UNLIMITED!

(We had to order an extra shipment of sparkle emojis to prepare for this. You’re welcome.)

Forgive our nerdish fervor, but this is kinda a BIG DEAL.

If you’ve been busy touching grass and you’ve missed our recent posts and announcements, strap in.

In addition to the usual tips, goofball tidbits and funny vids, you’re about to get the TL;DR on why this changes everything… and has already inspired our member Rod to invoke the name of the Dark Knight:

In today’s edition:

• Why this ain’t no shared hosting… it’s a totally different beast.
• So how many sites can you REALLY fit on a $15 server? We did the math.
• What our co-founder James is using Unlimited for… and why.

But First: Unlimited… Who IS She?

She’s mysterious. She’s powerful. She contains multitudes.

Unlimited is a new way to run oodles of managed WordPress sites, without paying managed hosting pricing per site.

You get your own little slice of the internet, where you control how resources are allocated. Your server. Your rules.

Every site still comes with ALL the WPMU DEV hosting, plugins, bells AND whistles… yet works out to only around 20 cents per site per month.

Plus, it plays very nicely with the tools you already know and love. Spin up WordPress installs, manage them from your Hub, keep backups flowing, and generally feel like the efficient web wizard your clients know you are.

Game changer, indeed!

Yes, of COURSE there are bigger plans! All the way up to Eta MU with 32 GB RAM, 8 HF-vCPU and 455 GB NVME SSD! The sky’s the limit, babay!

Read the official announcement post.
Oogle Unlimited plans in all their glory.

Wait… How Many Sites Can You Actually Fit?

When we say “oodles” of sites… how many IS that exactly?

Our co-founder James did the math… and it’s kinda outrageous.

(BTW… that featured image? That’s just what happens when James is left unsupervised.)

And what sort of sites is James putting on his Unlimited package? Which ones are staying on Dedicated?

Find out here:
Unlimited or Dedicated Hosting? I co-founded WPMU DEV and here’s what I’m genuinely using them for.

After all, each site costs less than the change in your couch cushions… so why hold back?

Why This Goes WAY Beyond Shared Hosting

Limits? Where we’re going, we don’t need limits.

Unlimited transforms hosting like Doc Brown upgraded that DeLorean… and now it casually bends the laws of space-time. (No awkward dates with your teenage mom required.)

So what’s actually different between Unlimited and your stuck-in-the-past shared hosting?

Spoiler: It comes down to 3 things:

1. You get your own little internet bubble

Unlike traditional shared hosting, the only one using your resources is you.

You can run one massive site, 50 small ones, or a chaotic mix of client projects, side hustles, and that snarky little Stargate SG-1 fan blog you’ve been ranting on since 2003.

No noisy neighbors. No getting taken down by someone else’s viral moment. It’s allllll yours!

2. We took the hosting experience you know and love… and made it work at Unlimited scale

We know you feel right at home in The Hub. It’s giving “everything is right here and I don’t need 17 tabs open to look like a genius” vibes.

Switching to Unlimited is like upgrading from a tidy workshop… to a full factory.

But all your tools are still exactly where you left them.

And since it all runs on the same high-frequency infrastructure that WPMU DEV has spoiled you with for years (hello speedy CPUs and NVME SSDs), everything still feels responsive and lightning-fast.

3. We’re never gonna lock you down…

Plans are monthly. And not the “we already charged you, good luck” kind.

We’re talking pro-rata to the day.

None of those 24, 36, or bazillion-month contracts, or a 12-month “discount” that turns into a financial jump scare next year.

Just spin things up when you need them. Scale them while you’re using them. Shut ‘em down when you’re done.

Use a $15 server for just one day? Cool. Cancel it and you get about $14.50 back.

Finally, hosting that understands your workflow… instead of holding it hostage.

Read more here:
Unlimited vs. Shared Hosting: The Breakdown.

