Gutenberg Times: Abilities API, Block Accessibility Check, Gutenberg Framework, AI creating Blocks and themes—Weekend Edition 345

Hi the­re,

A release par­ty is coming up on Tues­day, Octo­ber 21, at 15:00 UTC for Word­Press 6.9 Beta 1. It’s the first time for this release squad. Good luck!

Will you start test­ing Word­Press 6.9 next week? You can use the Beta Tes­ter plug­in by Andy Fra­gen and install it on your test site. I am using Word­Press Stu­dio on my com­pu­ter for sys­te­ma­tic test­ing and prep work for the Source of Truth post to come out in a few weeks.

The Word­Press Test team alre­a­dy published a few pre-beta calls for test­ing, you can work through, and they are pre­pa­ring a com­pre­hen­si­ve post for all of Word­Press 6.9 test­ing for next week.

• Help test chan­ges to tem­p­la­te manage­ment 
• Call for Test­ing: Abili­ty to Hide Blocks 
• Call for Test­ing: Accor­di­on Block 

Word­Press 6.9 is a big focus of my work now. As always, I’ll keep you updated.

Have a fan­ta­stic weekend!

Yours,
Bir­git

PS: On Mon­day, Octo­ber 20^th, I will be on the 353^rd epi­so­de of This week in Word­Press show tog­e­ther with Michel­le Fre­chet­te, Tim Nash, and the bril­li­ant host Nathan Wrig­ley. You can join us live! 

PPS: This week, I cele­bra­ted the five-year anni­ver­sa­ry of Guten­berg Nightly. 

Developing Gutenberg and WordPress

Yes­ter­day, Matt Mull­en­weg tal­ked brief­ly at Word­Camp Cana­da, gave a demo, and then ans­we­red ques­ti­ons from the the audi­ence. The wizards behind the sce­nes alre­a­dy pos­ted the recor­ding of the ses­si­on to You­Tube. Word­Camp Cana­da 2025—Ma.tt Mull­en­weg “Town Hall/AMA”. If you rather read about the talk on Mullenweg’s blog, Word­Camp Cana­da Talk. He also added the Q & A tran­script as well.

The latest epi­so­de is Guten­berg Chan­ge­log #122 – Guten­berg 21.8 and Word­Press 6.9 with Beth Soder­berg of Bethink Stu­dio

If you are lis­tening via Spo­ti­fy, plea­se lea­ve a com­ment. If you lis­ten via other pod­cast apps, plea­se lea­ve a review. It’ll help with the distribution.

Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owner

In his video AI Builds Word­Press Blocks , Jamie Mars­land intro­du­ced Auto­mat­tic Telex and show­ed off about ten blocks he and other peo­p­le built with it, like ani­ma­ted text, a count­down coun­ter, and mer­maid dia­gram and more. Check it out; it’s not only ama­zing, it bor­ders on voo­doo or magic.

Tam­mie Lis­ter con­ti­nues her Octo­ber Chall­enge on the Blocktober.fun site. The latest blocks are Flip Card, Emo­ji Voting, High­ligh­ter, Sto­ry Gene­ra­tor, Water­mark and Make the logo big­ger. You not only can try them all out on Telex and remix them with your own ide­as. Lis­ter also shares here ela­bo­ra­te prompts you can stu­dy and learn how to skill up your AI work.

Troy Chap­lin released Block Acces­si­bi­li­ty Check v2.2! It intro­du­ces Hea­ding struc­tu­re vali­da­ti­on, alt-text pat­tern detec­tion and pro­vi­des an upgraded URL checks with real TLD vali­da­ti­on + dev envi­ron­ment support”Along with the new release comes a new dedi­ca­ted web­site fea­turing impro­ved docs, fea­ture over­views, and deve­lo­per API gui­de”. Chap­lin wro­te. The site is focu­sed to assist con­tent crea­tors and deve­lo­pers alike.

