27 Mar 2026, 5:50 pm

March 15–27, 2026

Welcome to the WordPress.com changelog!

We’re always working on making WordPress.com better for you — new tools, fixes, little things you might not notice but will definitely feel. We want to keep you in the loop. Every couple of weeks, we’ll share what’s changed and why it matters for your site or business.

In this edition, we’ll cover how you can now let AI agents create and manage content on your site, how to have more control over how newsletters are sent, and more.

Let’s dive in:

AI

Ask AI to handle the busywork and management on your site

You can now connect AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Cursor to do more on your site — like drafting blog posts, updating image descriptions, organizing tags, or replying to comments.

Instead of clicking through your dashboard, just ask. Get Claude or ChatGPT to work for you by asking things like:

• “I just finished writing this post. Publish it as a draft, categorize it as ‘Travel,’ add relevant tags, and write me a meta description under 160 characters.”
• “Update my About page to show our winter hours and add a notice that we’re closed December 24-25.”
• “Find all images in my media library that are missing alt text and suggest some based on the filename or attachment context.”

And most importantly: you stay in control. New posts default to drafts, deletions are recoverable for 30 days, and every action is logged. You choose exactly what AI can and can’t touch.

These features are now available on all paid WordPress.com plans. Enable them at wordpress.com/me/mcp, and check out the full announcement post for more information and example prompts you can start with today.

Newsletters

Set your newsletter send default once, not with every post

You can now set a site-wide default for whether new posts are sent to your email subscribers. 

Head to Jetpack → Newsletter or Jetpack –> Settings –> Newsletter and toggle “Email new posts to subscribers by default” on or off. When it’s on, the editor defaults to sending new posts as email. Flip it on per post if you need to make exceptions.

Previously, there was no way to set this globally — you had to change the send setting manually every time you wrote a post.

As a reminder, Newsletter is a feature included on all WordPress.com sites, enabling you to send your new posts via email to subscribers without needing to use a separate tool.

Payments

WordPress.com now accepts UPI for customers in India

If you’re based in India, you can now pay for WordPress.com plans and products using UPI. No credit card needed — just pay directly from your bank account using any UPI app you already use, like Google Pay, PhonePe, or Paytm.

Editor

Editor bringing small-but-powerful updates

The editor was updated across all WordPress.com sites. Notable updates:

• You can now manage your site logo and icon from a dedicated screen in the Design panel.

• You can preview button states — like hover, focus, and active — under Appearance → Editor → Styles → Blocks → Buttons.

• You’ll now see a ⌘K (on Mac) or Ctrl+K (on Windows/Linux) button in the WordPress admin bar. Clicking it launches the Command Palette, which offers you a way to quickly navigate and manage your site.

Themes

Our theme showcase gets a new look

Check out the newly designed wordpress.com/themes page! It now features a cleaner layout and a more modern feel — making it easier to browse the thousands of free and premium themes we have available for you.

Fixes and improvements

We also shipped a handful of bug fixes and quality improvements across WordPress.com, including: 

• Fixing featured images in the Reader being heavily cropped when viewing a full post — images now display at their natural proportions instead of being squeezed and resized.
• Fixing videos in Reader posts that were showing as an unplayable bar — they now display with playback controls and at the correct dimensions.
• Pressing the right and left arrow keys on your keyboard now allows you to navigate between posts in the Reader, alongside the existing J and K keyboard shortcuts.
• Fixing the subscriber count chart, which was making small fluctuations in subscriber numbers look much more dramatic than they are. It’s now easier to spot and understand trends at a glance.
• Fixing several bugs where domain purchases weren’t showing up correctly in your cart — including an issue where multi-year registration prices showed the wrong total before checkout.

26 Mar 2026, 3:00 pm

Barbara Kingsley spent 12 years as a high school English teacher, then six more doing PR for her school district. She retired in 2018.

Then, in January 2024, she picked up her phone and started posting on TikTok.

I couldn’t contain my emotions, and out it came. I immediately found a community.

A year later, she had over 100,000 followers. Not bad for someone who describes her setup as “me and my phone.”

Barbara posts as Buzziebeeteacher — a nickname that’s followed her since her days as a bass player, a daycare teacher, and eventually a high school English teacher in Pennsylvania. 

