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WordPress 7.1: What Matters for Agencies · Wpfavs - Your favourite WordPress news

• 0:13
  Last time we dug into the technical side of 7.1, the iframe isolation and the
• 0:17
  developer APIs.
• 0:19
  Today I want the editorial and block building view.
• 0:22
  When it comes to what agencies actually touch every day, what landed,
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  what got cut, and what do you test before August 19?
• 0:29
  Beta 4 just dropped with more than 114 updates and fixes, 51 in the Editor and 63 in
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  Core.
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  And the headline for builders is that core now has a Tabs block.
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  Clickable panels, with full blocks inside each one.
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  Plus a Playlist block, plus a Table of Contents block that builds itself from your
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  headings.
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  That last one used to mean installing a plugin.
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  I think that's a real shift.
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  It is, but let's be careful.
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  Does it kill the utility plugin?
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  Core gives you the primitive.
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  A toolkit gives you the finished control.
• 1:02
  One source we're reading, Nexter, sells a block toolkit, so it has a stake here.
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  But its point is fair.
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  It lists things like an accordion with FAQ schema, a dynamic repeater,
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  and ready made presets.
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  Core Tabs doesn't promise any of that.
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  Here's where I get excited, though.
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  A Table of Contents generated from headings is structure.
• 1:22
  When AI assistants read your page, they strip away the styling and the scripts and
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  look at the skeleton.
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  If core makes a clean heading outline the default, that's good for machines,
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  and nobody has to remember to install anything.
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  That's my interpretation, not something the release notes claim.
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  Right, and I'd push it further.
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  The more core absorbs the basics, the more a plugin has to justify itself with
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  something real.
• 1:43
  If your plugin is only a tabs widget, this release is a bad week for you.
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  I'd disagree a little.
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  For a simple brochure site, sure, drop the plugin.
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  But for an agency with forty client sites, ripping out a toolkit means rebuilding
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  every tabbed section, and nobody bills for that happily.
• 2:00
  Core plus a toolkit that matches how you build is the realistic answer.
• 2:05
  Not core versus plugin.
• 2:06
  So you're saying don't migrate for the sake of it.
• 2:09
  Exactly.
• 2:10
  Use core on new builds, and leave stable client sites alone until there's a reason.
• 2:15
  Now the styling side, which I think is the sleeper.
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  Responsive styling lets you set breakpoints right in the inspector,
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  and interactive state styling gives you hover and focus on things like buttons,
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  without a custom stylesheet.
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  For a lot of agencies, that's a pile of custom CSS that can finally go away.
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  And Beta 3 fixed something I'd have complained about.
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  Applying a local style globally used to be all or nothing.
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  Now the Apply globally option opens a quick review step, so you choose which
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  modified styles go global and which stay local overrides.
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  That's the difference between a design system and a mess.
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  Plus the media changes.
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  Image processing moves into the browser, with client side support for HEIC,
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  UltraHDR, AVIF, and WebP.
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  Infinite scroll in the Media Library by default.
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  And Beta 3 fixed some ugly ones: long animated GIFs no longer hang,
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  and a single HEIC upload in Safari no longer creates two entries.
• 3:14
  Which sounds great until your host or CDN has opinions.
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  Browser side processing changes where the work happens, so that's a staging test,
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  not a trust me test.
• 3:25
  Okay, the elephant.
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  Real time collaboration.
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  Live editing, watching your teammate's cursor move.
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  It was pulled from 7.0 in May, and it did not make 7.1 either.
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  Per the roadmap, there are still open strategy questions, including which storage
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  mechanism to use and whether to ship the full feature or just the underlying
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  architecture.
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  There's an outreach and testing effort running, but no confirmed release date.
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  So if live co editing was your one reason to upgrade, 7.1 isn't it.
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  I'd argue that's not a tragedy.
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  What you get instead is a much better Notes system.
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  Rich text formatting, @mentions that open a searchable list of collaborators,
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  and notes on a specific text selection instead of a whole block.
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  The roadmap also lists suggestion mode and reply notifications,
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  though I'd treat that list as a roadmap, not a promise.
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  I'm less forgiving.
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  Agencies were planning workflows around live editing.
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  Now the process is leave a note, wait, reply.
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  That's fine for editorial teams, but it's slower for a launch night when three
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  people are fixing one page.
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  Fair.
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  But I'd rather have asynchronous Notes that work than live editing that corrupts a
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  client's homepage.
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  Deferral here looks like caution.
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  Though I'll admit that's my read.
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  The project simply says the approach wasn't ready.
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  One more cut worth mentioning.
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  Unicode email address support is not in 7.1.
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  It's moving to a community plugin so compatibility, security,
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  and data handling can get broader testing.
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  For international clients, that's a wait and see.
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  So give me the checklist.
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  It's August, the final is scheduled for August 19, timed with WordCamp US.
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  What does an agency do this week?
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  Here's my practical list.
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  One, clone a client site to staging, and test it on the beta,
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  never production.
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  Two, check your patterns against the new responsive and state styling,
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  especially any block level custom CSS, because overlapping rules can surprise you.
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  Three, upload real client images, HEIC, WebP, AVIF, through your actual host and CDN
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  pipeline.
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  Four, confirm your theme and block plugins have a 7.1 tested release.
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  And five, confirm you're on PHP 7.4 or higher, since that's the floor 7.0 set.
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  And for stores and high traffic sites?
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  Wait for the first point release unless your rollback process is solid.
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  Beta 4 alone had 114 updates and fixes.
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  It's converging, but it's still a beta.
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  Also remember 7.0.2 was a security release, with a REST API batch route issue among
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  the fixes.
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  So the update habit matters more than ever.
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  The question is just sequencing.
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  My takeaway?
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  Core is eating the boring layer.
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  Tabs, contents, hover states.
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  The plugins that survive will be the ones doing something core won't.
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  Mine is simpler.
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  Test on staging, upgrade the small sites first, and streamline your plugin list
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  while you're at it.
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  If core does the job, one less plugin to maintain.
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  See what WordCamp US announces, and we'll pick it apart after the release.