The WordPress Interactivity API: A New Era for Dynamic Blocks
featuring Seth Rubenstein
Seth Rubenstein joins me to explore the WordPress Interactivity API and what it means for the future of dynamic, interactive blocks.
Seth Rubenstein from Pew Research Center joined me to talk about the WordPress Interactivity API — and if you're building anything dynamic with WordPress blocks, this is a conversation you'll want to hear.
What Is the Interactivity API?
In simple terms, it's WordPress's answer to making blocks interactive without shipping a mountain of JavaScript. Before this, if you wanted a block that responded to user actions — think accordions, filters, live search — you'd either load React on the frontend or write vanilla JS and pray.
The Interactivity API gives you a declarative way to add interactivity directly in your block markup. It's lightweight, it's built into core, and it plays nicely with server-side rendering.
Why This Matters
Seth has been working with this at Pew Research, where they deal with complex interactive data visualizations. His take: the API isn't just for simple toggles and tabs. It opens the door for genuinely dynamic experiences that WordPress never handled well before.
The key advantage is performance. Instead of hydrating an entire React app on the frontend, you're adding targeted interactivity only where you need it. Your pages stay fast, your blocks stay interactive.
The Bigger Picture
WordPress is evolving. The block editor was step one. Full site editing was step two. The Interactivity API is step three — and it's the one that makes blocks feel like real application components, not just fancy content containers.
If you're building custom blocks for clients, this is worth learning. Watch the full conversation for Seth's demos and real-world examples.