Her content started as political commentary and evolved into satire. She’s funny, sharp, and completely herself on camera.

What she learned about growing on social media

A year in, 100,000 followers, and Barbara has figured out what works. A few things she’d tell anyone starting out:

• Watch before you commit. See what’s working for creators you admire, then start experimenting.

• Don’t obsess over quality early on. Be consistent first. The quality will follow.

•  Always tag your content with your name from day one. Barbara learned the hard way that untagged videos can be used by others — and monetized — without your knowledge.

• Pick a posting cadence you can actually maintain: starting at three videos a week makes it hard to drop to two without the algorithm penalizing you.

You’ve got to have tenacity like a bulldog hanging on to the mailman’s pant leg.

Why WordPress.com

Barbara had a WordPress.com account from years ago, set up after she retired from teaching. Life got in the way, and she forgot about it.

When TikTok took off, she came back.

She needed a place to send her followers. Somewhere she owned, where she could sell her books and build something more permanent than a social media profile.

TikTok could disappear tomorrow. Her website won’t. And having her own branded .com domain — buzziebeeteacher.com — was a big part of that.

TikTok has my whole portfolio at any moment. But my name — that’s my brand. What more can I say?

Barbara started building the site herself using the AI website builder, then discovered she could schedule a call with the WordPress.com team to get help.

I knew what I wanted, and you guys polished it off. It’s been great. If you’re thinking about buying WordPress, buy Premium — because you can schedule help at your convenience. It’s the greatest thing since soap.

What the website does today

buzziebeeteacher.com is Barbara’s hub — a place for her books, her music, her bio, and her social links. It’s where TikTok followers who want to go deeper can land.

The domain was a big deal for her. It gave her brand a proper home.

That’s like MickeyMouse.com. It’s right there. It’s not going anywhere.

She’s got more plans, too. A finished cookbook written in calligraphy she wants to digitize and publish, a kids’ book, music, and videos on the site.

Your story deserves a home, too

Barbara built an audience of 100,000+ people on a platform she doesn’t control. Her website is the one place that’s truly hers.

WordPress.com gave her the domain, the platform, and the team to help her pull it together. She brought the personality and the plan.

The rest? Still being written.

25 Mar 2026, 3:19 pm

Jetpack 15.6 is out, and it’s a big one for anyone using Jetpack Social to share WordPress content across social media. 

We’re talking per-platform post customization, a rebuilt preview modal, improved AI image generation, and more control over what goes live and when.

Here’s everything that’s new:

Let’s explore each update in detail.

Customize your content for each social media platform

You can now customize the message, image, and formatting separately for each social platform — all from the editor sidebar before you publish.

This way, your content fits the audience and format of each social media network, instead of being a one-size-fits-all compromise.

A detailed caption for LinkedIn, something shorter for X, a different image for Facebook — adjust your approach on the go.

Generate AI-powered images for your social posts

You can create more engaging images for your social posts directly in the editor using Jetpack AI. 

Type a description, pick a style, and generate something that fits your post and your brand. 

The template-based Social Image Generator is still available, too. Both options now sit alongside your media picker in a single panel.

Work with a cleaner, more intuitive sharing panel

The editor sidebar got a cleanup, too. The media picker, image templates, and AI generation now live in one unified section. 

It takes fewer clicks to configure your post, the layout is cleaner, and visual dot indicators on active connections show you which accounts are enabled at a glance.

Preview your posts before they go out

The link preview modal has been completely rebuilt. It now shows you an accurate rendering of how your post will appear on each social network before anything goes out, with improved accessibility throughout.

A few things worth highlighting:

• Threads and Tumblr previews now render accurately, including gallery posts and custom messages.
• The modal is shared with Jetpack SEO, so you can preview your post for both social networks and search engines in one place.

Review what’s going out before you hit publish

Jetpack Social now gives you an optional confirmation screen before you hit publish. 

It shows you exactly what’s heading to each platform so you can check the message, image, and formatting. 

You can turn it off anytime if you prefer a faster workflow.

Check your sharing history and scheduled posts in one view

Your sharing activity and scheduled posts now live together in a single view. See what went out, what’s coming up, and when, without jumping between screens.

Try the new Jetpack Social experience

All of these improvements are already available for you to explore.

If you’re on a WordPress.com paid plan, you already have access. If you haven’t tried Jetpack Social yet, there’s never been a better time to start.

