WordPress is always changing. Quietly, constantly, and occasionally all at once.

DEV is where we try to keep up, and bring you the most interesting bits worth your attention.

Stick around to the end to find out what they’re actually singing in the opening sequence of The Lion King…

In today’s edition:

• Plugin submissions are exploding, and the review team is officially outnumbered.
• A zero-setup WordPress that lives entirely in your browser storage.
• WordPress 7.0 is never late. It arrives exactly when it means to.

Hot Off The Presses: What’s New?

So it’s not just me who compulsively presses Ctrl+S 72 times just to make extra, extra, super-duper sure everything is saved?

Yes, I know these days autosave makes this reflex useless. It’s just superstitious by now, like the pigeons that B.F. Skinner trained to superstitiously spin in circles to get food.

But that doesn’t matter. It’s hardwired muscle memory at this point. The fingers of my left hand will continue the endless Ctrl+S twitch until you lower me into my grave.

So, until then, why not Ctrl+S yourself some time and scroll down for a condensed catch-up on what’s new in WordPress?

(Ow… that one hurt. )

WordPress 7.0 Needs a Wee Bit Longer in the Oven

WP 7.0 Release Candidate 1 was scheduled to be released on March 19th, but as the team prepared for the release they realized a few things were slightly half-baked and needed more time.

So, back in the oven it goes for a few more days!

• The timer’s been reset: The release party has been rescheduled for March 24th at 3pm UTC, while the final release date of April 9th remains unchanged.
• The recipe’s slightly changed: Client-side media processing is no longer in this batch of updates – it’ll be included in WordPress 7.1 instead. (It’s still performing too slowly to ship.)
• Real time collaboration is under-cooked: The tests of this new feature so far has contributors doubting whether it’s ready to serve up.
• The serving size is still a bit too large: The current nightly build is around 60MB uncompressed, which is gluttonous compared to WordPress 6.9.4 at 27MB, so the team’s working on portion control.

In the meantime, if you want to sneak a taste, WordPress 7.0 Beta 5 is ready for download and testing.

Read the official delay announcement here.

My.WordPress.net: Your Little Corner of… Not the Web

Brandon Payton has created something pretty interesting: a private workspace that “lowers the barrier to getting started with WordPress to almost nothing.”

My.WordPress.net is built on WordPress playground and runs directly in your browser’s local storage, existing only on your device. Not on the web. Not in the cloud. Just… in there. Somewhere between your cached images and that one tab you forgot to close in 2022.

There’s no signup, no email, no domain and no password, all you have to do is open the page and there it is. If you ever want to make the site public, you can always move it to a host – but for now it’ll live persistently in your browser storage.

And it’s not a stripped-down demo either. You can install plugins, switch themes, and customize everything to your heart’s content.

This means you can use it for drafting posts before publishing elsewhere, keeping a personal journal, managing your personal CRM, or just a bit of tinkering around with zero risk of live-site consequences.

Just… uh… remember to download a backup before you clear your browser cookies… okay?

What are people saying about it?

• Matt Mullenweg is stoked about the strategic vision behind this, predicting a future where everyone gets a domain and a WordPress site alongside their phone number and email
• Sarah Perez points out you can plug in AI assistants and turn it into a searchable personal knowledge base.
• Abdul Rahman from WP Kitchen asked, “How is this different from Playground?” (Answer: it persists by default.)
• Ben Werdmuller calls it “absolutely bonkers” and is wondering how it’ll behave across devices.

What do you think? Innovative and game-changing, or just a more end-user friendly version of Playground? We’d love to hear your thoughts!

Read about it in Brandon’s own words

The Plugins Keep Coming and They Don’t Stop Coming…

The Plugin Team has been busier than a centipede in a toe-counting contest, thanks to a staggering increase in the amount of plugins submitted for review.

To put it into perspective:

• Since October 2025, new submission records are being smashed weekly
• Submissions have quadrupled since 2024
• Every two days now equals a full week of 2024 submissions

In other words: if plugins were rain, we’d all be underwater.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing that dozens of new plugins pop up every time you blink – as long as they are good!

Because as much as we all love installing 17 plugins just to solve one problem, it’s the quality that really matters, not the quantity.

Which brings us to the issue: the team responsible for reviewing and maintaining standards and enforcing guidelines is, understandably, a little overwhelmed.

So they’re recruiting.

If you want to roll up your sleeves and offer your sword/bow/axe/keyboard to the quest, the Plugins Team could really use the extra help! There’s a two-month training period, after which you’ll be unleashed upon the queue and can start helping to keep things (relatively) sane.

Find out more on the Make WordPress blog

Wanna join the WordPress plugins team? Fill this out!

Mind Bloggling Facts & Stats

• Remember Nick Hamze’s “Featured Plugins” experiment we told you about in the last edition? It resulted in 26,000 new installs across the 8 featured plugins – a 622% boost! (Source)
• WordPress Campus Connect has taught more than 4,000 students the wonders of WordPress, across 51 institutions and 28 events around the world. (Source)
• The WordPress Photo Directory now hosts over 33,000 photos, from 2,800+ contributors. For context, that’s roughly the same number of photos I’ve taken of my dog sleeping. (Source)

Blogs & Resources You Shouldn’t Miss

“I don’t have it all figured out. I show up anyway.” Indira Biswas on not waiting until you know everything to start contributing.

Real-time collab: Matt Cromwell “warns against “building Google docs in WordPress.” Is it really what the average user needs?

Jamie Marsland is also wondering: “Are we in WordPress asking the right question?”

As You Like It: ActivityPub now has a feature that lets visitors like and boost your posts directly on your site.

Mania disguised as productivity: Kenneth Reitz on how maintaining an open-source project almost broke his mental health.

Can Google actually find your images and understand what they contain? Here’s a checklist that might help.

The WebDev Studios team actually walks the equality walk, with 2x more women than the industry average. Meet them here!

Coffee Break Distractions

The first 90% of the project is much easier than the second 90%. It’s the third 90% that really gets you.

Veils of Fate: Take a journey through Eldermoor in this WordPress-powered choose-your-own-adventure game.

A dude who seems very chill.

Analytics for Beeper: See who you ghost, who ghosts you, and even your average response time.

This little pupper is having an absolute ball.

I think this is the domain my cat is trying to visit when she walks over my keyboard!

Listen to the scam call where Matt Mullenweg almost gets his Apple Account stolen. Do you think it was an AI bot?

And finally…

It sounds a lot cooler in Zulu, honestly.

Love this mix of nerdery and nonsense? Share it with your fellowship.

We’re here to share the highlights that make developers fall in love with the craft all over again.

Oh and if you want to see some proper panda-monium, stick around to the end.

In today’s edition:

• WordPress 7.0 Beta 3 is live: AI experiments and editor twists await brave testers.
• WordPress gets a Contributor Dashboard: finally, stats for the people powering the project.
• PHP 8.5 lands on WPMU DEV hosting: speed gains ahead.

Hot Off The Presses: What’s New?

I’m in this photo and I don’t like it.

Why is finishing a project so much harder than talking about it?

If my “Finish Project” box had a dollar for every time I bought a $12 domain and told my spouse “this is the big one,” I’d finally be able to afford that sleek ergonomic office chair.

Maybe it’s because telling everyone gives you 100% of the social glory and 0% of the CSS debugging.

If you’re currently ignoring a half-finished block theme to read this… we got you.

