Many new projects from community members this week, like WP Beacon, The Guild Membership, and WellPlayedWP. New WordPress plugin releases like CraftForms, CoverKit, Shorthand for WordPress, WP Multitool, Recently Edited, and more. Also, the new WooCommerce Subscriptions Health Check tool and insights from the GeneratePress Theme 2026 survey.
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What’s Buzzing in WordPress 💖
- The Guild Membership… Remkus de Vries has announced The Guild endeavor, “The Guild for WordPress Builders, Agencies, and Developers wanting to hone their craft”. It will be a paid professional membership for WordPress Builders, agencies, and Developers who want to keep leveling up in the real work of building, managing, and optimizing WordPress sites.
- WP Beacon Project… Austin Ginder has launched the WP Beacon project to keep a watch on the WordPress plugin supply chain. It will track every plugin on WordPress Org repository including: authors, committers, and releases, and will flag ownership transfers, dormant-then-activated takeovers, and release patterns that match known attacks.
- WellPlayedWP… Marcus Burnette, founder of The WP World, has launched WellPlayedWP plugins shop featuring 20+ WordPress plugins, accessible through a single membership. It features plugins for Elementor, WooCommerce, and Gutenberg Block Editor users.
- FlavorPress Project… Lucas Radke shared (LinkedIn) the FlavorPress project as part of Automattic’s Radical Speed Month, building with Matthias Reinholz. With this, you can connect any WordPress site, add the feeds and sources you already follow, see what’s trending, and publish adapted drafts in your voice with one click.
Brand New Plugins: CraftForms, CoverKit, & Shorthand
CraftForms… Vitaliy Kiyko, co-founder of Builderius, has launched an all-new CraftForms form builder plugin. It promises an intuitive interface through a visual Gutenberg powered form builder, REST API Integration, pre-built form patterns, smart SMTP configuration, and intelligent submission management.
CoverKit Early Access… Xaver Birsak, founder of Mailster, has launched early access to the CoverKit plugin, which turns your posts, products, and custom fields into repeatable branded visuals on your own server, in your existing workflow. It also features live WordPress and WooCommerce data sync.
Shorthand for WordPress… Ben Ice shared about the launch of Shorthand for WordPress for the Shorthand platform. This new plugin allows content teams to create and publish rich, on-brand stories using the Shorthand editor directly inside the WordPress website dashboard.
More New Plugins: WP Multitool, Recently Edited, & Drive
WP Multitool… Marcin Dudek has launched the WP Multitool plugin, a 13 module WordPress performance and developer toolkit that replaces a stack of separate plugins with one modular solution. It features Find Slow Callbacks, Database Optimizer, Autoloader Optimizer, Frontend Optimizer, Config Manager, and more.
Recently Edited… Jon Schroeder has released the Recently Edited plugin, which promises faster editing on your WordPress sites. It features fast navigation, post type switcher, inline title/slug editing, view and copy post IDs, copy links, and Gravity Forms support.
Integration for Google Drive… Ahanaf Istiyad brought to notice the new Integration for Google Drive by CodeConfig plugin. It allows you to add and manage your Google Drive files directly from the WordPress Media Library. Also, enables SEO friendly URL for indexing of such files.
New Free Plugins: GigPress & AcrossAI Model Manager
GigPress Reborn… András Guseo is bringing back the GigPress plugin with a full rewrite, now available as the GigPress Reborn plugin in the repository. It allows you to manage live shows and uses native WordPress custom post types for Shows, Artists, Venues, and Tours, giving you a familiar editing experience with full support for revisions, trash, and bulk actions.
AcrossAI Model Manager… Deepak Gupta shared (LinkedIn) a new AcrossAI Model Manager plugin released in the plugins repository, which gives you full control over AI usage inside your site. It allows you to check (video preview) which model is used per capability, how long requests are allowed to run, and a complete audit log of every AI generation call made on the site.
Extended WordPress Buzz 🔥
- Woo Subscriptions Health Check… following up with the WooCommerce Subscriptions issue raised by Sybre Waaijer, the team at Woo has released the WooCommerce Subscriptions Health Check tool. It scans your store for subscriptions that may need attention, like subscriptions set to manual renewal when they could be renewing automatically.
- Droip to Kirki Rebranding… the Droip page builder from Themeum has rebranded as Kirki moving forward. Some time back, Themeum acquired Kirki, a customizer framework, and now being used as the name for a page builder product.
- WordPress AI + New Connectors… the team at rtCamp has released three new AI connectors for the official WordPress AI plugin. These include: Connector for OpenRouter, Connector for LM Studio, and the Universal OpenAI API Connector.
- Short Form Blogging Theme… Dave Martin and Joseph Scott have created a new theme for short-form blogging on WordPress .com that be a private social network just for friends & family. It has features of quick posts, replies, and reblogs – ideal for writings between a tweet and blog post.
- Quick Edit for Woo… Luigi Teschio shared preview (Links X) of Quick Edit (GitHub), as a part of the new Product Catalog experience for WooCommerce users. This for sure makes editing of products much faster and easier inside WordPress dashboard.