23 Mar 2026, 3:00 pm

Rahul Tulsiyani has seen the full spectrum of web development. 

His agency, Encircle Technologies, runs a 50–60-person team across development, QA, and UI/UX design, based in India, building everything from custom e-commerce stores to headless CMS architectures. It serves clients through a global network of agency partners.

When you work at that scale, across that many platforms and project types, you get very good at knowing what to trust.

For most client projects, the answer is WordPress.com.

You don’t need to do any extra optimization work. Deploy to WordPress.com, and the site is fast from day one. It’s kind of amazing.

Rahul Tulsiyani, CSO & Co-Founder at Encircle Technologies

That’s also why Encircle joined Automattic for Agencies — WordPress.com’s program built specifically for agencies managing multiple client sites.

“We joined Automattic for Agencies as a way to streamline how we manage WordPress.com for our clients. The program makes it easy to handle multiple sites from one place — without the overhead of juggling separate accounts. For an agency working at our scale, that kind of consolidation matters. It lets us focus on building, not administering.”

The moment that changed their hosting default

It started with a client site that grew faster than anyone expected.

The site was brand new. No one was anticipating a traffic spike. But within weeks of launch, it got serious traction — and the hosting couldn’t keep up.

They upgraded the server. Then again. Then a third time, all within a few months. Each upgrade meant another bill, another conversation, another round of hoping it would hold.

Eventually, they’d had enough. They moved to WordPress.com. The traffic problem stopped being a problem.

With WordPress.com, you don’t have to worry about it. It can handle any kind of traffic you throw at it. Without extra cost.

Rahul Tulsiyani, CSO & Co-Founder at Encircle Technologies

Fewer plugins, less overhead, better sites

For a WordPress development agency, the real measure of a hosting platform isn’t just uptime. It’s how much extra work it creates — for the agency and for the client managing the site after launch.

Rahul’s rule of thumb: the fewer plugins on a site, the better it performs. 

On a typical self-hosted setup, agencies end up stacking plugins just to cover the basics — caching, security, performance optimization, backups. Each one needs to be updated, tested, and monitored. And clients end up inheriting that complexity.

WordPress.com handles all of that at the platform level, so the sites Encircle deploys start leaner, run faster, and are easier for clients to manage long-term.

We don’t have to really optimize the website. It just works best.

Rahul Tulsiyani, CSO & Co-Founder at Encircle Technologies

That’s what a fully managed platform looks like in practice: performance, security, updates, backups, domains, SSL, and support all taken care of.

Domain transfers are also handled seamlessly — including a free 1-year extension — making client handoffs that much simpler.

AI is raising the bar, and WordPress.com helps clear it

At the same time, clients are now arriving better prepared than they used to. 

AI tools have changed how people come into projects — they’ve done more research and show up with detailed, specific requirements — staging environments, CI/CD pipelines, weekly backups. They know the terminology, and they know what to ask for.

Clients used to send a few paragraphs and call it a brief. Now they come back from every conversation with ChatGPT with a new list of requirements — staging setup, Git pipeline, security practices, CDN. They know exactly what to ask for.

Rahul Tulsiyani, CSO & Co-Founder at Encircle Technologies

This makes having a platform that handles the defaults even more valuable. When WordPress.com takes care of security, backups, and performance out of the box, your agency can focus on what clients are actually paying for.

In a market where client demands keep growing and shifting, that’s not a small thing.

WordPress.com lets us focus on what clients actually hired us for. The infrastructure just works — and that trust adds up over time.

Rahul Tulsiyani, CSO & Co-Founder at Encircle Technologies

20 Mar 2026, 1:00 pm

Last October, we introduced MCP support on WordPress.com, giving AI agents like Claude, ChatGPT, OpenClaw, and Cursor a window into your site’s content, analytics, and settings. 

Thousands of you connected your favorite AI tools, asked questions about your sites, and saved hours of dashboard diving.

But you told us you wanted more. Reading your site data was useful, but you wanted your agent to be able to actually do things for you!

That’s why we added write capabilities, turning your AI agent into your most versatile WordPress collaborator.

