Hi, the spring is coming to Munich this weekend, or that’s what the forecast tells us. With temperatures around 18 °C / 64° F, I will spend a few hours outside on long walks in the Englisch Garden and possible get my bicycle working again. I am looking forward to getting away from the screens all together and having in-person conversations with my cousin and his wife. They are accomplished musicians and different kind of nerds.
What kind of activities are in your future and are they also determined by the weather like mine? Hit reply and let me know.
Yours, 
Birgit
PS: I just started my travel preparation for WordCamp Europe. Want to meet me? bit.ly/WCEUMeetBirgit
Developing Gutenberg and WordPress
WordPress 6.8 Beta 3 was released on March 18, 2025, and it is ready for testing. If you need inspiration and instruction on how and what to test, the test team’s post is for you. Help Test WordPress 6.8.
Joe Dolson published the dev note on Changes to the .screen-reader-text class in WordPress 6.8 The .screen-reader-text class replaces the deprecated clip property with clip-path: inset(50%) for modern browser compatibility and accessibility improvements. Focus styles remain unchanged to ensure visibility during keyboard navigation. Developers should update themes and plugins using .screen-reader-text to align with these changes for future-proofing.
A group of contributors collaborated on the Source of Truth (WordPress 6.8). Learn everything about enhanced data views, query loops, and block interactions. Also about the more cohesive design experience through the Zoom Out editing approach, expanded style controls, and improved typography options. WordPress 6.8 is scheduled to be released on April 15, 2025
George Mamadashvili released Gutenberg 20.5 and the changelog is available on GitHub. Among the updates you’ll find
- the ability to create a new page from the button block added to a site navigation, (69368)
- the pages list in the site editor can now display hierarchical relationship similar to the current pages list page, (69550)
- developers can now control the modal size called via DataViews action functions (69302)
Troy Chaplin published What’s new for developers? (March 2025) on the WordPress Developer blog. He covers Gutenberg 20.3 and 20.4 as well as updates around the WordPress 6.8 release cycle.
As one of the first to cover the upcoming major release, Nithin Sreeraj at WP-Content posted WordPress 6.8 Expected Features and Changes.
Latest episode: Gutenberg Changelog 115 – Gutenberg Releases 20.2, 20.3, 20.4, WordPress 6.8 and WordCamp Asia with special guest Jessica Lyschik.
Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners
Bhargav (Bunty) Bhandari takes building in public quite literally. This time he created a Poll block for WordPress. It allows you to create interactive polls directly within the WordPress Block Editor, with design tools, voting options and results in real time. The code is available on GitHub until he submits it to the WordPress repository.
Jamie Marsland runs an always friendly and welcoming WordPress Gutenberg Facebook group! The description read: “A community for Gutenberg users to learn, share, and explore tips on building WordPress websites using the Blocks Editor.” It’s a private group, too. Marsland wrote: “Whether you need help with WordPress editing or want to share your knowledge, we’d love to have you.”
Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks
Some people like to learn via videos; other people prefer books.
Koji Kuno, a web developer from Japan and contributor to WordPress, published a book called Creating a Website with Twenty-Twenty-Five in late 2024. This book is designed for beginners who want to learn how to create websites using WordPress 6.7 and its newest theme, Twenty-Twenty-Five.
The book starts by explaining the basics of WordPress, including how its block themes, block editor, and site editor work. Once readers understand these concepts, Kuno dives deeper into the Twenty-Twenty-Five theme. He provides a detailed overview of the theme’s files, layout structures, style options for blocks and fonts, and how templates and patterns connect to each other.
Kuno also includes step-by-step guides for building two types of websites: a blog site and a coffee shop site. He uses clear explanations and helpful graphics to make everything easy to follow, even for beginners. While most of the instructions focus on using WordPress’s site editor, Kuno also touches on the underlying code for certain features, such as supporting post formats.
Overall, the book strikes a good balance between practical tutorials and technical insights. It’s an excellent resource for anyone looking to learn website design with WordPress in an approachable way.
Screenshot of Patterns and how they fit into the template structure of Twenty-Twenty-Five. (Page 44)
Elliot Richmond experimented with Cursor AI to build a Block Theme. You can follow along on YouTube and see he is using Cursor AI for refactoring and code generation, about the challenges and results of AI-generated block themes, and some lesson learned turned into best practices .
In his post Additional Block Styles for Child Themes, Silvan Hagen shares how you can block styles by copying the relevant CSS file from the parent theme to the child theme and making adjustments. Hagen also provides a code snippet to append custom block styles from the child theme without overwriting the parent styles, by adding a function to the child theme’s functions.php file that enqueues the custom styles.
“Keeping up with Gutenberg – Index 2025”
A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test, and Meta team from Jan. 2024 on. Updated by yours truly. The previous years are also available: 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024
Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor
In his post, Local WordPress Development Workflows Using Studio , Nick Diego walks you through two development workflows using Studio by WordPress.com. He covers using Git Deployments to WordPress.com for your newly developed plugin or theme. In the second part of the article you’ll learn how to structure a complete website build, share a preview with clients and colleagues, and sync to a live site on WordPress.com.
Muhammad Muhsin, developer at Awesome Motive, used the WordPress Interactivity API to build a simple Stopwatch block. He is also working on a tutorial to go along with it. Meanwhile, you can study his code on GitHub next to the documentation of the Interactivity API.
In this week’s live stream, How to build incredible WordPress Blocks with Cursor AI, Ryan Welcher and Nick Diego explored how AI can help you create great WordPress blocks. They shared useful tips and cool AI tools to improve your block-building skills and make things easier. Don’t miss this chance to discover new possibilities for your WordPress site!
The @wordpress/data package introduces a data layer to the WordPress Block Editor, enabling efficient state management and interaction with the editor’s ecosystem.
In two of his live streams, JuanMa Garrido embarked into the depth of the data package and discuss how to work with the data package. In Data in the Block Editor, part one, he explores the various stores, how to retrieve and update store data and dispatch actions. In Data In the Block Editor, part two, Garrido continues to work through the block editor documentation and the date layer course on learn.WordPress.org
In his live stream, Ryan Welcher walked his viewers through the work necessary to add tests to his Advanced Query Loop plugin so developers who want to extend on the plugin can test custom hooks.
On his video channel, Jon Bossenger streams on his adventure using AI for coding. You find out with him what works and what doesn’t. In his latest video Let’s Vibe, he wanted to find out what Vibe Coding is all about and if it actually can produce functional software.
Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg’s master branch?
Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review.
Now also available via WordPress Playground. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? Email me with your experience
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
Featured Image: Garage door and wall with rectangles of various colors painted on them for decoration Photo by Marcus Burnette found on WordPress.org/photos
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