WordPress 7.0 enters its final stretch, with everything locked in and focus shifting to polishing the last details.

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Program transcript

Hello, I’m Alicia Ireland, and you’re listening to WPpodcast, bringing the weekly news from the WordPress Community.

In this episode, you’ll find the information from March 23 to 29, 2026.

Matt Mullenweg has opened a discussion on Make Core about the admin dashboard’s left sidebar menu. The problem is well known: any plugin can add menu items wherever it wants, with no established order, which means that on sites with several active plugins the menu ends up a hard-to-navigate mess.

Matt’s proposal is to establish a hierarchy: core WordPress items first, followed by a dedicated section for plugins, where heavyweight plugins like WooCommerce or an LMS would get their own top-level entry containing their entire universe. To prevent important plugins from getting buried at the bottom, he suggests allowing items to be pinned, or automatically surfacing the three most recently used plugins at the top.

The case for this change is straightforward: the current sidebar has no structural logic, and the experience on heavily-plugged installs is objectively bad. A clear hierarchy would also benefit AI agents and automation tools, which are increasingly interacting with the WordPress admin. It’s a real problem that has gone without an official solution for years.

What’s generating doubt in the community comes down to mus...

WordPress 7.0 Is Ready to Launch