Mind Bloggling Facts & Stats

• Austin Ginder is becoming somewhat of a superhero, foiling the plans of yet another villain hiding sneaky backdoors in plugins. (Source)
• 174 PRs merged. 8 first-time contributors. Gutenberg 23.0 has been BUSY. (Source)
• Speaking of Gutenberg, adoption has climbed to over 60% compared to just 37% in 2020. (Source)

Blogs & Resources You Shouldn’t Miss

Draw Attention is a very cool plugin that lets you turn images into clickable, interactive magic.

Oooh, a Guild! I haven’t joined one of those since my WoW days!

Sometimes, the biggest threat to your site… is you.

The WP Minute on hidden revenue: like a treasure hunt, but the treasure is your own underpriced services.

A completely calm and rational take on why WordPress sometimes makes us scream internally.

The next generation of WordPress devs has entered the chat.

I feel it in my fingers… Will AI make us lose the “muscle-memory” of manual coding?

Coffee Break Distractions

Someone fed ChatGPT a symphony of farts and it reviewed it like an album: “It has a cool, Lo-Fi, late night, slightly eerie vibe…”

When the code totally works… as long as you DON’T TOUCH IT.

“What the fork just happened, guys?”

If you haven’t seen Floor 796, it’s a gloriously nerdy rabbit hole you’ll lose three hours to.

The real hero of HeroPress: Topher DeRosia has officially shared 300 stories with his inspiring project.

Never underestimate your users’ ability to discover entirely new, never-before-seen ways to use your site incorrectly.

This dude refused to take two trips carrying beach chairs… and became a biblically accurate angel.

And finally…

What happened to the rest of those sparkle emojis we ordered?

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

Which has been useful (we deal with any bugs so you don’t have to) and also super interesting!

But also, it means we’ve been using it for a while. So, given that, I’d like to share with you how I’ve been using Unlimited alongside Dedicated.

Important vs. test / playground

Now the first thing might sound obvious, but I’ve got a bunch of sites that I feel quite strongly about.

Like my own blog (allbeit not updated any more… it’s sentimental), or the sites I maintain for my mum and step-dad.

They are very much staying on Dedicated, although given the amount of traffic they get they are absolutely fine on Bronze, so I’m leaving them there.

However, there are many, many other sites that are essentially me playing with plugins and ideas and that have virtually zero traffic, and all of those are going onto Unlimited.

When the cost of a new site is basically… nothing

This is where things get really fun.

Now there are loads of great ‘test out WordPress’ sites that I’ve used over the year, I bet you have your favourites.

The old skool InstaWP was great until, um, I think they decided to become us (not awkward at all lol, flattered I guess).

These days TasteWP is pretty great (thanks guys :)

But now those days are gone! At least for me. Because I can just do it here with Unlimited… and it doesn’t expire or disappear in a few days and it has all the bells and whistles.

So I can even spin up sites, do some work on them and present them to clients – I have a few charity clients, besides my parents – and know they will be able to check them out at their leisure.

And given that I can fit at least 60 of them on one $15/m server this basically means that alongside the few small sites that are on there because they get very little traffic, all of these test and sandpit sites are, well, essentially free!

Which I know shouldn’t excite me as much as it does, but well, it still does.

And it takes less than a minute

I know, I know, it is not ‘instant’ but it might as well be.

In less than a minute you have the whole thing in place, it’s fast enough to just watch the progress bar, although that could well just be me though, I mean I am pretty proud of it .

So yep, that’s how I’m using Unlimited these days.

How are you going to use it? Let us know!

I wanted to take one of our High Frequency servers (you can also use them for Dedicated) and allow users to put over 50 sites on it.

And not just because “50 sites for $15” is helluva catchy (it is though, isn’t it ), but also because that is what our members have been asking for ever since we started offering hosting.

And if there is anything I love doing, it’s listening to our members.

So, after a LOT of hard work we made it… but why should you take our word for it?

Well, I decided to do the work for you and demonstrate how it can be done

And I didn’t just get 50+ sites on there, I got 94, although in the end I decided on 60… let me walk you through it.

