8 May 2026, 5:30 pm

April 24 – May 7, 2026

Welcome back to the WordPress.com changelog! It’s been a big two weeks at WordPress.com HQ: we opened opt-in access to the WordPress AI Assistant on all current paid plans, Studio Code launched in beta as a coding agent built specifically for WordPress, and we shipped a new theme focused on short-form social-style blogging.

AI

The AI sidebar is now on every paid plan

Until this week, the WordPress AI Assistant was opt-in only on Business and Commerce plans. Starting now, it’s available as an opt-in on all current paid plans — Personal, Premium, Business, and Commerce. Free and legacy Blogger plans will need to upgrade.

The assistant works alongside you as you write, design, and update your site on WordPress.com, offering guidance, edits, and improvements. It’s not a separate app or a one-time setup tool; it’s ongoing help that understands your specific site, built into the editor and the Media Library.

Use it to:                             

• Tighten your writing for SEO and clarity without losing your voice.
• Generate and edit images.
• Refine layouts and design choices without manually searching for solutions.
• Get site-aware help when something isn’t behaving the way you expect.

Here’s how to opt in, plus some tips for getting the most out of the assistant. 

WordPress Studio

Build WordPress sites from your terminal with Studio Code

Calling all developers, builders, and vibe coders: Studio Code is your WordPress expert in the terminal.

Describe what you want (in natural language, with a reference URL, or with a folder of images), and the AI agent builds the blocks, theme, plugins, and full WordPress site, locally.

A few things it does that a generic coding agent can’t:

• Stop debugging “invalid content” warnings. Studio Code validates every block against the real editor before inserting it, so generated markup opens clean.
• Skip the screenshot-and-reprompt cycle. It captures its own output in a screenshot, spots layout issues, and iterates for you.
• Stay in the terminal to ship. Just say the word to sync to a production or staging site on WordPress.com.
• Point at problems instead of describing them. Run /annotate, click any element on the page, and ask for the change you want.

Install the Studio CLI, run studio code, and start describing. Studio Code is free with unlimited credits during the beta.

Themes

A new theme for short-form blogging

We introduced a new short-form blogging theme that lets you create your own small, personal “micro Twitter” with a group of friends, family, or any community you choose.

It’s built for quick posts, replies, and reposts, with a simple Compose flow, profile-style pages, and automatic attribution for shared posts.

The big idea is that social-style posting no longer has to live on someone else’s platform: every update is still a real WordPress.com post on a site you control, replies are saved as comments, and the whole experience stays portable, exportable, RSS-friendly, and independent of algorithmic feeds.

Take it for a spin at wordpress.com/social.

Fixes and improvements

We’ve shipped reliability and polish updates across WordPress.com to keep your site (and the platform it runs on) running smoothly, including:

• Showing the correct duration on audio blocks in the Reader instead of always reading 0:00 before you press play.
• Routing “Contact us” links from inside support articles directly to the in-app help chat, instead of a broken landing page.
• Making BLIK, a Polish mobile payment system, a supported payment method.
• Fixing inconsistencies in how expired-domain warnings show up in the dashboard.

4 May 2026, 4:57 pm

Thinking about selling online, but not sure where to start?

Our new course — Build Your Store with WooCommerce — gives you everything you need to create, set up, and manage your own online store with confidence. The WooCommerce plugin can be installed with any paid plan at no extra cost, turning your site into a complete store.

Whether you’re selling physical products, digital downloads, or services, this course takes you through the essential steps to get your shop up and running—so you understand not just what to do, but why it matters.

It’s fully self-paced, so you can move through each lesson in your own time. Complete the course in around an hour—or jump straight to what you need. 

What you’ll learn

Across a series of practical, beginner-friendly lessons, you’ll learn how to:

• Set up your store foundation — choose a theme, install WooCommerce, and get your site ready for selling
• Add and manage products — create simple, variable, and downloadable products 
• Configure payments — accept payments securely and understand your available options
• Set up tax and shipping — create shipping zones, classes, and configure tax settings for your store
• Design your store experience — customize your store pages and display products in a way that reflects your brand
• Test and manage orders — handle orders, emails, and refunds smoothly
• Launch your store — go live knowing everything is set up and working as expected

Why you should take this course

Starting an online store is an exciting journey.