- WP Milestones… Aurelio shared (Links X) about the WP Umbrella plugin in the repository crossing the 70,000+ active installs milestone. MailerPress has crossed 1000+ active installs milestone in the repository, rather quickly. Also, Syde is celebrating 20 years of journey starting from 2006 as Inpsyde GbR.
- WP Core Buzz
- WP Core AI, 7.1 planning & beyond, by Grzegorz Ziółkowski.
- Presence API plugin as awareness layer who logged & more.
- Testing request to Web hosts for the collaborative editing.
- Check new updates to WordPress Accessibility documentation.
- WP Community Buzz
- WordPress Student Clubs are beginning to take shape now.
- 60 students from Kraków, took part in the WordPress Academy.
- Host city applications open for WordCamp India 2027 event.
Big Updates: LifterLMS, MailerPress, & Modular DS
LifterLMS + Big Update… 10.0v brings big changes promising a ‘new standard for online education’, with capabilities to deliver live, virtual, and instructor-led learning (ILT). Also, new tools to recover lost revenue, faster course building, and more focused learner experience.
MailerPress + Automations… 2.0v brings Advanced Email Automation (Beta), allowing you to create sophisticated email workflows through a visual automation builder. Also, now the MailerPress visual editor allows you to completely redesign new user welcome emails, password resets, comment notifications, and admin alerts.
Modular DS + Migration… the team at Modular DS has added the most requested feature to migrate, clone, and create staging sites directly from Modular DS. This should save time and effort on migrations, test changes safely, and restore backups more easily from one dashboard.
Updates: Activity Log, Independent Analytics, & Divi
Activity Log Pro + Log Channels… 1.0.6v has introduced the Log Channels feature, allowing you to stream your activity logs to external platforms like Grafana Loki, Better Stack, Slack, and more in real time. Also, added Login Flood Guard to reduce noise during brute-force attacks.
Independent Analytics + Request a Quote… Ben Sibley shared a preview (Links X) of the new form tracking for the Request a Quote for WooCommerce plugin in 2.14.9v update. This will allow you to view the number of quote requests you received from each traffic source, UTM campaign, and more.
Divi 5 + Variable Generator… Divi 5 has introduced a variable generator feature, which allows you to spin up an entire sizing and color variable system automatically in a few clicks. This makes it easy for beginners and also gives full control for customization as per requirements.
Quick Bits 👍
- Participate to win LifterLMS Infinity Bundle Lifetime license.
- New look Gravity Forms website with mega menu & layout.
- A huge collection of WordPress AI Tools, by Lax Mariappan.
- James Farmer check if you can fit 50 sites on a $15 server.
- Beaver Builder AI teased (Links X), coming in Beaver Builder.
- Brian Jackson has acquired .com (Links X) for Perfmatters site.
- Hostinger’s 2025 Sustainability Report & preparing for next.
- Rae Morey share latest on the judge’s order for Matt to explain.
- Check recap of Web Agency Summit 2026, by WPBakery team.
- Let’s Learn
- How I generated 47 WP tests in an afternoon, by Varun Dubey.
- Austin Ginder on how a plugin hid a dormant backdoor for years.
- Learn difference between ACF Blocks vs Native Gutenberg Blocks.
- WordPress & YouTube
- Change your mindset with using Elementor V4, by Imran Siddiq.
- Preview JetMenu 3.0 to build dynamic menus and mega menus.
- People of WordPress
- Stefania Mattana is celebrating 10 years (LinkedIn) at Automatic.
- Robert LiRobert Li is leaving (LinkedIn) WP Engine after 9 years.
- Alina Kakshapati receives Yoast Care fund for WP contributions.
New: Perfmatters, WC Vendors, Directorist & SiteSkite
Perfmatters + Elementor Atomic… 2.6.2v update allows you to automatically optimize and lazy load Elementor Atomic YouTube elements and legacy video widgets when Perfmatters iframe lazy loading is turned on. Also, added filters back to turn off WordPress’ lazy loading.
WC Vendors + Stripe Fee Details… WC Vendors Stripe Connect gateway has been updated to display exact Stripe fees computation that applies to each of their orders, along with their commission, on the vendor dashboard and the vendor’s new order email.
Directorist + Nearby Sort… 8.7.1v has introduced Nearby filter to the search, which displays results from shortest to longest distance from the searched address or zip code. Also, admin now has the ability to reject a specific listing and select one, or type a custom reason for rejection.
SiteSkite + MCP Support… 2.0v has introduced AI + MCP support, allowing developers and agencies to plug in their own AI models instead of being locked into a single provider. This release also includes sandbox environments created directly from backups, and safe mode access for crashed sites.
GeneratePress Theme 2026 Survey Insights
The team at GeneratePress conducted a survey to gather feedback about the product and future direction. The survey findings reveal interesting insights into how the theme landscape is changing with the Block Editor and AI storm.
GeneratePress will get its own native forms solution, conditionals will expand to include ACF and custom fields, a broader range of starter sites other than blog focused, and still uncertainty about the FSE direction for now.
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