🗞️April 2026 Update: Global Border, Performance Pass, and Block Abilities Coming

We sometimes get asked why we keep investing in a category Core seems determined to absorb. April’s release answers part of it. Global Border applies across the entire site in one click, the theme and extension both got a serious performance pass, and the typography defaults you have been hand-overriding for years now ship as settings, not edits.

The bigger story this month happens outside our codebase. WordPress 7.0 ships May 20th and last week Matt pulled Real-Time Collaboration from the release. Kadence WP got rolled into Liquid Web by Nexcess. Page-builder fatigue showed up as one of the most-discussed r/Wordpress threads of the month. We had things to say about all three. Here is everything in one place, with our honest take blended in.

🎉 What’s New

• Nexter Blocks, Typo Components Text Transform Default: Set your capitalization preference once at the component level (uppercase, lowercase, capitalize), and every block inherits it. No more per-block overrides, no more extra CSS.
• Nexter Blocks, Global Border: Define one border style and apply it across the entire site. Change it once, everything updates. The kind of saver you notice on a 50-page build.
• Nexter Blocks, Global Border Radius: Same idea as Global Border, but for corner radius. Set once, forget hunting individual blocks when you want the rounding to shift.
• Nexter Extension, Core Performance Improvements: The plugin now loads only what each page actually needs. Less overhead per load, less surface area for plugin conflicts on heavy sites.
• Nexter Theme, Performance Pass: DB calls now cached. Customizer hooks now admin-only. Media loads only where needed. Unnecessary Google Fonts requests gone. Your frontend loads faster, your admin feels snappier.

For everything else this month, check the complete changelog here.

What’s Coming Up

Block Abilities and a dedicated Woo Block are next in the pipeline. If you are building WooCommerce stores on Gutenberg, keep an eye out. We are making that flow much shorter.

📹 Video Tutorials

📊 — Quick Poll

Which April release matters most to your sites?

🎨 Global Border across the site
⚡ Nexter Theme + Extension performance pass
🔤 Typo Components defaults
📦 Block Abilities (coming soon)

Reply in the comments with the letter. Takes a second. Helps us prioritize the next release.

🗞️ WordPress and Tech Bytes

The news, with my honest take on each one, and what it means if you build with Nexter.

1. WordPress 7.0 is confirmed for May 20th, and last week Matt pulled Real-Time Collaboration from the release citing fuzz-test stability concerns. What is actually shipping matters more to block users: native Accordion, Breadcrumbs, Icon, Math, and Term Query blocks land in Core, plus Pattern Overrides and Block Bindings improvements. We have full Nexter compatibility going out the same week, with our Nexter Blocks variants of these going further than the Core defaults on styling, conditions, and global control. WordPress 7.0 release schedule →
2. Kadence WP is now under Liquid Web by Nexcess as part of the StellarWP roll-up. Two of this month’s most-upvoted r/Wordpress threads flag that Theme v1.5.0 planted a permanent Liquid Web panel inside WP admin and openly ask for lightweight alternatives. If you have been holding out, Nexter Theme is independent, faster, and built by the same team that supports it. r/Wordpress thread on Kadence alternatives →
3. “After 300+ builds, I’ve stopped using page builders for client sites” was one of this month’s most-discussed r/Wordpress threads (116 upvotes, 168 comments). Agency builders are sharing the same fatigue: lock-in, frontend bloat, upgrade-tax cycle. If you are watching this with your own clients, Nexter Blocks are built for the destination they are moving to: Gutenberg-native, no lock-in, no bloat. r/Wordpress page-builder-fatigue thread →
4. Gutenberg 22.9 shipped background gradient support on the Group block. Gradients and background images now coexist, including gradient overlays on image backgrounds. The command palette also has organized sections and a recent commands list. Small features, but the kind of thing you feel every day if you live in the editor. Gutenberg 22.9 release notes →
5. Gutenberg 22.8 shipped a State dropdown in Global Styles for Hover, Focus, and Active button styling, with live previews directly in the editor. Small feature, but if you build with global button styles (we ship this in Nexter Extension), this is exactly the level of control you wanted in Core. Gutenberg 22.8 release notes →
6. Gutenberg 22.8 also shipped client-side AVIF support. For Nexter users already using AVIF compression in Nexter Extension Pro, the editor now handles those files natively, no workaround needed. One less manual step in the image pipeline. AVIF support in Gutenberg 22.8 →
7. Plugin-registerable connectors landed in Gutenberg 22.8. Developers can now add custom connectors via registerConnector(). For us, this opens up cleaner integrations on Nexter Blocks that previously required workarounds. Expect to see this surface in upcoming releases. Connectors API in Gutenberg →
8. Google rolled Preferred Sources out globally. Worth knowing the actual mechanic: it is a personalization feature, not a ranking signal. Users can mark sites they want to see more often in Search and Discover. Do not let anyone resell it to you as SEO. Preferred Sources global rollout →
9. Google publicly told dev teams to build for AI agents, not just human visitors. Schema, architecture, content strategy. All of it needs to account for how AI retrieves content now. If you build client sites on Nexter, the structured-content shape that already ships with our Nexter Blocks puts you ahead of where most themes are on this. Google’s guidance for developers →
10. Google blamed AI Overview traffic drops on “bounce clicks”, where users click organic results and immediately return to the search page. The SEO community is not fully buying it, and honestly neither am I. The pattern looks more like AI Overviews answering before the click even happens. Google’s bounce-click explanation →
11. New research on ChatGPT citations shows focused content beats exhaustive guides. Depth wins over breadth in AI search. If you have been writing 8,000-word “ultimate guides”, they are probably hurting you more than helping. We are reworking our own help docs around exactly this insight. ChatGPT citation length study →
12. AI search is increasingly surfacing Reddit threads over branded content, even when your content is more authoritative. Community presence is becoming a visibility lever, not a vanity metric. Worth thinking about before your next content plan. Reddit beating owned content in AI search →
13. Alphabet reported Q1 2026 Search revenue at $60.4B, up 19% year-over-year. Google says AI experiences are driving more Search, not less. For now, the panic about Search dying looks early. Alphabet Q1 2026 earnings →
14. Bing crossed 1 billion monthly active users, mostly on the back of its AI features. Search optimization is no longer a Google-only conversation, and the web is healthier for it. Bing reaches 1B monthly active users →

🔥 Tool of the Month

RankReady is a WordPress plugin that gets your content cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, not just ranked by Google. You set it up once, and it handles the structured signals AI crawlers need to find, trust, and surface your content.

If you are ranking well on Google but watching AI tools answer your audience’s questions with competitor content, this is built for that. Setup takes under five minutes. No developer needed.

🗣️ — Word of the Month

Nexter Extension simply a dream!

The Nexter Extension is a well-designed all-in-one solution for WordPress. If you want to run your website with as few plugins as possible and still use many functions, you’ll find a powerful tool here!

Thanks

~ @wpkonzept

🤔 From the Founder

WordPress 7.0 ships May 20th, and last week Matt pulled Real-Time Collaboration from the release. That was supposed to be the headline. What is actually landing is more interesting and, honestly, more disruptive to anyone building blocks: Core is now bundling native Accordion, Breadcrumbs, Icon, Math, and Term Query blocks. Things that block plugins used to own.

For Nexter users this is a clean opportunity. Our Nexter Blocks variants of these already go further than the Core defaults on styling, conditions, and global control, and our 7.0 compatibility is going out the same week. With the performance pass we shipped this month, your sites land on May 20th from a strong base.

One real question for you: when Core ships its own version of a block your favorite plugin already does, do you default to Core, or stay on the plugin? Drop your thoughts in the comments below.

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