I was curious whether WordPress Site Editor is something a complete beginner could realistically pick up, so I asked Claude to review the experience through the eyes of someone completely new to WordPress. The prompt was simple: forget everything you know about WordPress, start with a blank site, and document every point of confusion, every […]

The WordPress Site Editor: A Beginner-Centred Critical Review (by Claude) **Everything that follows was automatically generated by Claude. ** Environment tested: WordPress 7.0.2, Twenty Twenty-Five 1.5, fresh install, default content. Every finding below was observed directly in the running product, not recalled from documentation. Persona applied throughout: a florist with no website experience, fluent in […]

I love WordPress block themes. I think they're one of the biggest technical achievements in WordPress over the last decade. They give us consistency, flexibility, global styles, design systems, and an incredible amount of control. As someone building on top of WordPress every day, I wouldn't want to go back. But… I'm increasingly convinced that […]

Eleven days ago I set myself a weekend challenge: build "Canva for WordPress." Not another page builder. A page builder on top of Gutenberg that a complete beginner could use with zero training. The page is the canvas. You edit on the front end. You drag, resize, rotate, snap to guides. And when you hit […]

If you've been thinking about moving from Wix to WordPress, you've probably discovered that most migration guides assume you know what FTP is, are happy exporting databases, or don't mind wrestling with plugins. I don't think that's how most people want to build websites. Here's the good news. If your website is primarily made up […]

PootleWriter already exists. It already does what I originally set out to build: a fast, distraction-free writing experience with helpful insights that make editing easier. But over the last few weeks I've realised I've been asking the wrong question. Instead of asking, "What feature should I add next?", I've started asking, "Why would someone come […]

Over the past few weekends I’ve been experimenting with an idea that’s been sitting in the back of my mind for years. What if building a WordPress page felt as easy as using Canva? Not another page builder with hundreds of settings. Not another AI website generator. Just a canvas where you can click on […]

One of the most interesting things I've read this week is this article about WebMCP, an emerging proposal that explores how AI assistants could interact directly with websites. At first my reaction was: why not just use MCP? MCP already gives AI assistants a way to connect to applications and call tools. It's fantastic for […]

Over the weekend, Fable and I built a working MVP of a new WordPress page builder called Gogh. The idea is simple: make building WordPress pages feel as easy as Canva. Instead of wrestling with rows, columns, and nested blocks, you edit directly on the live page. Elements can be dragged, resized, rotated, reordered, and […]

The Front-End Editor started life with one job: let your content team fix a typo or reword a sentence right on the live page, without opening the block editor. This release takes that idea a lot further. You can now edit links, images and buttons the same way, all from the front end. Edit links […]

England lost to Argentina. This is not ideal. In fact, for approximately 57 minutes, England appeared to be doing something highly unusual, which was winning a football match against strong opposition while looking reasonably comfortable. Then England scored. And everything changed. Most teams, when they score, become more confident. England, however, reacts the way I […]

When I built Jamie's Front-End Editor for Content Teams, the idea was simple: let a client fix the words on their live site by clicking the text and typing, without ever opening the block editor or learning WordPress. No dashboard, no interface, just edit the page in front of you. The idea landed. But the […]

Satya Nadella (CEO Microsoft) shared an interesting idea this week about AI and what he calls the “Reverse Information Paradox.” The short version is that every time we use AI, we’re teaching it. Through our prompts, corrections, workflows, and feedback, we’re creating valuable knowledge. Reading it made me think about WordPress. For years, we’ve thought […]

One of my favourite things about building for WordPress is how quickly a bit of feedback can turn into a real feature. This week it happened again. A few days ago, Alessio left a lovely review of Jamie’s Front-End Editor for Content Teams: “Very promising plugin, exactly the kind of thing I am looking for […]

Imagine asking your WordPress site: Which services don’t have testimonials? Which products mention pricing but don’t explain delivery? Summarise everything we offer for beginners. Show me every product launch we’ve announced in the past two years. Generate a newsletter from this month’s company announcements. Today, WordPress can’t answer those questions. It can store content. It […]

In my last post, I explored the idea of creating a schema layer on top of AI-generated HTML. The more I think about it, the more I believe the schema is the interesting part. Not because it helps WooCommerce or Jetpack Forms integrate with AI-generated pages, although it does. What’s interesting is everything that becomes […]

The next step isn’t asking AI to write better HTML. It’s helping WordPress understand the HTML people already paste in. AI might generate this: <h1>Premium Coffee Mug</h1> <p>£19.99</p> <button>Add to Cart</button> A person knows what that means. WordPress doesn’t. So the plugin needs to create a schema behind the scenes: {   “component”: “woo-product”,   […]

I’ve been thinking about where my Visual HTML Editor could go next. Right now, the plugin solves a simple problem: AI is incredibly good at generating HTML, but HTML isn’t particularly friendly for most WordPress users to edit. The plugin sits in the middle. AI creates the layout, and users can safely edit text, images, […]

A few years from now, I think we'll look back and find it a little strange that we ever bolted page builders onto WordPress. Here's the thought I can't shake. AI is astonishingly good at HTML. Ask it for a hero, a pricing table, a whole landing page, and it writes clean, semantic markup in […]

When I was running WordPress courses, someone once copied my website almost word for word. They copied the headlines, the structure, the sales copy, the lot. They were so lazy they even copied my phone number. So I started getting calls from people trying to book courses through their website, which was both annoying and […]

What happens when AI stops generating pages and starts generating design systems? Over the last few months I’ve become convinced of three things. First, AI is incredibly good at HTML. Not “surprisingly decent” good. Genuinely good. It can produce layouts, components, responsive designs, and entire interfaces faster than most humans can. I wrote more about […]

If you’ve ever shared a WordPress Playground link and watched someone wonder where to click next, this is for you. I’ve been experimenting with a new feature on pootleplayground.com called Guided Tours. Here’s a live example: https://pootleplayground.com/p/5ai0uv Open the link and you’ll be guided through WordPress step by step. The idea is simple: instead of […]

Or: Why British Government Is Basically a Washing Machine Stuck on Spin Cycle Every few years, a politician stands at a lectern, looks serious, and announces that power is going to be devolved. This week it was Andy Burnham. The speech is usually accompanied by words like local empowerment, community leadership, decision-making closer to the […]

I asked Claude to spend time inside both the WordPress Site Editor and the block editor, click everything, break things, and report back. This is that report. What follows is Claude's analysis of where WordPress is today, what works well, where friction remains, and how the editing experience might evolve in the future. To find […]

WordPress is a brilliant publishing platform, but let’s be honest about the writing experience: the moment you click “Add New Post” you’re staring at admin bars, sidebars, settings panels, block inserters, and a dozen things competing for your attention. None of that helps you write. It helps you configure. Jamie’s Distraction-Free Writer strips all of […]