The big release of WordPress for 2025, WordPress 6.8, drops this week on April 15, 2025 – keep an eye! Also in this issue, the business side of WordPress with rebranding, acquisition, and stepping into the Shopify ecosystem.
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What’s Buzzing in WordPress 💖
- Autoscale Hosting Platform… the team at 20i has launched the Autoscaling Cloud Hosting platform, where PHP workers and server capacity scale automatically in milliseconds, promising easy handling of unlimited concurrent users simultaneously, ensuring uptime even under heavy loads.
- Plugins Getting Closed… a few plugins at the WordPress org have been closed temporarily. With the WP 6.8 release around, “Are your plugins ready” emails have been sent out – any bounces will result in the plugin being closed or the committer being removed. Take note!
- Advts in Block Editor… Morgan Hvidt shared a screenshot (Link X) of how the plugin advertisement / upsell banner is being displayed in the Block Editor. Pavel Cioric also shared a screenshot (Links X) of another product showing upsells in the Block Editor.
- Soon in Beaver… the team at Beaver Builder shared what is coming 2.10v and beyond. Many new features in focus like dynamic global templates, 60+ module templates, star rating module, and accessibility improvements. Also, look out for website blueprint and templates, layers, and popups.
New WordPress Tools: WP Since & Hooks Extractor
Plugins + WP Version Check… Eduardo Villao has created a free WP Since tool that makes sure your plugin works with the right WordPress version automatically. This scans your WordPress plugin to detect all used core symbols and validates them against their official since versions for accurate compatibility checks.
WP Hooks Extractor… Balázs Piller has created a free online tool, WordPress Hooks Extractor, which allows you to extract action and filter hooks from any WordPress plugin or theme. The results are provided in Markdown format, which you can use with ChatGPT or other AI tools for further customization.
New Features: Fluent Community, Divi, & SureForms
FluentCommunity… 1.3.1v allows you to use Block Editor in the course lesson editor for content creation. Also, making it easy to organize, now you can move lessons between different sections.
Divi with Flexbox… Divi 5 is going all into Flexbox Layouts and Controls. It will include new Flexbox row templates, and Divi elements will be updated with flexbox controls and new sizing settings.
SureForms… 1.5.0v has introduced a calculator feature allowing you to add interactive calculators to your forms. Check the premade example calculators for: Check your BMI, Plan Trip Budget, and Paint Coverage.
Extended WordPress Buzz 🔥
- WordPress 6.8 This Week… the big new release of WordPress version 6.8 is happening this week on April 15, 2025 – so test for compatibility and conflicts. This WordPress 6.8 Release Candidate 3 was released on April 08, 2025.
- Gravatar’s New Tools… the team at Gravatar has released many new tools, like Card Customization for a custom header image and adding a contact button. Also, new Email Signature Generator and simplified Private Messages feature.
- New WP Collective for Asia… Ahsan Parwez has launched WPapac, a collective of WordPress professionals in the Asia Pacific region – for more exposure and opportunities to create, learn, and share.
- WP Milestones… the Barn2 Plugins YouTube Channel has crossed 8000 subscribers. The WP Weekly’s Twitter / X profile has crossed 6000 followers. Thank you to all WordPress users – do follow, if not already following!
New Features: SureMail, FluentBooking, & ACF
SureMail… 1.5.0v has introduced the Resend Email feature, allowing you to resend any past email with just one click from the email Logs page within your WordPress website dashboard.
FluentBooking… 1.7.0v has introduced an offline payments feature allowing online bookings without the immediate online payment. Also, now you can filter appointments by team calendars, making it easier to track availability.
ACF + HPOS… Advanced Custom Fields 6.4v has added support for WooCommerce’s High-Performance Order Storage (HPOS). This means, instead of storing order data in the wp_posts and wp_postmeta tables, orders are now stored in custom database tables.
Quick Bits 👍
- Brand new AI Website Builder on WordPress .com – try it!
- Cool visual structure for templates coming in JetThemeCore.
- Novashare with share button support for Nextdoor network.
- Pressable has introduced advanced site metrics feature.
- Brewing managed hosting for Paid Memberships Pro sites.
- April 2025 WordPress Developers recap and what’s new.
- WP Community & Beyond
- WP Foundation gets Managed WordPress trademark in Europe.
- WordPress VIP achieves FedRAMP Moderate Authorization.
- Sites by Human Made & 10up in Webby Awards nominations.
- Celebrating 20 years of Git, Q&A with creator Linus Torvalds.
Business Buzz: Into Shopify, Rebranding & Acquisition
Stepping into Shopify… Vishal Kothari from Tyche Softwares selling Woo addons, has stepped into (Links X) the Shopify world with the release of their first Shopify app, which is an equivalent of their WooCommerce plugin, Order Delivery Date Pro – and possibly more to come.
Name Rebranding… SureTriggers will have a new name OttoKit, where Otto is from automation and Kit represents a toolbox. Nothing changes for the existing SureTriggers users, and the next big focus would be AI Agents – beyond task automation, your AI powered teammates.
Plugin Acquisition… Lesley Sim and Ahmed have sold the Newsletter Glue plugin to Tyler Channell of PaywallProject. Moving forward, Lesley and Ahmed will focus on the upcoming events plugin called EventKoi.
2024 Annual WordPress Security Report
The team at Wordfence has published the 2024 Annual WordPress Vulnerability and Threat Report. There was 68% increase in vulnerabilities disclosed in 2024 and out these 81% has the ‘Medium’ severity CVSS score.
Plugin vulnerabilities had a share of 96% and remain the biggest software threat to WordPress. Arbitrary File Uploads were the most common vulnerability type disclosed, followed by Privilege Escalation.
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