Contributor Dashboard: Counting the Steps That Power WordPress

Every fitness bro tracking cardio duration, heart rate, and “active zone minutes” on a smartwatch will tell you one thing:

You can’t improve what you don’t measure.

And if we want the WordPress project to stay fit and healthy, we need to track the lifeblood that keeps it going: Contributors.

That’s what the Contributor Dashboard is all about.

This newly-launched all-in-one “contribution health” dashboard shows key data at a glance, including stats like:

• Number of contributors
• Total contributions
• Average contributions per contributor
• Amount of time from account creation to first contribution
• And even the “drop-off risk” of one-time contributors

In other words, it’s the WordPress equivalent of checking your step count… except instead of steps, it’s forum replies, translation suggestions, and WordCamp participation.

The dashboard is essentially a custom plugin that pulls contribution data from WordPress.org, giving the community a clearer picture of how people join the project, what they’re working on, and how their participation evolves over time.

The next step? That’s up to you.

• Team-managed personas: What if each Make team could create their own contributor “personas” – such as language-specific ladders for translation contributors, or community-specific personas for WordCamp or meetup organizers?
• Built-in automated engagement. Imagine getting a little reward for leveling up your contributions. Not that anyone contributes for the glory… but let’s be honest, nobody has ever been sad about receiving a free sticker.

Share your feedback on which feature should come next

PHP 8.5 Lands on WPMU DEV Hosting

Speaking of updates: PHP 8.5 is now on all WPMU DEV hosted sites!

If you’re ready to make the switch, you can update the PHP version your sites use with a couple of clicks in The Hub.

Here’s how:

Guide to updating your PHP version on WPMU DEV

A few words of dev wisdom:

• Test before switching production sites.
• Keep an eye on plugin compatibility.
• Make sure everything works on your staging environment first.

Most modern plugins and themes should play nicely with PHP 8.x by now, but there’s always that one rogue plugin still living in 2017.

WordPress 7.0 Beta 3 Arrives: Testers, Assemble!

Oh, and if you’re in testing mode, why not play around with 7.0 Beta 3?

It just dropped and it’s packed with AI experiments, block theme CSS tweaks, and editor upgrades waiting for brave testers to poke, prod, and report back. Use it to do the things you’d normally do with a WordPress site – and see what happens!

What’s new?

• Connectors: A central UI in your wp-admin where you can hook in 3 main AI providers: OpenAI, Anthropic & Google. (Mark McNeece called this “both less exciting and more important” than he expected.)
• Iframed editor improvements: Instead of checking all registered blocks across your plugins, WordPress only looks at blocks actually inserted into the post. If there’s not all version 3 or higher, the iframe won’t be auto-inserted, to make sure the lower-versioned blocks will still work.
• WordPress core now runs PHPStan static analysis as part of development. Which means WordPress officially stans PHPStan now.

Meanwhile: Anne McCarthy shares some Notes features that didn’t make the cut, and welcomes your feedback on the PRs.

The Core team wants testers of all skill levels, from seasoned plugin devs to curious clickers who will break things and then report what happened. Spin up a staging site, poke around, and submit your feedback.

The more eyes on Beta 3, the fewer surprises when 7.0 goes live on April 9th.

Beta 3 download and testing instructions
Core call for testers

Mind Bloggling Facts & Stats

• Patchstack found 91% of new WordPress vulnerabilities come from plugins. The call is coming from inside the /wp-content/plugins folder. (Source)
• Another example of a naughty plugin: a calendar booking tool leaves 100k sites wide open for privilege escalation. (Source)
• Even though WooCommerce data shows a 27% boost in conversions with the Checkout Block, many sites still use the classic shortcode checkout. Rodolfo Melogli reckons that’s because switching checkouts is messy, and no one wants to potentially break what’s kinda working. (Source)

Blogs & Resources You Shouldn’t Miss

Nick Hamze experiments with a rotating batch of 8 fresh, curated “hidden gems” in the Featured Plugins tab.

Have your say in the Admin Bar’s 5th WordPress Agency Survey. Last year 1,233 responses revealed how agencies run.

“WordCamps are just for developers, right?” Nope. Here’s why designers belong in the room too.

BTW, wanna volunteer at WCEU in Kraków? Free tickets, t-shirts and an invite to the After Party sounds pretty sweet.

There’s a new subreddit on the block: /r/WordPressBlocks was launched recently by WP Engineer Johanne Courtright.

When it comes to Blocks, this plugin will give yours an accessibility audit, with clear guidance on what needs fixing.

On Open Makers, Cami McNamara shares how freelancers can avoid digital distrac… oh wait one sec I just got a DM… brb.

Coffee Break Distractions

“Just one more Jira Dashboard” = Famous last words.

That 5-legged office chair you’re sitting on? There’s a weird engineering reason it has five legs.

When you’re emoji-reacting on Slack to show how much you’re “helping” with the project.

This homemade 7-up ad is pure cinema.

This magic trick is still pretty impressive, even when you know the secret of how it works.

If Eminem got his lyrical inspiration from the cheesy quotes on throw pillows.

And finally…

What’s black and white and goofy all over? These ridiculous creatures.

Love this mix of nerdery and nonsense? Forward it to your favorite WordPress weirdo.

As always, we’re serving up release rundowns, roadmap revelations, and resource recommendations to keep your WordPress world well-oiled and wonderfully workable.

Stick around to the end to see the cutest sashimi dinner ever.

In today’s edition:

• The memory of #WPMom lives on: The Kim Parsell Scholarship is now open for applications.
• WordPress (and the web at large) may be # Heading in the direction of Markdown, for LLM-friendliness sake.
• Client Notes: a place to put all those persnickety preferences, problems and pointers that pop up during projects.

Hot Off The Presses: What’s New?

Sure, this cat is adorable and everything.

But the real question:

Is he responsive for mobile?

Fun Fact: Did you know that physicist Marc-Antoine Fardin won an Ig Nobel Prize (the award for the most pointless scientific study) by proving that cats should actually be classified as a “non-Newtonian liquid” rather than a solid, due to their ability to alter their shapes to fill a container without changing their volume?

But enough about that… we can hardly contain our excitement as we share with you the latest updates from the WordPress world.

Mark Me Down As Curious, But Skeptical…

The web may be developing a second, AI-facing layer, and Markdown is emerging as a candidate format.

On February 7th, Matt Mullenweg proposed making every URI on WordPress.org available with a vary/markdown equivalent. He means not just docs, but the entire shebang, from forums to directories.

Why Markdown?

Markdown, the lightweight syntax that lets you format plain text with characters like #, *, ( ) rather than complex tags, is significantly easier for AI agents to process than full HTML.

By stripping away layout, scripts, and interface noise, it can dramatically reduce token usage and lower the cost of machine parsing.

Less than a week after Matt’s blog post, Cloudflare launched “Markdown for Agents.”

With this feature sites can:

• Serve clean Markdown versions of pages to AI crawlers when requested
• Reduce token load
• Strip layout noise
• Make content easier and cheaper for LLMs to process

As the Cloudflare blog post describes it:

“Feeding raw HTML to an AI is like paying by the word to read packaging instead of the letter inside.”

Flip the toggle, and any page in your zone can be served as Markdown.

Broader Implications

Ernie Smith writes that although the current motivation for this Markdown make-over is AI, offering pages in Markdown would also make the web more accessible.

Brett Terpstra envisions an entirely Markdown web, quite a **bold** proposal.