From reading to writing

With write capabilities, your AI agent can now:

• Draft and publish blog posts: Provide copy or describe what you want to publish, and your AI agent can create the post directly on your site.
• Build and update pages: Create landing pages, About pages, and more, complete with your site’s design specs and block patterns.
• Manage comments: Approve, reply to, or clean up comments without ever opening your dashboard.
• Organize your content: Create, rename, and restructure categories and tags across your site.
• Update media metadata: Fix alt text, captions, and titles for better accessibility and SEO.

And all of this happens through natural conversation. Just tell your AI agent what you want to do, and it handles the rest.

19 new abilities, the same interface

These new capabilities add 19 new writing abilities across six content types: posts, pages, comments, categories, tags, and media. Besides enabling the new tools in your WordPress.com MCP dashboard, there’s nothing new to install to get started.

Here’s a taste of what you can do with your AI agent:

• “I just finished writing this post. Publish it as a draft, categorize it as ‘Travel,’ add relevant tags, and write me a meta description under 160 characters.”
• “I want to start publishing recipes on my blog. Set up a ‘Recipes’ category with subcategories for Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and Desserts.”
• “Create an About page with sections for our team, mission, and contact info.”
• “I want to add a testimonials section to my About page. Find a pattern in my theme that works for that and set it up as a draft — I’ll supply the actual quotes.”
• “Approve all the pending comments on my latest post and reply to the one asking about pricing.”
• “Add a ‘Tutorials’ category under ‘Resources’ and tag my latest three posts with ‘Beginner.'”
• “Audit my website for Accessibility and create a report.”
• “Find all images in my media library that are missing alt text and suggest some based on the filename or attachment context.”

Your AI agent discovers the available operations, figures out what’s needed, and walks you through the process — confirming every step before making changes.

Design-aware updates

One of the most powerful aspects of the write capabilities is the integration with your site’s theme. Before creating content, your AI agent can search your theme’s design and understand  its colors, fonts, spacing, and block patterns. 

This results in outputs that inherits your site’s design system and adapts automatically when you change themes.

Safety you can trust

We know that giving an AI agent the ability to modify your site is a big step. That’s why we’ve built this with multiple layers of protection:

Every change requires your approval. Before creating, updating, or deleting anything, your AI agent describes exactly what it plans to do and asks for your explicit confirmation. Nothing happens without approval from you.

New posts default to drafts. When your AI agent creates a post or page, it starts as a draft, giving you a chance to review before anything goes live. If you update a published post, your agent warns you that changes will be visible immediately.

Deletion is reversible (where possible). Deleting posts, pages, comments, or media moves them to the trash, where they’re recoverable for 30 days. For categories and tags — which WordPress doesn’t support trashing — your agent explicitly warns that deletion is permanent and requires additional confirmation. 

All changes are visible through your Activity Log. See all of your AI agent’s activity in your site’s dashboard (or just ask your AI agent for a list of changes it has made).

WordPress permissions are enforced. The write capabilities respect the same user role permissions as the rest of WordPress.com. An Editor can create and edit posts, but can’t change site settings. A Contributor can draft posts but can’t publish. Your existing access controls are automatically carried over.

You choose what’s enabled. Every operation, from creating posts to updating media, has its own toggle in your MCP settings. Enable only what you need on the sites you need it, and leave everything else off.

Get started

Write capabilities are available today on all WordPress.com paid plans. Here’s how to start:

1. Enable MCP on your account at wordpress.com/me/mcp.
2. Toggle on the write capabilities you want to use.
3. Connect your AI client — Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, or any MCP-enabled tool.
4. Start creating. 

For the full list of available operations and technical details, check out our MCP Tools Reference and prompt examples to spark your creativity.

When we launched MCP on WordPress.com, we said that understanding your site shouldn’t mean piecing together insights from half a dozen places. Now, managing your site shouldn’t mean it either.

Your AI agent is ready. What will you create?

19 Mar 2026, 3:00 pm

Ajit Bohra has been building with WordPress since 2008. His agency, LUBUS, works with start-ups, enterprises, local businesses, and content platforms across India.

One decision changed how the entire agency operates: moving 80% of client projects to WordPress.com.

You work on growing the business, not in the business. WordPress.com takes care of everything else.

Ajit Bohra, Founder & CEO at LUBUS

Here’s a look at the tools, workflows, and mindset behind that decision.

