Welcome back to the WordPress.com changelog! |
Some helpful editor updates headline today’s changelog: two brand-new blocks, a gallery that fills itself, and a much better way to leave notes on a draft. You can also now change your plan yourself, without contacting support. |
Two new blocks: Tabs and Playlist |
The Tabs block organizes content, like FAQs and feature comparisons, into tabbed sections. Each panel accepts blocks, and the tab buttons have their own color, typography, border, and spacing controls so they match your theme. |
The Playlist block showcases a list of audio tracks with artwork, track metadata, and a waveform. You can set the play order and toggle artwork, artist names, track numbers, and track length individually. If you publish podcast episodes or music, you can do it without pasting in an embed from somewhere else. |
Type /tabs or /playlist in the editor to use these blocks on your posts or pages. |
Galleries that build themselves |
The new Dynamic Gallery option in the Gallery block automatically shows every image attached to your post instead of making you hand-pick each one to create a gallery from scratch. |
Add a Gallery block in your post or page by typing /gallery, then click “Use attached images.” |
Leave more granular feedback in notes |
If anyone else touches your posts before they go out — a client, a business partner, a contractor, or the one friend who always catches your typos — you may be gathering feedback from a few different places. |
Notes keep all of it on the draft inside WordPress. A note now attaches to a specific phrase rather than the whole block, and you can @mention someone to pull them directly into the conversation. |
Nobody has to be in the editor at the same time. You leave a note, they answer when they get to it. |
Change your plan yourself, any time |
Moving to a lower-tier plan used to mean contacting support. Now there’s a “View plans” button on any active plan’s settings page that will take you to the plans page where eligible lower tiers show a “Downgrade” option alongside the usual upgrades. |
Once you’ve requested a downgrade, it’s scheduled for your next renewal date. This means that you keep everything you’ve already paid for until the term ends, and then you’re charged the lower price. |
We also shipped some reliability and polish updates across WordPress.com: |
- Buy a paid plugin from the marketplace, and you’ll land on your plugins page with it switched on instead of waiting on a progress bar that sometimes stalled.
- Your traffic numbers show up reliably on the hourly view instead of constantly loading.
- Video stats now show thumbnails so you can tell which video is which at a glance.
- Help is a click away while you’re picking a domain during signup. Click the “Need help?” button to search our docs or connect with one of our Happiness Engineers.
- We’re retiring Feature Clips, our experimental tool for turning a post into a short vertical video. If you were using it, our guide to working with video walks through the other ways to add video to a post.
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If you love building on WordPress, it’s time you were in a room full of other people who do too. |
WordCamp US lands in Phoenix on August 16–19, and this is your chance to connect with the WordPress community.
If you’ve never heard of WordCamp, here’s the TLDR: it’s a conference built entirely around WordPress, run by the same open-source community that builds the platform you’re using right now. |
And at the WordPress.com booth, we’re championing the theme: WordPress for the future. This year, we’re offering a sponsor code WordPress.com-friend20 for 20% off general admission.