This course gives you a clear, step-by-step path to launching your store using WooCommerce—used by millions of stores worldwide and one of the most flexible ways to sell on WordPress.com.

You’ll learn not just how to set things up, but why each step matters—so you can make better decisions as your store grows.

By the end, you’ll have a store that’s live and ready to grow.

More video resources to explore

If you’re just getting started or looking to grow your site further, check out our other popular courses:

• Grow your website’s audience
• Monetize your WordPress.com site

28 Apr 2026, 2:50 pm

At WordPress.com, we believe short thoughts deserve a real home. Today we’re introducing a new theme built for quick posts, replies, and reblogs: the kind of writing that lives somewhere between a tweet and a blog post, on a site that’s entirely yours.

If you’ve been thinking about starting your own small, private social network with friends or family, or you want a space to post thoughts freely, or to import your historical posts from Twitter, Mastodon, or Bluesky without handing your words over to someone else’s platform, this one’s for you.

Let’s take a look — or sign up now at wordpress.com/social.

Write now, not later

Click the “Compose” button, type your thoughts, watch the 500-character counter, and tap Post. No blank canvas, no formatting toolbar to navigate first. Just a simple prompt, What’s happening?, and a place to answer it.

A profile page that feels familiar

Your profile collects everything in one place: your avatar, bio, and the counts your readers will look for posts, following, followers. Tabs for Posts, Replies, Media, and Likes let visitors browse the way they already know how. A sidebar keeps Home, Explore, and your profile one click away.

Reblogs that actually work

This is the feature we’re most excited about. Click the reblog icon on any post and it flows into your own feed, credited to the original author, automatically. No screenshots, no copy-paste, no lost attribution.

Every post is a real post

Here’s what makes this different from a social app: every quick thought and every reblog is a real WordPress.com post on a site you own, and every reply is saved as a comment. You get the speed and feel of a social feed, with the permanence and portability of a blog. Export it, back it up, migrate it to another host. It’s yours.

Built for the open web

The theme is fully mobile-responsive, so posting from your phone feels just as natural as from your desktop. Tap Compose from wherever the thought hits you.

And because every blog on WordPress.com comes with RSS out of the box, your readers can follow along in whatever feed reader they already use. No algorithm, no app required, just a URL they can subscribe to and content that shows up when you publish it.

Give it a try

Head to wordpress.com/social to sign up for a new blog and get started.

We’d love to hear what you think.

27 Apr 2026, 6:50 pm

Studio Code is now in beta, and you can try it today — even though we’re still actively building it.

That’s intentional. We wanted to get it into your hands early, gather feedback, and shape the next phase of development together rather than polish it in a vacuum and call it done. Consider this the beginning of that conversation.

To try it, install Studio CLI (either from the desktop app or directly from your terminal) and then run studio code.

What is Studio Code?

Studio Code is a CLI tool — your WordPress expert in the terminal. Think of it like having a senior WordPress developer available as a command: one that reads your codebase, edits files, runs commands, can spin up local sites, and knows WordPress best practices deeply.

It’s like Claude Code or Cursor CLI, but specifically for WordPress. In fact, we’re leveraging the incredible tech of Claude Code to make Studio Code a powerful WordPress coding tool.

General-purpose coding agents don’t have the tools to act on a WordPress site out of the box — they can’t spin up a local environment, run WP-CLI commands, validate block markup against the real editor, or screenshot the result to check their own work. 

Studio Code can. It’s purpose-built for WordPress: it understands block themes, knows WP-CLI inside and out, validates block markup against the real editor, and works the same feedback loop a developer would — run something, check the output, iterate until it looks right, and ship.

You describe what you want in natural language; Studio Code builds it.

What it can actually do

The honest answer: quite a lot, and it’s getting more abilities by the day.

Build a complete WordPress site from a description or reference. You give it a site concept — a bakery, a portfolio, a nonprofit landing page — or a reference URL, and it designs and builds a full block theme: layout, typography, color palette, and page content. It picks fonts, writes CSS, creates the pages, checks the visual output with a screenshot, and fixes what’s broken.