Let’s break down each Unlimited site:

Total site size: 250 MB

WordPress core: 80 MB
WPMU DEV Pro Plugins: 150 MB
2025 Theme: 10 MB
Logs: 5 MB
Database: 5 MB

Now, I know you love math, so our Alpha MU plan has 32GB of NVME SSD storage and uses 9GB for system resources which leaves us with 23GB of storage for you.

That’s 23,522MB on which you could literally install 94 vanilla sites.

But of course you are going to want to add new themes, plugins and content to those sites and over time your database and logs will grow too.

So, if you instead go for 60 sites that gives you an extra 142MB to play with for each site (on top of everything else).

Which, with some nicely Smushed images we reckon is more than enough for the portfolio sites you would probably want to be hosting… plus quite a bit change, plenty for a few staging sites if you fancy too.

And ends up with another neat bit of maths… each of those sites will be costing you 25 cents (yep, $0.25) per month.

I can’t wait to see what our Premium members do with it :)

p.s. Did you like the featured image? :D

Genuinely special, not just ‘we say this is special but really it’s just shared hosting with fancy clothes’, but something that took that whole paradigm and changed it for the better.

Well, we’ve called it Unlimited and here’s why we think it’s special.

We built an isolated and compartmentalized environment that would always allow you to be in control.

Special, part 1, done.

But how were we going to manage it, what kind of experience would be just as special as the technology behind it?

Well, we tried every single different idea, from good old cPanel / WHMCS (bless, but ewww) to a brand new UX and hosting experience.

But we kept on coming back to why people love WPMU DEV hosting as it is… the tools, the ease of use and having everything in one place.

And so that’s what we decided to create.

The hosting experience and tools that you know and love at WPMU DEV, replicated for as many sites as you can fit on your super fast NVME SSD.

Special, part 2, nice.

And last, but not least, we knew that hosting for web developers and digital agencies is an ‘on demand’ thing. You need it when you need it, and when it is gone, it’s gone.

So, while we have made our plans almost recklessly affordable… the real kicker is that they are monthly and pro-rata to the day.

If you only use our $15 Alpha MU plan for 1 day of the month and then cancel, we will credit you $14.50.

No 12-month-discount followed by a huge price increase. No 24, 36 or 48 (lol!) month contract paid up front.

Just what you need, when you need it.

You guessed it, Special, part 3!

Which leaves us with:

Regular shared hosting

• A segment on a massive machine, non compartmentalized, impacted by other clients
• Running a decades old hosting platform (almost always WHMCS and cPanel behind it)
• Discounts when you pay upfront and are locked in for years… followed by huge price increases

WPMU DEV Unlimited

• Compartmentalized, isolated high frequency server where the only sites that matter are your own
• Each site has the complete suite of hosting tools, from staging to incredibly easy all-in-one-place management
• Astonishingly affordable flat price with no renewal shocks, pay for only what you use, to the day

Now, obviously I would have loved to put that all on a landing page… but our copywriter said ‘no’ haha.

So here it is, the business decisions behind Unlimited Hosting and the reasons for them.

If you haven’t tried it out yet then give it a go… and heck, we’ll even refund you in full for any reason in your first 30 days, so you don’t even have to worry about pro rata!

And let us know any questions or thoughts you’re having in the comments below.

We cannot wait to see what you do with your new hosting setup

Before I begin, I want to take you back to the dawn of shared web hosting – specifically, the birth of the revolutionary and wonderful cPanel and WHM.

And I have a confession to make: without cPanel (and, specifically, Fantastico) I genuinely don’t think I’d be here writing this now. The ability it gave people to play with open source tech on a $7/mo slice of a server was… spectacular.

I used WHM to build the first Edublogs Campus back in 2007 (now CampusPress) and I’m still slightly amazed that it existed.

And for a long time, platforms like that (and their derivatives) have been the basis for pretty much every successful shared – and therefore very low-cost – WordPress hosting service since then.

Until today. Because we’ve made a better mousetrap

Introducing: WPMU DEV Unlimited

A new way to run a lot of WordPress sites on a premium managed hosting platform – without paying “managed hosting pricing” per site.

