In this month’s roundup, Ryan Welcher (Developer Advocate at Automattic) walks through all the key updates for WordPress developers — from Gutenberg enhancements to performance upgrades and exciting new tools.
🧩 Highlights from October 2025:
Gutenberg 21.6, 21.7, and 21.8: Packed with new features and fixes, all heading into WordPress 6.9.
Command Palette Expansion: Now available across the entire WordPress admin.
Experimental Terms Query Block: Query taxonomy terms like never before.
Content-Only Editing: Protects layout integrity for client sites.
Block Visibility Controls: Conditional display is finally here!
Global Styles for Form Controls: Style inputs, selects, and more directly in theme.json.
Collaborative Editing (Notes): The first step toward real-time editing in WordPress.
Major improvements to Data Views, Forms, and Block Bindings API.
WordPress Playground IDE: Run PHP in your browser — no setup required.
AI-powered plugin documentation testing with Kappa.do.
Performance Enhancements: Smarter caching, lazy loading, and term count optimizations.
⏱️ Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:44 Command Palette Expansion
01:10 Experimental Terms Query Block
01:24 Content-Only Editing
01:56 Block Visibility Controls
02:49 Global Styles for Form Controls
03:12 Collaborative Editing (Notes)
03:32 Data Views, Forms & Block Bindings API
04:45 Interactive API
05:54 Accordian Block Improvements
06:35 WordPress Playground IDE
07:50 AI-Powered Plugin Documentation (Kappa.do)
07:52 Performance Enhancements
09:21 Closing / Join the Developer Blog
📰 Read the full “What’s New for Developers” article:
📅 Stay tuned for next month’s update — November 2025!
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