Insights, thoughts, and tips on product, design, and development. Pick a topic and start exploring.
I had the pleasure of making the WordPress 6.7 release video on YouTube. Had a lot of fun with this one. There’s something about extending craft across different mediums.
Hat tip to @nickdiego and @jamie for helping, and to the 780+ contributors who worked on WordPress 6.7.
Since my latest design refresh, many folks have been asking about the WordPress theme I’m using and how to get it. So, same as before, I’ve made my blog’s theme open source.
Meet Kanso, my best blogging theme yet.
Your __________ doesn’t need a flashy redesign; it needs to work better.
You might think that a new coat of paint will solve your problems. But if the core functionality is lackluster, users likely care about sleek interfaces.
Instead of redesigning, focus on the core elements that matter to users. Fix the bugs that frustrate customers, then streamline flows for intuitive navigation and task completion.
Only then, consider adding genuinely useful features that address real user needs and pain points. These improvements, while less visually apparent than a redesign, result in higher satisfaction and retention.
It’s always substance over style. A functional but plain product will outperform a pretty but broken one.
Focus on solving real problems to drive growth, not trendy designs. You don’t need a flashy redesign, for now.
Open source is beautiful. And open source is often messy.
WordPress, with its global community of contributors, is no exception. We’re a passionate bunch, each bringing our ideas, skills, and perspectives to the table. It’s what makes WordPress different—a competitive advantage. But this freedom comes with a challenge: together, how do we build a cohesive, intuitive, and human-centric WordPress experience?
More than ever, WordPress should be design led.
That doesn’t mean a few designers make all the decisions. Actually, it’s the opposite; every contributor—developer, writer, marketer, or designer—thinks more like a designer.
To think like a designer means looking beyond the immediate task and considering the bigger picture. It requires understanding how every change impacts the user experience and approaching decisions with empathy, ensuring every interaction feels purposeful and seamless.
This approach challenges us to avoid arbitrary decisions and lean on holistic solutions that prioritize user experience. Because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how beautiful, extensible, or accessible WordPress is. If WordPress is not usable, it can’t democratize publishing.
“It doesn’t matter how beautiful, extensible, or accessible WordPress is. If WordPress is not usable, it can’t democratize publishing.”
Rich Tabor
I’m not saying WordPress isn’t usable today (although there’s room for improvement), but that open source isn’t an excuse for sloppiness; it’s a call for excellence—especially with a project that matters, like WordPress.
As contributors, we have the opportunity to create a more thoughtful, human-centric experience that empowers people to publish, if we all think more like a designer.
An interesting read from Brad Frost on how AI is influencing the evolution of design systems, highlighting the balance between automation and human creativity in crafting cohesive and scalable digital experiences.
This stands out to me most:
We still need critical thinking. Ethical thinking. Systematic thinking. We still need to foster relationships. To build bridges. To coordinate. To orchestrate. These are human things. These are the skills that designers and developers need to cultivate and grow in order to continue to be viable in our AI age.
What do you think? Are these human things?
This interview with David Lee, the CCO of Squarespace, poses an interesting question: Will AI make human creativity a luxury?
Creativity is not just about technical skill or craft; it’s about identifying what resonates with people and captures the human experience. That is, taste.
In today’s world, where AI is increasingly capable of creating art, music, and literature, taste matters more than ever. I agree with David here—taste is the currency of this inevitable future, which perhaps is already here.
Good taste helps creatives produce resonate work that reflects personal style and originality. It involves a level of vulnerability, exposure to diverse influences, trusting instincts, and knowing when to follow or diverge from trends.
WordPress 6.6 is a solid mix of refinement and progression, most notably with enhanced design tools to level-up site creation, and rollbacks for plugin auto-updates.
Here’s my take on the most interesting parts of this release:
I recently discovered Muji’s ethos, where the company champion against a world obsessed with perfection:
“We do not make objects to entice responses of strong affinity, like, “This is what I really want” or, “I must have this.” MUJI’s goal is to give customers a rational satisfaction, expressed not with, “This is what I really want” but with “This will do.”
“This is what I really want” expresses both faint egoism and discord, while “This will do” expresses conciliatory reasoning. In fact, it may even incorporate resignation and a little dissatisfaction.
MUJI’s goal is to sweep away that slight dissatisfaction, and raise the level of the response, “This will do” to one filled with clarity and confidence.”
In product and software development, balancing perfection and completeness is incredibly difficult.
I appreciate this mindset because it’s not about compromising quality, but appreciating sufficiency. It’s a shift from chasing perfection to finding contentment in what meets our needs.
Welcome to Shaping WordPress, where I share every couple weeks what’s top of my mind and what’s shaping up for WordPress. If you haven’t already, subscribe.
The best part of WordPress is that we get to work together making something we appreciate better.
Contributing to open source is all about caring deeply for something and following up that passion with progress. Working together with others.
It’s like embarking on a side quest in your favorite massive multiplayer gamer, where success hinges on assembling a party of adventurers. Each party member (or contributor) brings their unique skills to the table, driven by a shared commitment to progress.
I know it can be difficult to find the intersection of what’s important to a project and what’s interesting to you as a contributor. My advice here is to connect with other contributors and make your interests known.
Blog about your curiosities, your explorations, what drives you as a person. And when you do form that party of adventurers interested in the same areas of work around you, that’s when you will start picking up real momentum.
This dynamic interplay of passion, collaboration, and community underscores the art of contributing to open source. A reminder that at the heart of open source lies a vibrant community of people, each playing a role in shaping its future.
That’s why I build, and publish, with WordPress.
Over the last week or so, I made 720 unique theme styles. But here’s the kicker—this is all in a single theme. Wild.
With Assembler, you have a whopping 45 color combinations and 16 font sets that can be mixed and matched to generate an incredible 720 unique vibes. And while not technically individual themes, each permutation could very well serve as a unique theme style on its own.
Typically, WordPress themes come with a handful of theme style variations at most. But by leveraging the new capabilities of theme style variations landing in WordPress 6.6, this theme shatters the norm.
Check out this highlight I made, featuring Assembler and a few patterns, expressed across just 7 of the 720 permutations.
I participated in my friend Jamie’s WordPress Speed Build Challenge last week. The premise of the show is that two contestants have thirty minutes to build a landing page using WordPress. Good fun.
Whether it’s about the block editor, site editor, building blocks, designing themes, creating patterns, or just using WordPress—ask me anything and I’ll follow up with you.
A few of my favorite photos from a recent trip to Tokyo, Japan for an Automattic team meetup.
Sharing meals builds trust, jumpstarts relationships and drives momentum—essential for distributed teams. These shared experiences foster unity and enrich collaboration, much like WordCamps do for the WordPress community.
On that note, I’ll be in Torino, Italy, next month for WordCamp Europe. Drop me a DM on X, or reply, if you’d like to meet.