Why 80% of their clients run on one platform

Running everything on WordPress.com was a deliberate choice — and it shapes all operations of the agency by having one platform, one workflow, and one place to search when something goes wrong. 

Backups automate, rollbacks happen in one click, and the activity log tells them exactly what went wrong and when. 

The moment you go to WordPress.com, your backups are sorted. You don’t have to worry about it. Your clients are safe, your data is safe.

Ajit Bohra, Founder & CEO at LUBUS

When a problem arises, clients can go straight to WordPress.com support without an agency in the middle. A junior team member once resolved a client site issue via chat support in 30 minutes, with no escalation and no senior help needed.

He said: I didn’t have the technical knowledge, but I got it sorted for the client. That’s exactly the point.

Ajit Bohra, Founder & CEO at LUBUS

The workflow every LUBUS developer learns on day one

Having a single platform means having a single way of working, and that consistency is what ensures a team’s efficiency across every project. Every developer at LUBUS works locally via WordPress Studio, synced to WordPress.com, so nothing directly touches the live server. 

Preview links handle internal QA, and staging is for client sign-off. GitHub hosts and deploys the custom plug-ins. When something goes wrong, Jetpack backups and the activity log are the first stop — roll back, then figure out why.

We built internal documentation around it: building websites with WordPress.com. It’s what every new team member learns first.

Ajit Bohra, Founder & CEO at LUBUS

Peace of mind is the real deliverable

LUBUS sets a simple goal for every project: The client’s website should keep running even without the agency’s involvement. 

That means clients get hosting, SSL, automated backups, rollbacks, Jetpack features, and direct support, all bundled together.

But what Ajit keeps coming back to isn’t the feature list. It’s the fact that clients ultimately own their site, understand how it operates, and avoid panic if an error occurs.

Even without us, their WordPress is up and running. That’s our motto. WordPress.com helps us deliver that.

Ajit Bohra, Founder & CEO at LUBUS

Why AI is making the agency busier, not redundant

Their focus on genuine client value is also why Ajit isn’t worried about AI. 

Four recent clients came in having already tried website building with an AI tool. They’d used it to validate their idea and create a general prototype of their vision — and then realized they needed a human to execute the concept. 

For LUBUS, AI is creating a new type of client: one who arrives with a clearer brief and a stronger conviction that they need professional help.

A lot of agencies lead with tech. But tech comes after. The biggest skill is talking to real people and helping them understand what they actually need.

Ajit Bohra, Founder & CEO at LUBUS

How LUBUS uses AI internally

The team at LUBUS uses AI across copywriting, ideation, and code development.

They are experienced users of Telex, using it to build proofs-of-concept and prototype custom blocks to generate a working demo faster, which helps determine next steps.

For example, the team used Telex to build a Text-to-Speech Block, exploring different implementations before moving toward a unified solution for content and accessibility use cases.

They also generated a Modal Popup Block for lightweight overlays in block-based content, which is already being used in upcoming projects and is planned to evolve into a more refined open-source solution.

But the biggest shift AI has brought to LUBUS isn’t technical — it’s commercial. Their consulting business is growing faster than their web builds, as more clients need help understanding what technology can and can’t do for them.

Build the kind of agency that wins on experience

AI is changing what clients expect from agencies, but Ajit believes the fundamentals don’t change: Understand the client, solve the real problem, and make them feel valued. WordPress.com helps companies implement this foundation.

WordPress.com has been on steroids. It evolved into an ecosystem that helps agencies work faster.

Ajit Bohra, Founder & CEO at LUBUS

LUBUS has been part of that evolution since before Automattic for Agencies formally existed, and Ajit watched it grow into something much bigger than a hosting program.

Automattic for Agencies reflects that same evolution — it’s a strategic partnership that lets agencies deliver a VIP-grade experience at an accessible price point, so teams can focus on building great digital experiences.

Ajit Bohra, Founder & CEO at LUBUS

Give your clients the same peace of mind LUBUS gives theirs  — and provide your team the same freedom to focus on what actually grows the business.

17 Mar 2026, 3:00 pm

A year ago, Scott Wilson’s life was running out of time.

End-stage liver disease. A terminal diagnosis. Two children to raise alone after becoming a widower seven years prior. Every day was an act of sheer will.

Then, on January 13, 2025, the call came. A liver transplant was available.

