Weston Ruter
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weston.ruter.net
Weston Ruter
@weston.ruter.net
WordPress Core committer 👨🏻‍💻 Daddy² & husband 👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 Going by bike/bus/train 🚴‍♂️🚍🚈 Runner 🏃‍♂️ Cat person 😸 Linguaphile 🇲🇽🤟 Portland, Oregon 🇺🇸 [ˈwɛs.tn̩ ˈɹu.ɾɚ]

Blog: https://weston.ruter.net
Profile pic credit: @andy.thefragens.com
Something I've been thinking about a lot this Christmas season, so I blogged it:
Would Jesus have found refuge in the United States? - Weston Ruter
When Mary and Joseph fled Judea to protect Jesus from Herod, would they have been welcomed as refugees in America if he had been born today?
weston.ruter.net
January 1, 2026 at 7:36 AM
I used WordPress Playground for the first time in a support forum reply to try to reproduce a bug report. Super nice! I made a test plugin in a gist, within which I included a blueprint.json to self-install and set up the test case to repro with 1 click: wordpress.org/support/topi...
WordPress 6.9 broke site layout
WordPress 6.9 broke site layout theinfoprovider (@theinfoprovider) 1 week, 6 days ago After the automatic update to WordPress 6.9 (and/or Gutenberg plugin 19.5), the entire front-end design of our …
wordpress.org
December 17, 2025 at 2:16 AM
Reposted by Weston Ruter
Meet WordPress 6.9 “Gene”.

This release delivers collaboration with soul. Notes in the editor, smooth drag and drop, new creative blocks, and faster performance across your site.

Discover what is new and upgrade today: wordpress.org/download/releas...

#WordPress
December 2, 2025 at 8:29 PM
I'll be there.
November 27, 2025 at 7:09 AM
Reposted by Weston Ruter
I'm really excited for the @wordpress.org 6.9 release! There's. A. Ton. The field guide is now live, and it proves my point (it's a doozy). I'm looking forward to seeing the community build on top of the new Notes feature, which unlocks new ways to collaborate!
WordPress 6.9 Field Guide
This guide outlines major developer features and breaking changes in 6.9 and is published in the Release Candidate phase to help inform WordPress extending developers, Core developers, and others. …
make.wordpress.org
November 25, 2025 at 3:32 PM
Reposted by Weston Ruter
WordPress 6.9 to Bring Performance Gains With fetchpriority Support, Increased Inline CSS, and New Output Buffer
www.therepository.email
November 21, 2025 at 3:00 AM
Reposted by Weston Ruter
WordPress 6.9 Release Candidate 2 is now available for testing. This vital milestone invites you to download and test the latest features that aim to enhance your experience. Your feedback is crucial for the final release! Ready to dive in?