Take a look at the full WordCamp US 2026 schedule to see what’s on the horizon this year. |
WordCamp is four days of practical sessions, workshops, and conversations with people who build, use, and improve WordPress |
The two main conference days run across four tracks: AI, Technical WordPress, Honing Your Skills, and Beginner WordPress. They cover everything from AI guardrails and agency pricing to modern dev workflows and your first WordCamp. Every track mixes talks with hands-on workshops, so you leave with something you can actually use, not just notes. |
But the sessions are only part of the value. WordCamp US also puts you in the same rooms, lunch lines, and hallway conversations as people working through the same publishing, business, and technical questions you are. |
7 Reasons To Attend WordCamp US 2026 |
WordCamp US gives you four days to solve problems, build skills, make useful connections, and see where WordPress is heading. |
Here are seven reasons to make the trip to Phoenix: |
1. Showcase Day: See how far WordPress can go |
On August 17, teams running some of the internet’s biggest, highest-traffic sites walk through exactly how they build features, manage publishing, and keep things up and running when millions of people show up at once. |
Think of it as the WordPress Showcase pulled off the page and put on a stage. Previously featuring platforms behind Disney, NASA, and major publishers, explained by the people who actually build and maintain it. |
Past Showcase Days have brought out teams from Wikimedia and CANCOM. Expect sessions on catching bugs before they ship with automated testing and running the Block Editor inside a fully custom app. This is the kind of detail you only get from people who’ve actually shipped it, not talked about shipping it. |
2. Get unstuck, on the spot, for free |
The Happiness Bar is a free, drop-in help desk where you sit down with a real WordPress expert and get help with whatever has you stuck. Bring your laptop, your WordPress.com site, and the problem. |
Code review, plugin questions, a site doing something weird, or the classic “I don’t even know where to start” – it all counts. There’s no ticket queue, appointment, or charge. |
If you’ve ever spent an hour searching forums for an answer that was two sentences long, this is the in-person version of skipping straight to those two sentences. |
3. Turn your WordPress experience into your next job opportunity |
Career Corner, inside the Sponsor Hall, is a low-key place to explore what comes next. Browse the job board, meet sponsors that are hiring, and talk directly with company representatives. |
There are no appointments and no formal pitch, just people open to a useful conversation. |
A separate hands-on workshop gives you half a day to build a complete site, whether it’s for your portfolio, business, ecommerce store, or personal brand. |
Bring the project you keep pushing to next week, then use the focused time, accountability, and support from experienced WordPress people to finally get it moving. |
4. Figure out what AI actually means for your site, beyond the hype |
AI runs through the heart of this year’s program, with practical sessions on content, search, development, automation, and the legal questions site owners need to understand. |
If you’ve felt behind on this topic, this is a chance to catch up with people working directly on these problems. |
Sessions cover guardrails for using AI tools responsibly, what it means to prepare your site for AI agents as a new category of visitor, and the legal and ethical questions that come up when you start handing AI tools to clients. |
5. Learn WordPress without feeling like the only beginner in the room |
You don’t need to arrive fluent in PHP or WordPress terminology. |
WordCamp US is designed to welcome first-time attendees, with guides, sessions, mentors, and spaces to help you find your footing. |
All conference sessions are recorded and posted to WordCamp US YouTube afterward, so you can prioritize live workshops and questions without losing every overlapping talk. |
6. Contribute to WordPress itself, no experience required |
Contributor Day on August 16 opens the event, and it’s open to anyone – you don’t need to have contributed before or know how to code. |
Join a team working on WordPress core, documentation, design, training, accessibility, or translation, and spend a day helping build the software instead of just using it. |
For a WordPress.com user, it’s also a chance to see how the open-source software underneath your site gets made – and help improve it. You can contribute in person or remotely through the Slack #contributor-day channel. |
Help teams covering everything from Core AI and accessibility to documentation, photos, marketing, support, and training. |
7. Make Phoenix worth the trip |
WordCamp US is a compact downtown trip: the airport is less than five miles away, the official hotel is a five-minute walk from the air-conditioned convention center, and the light rail from the airport costs less than $5. |
Why not spend an evening or extra day checking out these events: |
Keep the middle of the day for WordCamp, then use mornings and evenings for Roosevelt Row: local coffee, tacos, pizza, cocktails, and desert scenery you cannot get anywhere else. |
Don’t miss out on WordCamp US 2026 |
WordCamp US 2026 runs on August 16–19 at the Phoenix Convention Center. |
General admission is $100, while student tickets are just $25. Use sponsor code WordPress.com-friend20 for 20% off general admission.
Your ticket covers: |
- Two conference days with more than 50 talks and workshops
- Contributor Day
- Showcase Day
- Lunch and all-day coffee
- Sponsor Hall access
- Closing social
From the team at WordPress.com, we can’t wait to see you there in person, either at our booth or the many social events! |
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