Scott didn’t just survive. He came out the other side with a mission — to use his story to drive organ and tissue donation awareness across Canada. 

He joined the Transplant Advocate Association and became a UHN Foundation Ambassador. Got featured in national media. Went to City Hall to push for April to be recognized as Organ Donor Month in Ontario. And joined a panel working to bring a life-saving organ preservation technology to Canada, one already standard practice in Spain and the UK.

There’s nothing online quite like what I’m building — it’s my perspective, my experience, my voice.

Why WordPress.com

With everything Scott was doing, he needed a home base. A place to document the journey, share his story, and build a platform that could grow into something bigger.

He did his research before choosing a platform. Read consumer reports, went through reviews, and landed on WordPress.com.

Once he was in, he opted for the Website Design Service — a team of experts who build the site for you. Scott had the story, the voice, and the content. The team turned it into a site that actually reflected all of it.

What I appreciate about WordPress is its ability to take everything that I said and mash it up into a saleable product. Who’s going to buy into it? Who’s going to come to it? That’s what I look at.

The site went live without the usual back-and-forth. No glitches, no delays. Scott was surprised by how smooth it was.

It was a leap of faith. But it was a good leap.

What the website does today

jamesscottwilson.ca is Scott’s platform and his archive. A place to document the journey from the inside out — the recovery, the advocacy, the single parenting, the faith, and the parts nobody talks about.

He’s also using it as a launchpad for a future book and podcast.

It’s a blog, a launching off point for writing ideas. Inspiration for a future book and podcast material.

The site will keep evolving. Scott is the first to say that. But that’s the point.

It’s a fluid, living document. Everything new — new life, new liver, new student. I am living proof that anything can change.

Your story deserves a home, too

Scott’s story is unlike anyone else’s. His website is where he gets to tell it on his own terms.

WordPress.com’s Website Design Service paired him with a team that took his content, his voice, and his vision and turned it into a site ready to go. 

He focuses on his mission. The platform handles the rest.

16 Mar 2026, 3:00 pm

WordPress theme development has always had a learning curve. 

Between PHP, CSS, the template hierarchy, and the inevitable mystery bug that appears unexpectedly, it’s not something most people figure out in an afternoon.

Telex removes that barrier entirely. You tell it what you want, it generates a theme, you install it, and your site has a completely new look.

Here՚s how it works.

1. Ask Telex to create a theme

Start with a prompt. The more detail you include, the closer the output will resemble what you want. 

Here՚s an example for a recruitment consultant landing page:

“Create a professional business theme for a recruitment consultant. Clean layout, confident typography, muted color palette with one strong accent color, clear calls to action for job seekers and hiring managers, and a services section above the fold.”

It’s always good to include the visual style, the layout structure, and the purpose of the site. 

For example, a recruitment landing page should immediately communicate trust and professionalism, which is very different from the first impression of a portfolio or a blog. 

The more context Telex has, the less you will need to correct afterward.

2. Click “Enhance Prompt” before generating

Before generating your theme, click the Enhance Prompt button. 

Telex will rewrite your description into a proper design brief, filling in design language, layout structure, typography, and spacing choices you may not have considered.

For a recruitment site, that means Telex might add guidance around trust signals, whitespace, and hierarchy that you did not explicitly ask for but absolutely need. 

Our updated prompt would include new details such as:

“Use a clean, minimal layout with confident sans-serif typography and a muted neutral palette with a single bold accent color for calls to action. The homepage template should display a hero section above the fold with a headline, subtext, and two prominent CTA buttons: one for job seekers and one for hiring managers. Directly below the hero, show a services section with icon blocks highlighting key offerings such as talent sourcing, executive search, and contract staffing. Include templates for a single job listing, an about page, and a contact page. On the frontend, ensure fast load, responsive design, sticky header with logo and navigation, and a footer with contact info and social links.”

This gives you a much stronger foundation.

3. Alternatively, upload a reference image

If you have a competitor՚s site you admire, a brand mockup, or even a rough sketch of how you want the page laid out, upload it to Telex to guide the visual direction of your theme.

Telex will read the visual and use it as the basis for your theme.

For someone who already knows their brand direction, this is often the fastest route to a result that looks like what they had in mind.

4. Choose from the four variations Telex generates

From here, Telex will give you four variations to compare, each interpreting your prompt a bit differently, with its own take on typography, spacing, layout, and feel.