Anne Katz­eff shared how she crea­ted over­lap­ping Colum­ns with the Media & Text Block and litt­le Addi­tio­nal CSS. The step-by-step ins­truc­tions show you how you can build some dyna­mic lay­outs with the core block features.

Katz­eff also pos­ted a video of her pro­cess on You­Tube. Over­lap­ping Colum­ns With the Media & Text Block.

Micha­el Manu­el, Word­Press VIP, pos­ted a four-part series of short video: Behind the Build: How Chris­tia­ni­ty Today Moder­ni­zed its Publi­shing Expe­ri­ence and how the team of Web­Dev­Stu­di­os hel­ped trans­form edi­to­ri­al work­flows, infra­struc­tu­re, and con­tent ope­ra­ti­ons for one of America’s most trus­ted media brands.

• Part 1: Edi­to­ri­al empower­ment & work­flow efficiency
• Part 2: Per­for­mance & plat­form modernization
• Part 3: Home­page & design sys­tem overhaul
• Part 4: Con­tent migra­ti­on & CMS modernization

Brad Salo­mons, 8r4d Con­sul­ting, Ltd, crea­ted the Pan­o­r­amic Slider Block to scratch an itch. With this block you can post your Pano pho­tos from your pho­ne came­ra as it pro­vi­des hori­zon­tal sli­ding controls.

Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks

On the Word­Press Deve­lo­per Blog, Nick Die­go published a Snip­pet on How to add cus­tom blocks to navi­ga­ti­on menus. It shows how to use the blocks.registerBlockType fil­ter to extend the navi­ga­ti­on block’s allowedBlocks array.

Elliott Rich­mond demons­tra­ted how to crea­te a block the­me using Clau­de Code on You­Tube. He built a the­me from scratch with Clau­de Code, pro­vi­ding clear struc­tu­re and Mark­down tips for the AI tool. You’ll dis­co­ver how to set up a CLAUDE.md file for AI-assis­ted the­me deve­lo­p­ment and how Clau­de works with the Word­Press Block The­me structure.

Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor

Muham­mad Muh­sin seni­or engi­neer at Fue­led gave a talk on Buil­ding a Web App with the Guten­berg Frame­work at Word­Sesh ear­lier this year. What is Guten­berg as a Frame­work? It’s a way to use the block edi­tor in a Java­Script appli­ca­ti­on out­side of Word­Press. Muh­sin “built CareerVision.io using Guten­berg out­side WordPress—a stan­da­lo­ne React frame­work for block-based apps”. You can watch the pre­sen­ta­ti­on on You­Tube now.

Ryan Wel­cher was the Pro Word­Press Deve­lo­per Wat­ches AI Build a Cus­tom Block… and is Blown Away! He put Automattic’s Telex to the test, to build a live audio visua­li­zer block inspi­red by the clas­sic iTu­nes music visua­li­zer. The AI wri­tes the React code, hand­les audio input, and even makes the block respond to live micro­pho­ne sound, all in about 15 minu­tes. It’s an impres­si­ve look at how Telex could res­ha­pe the way deve­lo­pers build cus­tom blocks for WordPress.

Juan­Ma Gar­ri­do, deve­lo­per advo­ca­te at Auto­mat­tic, live­strea­med his ongo­ing dis­co­very of the Abili­ties API. He explo­red how to regis­ter cus­tom abili­ties, expo­se them to AI models, and under­stand how this fits into Word­Press’ broa­der AI archi­tec­tu­re along­side the MCP Adap­ter and PHP AI API. The recor­ding is now available on YouTube.

Ques­ti­ons? Sug­ges­ti­ons? Ide­as?
Don’t hesi­ta­te to send them via email or
send me a mes­sa­ge on Word­Press Slack or Twit­ter @bph.

For ques­ti­ons to be ans­we­red on the Guten­berg Chan­ge­log,
send them to changelog@gutenbergtimes.com