WordPress 7.1 Reviewed - Fourteen Features Put to the Test

YouTube video by Elliott Richmond

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WordPress 7.1: What’s Actually Worth Your Attention

WordPress 7.1 lands on 19 August 2026, and for once I don't think that's an exaggeration when I say it's a proper release. Not a "few tweaks and a new default theme" release, mind, a genuine "people have been asking for this for years" release. I sat down and went through it properly for my latest YouTube video, cherry picking 14 features to actually test rather than just read about, and a few of them are worth talking about here on their own.

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Poll from Elliott Richmond - YouTube

I’m curious to know what WordPress developers are using for local development these days? If it’s not listed below then leave a comment…

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Debug WordPress Like a Pro: Xdebug with WordPress Studio

YouTube video by Elliott Richmond

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WordPress 7.1 Source of Truth

Welcome to the Source of Truth for WordPress 7.1! Before you dive headfirst into all the big and small changes and pick your favorites, make sure to read these preliminary thoughts about this post and how to use it. If you have any questions, leave a comment or email me at pauli@gutenbergtimes.com. A huge "Thank you" to Anne McCarthy, Justin Tadlock, Isabel Brison, Adam Silverstein, Ramon Dodd, Andrew Serong, Hans-Gerd Gerhards, Marin Atanasov, Krupa Nanda, Isabel Brison, Aaron Robershaw, Ben Dwyer, Brent MacKinnon, Ashar Fuadi, and a lot more.

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WordPress 7.1 is coming. Are your custom blocks ready?

YouTube video by Ryan Welcher Codes

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Using WordPress Playground for Serious Business - The WP Minute

You may have heard of WordPress Playground, but have you explored what it can do? WordPress developer and core contributor Elliott Richmond has some real-world examples that might surprise you. He joi...

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How I Use WordPress Playground Blueprints to Train Clients (Without Touching the Live Site)

When you launch a new website, training the client is the bit that gets neglected. The block editor is mature enough now that clients can do far more than they used to, but anything new needs teaching. So training isn't an optional extra, it's part of the job. The obvious place to do it is the staging site. You've already got one, it's running the theme, the plugins, the content.

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WordPress Playground & Blueprints - The Client Training Tool You're Probably Not Using

YouTube video by Elliott Richmond

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Why I Spent 16 Months Turning 400+ Holiday Cottages Into WordPress Blocks

TL;DR: I rebuilt kate & tom's, a 400+ property holiday cottage site, from Advanced Custom Fields flexible content into a native WordPress block theme. The client can now build pages from patterns instead of waiting on me to code a new widget every time. The hard part was migrating 10,590 widgets out of post meta and into blocks, which I did with a purpose-built plugin re-run against fresh production snapshots throughout development.

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Using WordPress Playground and Blueprints to Train Clients on Block Themes - elliott richmond

A practical look at how WordPress Playground and Blueprints can replace a dedicated staging environment for client training sessions. Real setup, real workflow, and a use case straight from WordCamp E...

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Using WordPress Playground and Blueprints to Train Clients on Block Themes

Now I'm pretty late to the table with this but I came back from WordCamp Europe this year with one thing I actually needed to go and try. Not for the sake of it. Because there was a job waiting on the other side. A client of mine is mid-migration from a classic theme to a full block theme. For years they've managed their content with a plugin that used flexible content fields, so this is a proper shift in how their site works day to day.

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Where Have All the WordPress Speakers Gone?

The Cheltenham WordPress meetup is taking a summer break. Holidays, busy schedules, the general impossibility of finding a free Wednesday in July when half your members are somewhere on the Continent. It's nothing unusual. Other meetups do it too. We'll be back. But the break has given me some time to sit with something that's been nagging at me for a while: finding speakers has become genuinely hard.

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From WordCamp and 120 Pizzas to a Block Theme Launch

What a contrast a week can be. Last weekend I was at WordCamp, surrounded by a group of WordPress and open source enthusiasts, all buzzing about the same stuff I get excited about. The sort of weekend where you come home full of ideas and convinced you're going to change how you work. Then the dust settles, you sit down to actually turn those ideas into content, and you come back down to earth with a bump.

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WordPress in the Real World, Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 7:00 PM | Meetup

**Safe Edits, Local Development & Taking Over Existing Sites** Ever inherited a WordPress site and been too nervous to touch anything? Or made a “small change” that acciden

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WordCamp Europe 2026 Kraków Recap

This year WordCamp Europe was truly quite special. I've attended quite a few WordCamp's - and particularly a couple in Europe - and although I've been in the WordPress community for over 20 years and run our own little WordPress meetup in my local town, I have always been that introverted, shy, and retiring attendee. My enthusiasm for WordPress has never wavered from the day I discovered it, but coming together with a community as massive as this can be daunting.

elliottrichmond.co.uk

WordCamp Europe 2026 Kraków Recap

This year WordCamp Euro was truly quite special. I've attended quite a few WordCamp's - and particularly a couple in Europe - and although I've been in the WordPress community for over 20 years and run our own little WordPress meetup in my local town, I have always been that introverted, shy, and retiring attendee. My enthusiasm for WordPress has never wavered from the day I discovered it, but coming together with a community as massive as this can be daunting.

elliottrichmond.co.uk

Ditch Local and Docker? Studio CLI and Studio Code for WordPress Power Users

YouTube video by Elliott Richmond

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