-earned three-month sabbatical and handed over editorial duties to me while she’s away. The one change: for the next few months, the Weekend Edition will arrive every two weeks or so instead of every week. And what a week in the WordPress world to begin! I’d been writing this intro in my head over and over since Birgit’s handoff. Needless to say, that version got thrown out the window over the past few days. Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg was placed on a paid leave of absence by the company’s board, and two days later was back in control. As an Automattic employee, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t feeling a range of emotions about the shifts in the company. I cannot talk about internal company conversations, but I can’t exactly avoid the biggest news in the WordPress world, either. So, for my first Weekend Edition, I want to offer my support to Matt, my fellow Automatticians, and the people in the WordPress community. I’m just as passionate about the WordPress project today as I’ve ever been. Neither the core philosophy of democratizing publishing nor our principles around free software have changed. The only thing we can do is push forward and keep building a tool that so many people’s lives and businesses rely on. With that, let’s get down to the latest news. WordPress 7.1.1 is on track for Thursday, September 17. It’s a bug-fix release, so if you maintain anything built on 7.1’s newer features, grab the release candidate and give it a spin before then. More on that below. On the community side, WordPress News shared the story of students in Bangladesh who built 108 websites in two weeks, along with free workshops from Uganda to Costa Rica. And if you need a break this weekend, WordCamp World is an unofficial pixel-art adventure set at a fictional flagship WordCamp, complete with a Contributor Day and a closing ceremony. The game was released by The WP World, an independent community project run by Marcus Burnette. Jonathan Bossenger took it for a spin in his latest stream. Have fun this weekend and enjoy life! Your friendly WordPress developer advocate, Justin Tadlock Table of Contents Developing Gutenberg and WordPress Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor. What’s new in Playground? AI in WordPress Developing Gutenberg and WordPress Finding the inserter on some block selections has been a small, constant annoyance, and Gutenberg 23.9 finally fixes that. The what’s new in Gutenberg 23.9 post leads with inserting blocks straight from the block toolbar. Global Styles also gets dot indicators for blocks with custom style overrides, plus a filter to show only those blocks. Theme authors get separate vertical and horizontal gap control for the Group block, theme.json styling for <label> elements, Global Styles controls for citations, inputs, and selects, and custom Duotone colors. WordPress 7.1.1 RC1 is out, with the final release scheduled for Thursday, September 17. It’s a bug-fix-only maintenance release covering 16 Core tickets and 22 Gutenberg pull requests, all for issues that surfaced during the 7.1 cycle or were deferred at the end of it. Adam Silverstein, Adrian Duffell, and Andra Ganescu are co-leading, and the 7.1.1 release schedule has the details. If you maintain anything that leans on responsive styles, the Icon Registration API, or the iframed editor, test the RC now. On the Developer Blog, I rounded up what’s new for developers (September 2026). The consistent theme this month is things that already existed have become more declarable, documented, or schema-valid. You’ll find blocks declaring their own keyboard shortcuts through variations and transforms, theme.json schema fixes so valid responsive styles stop showing up as errors, and schema support for PHP-only blocks. Contributors, check your local setup. As of September 8, trunk in both wordpress-develop and gutenberg requires Node.js 24 and npm 11. Manzoor Wani shared the specifics: the minimums are Node.js 24.18.0 and npm 11.16.0, and the required CI checks now run on Node.js 24. If you have a pull request based on an older trunk, rebase it to pick up those checks. Older branches keep their previous requirements. On the road to WordPress 7.2 The 7.2 cycle is officially underway. Jeffrey Paul announced the WordPress 7.2 release squad, with Matt Mullenweg as release lead, David Baumwald on release coordination, and George Mamadashvili and Peter Wilson as tech leads. Theme folks will want to note the default theme leads: Henrique Iamarino on design, and Maggie Cabrera and Carolina Nymark on development. Beta 1 is scheduled for October 20–22, with the final release set for December 8–10. Jb Audras also posted the bug scrub schedule for 7.2 if you want to pitch in. Notes has grown a lot since WordPress 6.9, picking up @mentions, rich text, and the ability to resolve and respond along the way. Anne McCarthy explains where it stands: “Notes are hard to discover, cumbersome to use, and tricky to track where and when they are left.” Her plan for elevating and refining the WordPress Notes feature aims to fix that by 7.2 Beta 1. It calls for a more visible spot in the block toolbar, a suggestion mode, Notes open alongside the Settings sidebar, and emoji reactions. If your clients or editorial team use Notes, now’s a good time to weigh in. Icon fonts have had a good run but are feeling very dated in 2026. Joen Asmussen makes the case for replacing Dashicons in the admin bar and menu with SVG icons rendered through wp_get_icon(), which was introduced in WordPress 7.1. Screen readers handle icon fonts inconsistently, and they don’t render properly in Windows High Contrast Mode. SVGs with aria-label and currentColor behave predictably. A couple of design questions are still open, including whether the Posts icon becomes a

How to Create a WordPress Contact Form Without a Form Plugin

Skip the single-purpose form plugin. Learn how to build a quote-request form with email routing, spam protection, and autoresponders using Otter Blocks. The post How to Create a WordPress Contact Form Without a Form Plugin appeared first on Themeisle Blog.

Matt: Major Life Announcement

I know everyone has been waiting to hear what’s been going on behind the scenes, so I’m just going to lay it out: I’ve made an offer to buy Ryan Phelan and Stewart Brand’s houseboat Mirene. People say “the two happiest days of a boaters life is when you buy the boat and sell the boat” but I’m not always the best at following advice, so I’m going all-in on this cute little tuggy. Anybody who’s founded a company and had to find good stewards knows that no one will love a thing quite like the original owner, but sometimes you can find the perfect person to carry the torch. I was happy to take on and upgrade John Mayer’s EarthRoamer for about five years. Then I passed it on to Dustin Yellin, trading for some of his art. But without a high-maintenance means of conveyance, I’ve felt a hole in my heart and really boxed in and constrained. So from land, to the sea! SF Standard says “The kitchen table may be where Otis Redding wrote “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay.” I hope do a lot of blogging there. Real artists ship, right? Longevity is all about maintenance, and I’m looking forward to all the lessons Mirene and the ocean will teach as we navigate the weather of the coming years. If the offer is accepted, I have a lot to learn from Ryan and Stewart about what’s next.