I’ve been building with Miles for a few weeks now and I want to talk about it.
Miles is a WordPress plugin by Andy Peatling. It helps you build and iterate websites faster using the block editor. Install Local, fire up Miles, and you’re building. That’s it. No complicated setup. No hours of configuration. You’re just in it.
I’m part of the early beta community around this project, and honestly that might be the best part. It’s not just a tool. It’s a group of people who are exploring what WordPress can actually be when you stop fighting the block editor and start working with it. Learning together. Breaking things locally. Sharing what works. That energy is rare and I’m grateful to be a part of it.
In This Post
- Twenty Years of WordPress: I’ve Seen Every Era
- Why Miles Makes the Block Editor Hit Different
- The Block Editor and WordPress 7.0: Turning the Ship
- What This Means for the WordPress Ecosystem
- Messy, Not Sloppy (Applied to Learning Tools)
- Getting Involved: How to Be a Mover and Shaker
- Try It
Twenty Years of WordPress: I’ve Seen Every Era
I’ve been building with WordPress for close to 20 years. Custom templates in the early days, hand-coding everything. Theme frameworks when those became a thing. Enterprise-level builds. Client sites of every size and complexity. I’ve seen every approach, every tool, every era of WordPress development.
And over those 20 years, I’ve also had to deal with every approach when inheriting sites, troubleshooting client issues, or cleaning up messes nobody else wanted to touch. That includes page builders. Elementor, Divi, Beaver Builder, all of them.
Look, page builders serve a purpose. They gave a lot of people a way to build sites who otherwise couldn’t have. That democratization matters. Some people love working with them and that’s fine. Everyone has their workflow.
But from a professional development perspective, there are trade-offs. When you inherit a site built with a page builder, especially one that’s been worked on by multiple people over time, the technical debt is real:
- Bloated markup that slows everything down
- Inline styles everywhere with no consistency
- JSON-stored content that’s a nightmare to version control
- Custom CSS layered on top of builder styles layered on top of theme styles, and nobody’s quite sure what’s doing what anymore
It’s not that page builders are bad. It’s that they were never designed for the way enterprise teams or professional agencies actually work long-term. They were designed for ease of use and speed, which are good goals. But ease of use for one person building alone is different from maintainability for a team working together over years.
The block editor was supposed to be the answer to this. Native to WordPress. Clean, semantic markup. Version control friendly. Designed from the ground up to be both user-friendly AND maintainable at scale.
But for a long time, it wasn’t ready. It was clunky. Limited. Frustrating for anyone trying to do real site building beyond blog posts. You could write content, sure. But building a full marketing site with custom layouts and interactions? The block editor wasn’t there yet.
That’s finally changing.
WordPress 7.0, combined with tools like Miles, is where the block editor becomes what it was always supposed to be. Not just a better way to write blog posts. A legitimate, professional-grade way to build complete sites. The vision is finally catching up to the execution.
Twenty years of perspective: I’ve built with hand-coded templates, theme frameworks, and dealt with every page builder when inheriting sites. Page builders serve a purpose, but they have trade-offs. The block editor was always the right direction. It just wasn’t ready yet. That’s changing now.
Why Miles Makes the Block Editor Hit Different
Miles doesn’t try to replace WordPress. It doesn’t abstract it away or build some parallel universe on top of it. It meets WordPress where it is, the block editor, the way things actually work, and makes that experience faster and more intuitive.
Right tool for the right project. I’ve used it across the board:
- Tiny personal projects and experiments
- SMB client sites that need to ship fast
- Full client builds with custom layouts
- Building things with my kids (seriously, they can participate now)
The range is what proves it’s not a toy. It’s not a proof of concept. It’s a legitimate tool for doing real work.
The flexibility is what makes it powerful. You can build and iterate fast, on the fly, with Miles doing the heavy lifting. Then you have a choice: keep using Miles or detach it and connect your own stuff. It’s not a lock-in. It’s a launchpad.
That matters more than people realize. Most tools in this space want to own you. They want you dependent on their ecosystem, their hosting, their everything. Miles just wants to make you better at WordPress. Use it as long as it’s useful. Stop using it when it’s not. The work you did is still yours.
