Like A Version, Released For The Very First Time

Stick around ‘til the end to find out why the dishwasher won’t close all the way.

In today’s edition:

• Tumblr’s big WP migration dreams are turning out as disappointing as the ball pit at Dashcon.
• WordPress 6.8.2 RC1 is live: let the bug-stomping commence.
• We casually flex on eeeeeeverything we’ve shipped in 2025. NBD.

Hot Off The Presses: What’s New?

Is this “shameantic versioning” not how everyone numbers their releases?

Those digits at the end are definitely the “haha ooops…” numbers, right?

As long as your version number doesn’t start looking like an IP address, you’re still good.

Anyway, welcome to DEV! We’re on edition #25 of this newsletter now but if we were counting shame fixes, whew, God only knows. 😅

Let’s dive into what’s new in WordPress!

Tumblr’s Migration to WordPress? It’s Complicated.

Remember way back in the innocent days of September 2024, when we reported on the plan to pack up Tumblr’s Jensen Ackles thirst-GIFs, musings on children’s hospital designs and dark academia moodboards and move them all over the WordPress?

Well, not so fast.

According to Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg, Tumblr’s migration is now on hold indefinitely. So much for the Shackleton-inspired “hazardous journey” filled with “constant danger,” huh?

The reason? A mix of shifting priorities and, let’s be real, the sheer complexity of moving a 16-year-old social blogging platform into a modern CMS without breaking a million blogs run by dedicated tumblrinas & tumblringos.

The news dropped on The Verge’s Decoder podcast, where Mullenweg explained that the team had originally hoped to port Tumblr to WordPress, opening up the possibility of a fediverse-friendly rebuild using the ActivityPub plugin on WordPress.

“I still want to do it,” Mullenweg says. “But right now, we’re not working on it.”

So, Tumblr will stay Tumblr for now, and won’t be joining the fediverse anytime soon — unless, as Mullenweg says, “there was a big push to implement fediverse,” in which case, “we would just do it on the Tumblr code base.”

At the end of the day, Tumblr’s die-hard cohort of “never gonna give you up” users will carry on nerding out with their niche communities anyway.

• Read the full Verge Article here.

Plus, a few classics to remind us why we love Tumblr:

• A spectacular tribute to the power of hats.
• A delightfully unhinged post about tea.
• The tale of Stinky Bastard Man.

WordPress 6.8.2 RC1: Ready for Testing!

While there are rumours floating around that we might get WordPress 6.9 later this year, right now 6.8.2 has officially reached Release Candidate Status.

This is a maintenance release and it’s here to do the unglamorous work of squashing bugs, tweaking styles and making things run just a little better. If all goes well, the final release is scheduled to land July 15, 2025. Until then, the Core team is calling for devs to help test, validate fixes, and make sure nothing breaks right before launch.

In total, it features:

• 20 fixes for issues throughout Core.
• 15 cherry-picked bug fixes for the Block Editor.

No flashy new features here, just good ol’ fashioned quality-of-life polishing to keep things running smoothly.

Why does this matter? Because even the most elegant block editor can trip over an unexpected issue, and these updates are the kind of quiet, behind-the-scenes fixes that keep everything humming (and your client emails blissfully empty).

Want to help test?

• Use the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (set it to “Point Release” channel)
• Or download the release candidate directly here →

Mid-Year Geeky Dopamine Boost: What We’ve Been Cooking in 2025

Can you believe 2025 is already HALF OVER!? It feels like just yesterday we were all singing Auld Lang Syne while sloshing champagne down our cummerbunds, doesn’t it?

Now the days are getting shorter, Q1 & Q2 are a distant memory and we’re looking back on all the bug squishes and big-time UI upgrades we’ve shipped in the first half of this year.

Spoiler alert — it’s a lot.

From our Half Yearly RoundUp post, here’s just a taste:

• The Hub had a glow-up, now it’s sleeker, faster and better than ever at making managing your sites actually enjoyable.
• Major plugin updates have dropped, like security boosts for Forminator, bulk actions for Broken Link Checker and Session Protection for Defender.
• Premium Hosting is now in whatever the opposite of Mercury in Retrograde is — as in it’s working BETTER than ever.

You know, it might sound cheesy, but we genuinely love building tools that help you run your WordPress business like the super-smart-and-amazing nerd you are.

All sorts of cool folks use our products and services to build things that make the world a more interesting place — and that will never get old for us.

So, here’s to the endless pursuit of smart upgrades, cleaner UI and dev-friendly features that support your craziest and most ambitious projects. We can’t wait to see what the rest of this year will bring! 🥂

Read the full update →

Mind Bloggling Facts & Stats

• The State of Devs 2025 survey found that 18% of developer respondents were women or non-binary. That might sound small, but it’s triple what previous surveys reported (hovering around 6%). Progress is slow, but real. (Source)
• Also from the same survey: 23% of devs said their favorite TV show is Severance. The work is mysterious and important, indeed. (Source)
• In some good ol’ fashioned WordPress spring cleaning, the team archived 20 GitHub repos, 11 plugins, and 30 Slack channels that were gathering dust. Shoutout to Jonathan Desrosiers for wielding the digital broom with style. (Source)
• 150 high school students in Cartago, Costa Rica joined WordPress Campus Connect on July 4th. Back in our day, we learned WordPress via digging through the 14th page of forum posts about mysterious phpMyAdmin errors. These kids don’t know how good they have it. (Source)
• WooCommerce got 140+ accessibility upgrades over the past year, including proper form labels, better color contrast, and keyboard nav improvements. High five! (Source)
• According to the 2024 Advanced Custom Fields survey, 71% of folks use ACF on ALL of their WordPress sites, with FTP the most common deployment method by far. Spill your ACF workflow secrets via the 2025 survey.(Source)

Blogs & Resources You Shouldn’t Miss

How Héctor de Prada went from 20 to 70 attendees in León, proving meetups aren’t just awkward ice-breakers — they’re community oxygen.

Felix Arntz has been contributing to WordPress core for an impressive 10 years! He shares the 10 most valuable lessons he’s learned in that decade.

If you need to create a LOT of WordPress pages at once, like hundreds, Karol Krol has the quickest method.

Want your hero image to sliiiide in on scroll without JavaScript? This guide shows you the CSS-only way, baby!

DIY your own WCAG contrast checker tool — because accessibility isn’t just a box to tick, it’s how you build something that actually works for everyone.

Eric Karkovack calls AI bots “mafia thugs” — who show up uninvited, eat your server’s lunch, and leave you to clean up the mess.

Tired of AI crawlers leeching your bandwidth? Charge them a toll. This article explains how.

Coffee Break Distractions

With duct tape and temp fixes, your legacy lives on forever. Immortal, unmaintainable, and someone else’s problem.

TFW you’re looking at a theme that promises to work for EVERY type of website.

Flags, feelings and fierce composition. The winners of the LGBTQ+Press 2025 “Share Your Pride” photo contest are absolutely serving.

AI-generated hiking routes sound cool until they send you off a cliff or into a bear’s den. 😳

Your brain needs a 90-minute sesh, not a 25-minute snack. Here’s why devs are ditching Pomodoro.

“Why should I hire a dev if I can just copy and paste code from Stack Overflow?”

The WayBack Machine archive is projected to hit one trillion pages soon. Yes, including your old blog where you used Comic Sans and thought drop shadows were cutting edge. Congrats, you’re part of internet history.

And finally…

The reason why the dishwasher won’t shut.

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