Here’s how it works:

• Over the last 6 years, we’ve built the most feature-rich, efficient and elegant managed WordPress hosting platform you could imagine.
• It sits on top of high-performance Virtual Machines (VMs) powered by 3GHz+ Intel Xeon processors and next-gen NVMe SSD storage, so you can get the full premium managed WP experience for a fraction of the cost – and the ability to easily scale up as your needs grow.
• And now we’ve adapted that platform so you can split a VM into as many WordPress sites as you want, while still retaining the full WPMU DEV hosting stack.

We’re calling it Unlimited.

The entry plan: Alpha MU (yes, we’ve brought back the MU )

For $15/mo you get a high performance machine with:

• 1GB dedicated RAM
• 1 vCPU powered by high-frequency 3GHz+ Intel Xeon processors
• 32GB NVMe SSD storage

Alongside our system storage requirements, that’s typically enough for 50+ cached portfolio/brochure sites (traffic dependent), each running in a fully managed WordPress environment with all the tools and tricks you want.

Or: 1 decent WooCommerce site and, I dunno, 20 portfolio sites on the side

Hey – it’s up to you.

The important thing is this: it’s there for you to do with as you please. Make of it what you will.

Why this isn’t “standard shared hosting”

If you’re thinking: “Hang on… 50+ sites for $15/mo sounds like old-school shared hosting”… I get it.

But Unlimited isn’t a bargain-basement cPanel box with noisy neighbors, mystery limits, and “best effort” performance. It is powered by the same platform behind WPMU DEV Hosting, offering the same powerful features and optimized to host unlimited WordPress sites on private, dedicated resources – which means you’re getting managed WordPress hosting, not “shared hosting with a WordPress installer.”

Simply put, you have full control over what sites are hosting.

Performance + stability (the stuff that keeps sites fast)

You get the platform-level performance stack (not something you’re duct-taping together with plugins), including things like caching, a tuned server environment, and the kind of infrastructure decisions that stop one site dragging everything else down.

Plus (as we may have already mentioned, but it deserves saying again!) your sites are running on state of the art high-performance hardware, including 3GHz+ Intel Xeon processors and next-gen NVMe SSD storage.

Security that’s on by default

This is a big one. Standard shared hosting tends to put the burden on you: install security plugins, configure them correctly, keep them updated, hope nothing breaks.

Unlimited flips that: security is part of the platform – the same approach we use across our managed hosting.

Backups you can trust (and restores that don’t ruin your day)

Automatic backups, offsite storage, simple restores – the kind of safety net you want before you need it.

Workflow tools for people who manage lots of sites

Staging, cloning, Multisite support, WooCommerce readiness, and dev-friendly tools – the stuff agencies and freelancers actually rely on.

Everything managed in The Hub

This is the “unfair advantage” when you’re running lots of sites: updates, monitoring, reporting, alerts, and site management – from one place.

That’s the point of Unlimited: you’re not trading quality for price. You’re getting the full managed platform, but with the flexibility to host multiple sites on a single server plan.

And when a site grows… just spin it off

Now here’s where it gets fun.

If one of your sites needs more resources, just spin it off to a new Dedicated server. Easy. Use our migration tools or let our support team handle the move for you.

No messy migrations, no rebuilding environments, no “please support, can you move my site to a different node.”

Unlimited is your “many sites” plan. Dedicated is your “this one is taking off” plan. Use both as needed.

No long contracts. No renewal shocks.

Plus – unlike pretty much every other provider – you don’t need to pay for 48 months up front.

We go month by month.

You won’t get hit by a renewal that’s suddenly 4x the price once you’re locked in. And if you cancel a server halfway through the month… we’ll pro-rata refund you.

Try it. If you don’t like it, you get your money back.

Don’t believe us? Try it out – and if you don’t love it, we’ll refund you. No questions asked

One catch…

Unlimited is only available to WPMU DEV Premium members.

So if you’re already a Premium member – congrats, this is for you. And if not, why not give us a try (and remember: if you don’t love it, we’ll refund you, no questions asked).

Welcome to the next generation of WordPress hosting.