I’ve used it for client-style work. Personal projects. I’ve built things with my kids using it, which, if you’re a parent who builds, you know how cool that is. When your kid can sit next to you and actually participate in making something on the web? When they can see their ideas turn into something real? That’s the promise of the block editor finally delivered.
You can get up and running so quickly. You don’t even have to do a whole lot to get set up. Install Local, start working through Miles, and you’re off. Yes, you can achieve similar things with other tools, but this is more direct into WordPress. It’s native. It belongs there.
Andy is iterating at a pace that’s almost hard to keep up with. As a beta tester, I’m watching features land weekly that would’ve been quarterly releases at most companies. He’s building in public, listening to the community, and shipping. That’s the kind of energy that changes ecosystems.
I wrote about this in Building My Own Tools: the best tools are the ones that fit how you actually work, not how you think you should work. Miles fits. It feels like it was built by someone who’s actually shipped client sites under deadline, not someone who’s theorizing about what developers might want.
What makes Miles different: It’s not a lock-in. Build fast, iterate on the fly, then keep Miles or detach and use your own stuff. It’s a launchpad, not a cage. The work you do is still yours.
The Block Editor and WordPress 7.0: Turning the Ship
WordPress powers 42.6% of the internet. Let that sink in for a second. Nearly half of all websites. That’s a massive ship to turn.
And it’s been turning slowly. The transition from classic editor to block editor to full site editing has been years in the making. WordPress has been in a hole for a while. The community has been frustrated. The direction has been unclear. A lot of people checked out.
I think we’re coming out of it.
The block editor has struggled for a long time and it’s still got a way to go. But I think WordPress 7.0 is going to streamline things significantly. Tools like Miles combined with AI are going to make it increasingly easier for people to get involved with the block editor rather than reaching for solutions that create different kinds of complexity.
The pieces are coming together:
- Better-structured content with patterns and block themes
- Tools like Miles that make the block editor fast and intuitive
- AI integration that accelerates the building process
- Menu Designer and other community-driven improvements
- Community members who are genuinely pushing things forward
It all adds up. It’ll help get WordPress out of the hole and more into full site editing the way it was always meant to work.
You don’t turn a ship that powers nearly half the internet on a dime. It’s a process. But the direction is clear and the tools are finally catching up to the vision.
This connects to what I said in Everything Accelerated Except What Actually Matters: the tools moved fast but the ecosystem took time to catch up. We’re at that inflection point now where the pieces are finally aligning. WordPress 7.0. Miles. AI integration. Menu Designer. All of it converging at once.
For those who have not previously loved the block editor, I think this will change your experience. WordPress 7.0 is going to be a new frontier. It finally bridges the gap between developers and users, or at the very least gets us a lot closer than we’ve ever been.
WordPress 7.0 is the bridge: For years the block editor was frustrating for real site building. WP 7.0 plus tools like Miles plus AI finally closes the gap between vision and execution. The ship is turning.
What This Means for the WordPress Ecosystem
Here’s what I’m seeing in the community: renewed energy. People who checked out of WordPress development two or three years ago are coming back. Not because WordPress suddenly got easy. Because it finally got worth the effort again.
The block editor was always the right direction. But direction without execution is just theory. And for years we were stuck in theory. Patterns that didn’t quite work. Blocks that couldn’t do what we needed. Full site editing that was technically possible but practically frustrating.
Now the execution is catching up to the theory. And that changes everything.
Developers who spent years avoiding the block editor are starting to explore it again. Agencies are starting to experiment with block-based themes. People are building things they couldn’t have built two years ago.
That’s not hype. That’s momentum. And momentum in an ecosystem this size creates opportunity.
The people who figure this out early, who invest in understanding how the block editor actually works instead of fighting it, are going to have a massive advantage. Not just technically. Economically. The market is shifting and the early movers will define what the next era of WordPress development looks like.
The landscape is changing. Page builders will continue to exist and serve their audience. But the professional development trajectory is clear: the block editor is maturing, the tooling is improving, and WordPress 7.0 is the inflection point.
If you’re building with WordPress professionally, you need to be paying attention to this shift.
