Matt Mullenweg is asking seven questions, with WordPress 6.8 being the only major release of 2025. On the business front, more acquisitions and a new parent brand. Is $2,500 – $4,999 still a good average price range for websites?
WP Adminify is a powerful WordPress dashboard customizer packed with tools to improve workflow, organization, & security – for effortless site management.
Kinsta managed WordPress hosting with unparalleled speed, leveraging Google Cloud and the latest C3D servers, it ensures lightning-fast performance.
WP Buffs – Let our 24/7 team take the pressure out of WordPress management. Start your WordPress care plan today, use code WPWEEKLY for 25% Off 1st month.
20i® Next-Gen WordPress Hosting – Blazing-fast cloud platform with free Staging, Cloning, WordPress Manager, CDN & Edge Cache. No plug-ins required!
↑ Community Sponsors supporting this weekly
What’s Buzzing in WordPress 💖
- Patchstack Excels… besides being the main source of WordPress vulnerability intelligence, Patchstack has become one of the very few security organizations that have been assigned more (LinkedIn) than 10,000 CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures).
- 2025 Year of Builders… David McCan published an insightful look into the page builder ecosystem in 2025. With Gutenberg in the mix, many page builder options are showing up with new updates like Bricks, Divi, Droip, Elementor, Oxygen, Builderius, Etch, Clutch, LiveCanvas, and Beaver Builder.
- Pro Patterns Collection… MahdiAli Khanusiya has launched the PatternsWP Pro Version, featuring a collection of pre-designed WordPress block patterns. You can easily add patterns of your choice, which are neatly organized in categories like hero, pricing, team, customer logos, and more.
New Plugins: Inspiro, Oxyfolio, RewardsWP, Viewer
Inspiro AI… the WPZOOM team has released the Inspiro AI plugin that enables you to fill your pages with content and images relevant to your business, using AI powers. It comes with 80+ ready-made patterns and access to royalty free images.
Oxyfolio for Oxygen… Jose Tamu, the creator of Dancepad for Breakdance builder and Next Bricks for Bricks users, has made available those elements as Oxyfolio for Oxygen 6 version users (new Oxygen release).
Refer a Friend plugin… the team at AffiliateWP has released a new refer-a-friend plugin called RewardsWP. It runs side-by-side with AffiliateWP for a simple setup, enabling customers to refer their friends.
WordPress Updates Viewer… Jekit Parekh has released a free Website Update Viewer plugin that allows you to track WP Updates within the dashboard. It displays information about the available updates for WordPress core, plugins, and themes.
Dev Support: Composer and CommandUI
SEOPress… 8.7 has added support for Composer, allowing you to pass your license key and automatically download the ZIP file of SEOPress Pro version. It has also added support for WooCommerce GTIN and an option to import Yoast global settings.
CommandUI Integrations… 1.6.0v brings deep integration of CommandUI with WSForm to search and access all your forms instantly. The 1.5.0v update added wpDataTables integration, allowing instant access to your tables and charts.
Extended WordPress Buzz 🔥
- Automattic’s Transparency Report… the team at Automattic has published their 23rd biannual transparency report for the period of July to December 2024. It highlighted the challenge of mass takedown spam and the evolving challenges in content moderation.
- New Parent Branding… TeamUpdraft is the new parent brand for popular WordPress products like UpdraftPlus, WP-Optimize, and All-In-One Security. Also, UpdraftPlus, WP-Optimize, and AIOS have moved to the new teamupdraft .com domain.
- Plugin Acquisition… the new parent brand TeamUpdraft has acquired Burst Statistics, an analytics plugin for WordPress users. Nothing changes for existing Burst Statistics users and they will receive new features in the future.
- Themes Acquisition… Syed Balkhi’s Awesome Motive group has acquired aThemes, which feature popular themes like Syndey and Botiga. It also has an actively developed Merchant plugin for WooCommerce store users.
