WordPress developers can look forward to the first Advanced Professional WordPress Developer Certification. Check new releases like WP Detector, Sudo for WordPress, and upcoming releases of Fluent Player and JetPlugins for Divi 5. Also, new free plugins: Beaver Team Pro, Mamba Cache, Carousel Kit, & Smooth SMTP.
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What’s Buzzing in WordPress 💖
- WP/Woo Detector + Chrome… Łukasz Kaczmarek from Osom Studio shared (LinkedIn) about creating a Chrome extension that detects WordPress and WooCommerce sites. It uses 50+ detection methods across 8 tiers, like meta tags, script analysis through DOM structure, JavaScript objects to cookies, and HTTP endpoint probing.
- New Fluent Player… the team at WPManageNinja has opened the waiting list for the all new Fluent Player allowing you to embed videos smartly for an advanced viewing experience. It features video playlists, chapters, timestamps, resume playback, email capture, overlays, buttons, and playback controls.
- Sudo for WordPress… Dan Knauss has released action-gated reauthentication for WordPress called Sudo for WordPress (GitHub). With this every logged-in user is treated the same: attempt a gated action and get challenged. Also, sessions are time-bounded and non-extendable, enforcing the zero-trust principle that trust must be continuously earned, never assumed.
- JetPlugins for Divi… the team at Crocoblock has opened early access for JetPlugins for Divi 5 Builder. It features dynamic content and AJAX filters for easily creating advanced catalog, directory, portfolio websites, and more. Plus, implement convenient search, filtering, and sorting of content for easy discovery by users.
Free Plugins: Beaver, Mamba Cache, Carousel, & SMTP
Beaver Team Pro now Free… Tom Car has decided to make Beaver Team Pro plugin free and open source moving forward. It provides modules and tools for Beaver Builder power users to speed up the workflow of building WordPress websites.
Mamba Cache Free… Mamba Cache for WooCommerce is moving to a freemium model and has released free version. This has been done after a big ground-up refactoring of moving the major part of the core engine into the free version.
Carousel Kit… the team at rtCamp shared about releasing the Carousel Kit (GitHub), a production-ready carousel and slider system designed as a reference implementation for the WordPress Interactivity API (IAPI). It is easily extensible enabling any developer to build a separate block.
Smooth SMTP… check the new free SMTP plugin for WordPress in the repository called Smooth SMTP. It makes email deliverability simple for WordPress users and supports SMTP providers like Gmail, SendGrid, Amazon SES, and Mailgun.
New Updates: Fluent Community, Divi 5, & Ollie Pro
FluentCommunity + Video Embeds… 2.2.0v update brings many new features, like embed and manage secure videos directly inside your community, powered by Fluent Player, card layout view for a more visually engaging way to browse community posts, and a redesigned message module.
Divi 5 + Speculative Prerendering… promising a super fast experience when using the builder, speculative prerendering feature has been added to Divi 5. This predicts where you are navigating to based on your mouse movements, and prerenders the destination before you click.
Ollie Pro + Smart Sync… Ollie Pro has released a new extension called Smart Sync, which allows you to style one block and instantly apply those changes to all similar blocks in your layout with a single click.
Extended WordPress Buzz 🔥
- WordPress Developer Certification… check the first certification designed specifically for enterprise-level WordPress development, the Advanced Professional WordPress Developer Certification. With an intention to set a new industry standard for enterprise WordPress, evaluating team capabilities, and assessing candidates for complex, mission-critical applications.
- Translate WordPress Reset… Matt Mullenweg is looking at the ground-up reset of strategy and thinking with regard to WordPress translation. He added, “I’d love some thoughts from the team on what we should be building towards, given the progress of LLMs to date, and what will happen over the next 12-18 months”.
- WordPress Core Update… WordPress 7.0 Beta 1 is now available for download and testing. The final release of WordPress 7.0 is scheduled for April 9, 2026 – at the WordCamp Asia 2026 event in Mumbai, India.
- New Telex Updates… Semiha Kocer shared new updates to Telex, AI-powered block creation tool. Now you can upload reference images when describing your block, editing of blocks outside of Telex is now possible, version history works better, and more.