The Critics

Not everyone is down for Markdown.

John Mueller, Google Search Advocate, called it a “stupid idea,” questioning whether LLM bots will treat it as anything more than a plain text file.

Jono Alderson is also a critic, insisting that a website is more than just a “container for words” and that flattening pages into Markdown removes crucial structure, context, and meaning.

And yeah, as Jono points out, at the end of the day this conversation starts to remind us of why Google eventually learned to render pages. To understand the internet like a human, you eventually have to learn to interpret all of the context you removed to create “LLM friendliness.”

Is Markdown a practical optimization, or a shortcut that strips away meaning? Should we be building a web for agents, humans, or both? Sounds like something we’re gonna need to hash out a little bit more.

Kim Parsell Scholarship Continues To Support Women in WordPress

The Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship is back again this year, honoring the memory of a WordPress legend who helped many women break into the tech world with her mentorship and support.

The scholarship provides financial support to attend WordCamp Europe 2026, including ticket costs, round-trip airfare and lodging for the duration of the event.

It’s open to anyone who:

• Is an active WordPress contributor
• Identifies as a woman
• Has never attended WordCamp Europe before
• Has a financial need that might otherwise make it tricky to attend

If this describes you, the link is here to apply.
Read more about the scholarship here.

Applications are open until March 15th, 2026, so get them in!

Giving Your Brain a Break: Client Notes in The Hub

The more clients you’re managing, the more details you have to remember… from special requests to follow-up tasks to due-dates and notes. Those details are often scattered across email chains, documents, Slack threads and random notes.

Your brain? That squishy thing in your skull that’s mostly anxious thoughts and Backstreet Boys lyrics?

That’s NO place to keep all that stuff.

Instead, you need a way to capture all that client info and keep it handy, right where you’ll need it when you’re working.

That’s why we built Client Notes.

Now you can:

• Built a reference library of notes connected to each specific client.
• Create checklists, format with numbered and bulleted lists and include links to resources.
• Choose who sees what, with full control over visibility.

Read about how it works.
Give it a try in your Hub today.

Mind Bloggling Facts & Stats

• 150,825 at-rules on a single page?! That’s wild. The CSS Selection 2026 report has some pretty crazy outliers. (Source)
• 800,000 WordPress sites were exposed to unauthenticated remote code execution due to a critical vulnerability in the WPvivid Backup plugin. Lucas Montes cashed in on a bug bounty of $2,145 for spotting the issue. (Source)
• $30,000 is the goal: WP Accessibility Day has announced a fundraising campaign to support hosting an editor-level booth at WordCamp Europe 2026, where they plan to offer free accessibility checks and guidance. (Source)

Blogs & Resources You Shouldn’t Miss

Somewhere, someone is struggling with a broken embedded YouTube video on your site. Help them out, will ya!?

Give the people what they want! WPFeatureLoop lets users vote on feature requests directly inside the plugin dashboard.

They see me scrollin’, they hatin’… Customizing scrollbars just got even easier with scrollbar-color available in Chrome.

Remkus de Vries explains why WordPress performance is much more than slapping on a plugin and calling it a day.

Russell Aaron spills the tea about the hidden settings page in wp-admin you never knew existed.

We’re paying with love tonight: Jessie J must have been talking about WordPress agencies when she said, “It’s not about the money, money, money…”

Coffee Break Distractions

Making friends as an adult doesn’t have to be as difficult as everyone says it is.

You’ll never guess which Black Mirror storyline is coming true next!

Have you heard the band Pink Oyster Mushroom? I was listening to them when they were still underground. Heard the lead singer is a pretty fun guy…

“Write the HTML skeleton that is used on every web page.” Nice, but not exactly.

Pokemon or Big Data company? See how many you can get right.

Meet Prune, officially Japan’s most chilled-out capybara.

Can you cry in space? Well… yes, but it gets messy.

And finally…

An otter-ly adorable sashimi dinner. ( Sound on, the squeaks are adorable!)

Love this mix of nerdery and nonsense? Forward it to your favorite WordPress weirdo.

That’s why we built Client Notes. Now you can capture and store client information directly on their individual profiles in the Hub, keeping everything accessible right where you’re already working.

Notes are searchable, easy to edit, and encrypted for security.

We’re listening and building. When we released Site Notes to help you organize site-specific tasks and project details, you asked for the same functionality on client profiles. Client Notes bring that same power to client management, giving you one consistent way to track information across your entire Hub workflow.

Here’s how they help:

Build a reference library for each client

Click into any client profile to open the notes panel and start recording information. Whether you’re documenting requirements after a discovery call, tracking ongoing requests, or keeping a list of client preferences, your notes stay connected to that specific client.

The built-in editor supports full rich text formatting. Structure your notes with headings, emphasize key points with bold or italic text, and include links to relevant resources or documentation.

Need to track tasks? Create checklists where you can mark items complete as you work through them. Or build numbered and bulleted lists to organize action items and priorities.

Navigate your notes efficiently

As you add more notes across different clients, finding specific information stays simple. Use search to locate details instantly, pin your most referenced notes to appear first, and mark favorites for quick access later.

Each client profile supports up to 10 notes, with each note holding up to 5,000 characters. If your workflow needs more capacity, contact our support team.

Protected by default

Client information deserves strong security. Every note you create is encrypted in our database, ensuring sensitive details stay protected.

Choose who sees what

By default, your notes are visible only to you. When you want to bring team members into the loop, you can assign them View or Edit permissions through their role settings.

Team members will access notes for clients they’re connected to. Your clients will not be able to view these notes at any point.

Start organizing client work better

Client Notes eliminate the need to maintain separate systems for tracking client details. Everything lives in the Hub where you’re already managing sites and services.

Try Client Notes in your Hub today.

Want to learn more about Site Notes? Check out our other blog post here.

Stick around to the end to see the mighty Nimbus and his squirrel.

In today’s edition:

• The “Year of the Meetup” begins, and WordPress wants you doing, not just listening.
• A first look at WordPress 7.0, plus a call for testing before launch.
• G’day, domain wranglers: you can now herd your .com.au and .net.au names in one place.

Hot Off The Presses: What’s New?

Just like when you’ve pushed a sparkling clean, perfect codebase to production, the house is now read-only mode. No merge requests accepted.

Although, there’s an annoying virus called dust that keeps overriding the read-only restrictions… need to send a ticket about that…

Stop! You need admin privileges to leave that dirty coffee cup in the sink! I’m serious. If I find as much as a candy wrapper on the countertop, I’m gonna lose it.

Kitchen_final_v46.cln would stay spotless if everyone would just STOP EATING THERE!

*ahem*

Anyway. Just like the house will never stay clean, things will never stop changing in WordPress. Keep reading to find out what’s new and what’s coming up next.

The WordPress Team Wants You To Actually Do Stuff At Meetups

TL;DR: Meetups are evolving from chat sessions into “get-your-hands-dirty” workshops. Mary Hubbard’s 2026 goals push for active participation, but organizers warn the current setup might not be ready.

All Hands On Deck

Meetups are the “primary front door” to WordPress, says Juan Hernando, and the team wants anyone walking through it to roll up their sleeves and actually participate.

Juan’s post lays out 2026’s meetup evolution: templates and resources for hands-on, issue-focused sessions, plus updated orientation guides that nudge newcomers toward doing, not just watching.

