I tried really hard to publish a newsletter for November. I had four drafts all on different topics. I was fired up, and I had things to say. But I just couldn’t say them. And now it’s December.
Sometimes you write your way through a topic and then… the motivation to publish leaves you. I never got any of my drafts anywhere near publishing, and I’m not sure I will. Instead I got distracted building a thing.
I built a new (beta) plugin for WordPress: Feeds. It’s an RSS reader that runs inside your WordPress dashboard. Here’s what happened.
As I’ve mentioned before, this past year I’ve been building a Woo store for my wife’s business. It’s been a learning experience, especially around how data is managed inside of WooCommerce.
One of the big strategic changes inside of Woo recently has been a push to lean more heavily on WordPress core’s components, data layers, and capabilities. Woo shipped an early integration with MCP and the Abilities API and inside the block editor, we’re seeing more native interaction with the WordPress Data Layer that has improved performance and user experience.
Along the way, there’s been a lot of work supporting two major components inside Gutenberg: DataViews and DataForms. My bet is that these will become key to a potential updated WordPress and Woo admin experience.
I haven’t dug into DataForms yet, but as I’ve been building functionality for my wife’s Woo store, I’ve been leaning into core WordPress to spin things up quickly- CPTs and Taxonomies for simple data storage, and the DataViews package for quickly generating admin screens. I wanted to create something I could jam on more publicly, so I created Feeds.
Here’s a preview of how the DataViews can render the list of articles, something that required a very minimal amount of code from me.
It’s still in beta, but I welcome anyone who wants to try it out and even file issues or PRs.
I leaned pretty heavily on Claude Code during the build out, but the truth is that I spent a lot of time reviewing and re-architecting the code myself. There’s really no best practice for React-based WordPress admin screens yet, so you should have strong opinions on how you want the app structured. On the positive side, you don’t need to write a lot of code, as long as you’re happy with the limitations of the existing components.
This Thursday, I’ll be at the WordPress Accessibility Meetup for a live website remediation with Amber Hinds. Register to join us on Zoom.
Amber will take a very close look at one of my personal websites 😬 and recommend some accessibility improvements. Amber knows her stuff so it’ll be an amazing learning experience.
Links from around the web
Why we embraced FSE for our own website redesign – This was one of the topics I almost wrote about in this newsletter. Enterprise WP agency Human Made used the Ollie block theme for their own website, instead of going custom. I think we’ll see a lot more of this as incentives shift away from spending money on fancy frontend design for marketing sites.
I was really struck by Caleb Porzio’s episode I don’t want to work in a studio from his Notes On Work podcast. The idea that video production gear can take over your office (and kill the chill, spacious, deep work vibes you sometimes want to cultivate) is something I’ve been struggling with but hadn’t yet articulated.
Speaking of podcasts, I was on the WP Legends podcast last month to talk about ecommerce platforms.
Aurooba Ahmed made a list of features that are mandatory for a CMS. There’s been a movement in WordPress (and Woo) to re-evaluate what are “table stakes” features, and this list is a good one.
James Kemp, Core Product Manager at WooCommerce, spoke at WordPress Day in Porto to talk about The Future of Selling with WordPress.
Devin Walker joining the team at Jetpack can only be good news. This interview on The WP Minute gives a great overview of what we might see.
The WordPress core AI tools are all shaping up for a big 2026. Felix Arntz introduces the WordPress AI Client SDK.
Anil Dash has always towed the line between practical and critical around technology. This piece on the popularity and usefulness of AI is fantastic and doesn’t go where you’d expect.
Pie Calendar has launched a new Connector Addon for adding additional event sources to your WordPress site.
Great post from the Roots team explaining why the WP REST API is the preferred successor to all those old admin-ajax calls.
Do your holiday shopping at these WooCommerce stores with the 2025 Woo Gift Guide.
That’s all for now! Have a great rest of the year.
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