Check the set of new tools showing up in the WordPress space, like DebugHawk, Ablad, and Logpress App. Also, new features for video popups, gifting courses, PDFs from form entries, and text effects in Block Editor.
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What’s Buzzing in WordPress 💖
- Diagnose WP Performance… Ashley Rich and Lewis Warren have launched the DebugHawk tool for WordPress performance monitoring. It promises to diagnose WordPress performance issues in seconds and provide performance data in a single unified dashboard to identify what’s slowing down the site.
- WordPress, Cursor, & Fun… Claudio is building the first Cursor for WordPress in the world, and announced it with a fun video (Links X). Check Ablad, which promises to be the first AI assistant that truly understands WordPress.
- Logpress App… Tunde Sanusi shared about the new Logpress App, a WordPress companion mobile app that allows you to manage your websites and includes 30+ WordPress dashboard videos. It is launching on September 15, 2025.
- WordVell Platform… a new website to discover and learn more about WordPress. WordVell platform aims to be a place dedicated to modern WordPress developers – to discuss creativity, coding, and growth strategies for building better with WordPress.
New Plugins: Formats, Woo Search, & Search Submit
Rich Text Formats… Punit Verma shared (LinkedIn) about the availability of the free BlaBlaBlocks Formats plugin in the repository. It allows you to add interactive tooltips and animated highlights to text with the Block Editor, with customization for behavior, colors, and animation.
Advanced Woo Search… Amadeu Arderiu shared about the release of the Wavinai Search plugin in the repository. Unlike standard WooCommerce search, Wavinai promises to deliver instant, relevant, and accurate results – try it!
Search Submission… Peter Wilson has released the Simple Search Submission plugin in the repo for IndexNow, which notifies search engines of updates to URLs on a site. It makes it easy to send crawl requests to search engines.
New Features: Video Popup, Course Gifting, & Form PDF
Presto Player & Popups… 4.0.0v has introduced the Presto Popups feature for creating video popups, promising better engagement and conversions. It is ideal for highlighting special promotions, demonstrating products, or sharing tutorials. This feature is available in the free version and the pro version, which comes with more customization options.
TutorLMS & Course Gifting… TutorLMS has added the Course Gifting feature, making it easy for anyone to gift your online course powered by TutorLMS. It adds a ‘Gift this Course’ button on your course screen which guides a visitor to add the recipient name, a custom message, and complete the payment on their behalf.
WPForms PDF Addon… the team at WPForms has introduced PDF Addon that adds functionality to generate PDFs from form submissions. It allows you to automatically convert form entries to highly customized documents, certificates, and invoices.
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Extended WordPress Buzz 🔥
- Core August 2025 Stats… Jb Audras published core stats for August 2025, with the WordPress Core team shipping 173 commits with contributions from 162 people. Over 28 countries contributed to WordPress Core, with the top 5 featuring: USA, India, Russia, Spain, and Australia. Company wise top 5 features: Automattic, Yoast, rtCamp, 10up, and Human Made.
- 2FA for WordPress org… two-factor authentication is now mandatory for people with capabilities to publish on the WordPress org website. “Effective 16 September 2025, any author, editor, or administrator without two-factor authentication enabled will have their role changed to contributor”.
- Gutenberg Update… 21.6v update has added a new add accordion button and improvements in Dataviews grid interface. Also, select, dropdown and text inputs now support global styles.
- WP Agency Forum Event… a new event designed for digital agency leaders and teams working with WordPress who want to scale sustainably, the inaugural edition of WP Agency Forum is scheduled for October 15, 2025, in Madrid, Spain. An in-person event with a live streaming option.
- New CEO & COO… Kinsta has a new leadership with Jon Penland as the new chief executive officer (CEO), who started at Kinsta as a support engineer 9 years ago. Matt Reid, former senior vice president at BigCommerce, is the new chief marketing officer (CMO).
- Acquisition Train… Jessica Snavely shared (LinkedIn) about Domain .com joining the Network Solutions. This follows a similar change for Web .com and Register .com – becoming Network Solutions.
- WordCamps Action… the call for speakers is now open for WordCamp Asia 2026, until October 31, 2025, for the event scheduled for April 9, 2026, in Mumbai, India.
- Youtube + WP Milestones… Imran Siddiq’s Web Squadron YouTube Channel has crossed the 150K subscribers milestone. Ryan Welcher’s YouTube Channel ‘Ryan Welcher Codes’ has crossed the 95,000 views milestone and is closing in on 100K.
New in Page Builders: Divi, Builderius, & Oxygen
Divi Custom Attributes… Public Alpha version 23 has introduced the Custom Attributes feature, which allows you to add any attribute, such as alt, title, rel, and aria-label, to elements and most sub-elements. Also, the responsive editor was released in version 22 of the public alpha.
Builderius Pro’s Big Update… Elvis Krstulović is progressing with a big update for Builderius Pro 1.0 (beta). Check this video preview (YouTube) for features that provide complete HTML control, dynamic data, custom post types queries, repeater fields, reusable components, and component variants using the styles property.
Oxygen Term Loop Builder… Oxygen 6.0 Beta 3 is now available, featuring a new Term Loop Builder element. This integrates with Oxygen’s Dynamic Data system, allowing you to easily display custom data supporting Advanced Custom Fields, Metabox values, and manually entered fields.
Updates: Nexter, Gato AI, & Language Switcher
Nexter Extension… the recent update has added SMTP Email Setup, which allows you to connect with any SMTP service within dashboard. Also, for wider security options, it now supports privacy-friendly Cloudflare Turnstile option.
Gato AI Translations… 14.0v allows you to execute the Gato Translate action with custom settings, via the new Gato Translate Custom bulk action. Also, added automatic integration with ACF and Meta Box, automatic translation of SEO plugin’s meta data.
Rebuilt Language Switcher… Adi Spiac shared (Links X) about the release of a fully redesigned and rebuilt Language Switcher for all TranslatePress users. It promises to be easier, flexible, and customizable than ever.
Quick Bits 👍
- xCloud’s new integration for Wasabi for storing WP backups.
- New Content Creators channel introduced on WordPress Slack.
- Automattic has closed the starter theme Underscores _s repo.
- Underrepresented in Tech featured in best 40 women podcasts.
- ACF’s annual survey 2025 results, 67% use ACF on all websites.
- Results of State of CSS 2025 survey are available to dig deeper.
- Let’s Learn
- How to filter posts by relationships, using Meta Box & Bricks.
- What happens when a page is loaded, Remkus explain in-depth.
- Create vertical magnetic scrolling effect (YouTube), by Astra team.
- Podcasts & Videos
- New Show: WPBakery Excerpt Talks for WordPress and Business.
- Rino de Boer live streamed exploring WordPress Block Themes.
Automattic & WP Engine… Matt Shares
Matt Mullenweg shared the latest, “Just got word that the court dismissed several of WP Engine and Silver Lake’s most serious claims – antitrust, monopolization, and extortion have been knocked out!”.
He further added, “This is a win not just for us but for all open source maintainers and contributors. Huge thanks to the folks at Gibson and Automattic who have been working on this”.
Really Simple Licensing (RSL) project
A few big names are supporting the new Really Simple Licensing (RSL) endeavor. This open standard allows web publishers to define machine-readable licensing terms for their content, including attribution, pay per crawl, and pay per inference compensation – in the age of AI and web crawlers.
Matt Mullenweg shared about this and the RSL plugin for WordPress users by James LePage. “Now the thing to figure out is distribution and adoption”.
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