The timing couldn’t be better: programs like Campus Connect, Credits, and Student Clubs are already bringing in fresh faces.

The Big Picture

This shift didn’t come out of nowhere. It’s directly connected to WordPress Executive Director Mary Hubbard’s big picture goals for 2026.

She calls for meetups to become places of “active participation,” rather than “passive attendance.” As AI tools become more common across the web, she explains, shared learning becomes even more important.

“Meetups are where people can sit side by side,” explains Mary, “learn how these tools actually fit into WordPress workflows, and build confidence together.”

Even Matt Mullenweg is on board, calling 2026 the “Year of the Meetup” on the Do The Woo podcast.

Here’s hoping the front door swings wider, meetups get better than ever, and more folks bring their hands-on skills to the community.

WordPress 7.0 Is Almost Here: And Your Feedback is Needed

Anne McCarthy from Automattic recently shared a look at the features nearly ready for WordPress 7.0. She’s talkin’ more flexible navigation, responsive grid styles, and smoother workflows that make publishing just a bit less fiddly.

Her post gives a sneak peek at what’s coming and shows how the core team is thinking about user experience before the official release.

Planning Ahead

The planning post from the Core team lays out priorities for this major update, including:

• Streamlining the editor and simplifying navigation.
• Adding new blocks and block tools.
• Upgrades to the Notes feature to make it even more powerful.

In other words, this isn’t just bells and whistles, it’s about making site-building cleaner, faster, more flexible, and more collaborative.

Call For Hands-On Testing

Some features still need real-world feedback, which is where you can get involved. The Test team is calling for contributors to try out some experimental AI-powered features, like type-ahead suggestions, comment moderation assistance and AI request logging.

You don’t even need to know how to review code to participate here, they’re looking for high-level answers to questions like:

• Does this feel useful, or confusing?
• Would you use this if it shipped tomorrow?
• What would be the first thing you’d change?

If you’ve got some time to click around, your testing could directly influence WordPress 7.0 before it ships.

Check out the call for testers here

Australians, Rejoice: .com.au and .net.au Transfers Are Here

Good news for our friends down under: we now support incoming transfers for .com.au and .net.au domains.

If your domains have been living elsewhere and you’ve been eyeing a move, this one’s refreshingly straightforward, no drama, no surprises.

A few things to know before you throw another domain on the barbie (because Aussie domains like to play by their own rules):

• The registrant still needs to meet the same eligibility requirements (ABN, ACN, business name, etc.) as when registering the domain.
• There’s no cost to transfer. Yep, zero dollars.
• The expiry date stays exactly the same.

In short: fewer hoops, no extra cost, and all your domains in one tidy place.

Full details on how it works are in the docs.
To initiate the transfer of your domain, click here.

Mind Bloggling Facts & Stats

• Knock knock, who’s there? Robots, apparently. According to the stats from WP Engine, automated traffic now accounts for 51% of all web activity. (Source)
• Bug hunting pays big bucks! Wordfence shelled out $12,402 in bounties during the December 2025 WordPress bug bounty program, with 25 high-threat issues flagged. They received 759 vulnerability reports, which is an increase of 1.7% from the previous month. (Source)
• There’s now 200 episodes spinning on the WP Tavern Jukebox, and Corey Maass celebrates the milestone by sharing his AT tech stack and workflows. (Source)

Blogs & Resources You Shouldn’t Miss

Freshly Pressed is back: a curated, subscribable spotlight of well-written blog posts from the WordPress ecosystem.

If your WordPress page looks like a polar bear in a snowstorm (aka. The White Screen of Death) here’s what to do.

During a home renovation, Kevin Geary gets an annoying reminder of why it’s important to build things with quality.

WordPress-based Noggin promises to be the second-brain note-taking system you’ll still be using in 10 years.

What do using AI for WordPress contributions and being a responsible dog owner have in common? You’re responsible for cleaning up any messes.

What do agency owners propose as the best proposal software? The Admin Bar rounds up the top picks.

Slip-off footwear, clay cups and “Indian Stretchable Time”: If you’re heading to WordCamp Asia, here’s a cultural primer.

Coffee Break Distractions

This is what happens when you let a Trojan Cat through your gates.

When you see the words “Quick question…” pop up on Slack and your life flashes before your eyes.

This is exactly the type of cool side project we love to see.

Speaking of… generative AI now generates infinite side-quests.

Now this? This right here? This is love.

Catscading stylesheets.

A dude who just made a very smart purchase.

And finally…

Nimbus and his squirrel.

Love this mix of nerdery and nonsense? Forward it to your favorite WordPress weirdo.

We’ll meet you at Twin Pines Mall at 1:15am to give you the latest developments, smart projects and community updates, to help you speed into your next project with confidence, no flux capacitor required.

Stick around to the end to see a grandpa who insists he doesn’t want a kitty hat.

In today’s edition:

• In Patchstack’s first test, 88% of threats bypassed “secure” hosting defenses. They tried again. Did things improve?
• The Future is Female: The Community Team brings back a super-successful women-led WordPress event initiative.
• Plus, handy tools for bug squashing, 404-dodging, code highlighting and block pattern wrangling.

Hot Off The Presses: What’s New?

Get in, Marty! Where we’re going, we don’t need roadmaps.

Maybe if you could go back in time and warn your younger self, you wouldn’t have taken that detour to abandon all of your current projects and work on the shiny new thing that caught your attention. After all, there are only so many hours in the day.

But at the same time, sometimes it’s the moments of spontaneous inspiration that lead you to something really great.

So whether you’re working on what you’re “supposed” to be working on, or you’ve branched out into an alternate timeline, you’ve earned yourself a break to catch up on what’s new in WordPress.

P.S. By the way, I’m looking to sell a used Delorean, so let me know if you’re interested. It’s in good shape and has low mileage… it’s only been driven from time to time.

Community Team Brings Back Women-Centric Events For International Women’s Day

Remember last year, when the WordPress Community celebrated International Women’s Day with a push towards hosting more women-centric events around the world?

Well, turns out it was a great success.

Over 25 events were planned as a result, in locations all over the world from Delhi to Madrid to New York City. Women and people of marginalized genders who attended said they felt “welcomed, valued, and encouraged to participate.”

Many of these events took place in communities where women-led formats had not previously existed, and several of the organizers, speakers and volunteers were taking on those roles for the first time. In other words, a huge win for inclusion.

In a post on the Make WordPress Community blog, Junko Nukaga shared that the team is bringing back the initiative again this year, with the aim of creating even more women-focused events in 2026.

This is such a great illustration of the “lead by example” point WP Includes made in their Gender Equality in WordPress Business whitepaper in 2024. Don’t just talk about making WordPress more inclusive – get out there and make it happen!

Can’t wait to see the empowering events this year brings!

Wanna get the gals together for an event? Here’s how to apply.

Vulnerability Tests Part 2: Patchstack Finds Hosting Still Not So Secure

Last year, Patchstack conducted a limited experiment where they tested 11 vulnerabilities across five different hosting environments, to see if those hosts were really as “secure” as they claimed to be.

The results were, well, worrying to say the least.

88% of attacks resulted in a successful site takeover.

Patchstack wanted to see what would happen if they expanded the scope of the experiment and tried again. Surely everyone has since doubled down on their security, right? Right???

Well, not as much as you’d think. Although the number of exploit attempts blocked increased from 12.8% to 25.89%, version 2 of the experiment still saw roughly 74% of attacks succeed.