Opt for the one that feels closest to your brand, your audience, and the impression you want to make. Remember, this is your starting point.

For a business landing page, pay close attention to how each variation establishes hierarchy and readability. 

Start with the version that most clearly communicates the value proposition and naturally guides the eye toward the call to action.

For the recruitment site example, we chose this theme:

5. Build out the remaining templates

From here, ask Telex to build additional templates for each page type you need.

By default, it starts with a single template that WordPress applies across all your pages, but a complete theme needs different layouts for different content types. 

For a recruitment consultant site, for example, you might ask to:

• “Create a services page template with icons and short descriptions for each service.”

• “Create an about page template with a bio, photo, and trust signals such as years of experience and client results.”

• “Create a contact page template with a lead capture form and clear next steps for visitors.”

• “Create a job listings archive template showing open roles with location, salary range, and an apply button.”

Each additional template extends the theme without breaking the visual consistency you established at the start.

6. Refine your theme until it fits your vision

Once the theme structure is in place, iterate on the details — typography, color palette, spacing, mobile layout, dark mode, or whatever else needs refining. 

For a recruitment site, for example, you might want the typography to feel more authoritative or the mobile layout tightened up since a lot of visitors may access the site from their phones. 

7. Download the ZIP and install it

Finally, click Download, and Telex will package everything into a ZIP file containing your templates, styles, theme.json, and layout definitions. 

Take that file to your WordPress dashboard, then → Appearance → Themes → Add New → Upload Theme, then select the file, install it, and activate it.

The moment you activate the theme, WordPress maps your existing pages and content into the new design. 

If you already have a services page, an about page, or any job listings set up, they will appear in the new layout without any manual work.

Tip: When you want to update the look later, go back to Telex, make your changes, download a new ZIP, and upload it. When you upload the new ZIP, WordPress keeps your existing content exactly as it is and only applies the new design.

Bonus step: Test your theme on a staging site first

Before activating any theme on a live site, test it in a safe environment first. 

For example, WordPress Playground lets you test your theme directly in the browser without installing anything.

You can also use WordPress Studio, a free desktop app that runs a full local WordPress environment on your machine with no server setup required.

Now it’s your turn

Envision a theme, try a prompt you wouldn՚t expect to work, upload a napkin sketch, and see what comes out. 

Then come back and show us what you built in the comments!

Keep in mind that Telex is still an experimental tool, so results will vary, and you may encounter the occasional issue. That is part of the process, and every project you release helps determine this tool’s future development.

11 Mar 2026, 4:30 pm

Tracking down bugs in WordPress development often feels like looking for a needle in a haystack. Especially when you’re relying on var_dump() calls and manually scanning error logs. 

WordPress Studio has two new debugging capabilities that make this process faster and more intuitive: Xdebug support and debug log access.

Step-through debugging with Xdebug

Xdebug is the gold-standard PHP debugging extension. Instead of scattering debug output throughout your code, you can set breakpoints, step through execution line-by-line, and inspect variables in real time — all from your editor.

This is now available for all Studio users and is powered by WordPress Playground’s WebAssembly version of PHP, which means there’s nothing extra to install or configure at the system level.

Enabling Xdebug

1. Select the site you want to debug in Studio.
2. Navigate to the Settings tab.
3. Click Edit site.
4. Navigate to the Debugging tab.
5. Check the Enable Xdebug checkbox.
6. Click Save.

Studio will restart the site automatically with Xdebug active.

A couple of things worth keeping in mind:

• Xdebug can only be active for a single site: To use Xdebug on a different site, disable it on the currently active one first. The site with Xdebug enabled will display a bug icon in the left sidebar. 
• Enabling Xdebug will slow things down noticeably: It’s best to turn it on only when you’re actively debugging.

Connecting your IDE

Once Xdebug is enabled, you can connect your editor and start debugging to find the source of any issues — plugins, themes, or WordPress core. Studio listens for debug connections on port 9003.

For the full setup guide, see the Xdebug in Studio documentation.

Easier access to debug logs

Sometimes a full step-debugger is more than you need when you just want to see what WordPress is logging. 

Studio now makes that much easier with a dedicated debug log toggle, which sets WP_DEBUG and WP_DEBUG_LOG for your sites automatically.