Manage your local WordPress sites. Create sites, start and stop them, install plugins, activate themes, set options, create posts and menus all through natural language. It uses WP-CLI under the hood, but you don’t have to.

Write and validate block content. Block markup has to be structurally valid or WordPress will reject it in the editor. Studio Code validates every block it generates against the real block editor before inserting it — running each block through its save() function in an actual browser.

Validate performance. Is your site fast? Run the /need-for-speed skill to run a performance audit on your local site, and you’ll get specific, actionable recommendations to speed it up.

Preview and publish to WordPress.com. Once you’re happy with your local build, you can generate a hosted preview site link and push to or pull from WordPress.com, where your site will be backed by fully managed hosting, built-in security, and 24/7 expert support.

Clean up your WordPress category taxonomy. Audit your existing categories, merge duplicates, retire dead ones, create missing ones, and re-categorize posts — all through natural language. It exports your content and applies AI-driven structure, but you don’t have to touch a single category setting yourself.

Why we’re shipping it now

We’re in the middle of building this, and we think that’s important to say out loud.

The core experience works. People are using it to build real sites, prototype ideas quickly, and skip the scaffolding work that eats time without adding value. We’ve seen it go from a brief description to a fully designed, content-filled WordPress site in a few minutes — start to finish.

But there’s more to build as AI gets better every day. We’re refining the design intelligence, improving how it handles complex layouts, and expanding what it can do with existing sites. So we’re doing the thing we believe in: shipping early, being honest about where it is, and building in public.

During the beta, we decided to keep the Studio Code experience free. That may change in the future, and we want your feedback before we can lock that in.

Give it a spin

Once you have the Studio CLI installed, simply run studio code to start using the beta.

We want to know what works, what doesn’t, and what you wish it could do. Open a GitHub issue with your thoughts, feedback, bug reports, and enhancement requests, and check out the documentation for more tips.

24 Apr 2026, 2:00 pm

April 12–23, 2026

Welcome back to the WordPress.com changelog! 

Over the past two weeks, we opened up the WordPress 7.0 beta for Business and Commerce sites, made it easier for you to fix plugin errors, and made our Support Center more easy to navigate.

Releases

Try WordPress 7.0 before it ships

WordPress 7.0 is on its way, and if you’re on a Business or Commerce plan, you can now test the beta on your live and/or staging site.

Visit Sites → Your Site → Settings → Server → WordPress, and pick the beta version from the dropdown.

WordPress.com takes an automatic backup of your site before switching the version, keeps your site on the latest beta as new betas are released, and lets you switch back to a stable version at any time from the same settings area.

Security

When a plugin breaks your site, you can fix it in one click

When a plugin causes a fatal error on your WordPress.com site, you no longer face a blank screen with no way out.

Site owners will now see an error page that identifies which plugin triggered the problem and offers a one-click Deactivate button, which works even if the site won’t load normally, to disable the offending plugin before it has a chance to run again.

Meanwhile, your site visitors see a clean apology — no technical details, no alarm.

For further peace of mind, our Happiness Engineers are constantly working to detect potential issues with plugins that may cause fatal errors on your site and proactively seek solutions before they become an issue for you or your readers/users. 

We also have a dedicated team of Security Specialists who work on detecting and resolving malware and other threats to your sites and will keep you updated with anything they find via email.

Support

Navigate our Support Center with the Support Assistant

Using the search bar in our Support Center now launches the Support Assistant by default for logged in and logged out users. The chat can surface answers to your specific questions, highlight helpful support resources, and connect you with one of our incredible Happiness Engineers if you need more assistance.

Fixes and improvements

We shipped additional reliability and polish updates across WordPress.com too, including:

• Adding an explicit confirmation screen when connecting your WordPress.com account to Telegram.
• Preventing survey pop-ups from appearing while the Help Center is open, so the two don’t compete for your attention.
• Enabling customers to start a free trial using UPI.

22 Apr 2026, 3:56 pm

David Edery co-founded Spry Fox in 2010 with a simple goal: creating games that make people happy.