- WordCamp Asia Buzz… for those coming to WordCamp Asia 2026 event, there are many food options with vegetarian, vegan, seafood, and non-vegetarian choices. Also, check on getting a new SIM, payments, and Internet options during your stay for the event.
- WP Milestones… from Cool Plugins, the AutoPoly AI Translation For Polylang plugin has crossed the 3,000+ active installs milestone in the repository. Robert Abela shared (LinkedIn) about Melapress YouTube Channel crossing the 200+ subscribers milestone.
More Updates: WS Form, SureForms, & ToggleWP
WS Form + CaptchaFox… 1.10.79v has introduced the CaptchaFox field, which allows you to add CaptchaFox CAPTCHA verification to your forms to help prevent spam and automated submissions. CaptchaFox is a privacy-friendly CAPTCHA service and is a reCAPTCHA alternative.
SureForms + Dynamic Data… 2.5.v has introduced dynamic data support, enabling your forms to pull options directly from post types and taxonomies. Also added support for displaying calculation results in the HTML block.
ToggleWP + AI Modules… 0.4v has added new AI modules, including AI Hub and AI Writer, that bring content creation to the WP dashboard with a BYOK (Bring your own key) model. This allows freelancers and agencies to use their own API keys.
Quick Bits 👍
- Participate in State of the Agency 2026 survey, from Elementor.
- Uncanny Owl website gets a new look, which is clean & modern.
- MailerPress shared public roadmap of upcoming features & more.
- WooCommerce 10.6v product images will lazy load by defualt.
- Matt recapped on AI, plugins, & future of software engineering.
- Kinsta awarded #1 web hosting provider in G2’s 2026 Awards.
- Matt Mullenweg on future of WordPress, at WP Tonic podcast.
- Chris Reynolds as interim president of The WP Community Collective.
- Case Studies
- Scaling Woo Shop with GDPR compliant Independent Analytics.
- WP delivers data-driven insights at scale for Pew Research Center.
- Let’s Learn
- Learning to tame the WordPress Heartbeat API, by Mike Davey.
- Create online food ordering site with Woo & FoodMaster plugins.
- Steps to prepare WP site for AI Search Engines, by Maddy Osman.
- WordPress & YouTube
- Paul from WPTuts review Elementor Editor v4, sarcastic edition!
- Sticky header trick makes WP websites look incredible, by Jamie.
- Intro to semantic HTML for accessible web design, by Elementor.
- Learn the difference between tags & categories in WP, by Yoast.
Hosting Buzz: 20i, Rocket .net, Pressidium, & FlyWP
20i + Cache Report Widget… 20i Hosting has released a new Cache Report Widget, which provides a clear snapshot of how effectively your website is being cached and where performance gains can still be made.
Rocket .net + Self Transfer… the Rocket .net hosting has introduced self-serve site transfer feature allowing you to initiate website transfers between accounts without the need of raising a support ticket.
Pressidium + Edge… Pressidium hosting has opened early access for Pressidium Edge, promising an enterprise grade speed and security for any WordPress website, regardless of where it is hosted.
FlyWP + Smart Recovery… FlyWP has added smart retry and recovery for website migrations. In case a migration fails, the system will properly save the failed state, which enables better recovery handling.
Community Buzz: Plugins Closed & Partnership
Free Plugins Closed… all free plugins from Bit Apps have been temporarily closed on the WordPress repository since February 7, 2026, due to ‘sock puppet’ activity. Bit Integration plugin has been restored, and other plugins are in the review process. For now, users can download free plugins from the Bit Apps website.
Patchstack + GoDaddy… courtesy of new partnership with GoDaddy, Patchstack is now available to over a million websites that are managed with ManageWP service. This enables automatic protection via Patchstack’s RapidMitigate protection and vulnerability detection.
Platform InMotion with high performance servers for serious WordPress websites, comes with hassle free deployment tools and expert support.
WPManageNinja is offering upto 50% discount on all its premium WordPress plugins. Top rated products like FluentCart, FluentCRM, FluentForms, & more.
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