Should Learn WordPress live inside the WordPress dashboard? I made that case, with some history, on This Week in WordPress 307. Meanwhile, the episode’s running joke was hats: the panel kept switching them on camera, and for audio listeners I described each one. For my part, I wore a black beanie with a raised WordPress logo.
🎙️ Episode details
- Show: This Week in WordPress 307, “Wearing many hats… literally!” from WP Builds
- Host: Nathan Wrigleycolleague
- Panel: Mark Westguard, Bob Dunncolleaguemet and me, Courtney Robertson
- Live: Monday, September 2, 2024. The podcast then followed on September 3.
- Topics: templates for custom post types, Learn WordPress in the dashboard, and accessibility news
- Show notes: This Week in WordPress 307 on WP Builds, with news links and a transcript
The captions come from a machine transcript I generated, and I haven’t proofread them yet. WP Builds also publishes a full transcript on the show notes page.
🧩 Templates for custom post types
First, on a news item about block templates, I drew on my time at The Events Calendar, one of the first plugins with Gutenberg support. Changing how a plugin’s custom post type template lays out its information wasn’t easy for site owners, I said, and in many cases that was still true.
📚 Learn WordPress in the dashboard
To start, I traced the idea of pulling Learn WordPress materials into the dashboard back several years. Later, Andrea Middletoncolleague revived it around 2020. I also remembered, for example, teaching in a bootcamp for adults retraining after COVID layoffs. At the time, instructors wanted graduates ready for advanced support or junior developer roles. In turn, that meant themes, which meant PHP, without any official standard to teach toward.
♿ Accessibility news
Finally, on an accessibility related item, I said one reason I know Amber Hinds of Equalize Digital is her accessibility work, and that I’d be interested to see how the projects in the story developed.
🧪 What can you take from the Learn WordPress dashboard idea?
- Plugin developers: make custom post type layouts editable with blocks, so site owners aren’t stuck.
- Educators: point learners to Learn WordPress where they already work, in the dashboard.
Also, more conversations like this one live in my podcast and speaking archive.
🗓️ Archival note
This panel streamed live on September 2, 2024, and WP Builds published it the next day. Later, on November 9, 2026, I moved this post to the live date and wrote it from the publisher’s automated transcript. However, However, However, I reviewed that transcript, not the recording.