We think you’re going to love it.

WPMU DEV Premium Members can get started here.

To find out more about WPMU DEV Premium, click here.

The web keeps evolving. So do the bugs. We’re here to help you keep up.

Stick around to the end to find out: if you fall out of a plane… where should you aim?

In today’s edition:

• All your (data)base are belong to us: why WordPress 7.0 is delayed.
• WCEU schedule dropped and, like a pierogi, it’s stuffed with goodness.
• A plugin acquisition horror story that will make you side-eye your dashboard.

Hot Off The Presses: What’s New?

You’re one click away from happy hour, and then you make the mistake of opening Slack at 4:59pm.

What could go wrong?

The client plays their final card: “Just a quick one before EOD…” aaaaaand suddenly you’re elbow-deep in the database at 2am.

Before you get UNO-reverse’d into overtime, keep reading for a quick roundup of what’s new in WordPress.

WordPress 7.0 Hits Pause (Turns Out Databases Are… Important)

WordPress 7.0 was supposed to land on April 9. Instead, it… didn’t.

This isn’t your usual “one more bug fix” situation. The delay comes down to something much deeper: figuring out how WordPress will handle real-time collaboration without turning your database into mom’s spaghetti.

The current approach stores collaboration data (like who’s editing and where their cursor is) in the postmeta table, with transients handling presence data. It works… but “works” isn’t good enough when you’re talking about multiple users editing the same post at the same time.

Matt Mullenweg pushed back on the approach, suggesting it’s worth doing this properly from day one, even if that means delaying the release. The proposed solution? A dedicated custom database table just for collaboration data.

Which is a big deal. WordPress doesn’t add new core database tables lightly. This is serious, once-in-a-decade, “measure twice, deploy once” business.

The result: WordPress 7.0 has been pushed back and, in a move that almost never happens, dropped from Release Candidate back into beta. For now, staying on WordPress 6.9.4 is still your stable, drama-free option.

This is probably a good thing. Shipping half-baked database architecture to millions of sites is the kind of thing very likely to keep developers up at night… and not in the fun way.

Keep an eye on this page, where the updated release timeline will be announced no later than April 22nd.

WordCamp Europe Schedule Is Live

The full schedule for WordCamp Europe 2026 is live, and it’s packed. We’re talking AI, performance, accessibility, agency workflows, block development… basically every tab you already have open, now in conference form.

The real challenge isn’t finding a good session. It’s choosing between five great ones that are all happening at the exact same time… and accepting that you physically cannot clone yourself (yet).

Some of the interesting talks that catch our eye:

• How to Make Toast by Stacy L. Carlson: Sounds like it’s about breaking down processes, but might also involve a mid-morning snack?
• Beyond Hamburgers: Latest Navigation Block Changes by Sarah Norris: Although this one also sounds delicious, it’s probably a discussion about website UX that’s really on the menu here.
• Fighting Spam and Bots on WordPress with AI by Adeolu Oshadare: First toast, then burgers, now Spam? Okay, this schedule is officially making me hungry.

Good thing this year’s event is going to be set in Kraków, Poland, which means you can challenge yourself to beat your pierogi-per-day high score.

And of course, strategically planning your energy levels around the equally important late-night networking events… which may or may not involve karaoke and wild shenanigans you’ll be telling stories about until next WordCamp.

Not going? No stress. Most of the talks will make their way to WordPress.tv afterwards, so you can catch up from your desk later.

Check out the full menu schedule to plan your WCEU experience.

Someone Bought 30+ Plugins… and Added a Backdoor

In a story that feels like it should come with a horror soundtrack, a buyer acquired over 30 WordPress plugins on Flippa and quietly added a backdoor to all of them.

Not immediately, of course. That would be too obvious.

Instead, the malicious code sat dormant for around eight months before being activated, waiting for the perfect moment to break through those backdoors, like Jack Nicholson in the Shining.

The good news is that the Plugins Team moved quickly, pushing a forced auto-update within hours of the issue being reported by Anchor Hosting founder Austin Ginder.