WordPress vulnerabilities are, indeed, still a major problem. But, as the report points out, it’s not that hosts don’t care! It’s that the security tools they’re relying on may not be covering them as well as they think they are.

Read the full breakdown here.

A Few Crazy Wild-Eyed Inventions From The Lab

What time is it? Time for another round-up of useful plugins, cool tools and clever projects that just might make your life a little easier.

• A smart little tool with a lot of great uses.
  WPBetterCodeHighlighting is completely free and makes it easy to showcase code snippets on your site.
• Wrangle your patterns.
  Pattern Wrangler helps you manage WordPress block patterns and curate what your client sees in the block editor.
• “Wait a minute Doc. Are you telling me you built a Wayback Machine… out of a Chrome extension?!”
  You’ll never see another 404 with this baby in your browser.
• Don’t let errors in your WordPress code come back to haunt you in the future.
  With Debug Log Manager, you can keep track of them and fix them before they cause you serious headaches.

Mind Bloggling Facts & Stats

• 12,713. That’s how many plugins were reviewed by WordPress Plugins Team last year. That’s a 40.6% increase from the year before. The jump in pace was necessary: the number of submissions sent for review doubled compared to 2024. (Source)
• Speaking of plugins… sales ain’t looking good. A survey by WP Product Talk’s Katie Keith revealed that 80% of plugin companies said their sales were the same or declining in 2025. (Source)
• According to Yoast’s 2025 SEO Wrap-Up, AI Mode and good ol’fashioned organic search results are not too different. 97% of URLs referenced in AI search were also in the top 10 organic results, showing strong traditional SEO still matters. (Source)

Blogs & Resources You Shouldn’t Miss

Release squad, assemble! This tight, focused team, lead by Matías Ventura, is ready to get crackin’ on WordPress 7.0.

It might not be Grays Sports Almanac, but you can bet the CMS chapter of the Web Almanac will set you up for success.

When you wish upon a plugin… Sabrina Zeidan tested 6 WordPress wishlist plugins, so you don’t have to.

Damnnn… that responsive grid block with set columns is looking . What’s her secret?!

Open Channels FM: How to make accessibility fun and “brain friendly.”

“I can’t wait to check out the new Playground.” – Things you said when you were 10 that you still say now.

“Humans are just attracted to bad news.” – The Repository’s Rae Morey on why the big stories of 2025 were kind of a bummer.

Coffee Break Distractions

“You mean you have to use your hands? That’s like a baby’s toy!” – The straight-shootin’ history of Wild Gunman.

Happy 25th Birthday, Drupal! Jonathan Desrosiers writes about what WordPress could learn from it.

“Today I was slopped in the face”: Dennis Snell coins a new term.

LOVE the idea of getting builders together to “Keep WordPress Weird” via a hands-on plugin build-a-thon.

Some interesting Biff Tannen head canon.

“How my codebase written entirely with Claude code runs.”

There’s an alternate timeline where I’m a YouTube millionaire because I went back and told myself this.

And finally…

He did, in fact, want a kitty hat.

Love this mix of nerdery and nonsense? Forward it to your favorite WordPress weirdo.

Stick around to the end to see why that package you ordered last year still hasn’t arrived yet.

In today’s edition:

• WP Engine snaps up Big Bite to level up enterprise WordPress publishing.
• WordPress 7.0 needs you (yes, you!) and no, you don’t have to write code to get involved.
• A community scholarship honours Zeel Thakkar’s legacy, helping more people find their place in WordPress.

Hot Off The Presses: What’s New?

Whether you think this is ethical, you gotta admit it’s pretty clever.

Of course, it only works because CloudFlare is about as reliable as a chocolate teapot and a random unexpected outage is not far fetched in the slightest.

It’s kinda the internet version of blaming a particularly bad fart on the dog, isn’t it?

No one will ever suspect you were the culprit all along!

In the meantime, if you’re looking for something to read while you procrastinate on fixing things a little longer… you’re in the right place.

WP Engine Takes a Big Bite Out of the Enterprise Publishing Space

WordPress hosting giant WP Engine has officially acquired Big Bite, a UK-based enterprise agency that has been building editor-centric workflows, newsroom platforms, and custom publishing systems for major media brands for over a decade.

They’ve also made plenty of impact across the open web, such as:

• Making contributions to Internet.org
• Helping to drive adoption of WordPress Gutenberg with a global bank
• Building the open-source Humanity theme in partnership with Amnesty International.

Big Bite’s roster of clients reads like a who’s who of global newsroom heavyweights, from The Times and The Wall Street Journal to New York Post and Metro. The deal means the agency arm of Big Bite will wind down, no longer taking on new clients as they fold into WP Engine’s core engineering organisation.

The aim is to bake editorial tools and publishing workflows directly into WP Engine’s product stack rather than serving them up as bespoke builds.

In a world where content is still king and editorial workflows can feel like herding cats, this move signals WP Engine getting serious about giving publishers some pretty snazzy built-in tools.

Check out the official press release.

Read what Big Bite have to say about the move.

Wanna Brag That You Helped Build WordPress? This is Your Moment.

WordPress 7.0 is officially on the horizon, and the Core team is rolling out the welcome mat for volunteers. If you’ve ever wanted to leave your mark on WordPress, there’s no better time to dive in.

Here’s what’s happening:

• Feature development, testing, and triaging: there’s a place for you no matter your skill level or area of expertise.
• Can’t code? No problem. They need your help with other things too, like photography, translation, and documentation.
• Your work will ship in 7.0, giving millions of sites new capabilities and a smoother experience.

The Core team has a spot saved for you, and the goal is to publish the final release during Contributor Day at WordCamp Asia, on April 9th, 2026!

Heed the call by commenting here.

Visit the WordPress Contributor Wizard to see which team you should join based on your interests and skills.

Zeel Thakkar’s Legacy Lives On With a WordCamp Kolhapur Scholarship

Zeel Thakkar, who passed away while attending WordCamp Surat in November 2025, was a contributor to WordPress 6.7 “Rollins” and 6.8 “Cecil,” an Operations team organiser, and a beloved member of the WordPress Ahmedabad community.

The Kolhapur WordCamp team is keeping Zeel Thakkar’s memory alive with a brand-new community scholarship in her honor for WordCamp Kolhapur 2026. Zeel believed in building community spaces where everyone had a seat at the table, and this scholarship embraces that inclusive and supportive vibe.

The details:

• The scholarship provides 20 free tickets for WordCamp Kolhapur 2026 (January 31st – February 1st.)
• It’s targeted at women and girls who want to contribute to WordPress but might need a financial boost.
• Preference is given to first-time WordCamp attendees or those new to the community.
• Last date to apply: Jan 15, 2026 | Winners announced: Jan 22, 2026

It’s more than just a free ticket, it’s a chance to learn and connect with other WordPress enthusiasts while paying tribute to a community builder who made it all a little brighter.

Apply for the scholarship here.

Read more about Zeel and the work she did.

Mind Bloggling Facts & Stats

• WordPress powers 65% of sites that use a CMS at all. As Nat Miletic points out, that’s “overwhelming category leadership.” (Source)
• In 8 years of Do the Woo/Open Channels FM, BobWP has aired 1.53 million seconds of audio. The word “WordPress” was mentioned 12,700 times. On average, that’s about once every 2 minutes! (Source)
• New Year, New Patch. In the first week of 2026, over 333 new vulnerabilities emerged in the WordPress ecosystem. Don’t forget to update, update, update! (Source)

Blogs & Resources You Shouldn’t Miss

Want confidence that your plugin won’t explode in production? Start with automated unit tests. Here’s how.