What followed was 15 years of quirky, original titles like Cozy Grove, a narrative-driven life simulation game that became a cult favorite, and Spirit Crossing, a cozy MMO currently in open alpha and targeting a full PC launch later in 2026. 

In 2022, Netflix acquired the studio. In January 2026, Spry Fox spun back out as an independent studio, still partnering with Netflix on Spirit Crossing.

Through all of it, including the acquisition and the spin-out, their WordPress.com presence stayed constant.

Why a game studio still needs a website

Many game studios lean hard on social media and paid advertising. Spry Fox has always done things differently.

Their growth has been almost entirely organic — built through a newsletter, Discord communities, Reddit, and a blog that’s been running since the early days of the company.

We’ve been trying to maintain a relationship with our audience through our newsletter, our Discord servers, and our blog on WordPress. That’s been driving the majority of our growth over the years.

David Edery co-founder Spry Fox

The blog is where Spry Fox puts the thinking that deserves more space than quick Reddit or Discord updates. A deep dive into how they tuned the economy of Spirit Crossing, a post explaining a design decision, or a longer piece on where the studio is headed.

That’s where we put deeper thoughts. If we need a place to say: hey, we thought carefully about this — we always start with the blog.

David Edery co-founder Spry Fox

It’s also an archive. A record of how the studio thinks, what they’ve built, and why. 

The site also drives traffic. People search for old games like Triple Town, land on the blog, and discover what Spry Fox is working on now. It’s a quiet but steady acquisition channel, and one that costs almost nothing to maintain.

The website that just works

Spry Fox’s game sites — including Cozy Grove and Spirit Crossing — are hosted on WordPress.com and built and maintained by the Automattic Special Projects team.

For David, the value is straightforward.

The website just works. If there’s ever an issue, it gets solved. I don’t have to think about it.

David Edery co-founder Spry Fox

That’s not a small thing for a studio focused on making games. Every hour spent on hosting, maintenance, or troubleshooting is an hour not spent building. WordPress.com removes that category of problem entirely.

Your story deserves a home, too

Spry Fox has spent 15 years building an audience without massive investments in paid advertising. Their site on WordPress.com is a big part of why that works. A place they own and control, and a record of who they are and what they’re building.

WordPress.com gives you fast, secure hosting and a platform built for long-form publishing, so you can focus on the work that truly matters.

20 Apr 2026, 7:37 am

The best content ideas are already in your website data.

Connect your WordPress.com site to Claude to uncover what your audience is searching for—but you haven’t covered yet—and turn those insights into published posts.

In this guide, I’ll show you how to extract those insights, turn them into a clear plan, and generate ready-to-publish content.

Step 1: Connect Claude to your WordPress.com website

Start by connecting your Claude account with your WordPress website. This is possible thanks to the Model Context Protocol (MCP) that creates a direct link between both platforms. It’s completely secure, optional to use, and available to every paid WordPress.com user.

To enable MCP, head to your WordPress.com account → AI and MCP → Enable MCP Tool Access and toggle it on.

Next, head to your Claude account to enable our official Claude Code connector. Go to Settings → Connectors → Browse Connectors. In the search bar, type “WordPress.com,” and select the + button to initiate a connection with your website.

Finally, approve Claude’s access to your website. Select the right website before clicking the Approve button.

Step 2: Ask Claude to review your website and find content gaps

Next, ask Claude to scan the website’s existing content and identify missing topics. You can use a prompt similar to the one below and adjust it based on your own context and needs:

I tried this approach for my own website, and Claude instantly came up with a range of relevant content ideas like “How to build a marketplace website on WordPress” and “How to choose between a membership site and a subscription site.”

Claude also generated recommendations for how to improve existing blog posts on my site. It highlighted articles that were missing key elements like examples and data references, and explained how to add the necessary fixes.

From here, I tested it for other formats such as service pages and FAQs. This workflow is effective for any query related to your site, such as tips on key pages, pricing, case studies, or something else.

Step 3: Ask Claude to prioritize topics and create a content calendar

Next, instruct Claude to rank topics based on their potential impact on your business and website. This helps you prioritize your efforts and put together a plan that will genuinely help you get relevant visitors and leads.