But the bigger issue is how this happened in the first place.

This is one of the most methodical supply chain compromises we’ve ever seen, and at the moment there’s really no way to prevent it. When plugin ownership changes hands, there’s currently no deep review process.

All work and no review process makes your plugin list a very bad idea… and means a trusted plugin can quietly begin a slow descent into madness without you realising until it’s too late.

More details on the plugin drama here.

Mind Bloggling Facts & Stats

• WordCamp Asia in Mumbai boasted 2,281 attendees, a new record for the event! Official stats on cups of tea and vada pav have not been released. (Source)
• Turns out, accessibility really pays. According to the Admin Bar’s 2026 State of the WordPress Agency survey, only 1 in 4 agencies offer accessibility, but the ones that do are almost twice as likely to surpass $200k in revenue. (Source)
• Gutenberg 22.9 just landed with 131 merged PRs. Highlights include gradient backgrounds that actually play nice with images, and a tidier command palette so you can finally find things without going on a quest. (Source)

Blogs & Resources You Shouldn’t Miss

Scheduling posts is so 2010. What if WordPress could schedule changes instead? Brian Coords thinks it’d be cool.

Write Plugin: What if WordPress had pristine-Moleskine, finally-writing-my-novel energy?

AI made content cheap. Fixing it is profitable. Here’s how to make content audits your new favorite service.

SSL certifications are getting shorter-lived. Because remembering to renew them once a year was too easy, apparently.

You’re a developer. Not a lawyer. Donata Stroink-Skillrud explains why your client’s privacy policy isn’t your responsibility.

AI isn’t replacing you, it’s pulling up a chair… and there’s room for everyone at the table.

Who need grammar? Speak like caveman. Save Claude token.

Coffee Break Distractions

Not all hero sections wear capes. This WordPress site helped rescue 100+ animals.

Ah yes, Dexember. It’s the month right before Xanuary, right? AI certainly thinks so.

Some might call them bugs. Others call it job security.

Seems like this guy is really head over heels for his girlfriend.

Who knew penguin relationship drama was more complex than your plugin stack?

No one prepares you for when you get expertly roasted by your own kids.

One of Tarantino’s classics: Reservoir Ducks.

And finally…

Some valuable information that could save your life.

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

Things are changing fast. We’re here to try to keep up… and help you stay in the loop.

Stick around to the end to see the cutest unboxing video of all time.

In today’s edition:

Hot Off The Presses: What’s New?

Is it just me, or is the absolute worst thing for your productivity… having a 2pm meeting?

Your brain refuses to start anything meaningful before it. You’re not quite resting, not quite working, just… buffering.

If you’re in procrastination mode right now, we’ve got you. Scroll on for the latest WordPress updates to fill the void until motivation (hopefully) kicks in.

WordPress Now Lets AI Run Your Site (Kinda)

WordPress has shifted from letting AI read your site… to letting it actually do things.

The change is powered by Model Context Protocol (MCP), which allows AI tools to plug directly into your site and perform 19 new types of tasks, including drafting and publishing posts, building pages, managing and replying to comments, and creating, renaming, and restructuring categories and tags.

As Ana-Maria Stanciuc described, it’s like AI agents used to have a “window” into your site, and now they have a “door.” Knock knock. Who’s there? Not a human anymore!

Don’t worry, you’re still in control:

• The AI agent checks with you before publishing, creating, updating, or deleting anything
• New posts default to drafts, so you can catch any wild hallucinations before they go live
• Even “delete” isn’t forever, you can restore content within 30 days
• It won’t randomly go rogue and turn your company website into a hobbit fanfic blog (without your approval)

For the average WordPress wrangler juggling dozens of client sites and a half-written blog post from 2022… this could actually help. You can spin up draft posts in seconds, clean up formatting and categorization messes, organize content you were definitely going to sort “later,” and maybe even keep client blogs alive without chasing them for content (again).

But of course, there’s a potential dark side: AI content flooding the web, SEO turning into even more of a battlefield, and readers wondering if a human wrote anything on your site.

