A lot of buzz in the core community, be it finalizing WordPress 6.9 for December, or the new WordPress Credits program by The WordPress Foundation. Also, tracking new in FluentCommunity, SureCart, and a few new plugin releases.
Call for Sponsorship is closing soon, for the upcoming ‘The WP Awards 2025’ event, and get ready to vote for your favorite WordPress products.
Need to update a private WordPress plugin or theme, like it’s from the repo? With no more ZIPs or manual installs, wp-content.io does that in seconds.
All-in-One WP Migration is the #1 WordPress migration plugin used by over 60 million websites. Migrate your site with zero downtime, no technical skills needed.
Platform InMotion with high performance servers for serious WordPress websites, comes with hassle free deployment tools and expert support.
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
What’s Buzzing in WordPress 💖
- New Entry in Top 10… Google Site Kit, Google’s official WordPress plugin built in partnership with 10up, WordPress practice at Fueled, has cracked into the top 10 plugins by install count in just a few years. It makes WordPress site connection to Google Analytics, Console, and other services – a few clicks routine.
- WP Ultimo Forked… WP Ultimo, Website as a Service (WaaS) solution, was abandoned by the original developer and now has a new life. David Stone, member of WP Ultimo User Community, has forked it. It is now available under the new name of ‘Multisite Ultimate’ on GitHub as ‘community maintained’. Thanks (Dynamic WP, FB Group), Michael Edwin, for the heads up, check this Reddit thread for more.
- The Cyber Resilience Act… CRA is the EU’s biggest cybersecurity update, requiring all internet-connected software, even WordPress plugins and themes, to meet strict security requirements. Check the free CRA checklist at Patchstack to prepare for upcoming changes.
- Multiple Results Templates… not liking the one generic search results page on your WordPress site? SearchWP has launched the Multiple Results Templates feature, allowing you to create different templates, such as for articles, products, and more.
New Plugins: Local Twemoji, AI Alt Writer, Finix for Woo
Local Twemoji… Peter Wilson has released a free Local Twemoji WordPress plugin that serves fallback emoji images from your own website URL rather than the WordPress org CDN.
AI Alt Writer… Bone Kirov and Artan Bajrami have released (LinkedIn) the AI Alt Writer plugin, which uses ChatGPT to automatically generate SEO-friendly alt text and image titles inside WordPress.
Finix for WooCommerce… now you can easily integrate Finix Payment Gateway with your WooCommerce store with the newly released Finix for WooCommerce plugin available in the repository at WordPress org website.
eCommerce Updates: SureCart & EasyCommerce
SureCart… 3.10v has added the Price Boost feature, providing customers an instant upgrade option, Product Form Embed option to display any product anywhere on your website, and smart Subscription Renewal reminders.
EasyCommerce… got its first big update, 1.0.0v brings AI-powered product summaries and descriptions to save you time, redesigned UI for a more intuitive experience, and extended custom fields for added customization and control.
Extended WordPress Buzz 🔥
- WordPress Credits… the WordPress Foundation has launched the WordPress Credits system to introduce WordPress to university students, the right way, with structured guidance and real-world experience in the open-source project.
- Core Committers Recap… Mary Hubbard published a summary of the core committer meeting for July 2025. The discussion focused on WordPress 6.9 release in 2025, WordPress admin area redesign, more clarity on plugin classifications, and the future of default themes.
- WordPress 6.9 in Dec… the proposed schedule for WordPress 6.9 has been published. The proposed release of Beta 1 on October 21, 2025, Release Candidate 1 on November 11, 2025, and the final release on December 2, 2025.
- PHPStan in Core Dev… PHPStan is a popular static code analysis tool for PHP that helps you find obvious and tricky bugs. There is a proposal to add it as a development dependency to WordPress with the required settings and a configured baseline.
- New WordPress RC… WordPress 6.8.2 RC1 is now available for your testing, addressing 20 issues throughout Core and 15 for the Block Editor. The final release is expected on Tuesday, July 15, 2025.
- Acquisition Train… ‘group .one’ behind popular brands like RankMath, GTMetrix, and WP Rocket, has acquired Social Pilot service, an online tool for social content scheduling across various social platforms.
- WP Milestones… Aditya R Sharma shared (Link X) about the Uichemy service, which started as an experiment and is now clocking over 50,000+ active users. Pascal Claro shared (Links X) about reaching 5,000 subscribers on the WP Roads YouTube channel, which features videos on WordPress.
Feature Updates: FluentCommunity & SureForms
FluentCommunity… 1.7.72v update has added the course schema feature for public and private courses, enabling easy SEO optimization of your course’s content within your FluentCommunity membership setup.
SureForms… 1.8.0v update brings User Registration and Login feature, now built into SureForms. It allows you to create custom forms that let users Register, Log-in, and set Passwords directly on your website.
Quick Bits 👍
- OttoKit introduce MCP (Model Context Protocol) server powers.
- The Divi 5 page builder gets the Flexbox based layout system.
- Check: Dave Grey has relaunched Nag Me Not for WordPress.
- Why you should restrict WordPress Admin access, by Rocket .net
- ‘Plugin Review Team’, renamed to ‘Plugins Team’, a good change.
- The call for speakers is open for the WordCamp Gdynia 2025.
- New Templates & Themes
- New GeneratePress starter Food Truck Template for restaurants.
- Hans-Gerd Gerhards has released SpacePress WP block theme.
- People of WordPress
- Oliver Sild of Patchstack has relaunched personal blog with content.
- Jonathan Desrosiers, 12 years contributing to WordPress milestone.
- Raitis Sevelis compared (LinkedIn) large vs small Contributor Day.
Security Buzz: Forwarding, Portal, & Gravity Update
VDP Report Forwarding… the team at Patchstack has introduced a new report forwarding system. Oliver Sild shared (Links X), “Many WordPress plugin developers have reached out to us with an issue where their VDP is being ignored and vulnerabilities are being misreported. Today, we launched a solution to that”.
Vulnerability Management… the team at Wordfence has launched the Wordfence Vulnerability Management Portal for WordPress plugin and theme developers. It aims to simplify the vulnerability disclosure process between the Wordfence team and WordPress software vendors. Such a VDP platform is also available at Patchstack, it was launched last year in September (2024).
Gravity Forms Users… update your plugin immediately. The Patchstack team has published about the malware found in the official GravityForms plugin, indicating a supply chain breach. “A version 2.9.13 has been released to ensure customers can safely update to a new version without a backdoor present”. The Gravity Forms team has published details; see more information here.
mySites .guru is the Ultimate Toolkit for managing multiple WordPress sites with the award winning Site Audit, Backup, Update, Secure, Monitor, & Alerting features.
Enhance Contact Form 7 with 45+ powerful features: multi-step forms, styling tools, smart integrations to build high-converting forms with Ultra Addons for CF7.
Kinsta managed WordPress hosting with unparalleled speed, leveraging Google Cloud and the latest C3D servers, it ensures lightning-fast performance.
↑ Community Sponsors supporting this weekly