I used the following prompt to ask Claude to rank my content topics:

Claude returned a table, ranking each topic by the value it delivers to prospects and clients:

I noticed that Claude weighed topics that targeted prospects higher than those targeting clients. It assumed my blog’s main job is to bring in new business, because that’s the first goal I shared in the prompt. 

So, I asked Claude for a different approach, and it devised a combined scoring system that weighted both goals equally. The output was better this time:

From here, ask Claude to build a fully operational roadmap for your content. This document will serve as your content calendar, which is essential for planning and effective execution. Here’s the prompt I used:

Here’s what it came up with:

Finally, I asked Claude to convert the calendar into an Excel sheet. It returned two options: download directly or open it on Google Sheets. It’ll need your Google Drive access for the second option. 

Step 4: Create Claude-assisted outlines and articles

Now, select one of the priority topics, ask Claude to generate an outline, and proceed to create the article. 

First, feed Claude all the necessary context (like the article title, goal, and target audience), and it will return a solid outline. Here’s the prompt I used:

Instantly, I received an outline showing how to cover the introduction and conclusion and what information to include in each subsection of the article. 

Review the outline carefully and ask Claude to adjust anything before moving forward, such as reordering sections and trying out different subheadings. 

From here, you can use the outline as a starting point and draft the article based on your knowledge and expertise.

Step 5: Ask Claude to add the article to WordPress.com

Once your article is ready, upload it as a PDF or markdown file to Claude, and tell Claude to add it to your WordPress website as a post. 

This is the prompt I used to instruct Claude:

Claude seeks additional confirmation before adding the article to the website. Once you confirm, it creates the post, defines categories and tags, and adds the article to your site.

Claude also flags any tasks left undone, like adding the meta description manually.

Open the article on your website and check the categories, tags, images, and interlinks. 

If you need to carry out quick edits to the text (like correcting grammatical mistakes and plugging logical holes), use WordPress’s native AI assistant. 

Head to your WordPress account → Sites → Settings → AI tools → Enable AI assistant and toggle it on if you’re on a Business or Commerce plan (or if you built your site with our AI website builder). 

Then, select the Sparkle option from the toolbar and click “Ask AI Assistant” to add a prompt or make edits like simplifying or summarizing your text.

That’s it. The article is now ready for publication. 

Start finding content gaps with Claude

You now have a repeatable process for identifying content gaps with Claude as well as generating outlines, writing articles, and sending them to your WordPress website. 

Connect your website once, and Claude gains access to your posts, pages, comments, and traffic data through secure access via OAuth 2.1.

16 Apr 2026, 2:00 pm

Bela Grundmann is an IT project manager by day. He modernizes legacy systems for banks and large organizations. But for the past five years, his passion project has been something completely different.

Through HealthPress.io, his Automattic partner agency, he has been building the digital infrastructure for a growing European lifestyle medicine community, bringing together experts such as Professor Godfrey Grech and Dr. Ioan Hanes.

Building a lifestyle medicine platform that runs while you care

What that community has built is striking. 

• Godfrey’s clinic-based wellness programs started in Malta and now run across three private hospitals, with partners in Barcelona, Madrid, the UK, and Dubai.

• Ioan’s European Lifestyle Medicine certificate, the only one of its kind in Europe, has completed 17 sessions with 600+ students from 60 countries. This September, the whole community comes together in Brussels for its yearly event.

All of it runs on WordPress.com.

Without the automation and the platforms we use today, we couldn’t do this.

Prof. Godfrey Grech

Building for people who are not developers

Godfrey is an academic professor, and Ioan is a physician, vice-president of the European Lifestyle Medicine Organisation. Their time goes into patients, research, and education. 

HealthPress built platforms that they could actually hand off to non-technical users.

Godfrey’s patient management system at InvestInYour.Health runs on WordPress with Groundhogg.io, handling automated follow-ups, program pipelines, and compliance tracking across multiple clinics. 

Ioan’s course platform at eulmcertificate.com runs on WordPress with LifterLMS, delivering 10 weeks of curriculum across devices, in a format students from 60 countries can access easily.