Turning your site into a “slop factory” still isn’t a strategy. Low-value content is low-value, even if humans are no longer required to produce it.

Have you experimented with giving an AI agent the keys to your WordPress door? How’s it going… and how much do you trust it? We’d love to hear your take.

EmDash: A New “Spiritual Successor” Just Entered the Chat

Cloudflare has just launched something called EmDash, which they are very casually calling a “spiritual successor to WordPress.” Cool cool cool. No pressure.

So what is it?

• A CMS built from scratch
• Runs on Cloudflare’s serverless platform
• Written entirely in TypeScript
• Treats plugins like sandboxed apps with permissions
• And is very, very into AI

In other words: WordPress… but if it grew up in 2026 instead of 2003.

The big pitch? Plugins can’t mess with each other or core. Which, considering most WordPress vulnerabilities come from dodgy plugins, makes sense.

Unsurprisingly, the April 1st announcement got everyone talking. (Including a GitHub issue asking if it was literally an April Fools joke.)

So… what are people saying?

• The Big M himself, Matt Mullenweg, insists that EmDash isn’t “spiritually tied to WordPress at all” and warns against claiming to “be our spiritual successor without understanding our spirit.”
• Hendrik Luehrsen says it exposes Gutenberg’s biggest weakness: a slick interface sitting on top of a system that was never redesigned for how content actually works today.
• Brian Coords calls it a genuinely smart rethink of CMS architecture… just not one that’s ready to compete with WordPress’s real-world ecosystem anytime soon.
• Olivier Dobberkau goes full philosophical, calling the admin panel a façade and arguing the real product is an API for AI agents, not humans… meaning you might not be the main user of your own CMS for much longer.

EmDash is interesting not because it’s going to dethrone WordPress tomorrow, but because it says a lot about where the web is going.

What do you think? Is EmDash a full stop for WordPress, or just a pause?

Our Premium Plan Just Got a Whole Lot More Premium

In news a little closer to home… we’ve been busy.

As in “turning our Premium Plan into a full digital agency starter pack” busy.

We recently rolled out a bunch of new upgrades to the Premium Plan, built around what you actually need day-to-day to build cool stuff for your clients.

Some of the new features packed into the Premium Plan include:

• Front-of-the-queue VIP support: Skip the line, fix things faster.
• $900 in free credits: For hosting, on-demand dev, and proactive monitoring.
• Sweet discounts: Half price hosting and Pro Email = bigger margins.
• Zero-fee billing: A feature that could save you a ton over time if you’re billing multiple clients monthly.

One of our members, Flavio, wrote:

“Thank you VERY much to the WPMU DEV team for listening, improving the Premium plan, and making it far more “reseller‑friendly.” This update shows real commitment to supporting agencies like ours.”

Cheers, Flavio! You know we’ve always got your back.

Read the full scoop on what’s new.

Mind Bloggling Facts & Stats

• On April 1st, SolidWP’s WordPress Vulnerability Report revealed 225 new vulnerabilities that had emerged in the WordPress ecosystem, including 91 that still remain unpatched. Don’t be a fool. Keep your site safe! (Source)
• WordPress can no longer boast that it powers 43% of the web. The number has dropped to 42.4%. It’s the first time that figure has dropped below 43% since 2022. The interesting part? The category of sites being built without any content management system (aka. AI-produced sites) has increased for the first time in a decade. (Source)
• The robots aren’t just building the sites, they’re also visiting them. Human Security’s State of AI Traffic & Cyberthreat Benchmark Report revealed that non-human internet traffic is growing EIGHT TIMES faster than human traffic. (Source)

Blogs & Resources You Shouldn’t Miss

Bryce Culp calls WordPress 7.0 a “foundational leap forward” and explains how to prepare your site for the impending AI era.

Built your side-hustle pre-AI? A Hostinger survey says you’re more likely to still be doing things the “old-fashioned way.”

Elementor has launched their own agentic AI for WordPress. Describe what you want and Angie will build it for you.

Meanwhile, Nick Hamze has been chatting with Dewey, his WordPress version of the ever-helpful Clippy.