A domain renewal scam targeting admins might be hiding in your inbox, and this isn’t the usual “Nigerian prince” nonsense.

An illustrated deep-dive handbook on WordPress security from Tài Hoàng

“The best outcomes rarely come from one perspective winning. They come from multiple perspectives being taken seriously, long enough to reveal what actually matters.” A thoughtful read from Aurooba Ahmed.

What’s Updog? Apparently, it’s a uptime detector that might help you see that next Cloudflare outage coming.

Advice from Sam Sayer: Think of your business year as a league – you may not win every game but you can win the season.

Dave Foy shares why teaching “evergreen” WordPress courses led to burnout, and why he pivoted to live cohort learning.

Coffee Break Distractions

What happens when you try to go for a day without using open source software.

This browser turns your next Wikipedia rabbit-hole deep-dive into a virtual mind map.

When everyone on the team does their part and the site launch goes off flawlessly.

If you miss the golden era of MTV, this player recreates it in your browser, with filters for music videos from each decade.

A little reminder about something you might not have done yet this year. (Speaking of, this might help.)

“Punk rock turtles saved our art group from AI-generated spam.”

When you’re working with more experienced devs and you’re just trying to keep up.

And finally…

Why your package hasn’t arrived yet.

Love this mix of nerdery and nonsense? Forward it to your favorite WordPress weirdo.

Stick around to the end to see a very good name for a snow plow.

In today’s edition:

• Your nudge to stop “thinking about speaking someday” and actually submit a WordCamp talk.
• Troy sneaks through the city gates to decentralize plugin distribution.
• The WordPress roadmap for 2026: Releases, timing and the big ideas on the horizon.

Hot Off The Presses: What’s New?

Okay, hear me out: this meme is funny, but it’s also a genuinely healthy way to think about New Year’s resolutions.

You don’t need to completely reinvent yourself with one huge, dramatic, life-altering resolution just because the calendar flipped to January. Sometimes the best move is much simpler: fix a bunch of small things and get a little better overall.

When software release notes say “various bug fixes and improvements,” you know what that really means. A bunch of small issues were cleaned up. Stability, efficiency, and quality were quietly improved. Some code probably got refactored. Nothing headline-worthy, it just runs better now.

If you approach your habits the same way, it’s a far more realistic (and sustainable) path to growth that doesn’t require a vision board meltdown.

So instead of going full “New Year, New Me,” try this:

• Do a quick bug audit of the friction points in your life, the little things that keep slowing you down.
• Pick 1–3 small fixes per month, max. Make them specific and trackable: “add a 10-minute walk after lunch,” not just “get healthier.”
• Ship improvements, not perfection. If a habit helps even a little, it counts.
• Keep a running changelog of what works and what doesn’t.
• If a habit doesn’t stick, get curious instead of ashamed. It’s not a failure, it’s just a fix that didn’t hold under stress.

If your year ends with more predictable routines, less background stress, and faster recovery after bad weeks? That’s a major upgrade worth shipping, even if nothing looks flashy from the outside.

Honestly, the only resolution you really need is this:
“I’ll keep noticing what isn’t working, and gently improve it.”

After all, you’re running a long-lived system that deserves thoughtful maintenance.

Now, let’s dive into what’s new in WordPress as we head into 2026, starting with some opportunities to level up your skills and visibility.

Here’s Your Chance to Upgrade to “WordCamp Speaker”

If “speak at a WordCamp someday” has been sitting on your personal backlog of “various fixes and improvements”, consider this your nudge.

The Call for Speakers for WordCamp Europe 2026 is officially open!

It’s happening June 4-6, 2026 in Kraków, Poland, and you’ve got until January 31, 2026 to throw your virtual hat in the ring.

You don’t need to be a household WordPress name, or have a perfectly polished keynote voice. What you DO need is an idea, a perspective, and a willingness to share something useful with the community. You can give a classic 30 minute talk, a quick to-the-point 10 minute lightning talk, or an in-depth workshop to get into the nitty-gritty of your chosen subject.

Full details here

(Also open: the Call for Sponsors, if your company wants to support the event and be part of the magic.)

And if the thought of public speaking makes your palms sweat just a little, you’re not alone. It’s not easy to get up in front of a crowd and express your ideas! Fortunately, there’s a new community founded by Jill Binder called Speak Tech Confidently, designed to help folks get more comfortable speaking in tech spaces, with plenty of practical guidance on creating great content and speaking with more clarity and confidence.

Level up your public speaking skills here

Future You on a WordCamp stage might be closer than you think. Even submitting a talk proposal is a great way to level up your courage, so why not go for it?

Troy Rolls Into WordPress Plugin Distribution

If you’ve ever thought “I love WordPress, but plugin distribution feels a bit… centralized,” this one’s for you.

A new open-source project called Troy has launched, offering developers a way to distribute and update plugins independently of the WordPress.org plugin directory.

Troy was created by Sybre Waaijer, the developer behind The SEO Framework, and the idea is simple but significant: give plugin authors more control over how their plugins are hosted, updated, and delivered, without relying on WordPress.org as the gatekeeper.

At a high level, Troy lets you:

• Host your plugin updates yourself
• Push updates directly to sites using standard WordPress update mechanisms
• Keep things open-source, transparent, and portable

In other words, your plugin can still feel native inside WordPress… just without having to pass through the main gates.

This isn’t a replacement for WordPress.org (and probably won’t be for most plugins), but it is an interesting alternative for:

• commercial or client-only plugins
• niche tools with smaller audiences
• developers who want fewer policy constraints
• folks thinking seriously about long-term plugin ownership and independence

As you might expect, it’s already sparked some healthy debate around trust, security, discoverability, and what decentralization should look like in the WordPress ecosystem. And if nothing else, it’s a reminder that sometimes, thinking outside the walls can open new doors.

Read more about Troy
Explore the project on GitHub
Download and deploy Troy

New Year, New WordPress: What’s Coming in 7.0

WordPress 7.0 is on the horizon, and the team has some ambitious plans.

Next year will bring three major releases, strategically timed to coincide with flagship events: WordCamp Asia, WordCamp USA, and State of the Word.

Meanwhile, a maintenance release for 6.9 is likely to drop in January, fixing post-release bugs and smoothing out any rough edges. (6.9 has been downloaded over 13 million times as I write this!)

Plans for The Next Big Glow-Up

Matias Ventura shared some of the big-ticket items being explored for 7.0, including:

• More collaboration features, so teams can work together more seamlessly
• Notes improvements are planned, adding even more juice to this new feature
• An admin area refresh that’ll give a more modern look and feel to the place where we spend a lot of time
• Customizable keyboard shortcuts for the hyper-productivity nerds
• Block API validation levels, so your blocks behave exactly how you expect

Full planning details here: WordPress 7.0 Planning

And the proposed release schedule: 2026 WordPress Release Calendar

It’s shaping up to be another year of steady improvements. WordPress keeps getting better, one thoughtful fix at a time, powered by love, creativity, and community effort. And if it can, so can you.