Get the release here: wp.me/pZhYe-526

#WordPress
November 18, 2025 at 4:01 PM
WordPress 6.9 includes so many performance improvements! Scripts with fetchpriority, increased inline CSS, minified theme styles, on demand block styles in classic themes, the template enhancement output buffer, and much more! Check out the field guide:
WordPress 6.9 Frontend Performance Field Guide
This post is the latest in a series of updates focused on the performance improvements of major releases (see 6.8, 6.7, 6.6, 6.5, 6.4, 6.3, and 6.2). WordPress 6.9 is the second and final major rel…
make.wordpress.org
November 18, 2025 at 5:29 AM
Worked nights and weekends (and days) to get these performance improvements landed! Getting 6.9 out the door on December 2nd will be a great relief. Hoping for a >20% boost to Largest Contentful Paint for Christmas! 🎄
The Release Candidate 1 for WordPress 6.9 is here! This milestone invites you to explore enhanced Site Editor features, performance improvements, and updates across the board. Your testing is crucial in building a better WordPress. Join the journey and test the RC1 version now: wp.me/pZhYe-51z
wp.me
November 11, 2025 at 11:54 PM
Reposted by Weston Ruter
As I was saying…
Jimmy Kimmel is Back!
YouTube video by Jimmy Kimmel Live
youtu.be
September 24, 2025 at 4:27 AM
Reposted by Weston Ruter
Big thanks to @weston.ruter.net for joining me on the ✨ SPDY STREAM 009 ✨ yesterday. Lots of details were shared about the progress on the #WordPress platform re: performance. This should edited for next week.
September 11, 2025 at 7:02 PM
I love this new post from Speed Kit. They divide up the 2.5-second “Good” threshold for LCP into two additional thresholds: Instant (300ms) and Fast (1000ms), while the current Good threshold becomes merely “OK”.
Don’t Settle for “Good”: It Is Time for New LCP Thresholds | Speed Kit
We at Speed Kit are now extending Google's LCP thresholds in all our dashboards by adding two additional buckets to show more details for page loads faster than 2.5s.
www.speedkit.com
September 11, 2025 at 5:14 PM
Just landed in WordPress trunk: scripts and script modules can be registered with a `fetchpriority` arg, and the Interactivity API script modules and comment-reply script use `low` by default. This can improve LCP by ~7% when the LCP element has an image: core.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/60...
Changeset 60704 – WordPress Trac
Blog Tool and Publishing Platform
core.trac.wordpress.org
September 3, 2025 at 10:43 PM
I've joined @wpengine.com to contribute full time to WordPress core, continuing the performance work I started while at Google:
Joining WP Engine - Weston Ruter
I've joined WP Engine to contribute full time to WordPress core, continuing the performance work I started while at Google.
weston.ruter.net
August 27, 2025 at 10:44 PM
I just presented “The Site Speed Frontier with Performance Lab and Beyond” at WordCamp US. Shortly before my talk, I published a companion blog post that has 10x the information I had time to share, and I've just added an embed of the livestream: weston.ruter.net/2025/08/27/t... #WCUS
The Site Speed Frontier with Performance Lab and Beyond - Weston Ruter
Analysis of the LCP impact for optimizations featured by the Performance Lab plugin and proposed for WordPress core. Presented at WCUS 2025.
weston.ruter.net
August 27, 2025 at 10:13 PM
My blog has reached a web performance milestone: It's now in CrUX for both mobile and desktop (at the origin level), and it passes the CWV assessment for each! But the web performance journey isn't over…
Web Performance Milestone - Weston Ruter
My blog is now passing the CWV assessment on desktop and mobile in CrUX and has 100 in Lighthouse! But the web performance journey isn't over.
weston.ruter.net
August 22, 2025 at 6:26 AM
I've just made some updates to my Portland picks post for WordPressers coming to my town for #WCUS: weston.ruter.net/2024/09/12/m...
My Portland Picks - Weston Ruter
Since so many of my teammates and colleagues are converging on my hometown of Portland, Oregon for WordCamp US, I've put together a list of some of my favorite things to do which may be helpful for WC...
weston.ruter.net
August 16, 2025 at 7:36 PM
I've published a new WordPress security plugin: Strict CSP. It helps mitigate cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities on the frontend and login screen (but not yet in the WP admin):
Strict CSP
Enforces a Strict Content Security Policy on the frontend and login screen to help mitigate any XSS vulnerabilities.
wordpress.org
August 10, 2025 at 8:54 PM
¡Qué logro, ¿no?!
August 4, 2025 at 7:03 PM
I've been enjoying Gemini Code Assist for GitHub. It is a very helpful AI code reviewer! I just learned it supports configuration via a .gemini/ directory, allowing you to provide a style guide. I've put together an initial one for my WordPress plugins: github.com/westonruter/...
Introduce code style for Gemini Code Assist by westonruter · Pull Request #1 · westonruter/wp-plugin-template
I just learned that Gemini Code Assist for GitHub supports a .gemini directory which can be used for configuration. One of these configuration files is a styleguide.md. This PR introduces an initia...
github.com
July 31, 2025 at 7:05 PM
If you're using Additional CSS (Custom CSS) in the Customizer and have a Block Theme active, you may have noticed that live preview hasn't been working. This will be fixed in the next version of Gutenberg (21.4):
Fix ability to preview Additional CSS changes in the Customizer when using a Block Theme by westonruter · Pull Request #70428 · WordPress/gutenberg
The implementation here is described in https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/63589#comment:23 Instead of re-introducing the separate STYLE tag for the Customizer's Custom CSS in the Customiz...
github.com
July 30, 2025 at 4:23 PM
Planned performance improvements for WordPress 6.9, including:
• script fetchpriority
• output buffering
• bfcache
• CSS minification/inlining
And more:
Roadmap to 6.9
WordPress 6.9 is scheduled to be released on December 2nd, 2025 with plans for a simplified editing mode in the Site Editor, improvements to template management, block leveling commenting, and more…
make.wordpress.org
July 29, 2025 at 1:09 AM
Do you like instant navigations on the WordPress frontend? Speculation rules! What if speculative loading was also in WP Admin? Check out this new experimental plugin that adds prerendering with moderate eagerness for links in the Admin Menu and Admin Bar:
GitHub - westonruter/speculative-loading-admin: Adds speculative loading to the WP Admin for prerendering links with moderate eagerness in the Admin Bar and Admin Menu. Experimental.
Adds speculative loading to the WP Admin for prerendering links with moderate eagerness in the Admin Bar and Admin Menu. Experimental. - westonruter/speculative-loading-admin
github.com
July 25, 2025 at 3:45 AM
If you've liked Speculative Loading with prerendering, you'll like this: The new “No-cache BFCache” plugin for WordPress enables instant back/forward navigations, particularly while logged in.
Instant Back/Forward Navigations in WordPress - Weston Ruter
The new No-cache BFCache plugin enables instant back/forward navigations, especially while logged in.
weston.ruter.net
July 23, 2025 at 8:08 AM
In one of my Duolingo lessons for Spanish, I encountered a word I hadn't used before: “conocedor”. But I quickly recognized its meaning since it just has the -edor agent suffix for the verb “conocer” which means “to know”.
July 19, 2025 at 4:36 AM