Jason Coleman doesn’t do anything without Flint, his 24/7 AI assistant who lives on an old gaming PC in his basement.

The 100th episode of Seriously, BUD? features AI hosts having a surprisingly human chat about the folks behind WordPress.

WP Plugin Insights uses AI to scan your plugins for trouble. Javier Casares and Mark Heijnen explain how.

Coffee Break Distractions

In contrast to all of the stuff above, here’s something whimsical and amazing built in the real world, no AI required.

A fascinating thread about a dinosaur question you probably never thought to ask.

This senior dog came last in the race, but he’s won first place in our hearts.

Our brains are biological computers. So, can they run DOOM?

Maybe not, but you can render Doom in 3D with just CSS. Niels Leenheer made it happen.

Is it worth tattooing “Patchstack” on your ankle to get stock options in the company? Soeren von Varchim thought so!

The goodest of good dogs. (Is someone chopping onions?!)

XKCD: Came for the “Dark Mode” joke, stuck around for the drop down menu below it. (My fave is “Airplane Mode”)

And finally…

Duck in a box.

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

That’s exactly what the shiny new and improved Premium Plan is designed to help you do.

You spoke, we took notes… and then we got to work. These new Premium Perks are built around what you actually need day-to-day as you roll up your sleeves and build cool stuff for your clients.

Premium is now even more of a true agency growth toolkit, helping you boost your profitability, scale your business and reduce your hands-on workload.

Here’s What’s New

$500 in On-Demand Development Credits

Instead of outsourcing to random freelancers or spending hours troubleshooting until your eyes hurt, you can now delegate the tricky, complex and time-consuming tasks to our team and keep your projects moving.

This will be your secret weapon for delivering faster, taking on more complex projects and saying “yes” to higher paying clients.

$200 in Proactive Monitoring Credits

This is a major reputation booster. No more scrambling to react when a client’s site goes down. With immediate downtime alerts, security scanning and performance checks, we’ll make sure issues are fixed before they affect business.

Fewer emergencies means less stress and stronger client trust… and makes it easier for you to justify monthly retainers.

$200/year in Hosting Credits & Half-Price Hosting

Yeah, it seems crazy… but we’re throwing in two hundred bucks of hosting every year too, plus a 50% discount. That’s $56 more per year than the old Premium plan – a 39% increase!

This is where the math really starts to work in your favor.

Being able to host a ton of sites for free, or spin up new client sites without worrying about costs, means you can make higher margins on every project. Offer competitive pricing while keeping as much of that sweet sweet profit for yourself.

Dedicated Account Manager + VIP Support

Our 24/7 support has always had your back, but now you’ll have priority access to a dedicated expert who can get problems solved even faster.

When you’re juggling client deadlines, plugin conflicts and migrations, this means you’ll never get stuck and you can spend more time on revenue-generating work.

But Wait… There’s More!

There are other great perks of Premium that should not be slept on, such as:

Zero-Fee Billing

Premium members will continue to enjoy a 0% billing fee, while Basic, Standard and Plus plans will have a 7.5% billing fee. If client billing is a feature you use often, upgrading will quickly pay for itself.

If you’re billing clients monthly, reselling services or running a maintenance business, this could save you thousands over time.

Half-Price Webmail

With Premium, you’ll also get 50% off Webmail, so you can set your clients up with a secure, professional inbox for a very affordable price. (Hello better margins!)

Wholesale Domains

Act like a domain provider, without having to actually be one. With our affordable wholesale domains, you can handle everything from domain to hosting to setup for your clients, giving them the “all-in-one package” treatment.

Plus, with domain renewals built in, it’s an easy way to add predictable recurring revenue to your business.

Give Your Business an Upgrade

The old Premium Plan gave you great tools. But the new Premium Plan gives you some serious leverage. Instead of just building sites, you can now run leaner, deliver faster and scale smarter.

Whether you’re managing a handful of sites or aiming for a full-blown agency, Premium gives you everything you need for serious growth, without the chaos that comes with it.

→ Check it out!

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.