Mind Bloggling Facts & Stats

• WordPress is still the most widely used CMS on the web. According to Cloudflare’s 2025 Radar Year in Review, it’s used by 47% of the web’s top 5,000 sites (although that’s a decrease from 53% last year.) (Source)
• Enterprises are locking it down with WordPress, with 2025 State of Enterprise WordPress Survey data revealing that 95% of organisations plan to stick with it long term. (Source)
• Knock-Knock. Who’s there? Probably a robot. WP Engine’s 2025 Website Traffic Report shows that non-human requests are accounting for up to 70% of web requests. (Source)

Blogs & Resources You Shouldn’t Miss

What will 2026 bring for WordPress? Matt Medeiros hosts a panel discussion where pros peer into the future and speculate.

Beaver Builder 2.10 has 60+ new templates, so you can pretend you’re a design genius. (Ngl, those Bento Grids look pretty nice.)

Slower sales for WordPress products don’t necessarily mean no demand. Matt Cromwell explains why “remarkable” still matters.

Need the TLDR on what happened in SEO in 2025? Here’s the official Yoast wrap-up.

“Disagreement is a feature. Logical fallacies are the bug.” – Remkus de Vries on how we can argue with each other better.

Wanna load CSS faster than your mom’s Christmas shortbread disappears? Read this.

Who says blogging is dead? Here’s why it’s still worth starting one in 2026.

Coffee Break Distractions

A thought-provoking piece on why creativity’s greatest impact can be felt when designing within project constraints.

Sometimes chubby middle-aged guys just want to get their K-pop dance on, and we’re here for it.

When Typepad shut down, 3,684 blogs dating back to 2005 moved over to WordPress. Here’s the story of the epic migration.

Avoid over-committing yourself this year with this handy “no-as-a-service” excuse generator.

Speaking of over-committing… if, like me, you tell yourself you can do 17 hours of work in one afternoon, you might need this.

Why Jamie Marsland thinks LinkTree is a symptom of something “gone badly wrong.”

Do you know why the Norwegian navy has barcodes on the sides of all their ships?

And finally…

The perfect snow plow name doesn’t exi…

Love this mix of nerdery and nonsense? Forward it to your favorite WordPress weirdo.

While you were all nestled snug in your beds, visions of 6.9 dancing in your heads, we’ve been wrapping up the latest tools, shiny updates, dazzling dev tricks and community creations, just for you.

Stick around to the end to see if you can spot the cat hiding in plain sight.

In today’s edition:

• 6.9 “Gene” just dropped: Dive in for a 60-second, 10-minute, or 45-minute taste of what the new version has inside.
• Get into the holiday spirit: WP Gives a Hand is back to spread the love to those who need it.
• James Farmer on WP Legends: How “just playing around” grew into WPMU DEV, CampusPress, Edublogs… and a legacy of making cool stuff and giving it away for free.

Hot Off The Presses: What’s New?

(This is exactly how it feels writing this newsletter, tbh.)

As the year winds down and you’re getting ready for curl-up-on-the-couch season, hopefully you’ve been enjoying the half-chewed memes and other tidbits we’ve been proudly dragging into your inbox this year.

Once again, we’ve hunted down the latest in WordPress for you, to kick off the purr-fect holiday season.

Oh, hold on.. there are some very dazzling ornaments at the bottom of the tree that are just asking to be smacked around… brb.

Everyone’s Getting Gene-uinely Excited About 6.9

Whether or not you tuned into State of the Word on December 2nd, you’ve probably already had a peek at the long-anticipated WordPress 6.9 “Gene.”

So… what do you think?

Gene is the culmination of more than 400 Core Trac tickets, over 125 of which are enhancements and feature requests… plus more than 250 pesky bugs squashed. It’s receiving positive feedback for its focus on collaboration, performance improvements and developer-centric features.

If you’ve already updated, did anything break? Have you had any trouble with emails sending? (apparently it’s a thing.) What new features have you been playing with?

Or, are you still waiting a bit longer to unwrap it, just to be safe?

Notes? Some people have, well, notes.

WordPress 6.9 introduces Notes, a new block-level feature that lets users comment, reply and resolve threaded notes right inside the post editor.

Previously known as block commenting, it’s a pretty big update to the way teams review, edit and create content in WordPress.

What are your thoughts on this feature?

While some are incredibly stoked about this and plan to use it to replace Google Docs, others are not impressed and don’t think it’s necessary.

Got time to get to know Gene a bit more?

Here are some helpful guides, organized by how much time you have to spare:

If you only have a minute, here’s a 60 second highlight reel from Webhive Digital’s Kate Smoothy.

If you have 10 minutes, here’s a more comprehensive overview by Pascal Claro from WP Roads.

If you have 45 minutes, here’s a juicy deep dive from Jakson.

Have fun diving in and giving it a spin!

P.S. This version’s namesake? The legendary jazz pianist Gene Harris, a guy who tickles the ivories with the kind of joyful skill that makes even non-jazz people go, “okay fine, this slaps.”

WP Legends Spotlight: James Farmer on Building a WordPress Legacy

This week on WP Legends, our very own founder James Farmer joined Gautam Khorana to unwrap how “just playing around with giving people sites” somehow grew into WPMU DEV, CampusPress, Edublogs… and millions of users.

A few highlights from the chat:

AI site builders? *insert eye-roll emoji here*
He predicts most will fade in 3–5 years.

Why company retreats beat trying to squeeze team-building between WordCamp events.
Nothing creates camaraderie like goofing around at karaoke.

Why “users” is the KPI that gets him the most stoked.
He still gets a “massive buzz” when people use the stuff we build.

“Make good stuff, and give it away for free.”
It’s giving Ebenezer Scrooge after he got spooked by all those late-night ghosties.

Despite the bleary-eyed pre-dawn hour, Gautam called it one of the most inspiring conversations he’s recorded. So, it’s definitely worth a listen!

Watch the full WP Legends episode.

Commit to Kindness: WP Gives a Hand

WP Bakery’s WP Gives a Hand is back again this year, and it’s a beautiful thing, in the “oh wow, I didn’t expect to feel feelings in a WordPress newsletter today” kind of way.

This seasonal charity movement has raised over $58,000 for good causes like UNICEF, SOS Children’s Villages Latvia and Hope Community Village in Kerala, India, impacting the lives of people all over the world in a positive way.

The TL;DR of how it works:

• From December 22nd–28th, participating companies, agencies, freelancers and developers donate a portion of revenue to a charity of their choice.
• Participants write blog posts, social media updates and newsletters about the event, spreading the word further.
• When the campaign ends, the results of the donations raised are revealed. (And everyone’s heart grows at least three sizes.)

Wanna be part of it?

Everyone’s invited to the giving party, even if you’re reading this from your cave overlooking Whoville with a sneer on your face. ’Tis the season, after all!

To get involved, click here.

Mind Bloggling Facts & Stats

• So far this year, 100k+ WordPress nerds just like you gathered at a total of 81 WordCamps, in 39 countries put together by 5,200 organizers. That’s a lot of sessions attended, hangovers survived and sponsor stickers plastered on laptops. (Source)
• Over 1000 plugins have joined Patchstack’s free mVDP platform, strengthening their security and making sure they meet Cyber Resilience Act requirements. (Source)
• According to the State of Open Source Software, organizations don’t just invest in open source projects out of the goodness of their hearts – 72% believe it makes them more competitive. (Source)

Blogs & Resources You Shouldn’t Miss

A simple glance at all the info that’s being sent by your browser. It’s a LOT more than you might think.

If the thought of installing another plugin makes you want to take a nap, this one’s for you.

