The Playground team listened to your feedback and rolled out three UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. improvements this month: one-click saving for playground instances, quick access to frequently visited pages, and a dedicated view for managing WordPress instances.

1. A Dedicated panel for better management

Saved playgrounds moved from the settings panel to a dedicated dashboard with its own landing page at playground.wordpress.net.

When you visit playground.wordpress.net, clicking on the icon with four squares on the top-right, you’ll find a clean, organized dashboard that allows you to:

• Start Fresh: Launch a vanilla WordPress site or test specific Pull Requests (PRs) from WordPress or GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/.
• Import Easily: Use the “Import .zip” button to upload projects via .zip files, GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ URLs, or Blueprint URLs.
• Explore Blueprints: Browse a library of blueprints with pre-configured setups like “Art Gallery” or “Coffee Shop.”
• Manage Your Work: View your saved playgrounds listed at the bottom with creation dates and storage status.

2. Remembering to save your progress

WordPress Playground runs client-side in your browser, so refreshing or closing a tab before saving can erase your work. Playground now displays an “Unsaved Playground” warning in the top navigation bar to prevent this.

Click the ‘Save’ button next to the warning to store your work in browser storage and resume exactly where you left off.

3. Faster navigation via Quick Access Links

Navigating the WordPress admin area usually requires multiple clicks or manual typing of URLs. The latest update introduces a Quick Access dropdown integrated directly into the Playground’s internal address bar.

By clicking the address bar, you now get instant shortcuts to the most common areas of your site:

• Homepage
• Dashboard
• Site Editor
• New Post
• Plugins
• Themes

This small change significantly speeds up the testing workflow, allowing you to jump from the front end to the backend editor in a split second.

Give it a try!

These updates are designed to make WordPress Playground more user-friendly and efficient. Head over to playground.wordpress.net to test them out for yourself.

Have feedback? The team wants to hear from you! You can leave a comment below or join the conversation via the #playground SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel.

The github-proxy.com was created previously to Blueprints, load branches, pull requests, and commits on GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ without CORS issues and add a dynamic packaging functionality. This service is hosted and maintained by a community contributor, Christoph Khouri, and he will end this service at the beginning of 2026 (but your Blueprints are safe).

The good news: The Playground team has introduced an automatic migrationMigration Moving the code, database and media files for a website site from one server to another. Most typically done when changing hosting companies. layer in WordPress Playground. If your Blueprints currently rely on github-proxy.com, they will continue to work automatically.

What is changing?

When Playground encounters a github-proxy.com URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org in a Blueprint, it will now automatically rewrite it to use native Playground resources like git:directory.

Your Blueprints will continue to work, but you’ll see a console warning to update them. Update your Blueprints to use native resources for future compatibility and to remove these warnings.

How to migrate

The automatic migration handles several patterns:

github-proxy.com pattern	Migrates to
?repo=owner/name	zip wrapping git:directory at HEAD
?repo=...&branch=trunk	zip wrapping git:directory with branch ref
?repo=...&pr=123	zip wrapping git:directory with refs/pull/123/head
?repo=...&commit=abc	zip wrapping git:directory with commit ref
?repo=...&release=v1.0	zip wrapping git:directory with tag ref
?repo=...&directory=subdir	zip wrapping git:directory with path
?repo=...&release=v1.0&asset=file.zip	url to GitHub releases download
?repo=...&release=latest&asset=file.zip	url to GitHub /releases/latest/download/
https://github-proxy.com/https://...	url with the inner GitHub URL

Here is how you can update your Blueprints to match the native implementation:

1. Repositories, Branches, and Pull Requests

The old proxy returned a ZIP file of a repository. You can now achieve this natively using the git:directory resource.

Old:

{
    "resource": "url",
    "url": "https://github-proxy.com/proxy/?repo=user/repo&branch=main"
}

New:
Use the git:directory resource directly in your steps (like installPlugin or installTheme).

{
    "step": "installPlugin",
    "pluginData": {
        "resource": "git:directory",
        "url": "https://github.com/my-user/my-repo",
        "ref": "main"
    }
}

You can target specific commits or pull requests using the ref property:

• Pull request: "ref": "refs/pull/123/head"
• Commit: "ref": "abcdef123456..."

2. Release Assets

If you were using the proxy to fetch a specific asset (like a pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party zip) from a GitHub release, you can now use the resource zip with an inner object.

Old:

{
    "resource": "url",
    "url": "https://github-proxy.com/proxy/?repo=user/repo&release=v1.0&asset=plugin.zip"
}

New:

{

  "resource": "zip",
  "inner": {
    "resource": "git:directory",
    "url": "https://github.com/owner/repo",
    "ref": "main"
  }
}

Why is this better?

The proxy was vital in Playground’s early days. Recent infrastructure improvements, Playground’s built-in CORS proxy, and GitGit Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency. Git is easy to learn and has a tiny footprint with lightning fast performance. Most modern plugin and theme development is being done with this version control system. https://git-scm.com/. over