- WP Milestones… Adam Preiser shared (Links X) about SureCart reaching a major milestone of 100,000+ stores. While the Simply Schedule Appointments plugin has crossed the 60k milestone in the WordPress repo.
New Features: SureCart, Divi, FlowMattic, Optimole
SureCart Content Designer… making it easy to add more useful content to product pages with the content designer in SureCart. You can to product pages like images, videos, feature breakdowns, size charts, FAQs, and more.
Divi Nested Rows… Divi 5 now has the nested rows feature, enabling the creation of more complex page layouts with ease. You can now put rows inside of rows for infinite nestability.
FlowMattic Email Builder… 5.1.0v brings a new Email Template Builder, which allows you to create fully customizable email templates with dynamic data, ideal for sending personalized emails.
Optimole… 4.0v has introduced Simplified Compression Presets, enabling users to choose an optimized presets (LinkedIn) for speed or quality, giving you full control without complexity. Also, lazy loading now includes device-specific and client-side detection of above-the-fold images.
Quick Bits 👍
- New ShopShield tool by Rocket .net for Woo performance.
- Jaed Mosharraf’s plugins are open for acquisition (Links X).
- View all sessions (YouTube) of the DE{CODE} 2025 event.
- A look at 43% WordPress market share, statistics, & more.
- WordPress Dev & More
- Dev’s look: Extending & Integrating two WordPress Plugins.
- Comparing ChatGPT Pro & Claude Pro, for WP Plugin dev.
- What AI means for WordPress in 2025? 3 experts share!
- Your Take: Is burnout silently destroying software makers?
- WordPress People
- Faisal Ahammad & Pooja Derashri, Yoast Care Fund recipients.
- Ben Pines is leaving (LinkedIn) Elementor for a solo journey.
- Kinsta sponsoring Krupa Nanda’s WP Contributions, thanks!
WordPress 6.8 is out + Few Questions!
WordPress 6.8 “Cecil” is now available for download. This release brings editor improvements, speculative loading for near instant page loads, accessibility improvements, and much more.
Matt Mullenweg shared about the WP 6.8 release, asking seven questions, “It’s a funny time in WordPress because there are a lot of really interesting open questions…”. Questions relate to canonical plugins, use of AI, the next 7.0 release, and about 13k issue backlog.
More on WordPress 6.8 Release
- Mary Hubbard on the one major WP release per year.
- Check the Developer’s Guide to WordPress 6.8 version.
- Bud Kraus on Hostinger blog, six key changes in WP 6.8v.
- Now Open: The call for WordPress 6.8.x release managers.
- WP 6.8 Performance
- 24 performance related improvements in WordPress 6.8v.
- Take note of WP_Query changes in WordPress 6.8 version.
- How to enhance WP_Query Performance in WordPress.
- How to setup Speculative Loading in WordPress 6.8 setup.
2025 WordPress Professionals Survey
Kyle Van Deusen over at The Admin Bar published results of the 4th annual 2025 WordPress Professionals Survey, in which 1,233 WordPress professionals participated. Over 42% generated less than $50,000 in revenue in 2024.
For 38% of folks, the average website price was between $2,500 and $4,999. Bricks, Elementor, and Divi were the top three builder choices. Over 57.3% are embracing the use of AI in their agencies. On the bright side, 46.5% are cautiously optimistic about the future of the WordPress project.
Platform InMotion with high performance servers for serious WordPress websites, comes with hassle free deployment tools and expert support.
Bit Flows is a drag & drop automation plugin like Zapier inside WordPress with advanced features like Router, Repeater, Delay, Conditionals, Webhooks.
mySites .guru is the Ultimate Toolkit for managing multiple WordPress sites with the award winning Site Audit, Backup, Update, Secure, Monitor, & Alerting features.
Merchants love Omnisend. So will you – Omnisend is trusted by 125,000+ brands who love using it for email & SMS marketing. Sign up now
↑ Community Sponsors supporting this weekly
