WPLake News Digest – May 2025
Automattic resumes active core WordPress development, AI tools expand in Search and IDE, plus new ways to blend WordPress with Node.js apps.
Table of Contents
1. WordPress Pulse
- Automattic returns to active WordPress Development
After a quiet period, Automattic has resumed full-scale contribution to WordPress core, signaling a renewed focus on open-source collaboration. - New AI-focused WordPress team formed
A dedicated team is now working on integrating AI into WordPress, exploring new ways to embed generative tools and intelligent automation across the platform. - Canonical plugins to improve accessibility
WordPress is exploring the use of Canonical Plugins to enhance accessibility. These plugins aim to offer structured, device-friendly content experiences, supporting tools like AI-driven assistants and screen readers. - WooCommerce caused a fatal error across sites
The WooCommerce plugin caused a critical bug due to a change in remote block pattern responses, crashing many websites. The issue was caused by unsafe array operations and was quickly patched in version 9.8.4.
The issue appeared to be in the Gutenerg block-patterns code. It was getting patterns from a remote source (wooblockpatterns.wpcomstaging.com) and using unsafe array-key-based operations in the response processing. The remote source has changed its response format and it started to cause fatal issues on existing installations, leaving owners and devs wondering why, as no updates were made from their side.
2. AI Spotlight
- Google publicly launched AI Mode for search (in the US)
The new AI mode offers users conversational, context-aware answers and summaries directly in search results. - JetBrains adds Junie agent to PHPStorm
PHPStorm now supports Junie, a coding agent that understands project context and executes multi-step tasks, similar to GitHub Copilot, but tailored for JetBrains’ ecosystem. - OpenAI launches Codex cloud agent
OpenAI introduced Codex, a powerful cloud-based software engineering agent capable of handling complex dev workflows across multiple tasks and projects in parallel.
3. WebDev Highlights
- Figma launches Figma Sites
Figma introduced a new product, Figma Sites, enabling designers to turn their mockups into shareable, live web pages and bridging the gap between design and production. - Platformatic bridges PHP and Node.js
The new php-node package by Platformatic allows developers to run PHP (e.g. WordPress) natively inside Node.js using a Rust-based module making it ideal for hybrid and headless setups.
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