Enabling the debug log in Studio

1. Select your site and click Edit site.
2. Open the Debugging tab.
3. Toggle Enable debug log on.
4. Click Save.

When the debug log is enabled, your local site will capture PHP errors, notices, and warnings to a log file at wp-content/debug.log. You’ll then see an Open log file link appear in the Settings tab, which opens the log directly — no need to hunt down the file path manually.

You can also write your own messages to the log using PHP’s error_log() function:

error_log( 'My value: ' . print_r( $my_variable, true ) );

This is especially handy when you need a quick look at what’s happening during a plugin activation, a hook callback, or a REST API request — without setting up a full debugging session.

Using AI agents to interpret debug logs

Once your debug log is capturing errors and warnings, you can bring an AI agent directly into your debugging workflow. Instead of manually reading through log output and cross-referencing documentation, point your agent at the log and let it do the heavy lifting.

Whether you’re using Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex, the setup is the same: tell your agent that error logs are available at wp-content/debug.log. From there, it can read the output, identify what’s going wrong, and suggest fixes, all without breaking your flow.

Showing errors in the browser

The Debugging tab also includes a “Show errors in browser” toggle, which sets WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY and controls whether PHP errors are printed directly on the page rather than silently captured in the log.

When enabled, fatal errors, warnings, and notices appear inline in the HTML output — useful during active development so you don’t have to keep switching to the log file.

One important note: “Show errors in browser” is best used alongside the debug log, not as a replacement for it. It’s great for quick iteration in your own local environment, but you’ll want to keep it off on any site that’s shared with clients — it can expose sensitive path information or internal logic in the page output.

Better debugging, faster fixes

These two features address different parts of your local debugging workflow:

• The debug log gives you a lightweight way to catch errors and warnings as they happen. 
• Xdebug takes it further, letting you pause execution and dig into exactly what’s going on inside your code.

Together, they make Studio a more capable environment for developing and troubleshooting WordPress sites locally.

If you haven’t tried WordPress Studio yet, now is a great time to get started.

10 Mar 2026, 4:00 pm

Monikka Spruyt spent years in corporate. Then, the training organization she worked for was being merged into another. She’d also just had her third baby.

She saw it as a sign. Starting over in another corporate role wasn’t what she wanted. This was her moment to build something of her own.

So she backed herself instead.

She trained as a life coach, an EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) practitioner, and a Reiki healer. She opened Connect Holistic Health — a business built around helping people untangle the noise in their minds and get more out of their lives.

I get to do it on my own terms. My number one hat is mom. And then I run this business in and around that.

Why WordPress.com

Monikka had a website on another platform before. When challenges in the back end of her business gave her reason to pause and reassess, she decided to switch — and go through a full brand refresh at the same time.

WordPress was already familiar. She’d used it extensively in her last corporate role. When it came to choosing a platform for her own business, that hands-on experience made the decision easy.

WordPress was my go-to from my corporate days. I already knew it, I already trusted it.

She could have built the new site herself. But as a sole trader juggling clients, a family, and a growing business, handing the build off just made more sense.

So she signed up for the Website Design Service — a WordPress.com team of design experts who build the site for you. From there, she could easily tweak and add things herself as the business grew.

Having the team build it and then managing it myself? Best time-for-money decision I’ve made.

What the website does today

connectholistichealth.com is Monikka’s primary business hub.

It’s a place for clients to learn about her services, book sessions, sign up for her Reiki membership, register for events, and shop her growing range of wellness products.

The booking and membership setup was exactly what she needed.

I’m using my website as a booking service. Clients find out about the business and book directly through the site.

Clients have noticed too.

I’ve heard from clients that it looks really nice and that it’s easy to navigate.

The e-commerce side has been seamless as well: uploading products and managing the shop structure in the backend has been straightforward.

Something she says is a clear step up from her previous platform.

Next on the list: more products to add to the shop, which Monikka is sourcing and testing herself before they go live.

Your story deserves a home, too

Monikka runs her entire business solo — coaching, energy work, e-commerce, memberships — and her website holds it all together.

WordPress.com’s Website Design Service means she didn’t have to build it alone. The team handled the build.

Monikka brought the vision, the content, and the brand. It was live in days, with fast and secure hosting included.

She focuses on her clients. The platform handles the rest.