Cloudflare down? Here’s how to handle service outages and calm your clients before your inbox fills with panicked emails.

Hover. Click. Boom. Add instant expandable tooltip popovers to your content with this very snazzy plugin from Joop Laan.

How Devin Walker plans to help Jetpack blast off towards a bright future.

Fediverse feedback just got a lot more quotable with some pretty cool new features in ActivityPub 7.7.0.

Want to build a body of work, not just a résumé? You’ll find Topher DeRosia’s approach really inspiring.

Coffee Break Distractions

Office for Budget Irresponsibility? How a predictable URL on a UK government WordPress site led to a major fiscal whoopsie.

Here’s a big list of things developer Terence Eden disables right away on every WordPress site.

Why use AI to make meaningless comments? BobWP says don’t bother.

Normal people have chocolate advent calendars. Devs? Well…

Feeling artsy? Why not try your hand at creating a Mumbai-inspired Wapuu design for WordCamp Asia?

Totally on-brand: Ke$ha uses WordPress to make a throwback MySpace-style site, complete with a glitter-generator.

The collected works of cats stepping on keyboards, as curated by Matt Rose.

And finally…

Can you see him?

Love this mix of nerdery and nonsense? Forward it to your favorite WordPress weirdo.

We’ve scouted the newest tools, executed clever dev maneuvers, and flagged the freshest features and community victories. Arm yourself with this intelligence so you can advance your mission with precision and honor.

Stick around to the end to see a behind-the-scenes tech get his moment in the spotlight.

In today’s edition:

• Wise mentors wanted: guide the next generation of WordPress contributors.
• Defender 5.7 boasts a privacy-friendly CAPTCHA that keeps the bots out without annoying humans.
• A few jokes that will be an absolute hit at the next Klingon party you attend.

Hot Off The Presses: What’s New?

yapqu’ meq? qatlh tlhIngan wo’ quv HolvaD WordPress mughlu’be’? SeQpIr Daleghpu’be’ net jatlh, tlhIngan Hol mu’mey DalaDpa’. naDev qaS rap.

qaStaHvIS cha’ Hogh WordPress De’ yIlaD ‘ej yIqaw: site DuHIvDI’ jagh bots, tIqIpqu’ ‘ej nom tIqIp! Qapla’!

Translation:
And why not? Why shouldn’t WordPress be translated into the glorious language of the Klingon Empire? They say you haven’t experienced Shakespeare until you’ve read it in the original Klingon. The same applies here.

Keep reading for your bi-weekly WordPress news and remember, if enemy bots attack your site, hit them hard and hit them fast! Success!

P.S. Click here to read some Klingon jokes. Spoiler alert: They don’t translate well.

Mentors Needed: Yes, You With The Opinions

WordPress Campus Connect is expanding its run of student-led events worldwide, and they’re officially on the hunt for new mentors to help guide the next wave of professionals.

This is your chance to impart your hard-won wisdom, and accumulate some serious good karma.

If you’ve got at least two hours a week to spare, the program is looking for experienced contributors who can:

• Support 3–5 student organizers
• Review event plans
• Offer feedback
• Host occasional office hours

In return, mentors get training, a snazzy Campus Connect Mentor badge on their WordPress.org profile, and the satisfaction of knowing that their encouragement has helped turn curious noobs into passionate nerds.

Our very own Hosting Support Lead Aditya Shah was a speaker at Campus Connect Jaipur, where he hosted a workshop at the college and helped students set up WordPress and create their first website.

He also leads the WordPress Bhopal community and co-organized the WP Build Tour where 1700 students from 6 colleges across Madhya Pradesh, India learned how to set up a domain and launched their online portfolios, all in one day.

If you like the idea of shaping future community leaders, without taking on a huge time commitment, applications are open until December 15.

Apply via this form.

Full announcement on Make/Community.

I Saw Mommy Deploying 6.9

By the time this newsletter hits your inbox, it’ll be December 2, which means WordPress 6.9 is officially here. To make your exploration smoother, here are a few resources worth keeping open in a side window:

• What’s new in 6.9 (and why it matters):
  Codeable’s breakdown of the headline features and the subtle improvements you’ll appreciate once you’re knee-deep in builds.
• The “everything in one place” guide:
  Gutenberg Times has assembled an incredibly comprehensive roundup, demos, screenshots, deep dives… all the good stuff.
• The official field guide:
  Straight from Core, with all the technical details, dev notes, and the finer points you’ll want to know before updating client sites.

Grab your beverage of choice, fire up a staging site, and enjoy that fresh release smell. Ahhhhh…

And for bonus good news: you won’t be waiting an eternity for the next one. WordPress is returning to three major releases per year starting in 2026, with planning for 7.0 already underway and targeted for March or April.

This Will Really CAPTCHA Your Attention…

Defender 5.7 just rolled out, and it comes with a very welcome upgrade: Cloudflare Turnstile support. It’s a privacy-friendly CAPTCHA that keeps bots out without turning your users’ experience into a super-annoying escape room puzzle.

Turnstile is lightweight, invisible, and doesn’t track users across the web. In other words, you get better security, zero extra friction and no creepy data collection.

Once you enable it, Defender will quietly step in to protect:

• Login forms
• Registration forms
• Password resets
• Comment forms

If you’ve been looking for a way to strengthen your human-only gates without driving the humans crazy, this is a solid upgrade to switch on. Oh, and of course you can display the Cloudflare Turnstile widget in any language, including Klingon.

Full usage guide is here if you want a quick walkthrough of setup and options.

Mind Bloggling Facts & Stats

• 77 accessibility improvements. That’s how many wins for inclusivity will be dropping along with 6.9 today, including better colour contrast, helpful auto-complete fields and improved screen-reader notifications. (Source)
• 11,354 WordPress sites. That’s how many WeWatchYourWebsite owner Thomas Raef found malware on in September. 81% of those infections came from stolen admin credentials or hijacked session cookies. ( Source)
• 20 years. That’s how old WordPress turned on November 21st. Happy Belated Birthday, WP! (Source)

Blogs & Resources You Shouldn’t Miss

Keep your users in the loop: why a killer changelog really matters.

Think publishing regular content equals “doing SEO?” Not quite. Here’s what you may be missing.

DesignSetGo: Justin Nealey’s new plugin helps you craft gorgeous, interactive blocks without sacrificing speed.

What really happened during the Cloudflare outage? Here’s the behind-the-scenes breakdown. 

Here’s one for the gearheads: Open Channels FM Founder BobWP breaks down his tech stack.

Jamie Marsland strongly believes AI is NOT going to kill WordPress.

“What if WordPress had a true “everything-in-one” menu?” Rich Tabor explores.

Coffee Break Distractions

NSFW WP Product Talk Blooper: Zack Katz makes an accidental click and drops an f-bomb on a live episode.

Regan Khadgi says he gained 3 kg on a 5-day WordCamp Mumbai venue visit. With all the yummy food, who can blame him?

The ultimate work from home setup. (Except for the dragon attacks.)

Plugin hunting made easy: Just describe what you want the tool to do and Ploogins finds and compares options.

Hey! Leave that alone! That’s my emotional support unfinished project!

Who knew your WordPress site could moonlight as a retro arcade?

When your job is trash but you still know how to make it fun.

And finally…

John gets his name in lights, literally.

Love this mix of nerdery and nonsense? Forward it to your favorite WordPress weirdo.