Messy, Not Sloppy (Applied to Learning Tools)
I wrote about this concept in Messy, Not Sloppy: you can be messy while you’re learning, while you’re exploring, while you’re figuring things out. That’s fine. That’s the process.
But sloppy is when you stop caring about the mess. When you just keep stacking things on top of a broken foundation because fixing it feels like too much work.
That’s what happened with a lot of WordPress development over the last few years. People got sloppy. They stacked solutions on top of themes on top of plugins on top of custom code and just hoped it held together. And when it didn’t, they moved to the next client and did it again.
The block editor forces you to not be sloppy. It’s opinionated in good ways. It pushes you toward semantic markup. It makes you think about structure. It rewards doing things properly instead of just doing things fast.
Tools like Miles make it possible to do things properly AND fast. That’s the unlock. You’re not choosing between speed and quality anymore. You can have both.
But only if you’re willing to learn how things actually work. Only if you’re willing to be messy while you explore and then tighten it up once you understand. Only if you care about the craft, not just the output.
The craft matters again: The block editor forces you to care about structure, semantics, doing things properly. Miles makes it possible to do things properly AND fast. You don’t have to choose between speed and quality anymore.
Getting Involved: How to Be a Mover and Shaker
I keep thinking about this.
How do I get more involved? How do I contribute to making this experience better for people? I’ve got 20 years of building websites. I’ve been in the trenches with clients. I’ve seen what works and what breaks and what makes people walk away from a platform entirely.
There’s got to be a way to channel that into pushing the block editor forward. Not just using it. Shaping it.
That’s the thing about communities like the one Andy is building around Miles. They’re not just user groups. They’re the people who will define what WordPress looks like in two years. The people who are building now, exploring now, breaking things locally and sharing what they learn, those are the people who will influence the direction.
I want to be part of that conversation. I think anyone who’s been building for clients in the real world should be too.
This isn’t about being a WordPress evangelist or drinking the Kool-Aid or any of that. It’s about recognizing that a tool you’ve used for 20 years is at an inflection point and you have an opportunity to influence where it goes next.
That’s rare. Most of the time you’re just along for the ride. Right now, in this moment, you can actually help steer. If you care enough to show up.
Get involved now: Install Local, fire up Miles, start exploring. Break things locally. Share what you learn. The people building now are the ones who will define what WordPress looks like in two years. Show up.
Try It
Everything I’ve been doing with Miles is local. Here’s how to get started with the block editor and Miles in five minutes:
- Install Local by Flywheel (free)
- Spin up a new WordPress site
- Install the Miles plugin
- Start exploring and building
No risk. No cost. No commitment. Just play.
That’s how the best tools earn your trust. They let you mess around first.
If you build with WordPress, or if you used to and walked away because the block editor frustrated you, check out Miles. Join the community. Start locally. See what happens.
I don’t do sponsored posts. I don’t write about tools unless I’m genuinely using them and genuinely think they’re worth your time. Miles is worth your time.
Andy is building something real. The community around it is solid. The timing with WordPress 7.0 is perfect. And the opportunity to get in early and help shape where this goes is something I don’t want to miss.
Neither should you.
Where This Fits in the Bigger Story
I’ve been writing about a lot of connected ideas lately. Strong opinions, loosely held. The importance of building systems that actually work instead of chasing every new tool. The freedom paradox of wanting efficiency but getting caught in endless optimization.
Miles fits into that story because it’s a tool that actually delivers on its promise. It doesn’t create new problems while solving old ones. It doesn’t lock you into a workflow that stops making sense six months from now. It just makes WordPress development better.
And in a landscape where everything accelerated except what actually matters, that’s refreshing. This isn’t acceleration for acceleration’s sake. This is making the foundational platform better. Making the thing that powers 42.6% of the internet more accessible, more powerful, more enjoyable to work with.
That matters. Not just for WordPress developers. For everyone who builds on the web. Because when the platform that runs nearly half the internet gets better, the entire ecosystem gets better.
So yeah. I’m excited about Miles. I’m excited about WordPress 7.0. I’m excited about the block editor renaissance.
And if you’ve been waiting for the right moment to dive back into WordPress, this is it.
