July 31 – August 13, 2026 |
Welcome back to the WordPress.com changelog. There are two bigger updates worth paying attention to this round, as well as a run of fixes: |
You know your brand, now your site does too |
Getting AI to write or design in your brand’s voice usually means describing that voice from scratch every single time, or settling for generic output when you don’t. |
Guidelines is a settings page where you write it down once: how you write, what your images should look like, and what you’re trying to accomplish. The WordPress Agent in the editor, via Telegram, or via email pulls from those guidelines so any and all outputs are grounded in what makes your site uniquely yours. |
Plus, you don’t have to start from scratch. On a paid plan, the WordPress Agent can read what you’ve already published and draft your guidelines for you, every section at once or one section at a time. Each suggestion arrives as a change you can accept or dismiss, nothing is saved until you choose to, and your published posts and pages are never edited without your review. |
Know where your plan stands before it lapses |
The purchase page for your plan now tells you plainly what’s happening and what it means for your site. As your expiration date gets closer, the message escalates from a heads-up months out, to a warning at 60 days, to an urgent notice in the final week. Each one spells out what you’d actually lose if your plan expires, too: things like plugins, custom themes, and your storage. |
We shipped reliability and polish updates across WordPress.com too, including: |
- Adding FLAC to the audio formats you can upload on a paid plan, alongside MP3, M4A, WAV, and OGG.
- Giving you more context if your card was declined and your payment fails so it’s easier for you to troubleshoot.
- Giving you a way out when a plugin install stalls (going to your plugin list or contacting support), instead of waiting for it to resolve itself.
- Stopping posts from showing up multiple times in the Reader.
- Sharpening featured images in the Reader’s compact mobile view.
- Improving the contrast and accessibility of the Views and Visitors chart in Stats.
If you’ve noticed these changes, we’d love to know what you think — leave a comment below! |
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WordCamp US 2026 is coming to Phoenix for the first time on August 16–19, and there’s a lot competing for your time and attention.
If you’re planning your schedule, start here: our selection of eight speakers worth catching, hands-on demos of WordPress Studio and WordPress Agent, and something new for students and educators. |
This year, we’re offering a sponsor code WordPress.com-friend20 for 20% off general admission. |
8 talks worth adding to your WordCamp US schedule |
WordCamp US 2026 has a strong AI thread this year, and Automattic speakers are right in the middle of it.
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We’re talking about vibe coding and agentic commerce to agency workflows, and the future of open source.
If you want to hear from the people building across WordPress.com, WooCommerce, and Automattic, start building your schedule here: |
- Matt Mullenweg, WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO joins Robert Jacobi in a fireside chat on the state of open source. AI, changing expectations, and the future of WordPress are all on the table, but the useful part is that it isn’t meant to be a prepared keynote: the final 30 minutes are audience Q&A. If you have a burning question about where WordPress goes next, this is your chance to ask it.
- Klaus Harris works on learning and credentialing at Automattic after more than 18 years as a software developer. In “The Making of a WordPress Credential,” he joins Dr. Leslie Thomas to unpack a problem the ecosystem has somehow lived with for years: employers need a better way to recognize real WordPress engineering skill. The session goes behind the year-long Automattic effort to build a professionally governed credential, not another badge you collect and forget about.
- Brian Coords, Developer Advocate at WooCommerce and one of the block-theme community’s go-to teachers, is tackling the question every agency is quietly nervous about. His session, “The Site Is the Source of Truth: Block Themes, AI, and Agency Workflows,” makes the case that once AI starts editing production sites directly, the site itself, not the AI’s memory of what it did, has to stay the one source of truth.
- Shani Banerjee, WooCommerce Developer Advocate, joins Danny Dudzic to take the agentic-web conversation in a very practical direction: the checkout. “From Crawlers to Customers: WordPress and the Rise of AI Buyers” looks at what changes when bots stop simply indexing your site and start comparing products, making decisions, and potentially buying. If AI agents become a new kind of customer, WordPress and WooCommerce have to be ready for more than traffic.
See how WordPress.com is helping students build on the open web |
WordPress.com Education gives students access to a professional WordPress.com environment where they can build real websites, learn practical web skills, and keep ownership of what they create. |
As Javier, an IT teacher at San Telmo Arts School in Málaga, put it: “I love the ‘forever’ nature of this. My students can build a real portfolio that they can actually keep and use after the course ends.” |
More than 5,000 active students have already used the program. If you teach, study, or care about the future of the open web, visit our booth to see how WordPress.com is connecting classroom work to real-world skills and the wider WordPress community. |
At WordCamp US, we’ll have something exciting to announce about what’s coming next for students and educators. |
Come say hello at the WordPress.com booth |
At the WordPress.com booth, our message is WordPress for the future. Our demos of Studio and Agent show what that future looks like: new ways to build, manage, and work with WordPress.
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WordPress Studio is our agentic development tool for WordPress developers and agencies. We’ll demo a brand-new UI, and you’ll see how our Studio Code agent can build, make changes, and ship to production, all from a conversation. |
WordPress Agent is for people who spend more time running a site than coding one. The demos cover guidelines as memory, editorial review, image editing, and using the Agent through email and Telegram. |
Watch the demos, ask questions, and tell us how these tools can improve. |
Help shape what we build next |
The booth isn’t a finished-product victory lap. We’re using WCUS to learn what sparks your interest, what gives you pause, and how we can do better and build better to support you well into the future. |
If you work at an agency, bring the client workflow that wastes your time so we can help solve it. If you publish or run a business, bring the task you wish your site could handle for you. Our booth staff will take that feedback back to the teams that build and market the products. |
Have fun with something decidedly offline |
After all the talk of AI, there’s something deliberately analog waiting in your attendee bag: The Little WordPress.com Zine. |
Inside are stories from people building on WordPress.com, a few gloriously low-tech activities, and a look at WordPress Studio and WordPress Agent.
The stories inside are all wrapped around a bigger idea: the things you build on the web should belong to you. |
It’s a limited edition made for WordCamp US 2026, included in your attendee bag. |
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 at the many social events! |
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