Brian Gardner

I’m excited to share that I’ve moved into a new role: Head of Community at @WPEngine. I’ll work alongside our customers, agency partners, and the greater WordPress community—leading strategic initiatives, supporting industry events, and pursuing sponsorship opportunities. ⬇️

@williamsba @amooreTO @IainMcPherson Works for a pretty good company to boot. 😃

@amooreTO @IainMcPherson That guy is such a professional now! 🤣

Hanging with WordPress OGs in NYC

Atta boy. 👊

@igorbenic @mikemcalister @WordCampUS Quick fly-by to say how great this looks.

@mikemcalister @WordCampUS AI to the rescue. Told it to try redesigning it using Ollie 😂

Genuine question here: what in the world is going on with this @WordCampUS website? us.wordcamp.org/2026/ Surely this cannot be the final product for the flagship conference in our industry. We want people to come to this right? Happy to help bring this thing to life.

Love seeing folks embrace FSE and core blocks. 😊

We’re hiring a Creative Director at @wpengine! 🚀 If you’re a design leader looking for a fresh challenge, let’s chat. DM me for the link or details. 📩

@carlhancock @jdevalk Not trolling, and serious question: What’s the alternative? I ask because—as a designer—I am struggling with this new reality.

I don't mean these comments to be derogatory BTW. So don't take it that way. As I said the site looks nice. But the more I work with Claude and the more I see people launch sites built with it... the more I see how it leans heavily on the same design patterns. Pattern recognition can be a curse.

Vol. XV: the 15th version of my blog since June 2004 (following pretty quickly after the previous one). I got rid of the AI-generated post images, picked Klim's Domaine and Pitch fonts to do the work instead, and built proper plumbing for longer writing. joost.blog/vol-xv/

@jdevalk 100000%.

@bgardner Hey copying is the sincerest form of flattery right 😉

I tweeted "how long before we get this for custom fields too?" when Custom Post Type UI landed in Gutenberg 23.1. Here's why custom fields are the half that matters, and what they should look like when Core finally ships them. joost.blog/wordpress-cust…

@jdevalk Planning a fun weekend experiment, to see if I design a new theme which conceptually models after your site. Not copy, mind you. Just be inspired by.

@bgardner They are amazing.

@courtneyr_dev Post formats. What a time to be alive!

@bgardner We’ve learned from the Post Formats merge to core I think.

🚨 Wow. 🚨 “Today, Matt made the decision to remove real-time collaboration from WordPress 7.0 and shared that he is not confident the current approach is robust enough to include in Core at this time, citing concerns around surface area, race conditions, server load, memory efficiency, and recurring bugs found through fuzz testing.” make.wordpress.org/core/2026/05/0…

The WordPress version of “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” 👇

@westguard Likely a temporary move and we’ll see it in 7.1. 🤷‍♂️

@bgardner Good move. I never understood why this should be in core.

@JustinFerriman I would agree.

@bgardner That feature always came across as a bit tone deaf. This was the right decision.

Do you also feel like every morning brings a new LLM, a new protocol, or another 'AI game-changer' to deal with? I find myself deep in complex technical challenges every day, and sometimes feel the need to zoom out a bit and focus on the "why" first. wpengine.com/events/decode-…

@RafalTomal More importantly, whether what you’re asking for is in demand or actually needed.

AI will build whatever you ask for. The harder question is whether what you're asking for is any good.

@LoCoHeather @natalieeelias3 Sending herself out like the all-star she is. Way to go @natalieeelias3!

In case you missed it over the weekend- this was @natalieeelias3 's final at bat at Margie Wright Diamond. Nice exclamation point on her time there as a Bulldog. Thank you, Red Wave, for making our east coast girl feel at home! #seniorday

DE{CODE} is next Wednesday, May 6th! Don’t miss out! Join @fran_the_dev and other experts at @WPEngine’s virtual conference and hear how they’re navigating this current era of Intelligent Web! Register here: wpengine.registration.goldcast.io/events/f3b71a8…

For those keeping score at home, this commit introduces an experiment in Gutenberg to register Custom Post Types. (Screenshot in reply.) github.com/WordPress/gute…