It really delivered a modern experience for us educationally, technologically.

Dr. Ioan Hanes

Joining Automattic for Agencies

Bela attended his first WordCamp Europe in 2024 and decided to join Automattic for Agencies.

For him, the decision was straightforward. 

He had been running client sites across different hosting providers for years. Consolidating everything on WordPress.com, under the program built by the people who own the technology, made sense for the long term.

It’s best to stick with the founders of WordPress. In the long run, that gives you confidence.

Bela Grundmann, HealthPress

He is now an official Automattic partner. Every client site HealthPress manages runs on WordPress.com.

What comes next

Godfrey is launching a course in June to teach other clinicians how to set up their own lifestyle medicine programs.

Ioan’s Brussels event, 10-12 September 2026, will run on the platform for the first time, combining the in-person experience with digital access for those who can’t attend.

For Bela, the vision is 500 lifestyle medicine professionals on the platform. 

One million people reached through them. A solo agency, growing without limits, because the infrastructure scales with it.

15 Apr 2026, 2:14 pm

Murphy Levesque is a high school senior in Connecticut. She co-founded Hidden Gem Animal Rescue in 2020, when she was 11 years old.

It started with a one-eyed cat named One-Eye at the barn where Murphy took horseback riding lessons. One-Eye was two years old, missing an eye, and on her third litter of kittens. 

Murphy and her riding trainer Logan trapped the kittens, got them veterinary care, and found them all homes.

That was the spark. They kept going.

Today, Hidden Gem Animal Rescue is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit operating across Connecticut and the Northeast, rescuing dogs and cats, running on a network of foster families, and taking cases from as far as Texas and North Carolina. 

Since Murphy started working with WordPress.com around three years ago, the rescue has helped over 100 animals, roughly doubling their previous pace.

What the website changed

Before the website, Hidden Gem had a presence on Instagram and Facebook, but no central place to send people. Her website, developed by the Automattic Special Projects team and hosted on WordPress.com changed that.

I honestly don’t know what my website would look like without you guys. It just looks so incredible.

Anyone who sees a post and wants to learn more can follow the link, understand how the rescue works, and take action right there. Whether that means applying to foster, filling out an adoption application, or making a donation.

It really just became easier for people. And it’s always better when it’s easier for people because they’re more likely to actually take their time to look at it.

Donations in particular became more seamless. The website added a proper donation platform alongside Venmo, giving supporters more ways to give and making the rescue look more like the legitimate organization it had become.

The website makes it look more professional. And people can look at all the cute animals and think, oh, this is something I want to donate to.

It’s been really seamless. I’ve really been able to figure it out and make the updates I want to make.

Murphy also used Blaze Ads to run advertisements for their available animals, bringing in a new wave of traffic and visibility for the rescue.

What’s next for Hidden Gem Animal Rescue 

Murphy is already thinking about what comes next for the rescue. 

The goal is to find a physical location, keep building the rescue’s profile and systems, and make the whole experience easier for everyone involved — volunteers, fosters, and adopters.

The website will be central to all of it.

It gains traction and lets people interact with us. It really helps us build our image.

Your story deserves a home, too

Murphy runs a nonprofit, manages social media, and updates a website while finishing high school. 

WordPress.com gave her a professional platform she could grow into, with the tools to manage it as the project evolved.

Whether you’re just getting started or ready to take things to the next level, WordPress.com gives you everything you need to build a site that works as hard as you do.

14 Apr 2026, 9:56 pm

WordCamp Asia 2026 just wrapped in Mumbai, and it was one of the largest WordPress events ever. WordPress users, developers, and creators gathered at the Jio World Convention Centre for three days of building and learning together.

Before we get into the highlights, a massive thank you to the organizers, volunteers, and speakers who made this happen. Attendees came from right here in Mumbai, across India, and around the globe.

Contributor Day kicked things off

If you’ve never heard of Contributor Day, it’s exactly what it sounds like — people sit down together and contribute to the open-source WordPress project. Code, documentation, translations, community planning, and more.

