WordPress publishing software can now run entirely in a web browser. The organization behind the open source platform announced this new capability on Wednesday. Through a service called my.WordPress.net, users can set up a site and begin publishing without signing up for a hosting plan or registering a domain. This new solution uses the same technology that powers WordPress demos and makes it available as a permanent, personal publishing platform.
There is a significant caveat to running WordPress this way. Sites created on my.WordPress.net are private by default and are not accessible from the public internet. They are not optimized for traffic, discovery, or presentation. Instead, WordPress becomes a personal environment where ideas can exist before they are ready to be shared, or where they may never be shared at all.
The sites are bound to your web browser, with their data saved in the browser’s storage. This means you cannot access the site from another device. However, you can move your site to a dedicated WordPress host if you ever want to make it public.
This positions WordPress as a personal workspace for private writing, journaling, drafting, research, learning, or building tools for personal use. For the latter, my.WordPress.net comes with an App Catalog offering a variety of tools built with WordPress plugins. These include a Personal CRM, a Personal RSS Reader, a bookmarking tool, and an AI Workspace.
The service is powered by WordPress Playground, the open source project that lets you install WordPress on any device with one click. It also integrates with AI and command-line apps to create new tools. As a result, you can use an AI assistant to modify my.WordPress.net to tweak a plugin or build a new one. You can also ask the assistant about data stored in WordPress, which it remembers, allowing WordPress to function as a personal knowledge base accessed by AI.
The post cautions that the service will take longer to launch the first time you use it and recommends that backups be saved regularly. Its storage starts at roughly 100 MB, making it better for smaller, personal apps and use cases. If you want to delete your current work, you can click a button to reset the site. You can also set up new, temporary instances that reset themselves when the browser is refreshed.
The launch of this service follows the formation of a WordPress AI team last year, which focused on launching new AI products for the developer community. The commercial hosting platform WordPress.com also launched an AI website builder last year that lets you design a site using an AI chatbot-style interface.