The magic isn’t just the work that gets done. It’s the connections. New contributors sat alongside people who’ve worked on WordPress core for over a decade. Ideas got shared. Friendships started and renewed. This is where WordPress’s “extended family” energy comes from. Find the full official recap post here.

Sessions worth your time

After contributor day, we held two full days of talks that covered everything from enterprise scaling to cross-border payments. You can watch every session on YouTube. Here are a few we attended and want to spotlight.

Education initiatives in the WordPress ecosystem

A dedicated panel covered WordPress Education — the growing effort to bring WordPress directly to students through campus events, student clubs, and a credits program that partners with universities to integrate WordPress into their curriculum. Real-world, hands-on open source experience for the next generation of web creators.

The Speed Build Challenge

Moderated by our own Jamie Marsland, this one packed the room. Ajay Maurya and Craig Gomes went head-to-head — one using AI, one going fully old-school — with 30 minutes to rebuild a complete site using only the Full Site Editor. No page builders, no custom code. There was no clear winner, which made it even more fun.

Danny Sullivan at the Google booth

Danny Sullivan is a Google Search Director and one of the most well-known voices in SEO. He was right there live at the Google booth, giving 1:1 advice to WordPress folks in person. While this wasn’t an official session on the schedule, it is the kind of thing that only happens at a WordCamp.

We heard him share that the same long-standing principles of quality content for good SEO still apply in today’s AI world. But it’s even more important now to have a strong point of view, a distinct voice, or a unique position. Without that, you’re just creating commodity content, which is less likely to be cited or used by LLMs. Content remains king. 

Mary Hubbard’s magic wand 

Mary Hubbard, Executive Director of WordPress, was asked what one surprising thing she’d change about WordPress if she had a magic wand. Her answer was to improve the WordPress.org plugin directory by treating it as a product and less like infrastructure. A lot of heads nodded at that one, and we look forward to helping make that vision a reality. 

AI was everywhere 

No surprise, but AI came up often throughout the conference. Including a talk from Nirav Mehta, a Mumbai-based entrepreneur. His Lost & Found in AI Wonderland session was a walkthrough of what actually worked (and what didn’t) when his team tried to apply AI across development, marketing, and operations.

Nirav reminded us that like a hammer, AI is only a tool. When you hold a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail. AI may not always be the right tool for the job. In a time full of AI excitement, that kind of honesty was refreshing.

What WordPress.com brought to Mumbai

The WordPress.com team showed up strong with a few things to share, and the conversations at our booth didn’t stop all week.

Plugins and themes on every paid plan. We made sure everyone knew: you can now install plugins and themes on all WordPress.com paid plans. Developers and agencies who build on WordPress every day loved hearing about the flexibility this means for pricing and features on our hosting platform.

A new WordPress agent on Telegram. We showed off a brand new Open-Claw-inspired WordPress agent you can chat with directly from Telegram — with WhatsApp and more platforms coming soon. The idea of managing every aspect of your WordPress site through a conversation on your phone sparked a lot of “wait, what if…” moments at the booth. More on this soon!

Your feedback is heard. Beyond the demos, we spent a lot of time talking to users, agencies, and developers who gave us direct, honest feedback about what’s working and what isn’t on WordPress.com. We’re already bringing all that learning into our roadmap and future plans. A huge thank you to everyone we chatted with. 

The WordPress community is as strong as ever

It is clear after a week in Mumbai that this community is growing, and the momentum is real.

The hallway conversations, the contributor sprints, the after-parties, the people who traveled halfway around the world to be in the same room — that energy isn’t slowing down.

If you’ve never been to a WordCamp, make this your year. And if a full conference feels like a big step, start with a local meetup. Find one near you at events.wordpress.org.

Now with four flagship WordCamps a year:

• WordCamp Europe — Kraków, Poland, June 4–6, 2026.
• WordCamp US — Phoenix, Arizona, August 16–19, 2026.
• WordCamp Asia 2027 — Penang, Malaysia, April 9–11, 2027.
• WordCamp India (TBD) — A brand new flagship event joining the lineup in 2027.

We can’t wait to see you there.

And with that, namaste, Mumbai!