Automattic has acquired WebHosting .com domain, and folks are thinking about its use case! Another big thing that left community members thinking was the massive 100-person layoff at Elementor – time to rethink! Also, many new plugin releases, product updates, rebranding, and another legal conflict is brewing.
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What’s Buzzing in WordPress 💖
- Minimal WP Dashboard… Austin Ginder shared (Links X) about releasing the Minn Admin (GitHub Link), which displays a modern and minimal WordPress dashboard interface. It lives alongside classic wp-admin, and is served at minn-admin as a single-page app on the WordPress REST API.
- Prospect WP Chrome Extension… Luke Humble shared the recently approved Prospect WP Extension for Google Chrome users. This allows direct scanning of a website visited in a browser, which supports strong data gathering for the website analysis and report building in ProspectWP.
- Uno AI Studio… Pascal Claro from WPRoads has launched Uno AI Studio that enables you to build block based website using AI powers. It allows you to generate design systems, patterns, headers, footers, and full landing pages using AI and native WordPress blocks.
- WP Search Filter Test Lab… Akramul Hasan shared about (LinkedIn) opening sourcing ‘a tool I built for my own WordPress plugin support work’. WP Search Filter Test Lab (GitHub) is a single WP-CLI/bash script that spins up a fully seeded local WordPress testing environment in minutes, includes: WooCommerce with 30 controlled test products, 2 custom post types with 64 CPT items, and more.
New AI Things: Novamira Visual & WPVibe Power Tasks
Novamira Visual + Watch AI Work… the team at Novamira has launched Novamira Visual, an experimental browser workspace where you watch your AI agent work on WordPress in real time. Instead of working out of sight, the agent opens your pages and the block editor in front of you. Ideal for development and staging sites – Elementor and Bricks supported.
WPVibe + Power Tasks… 1.6.0v gives the AI you already use a whole set of powerful new WordPress abilities. Now you can use it for tasks like moving a site to a new address, fix permissions without a plugin, check your site for tampering, clear any cache, un-stick scheduled tasks, adjust a single setting safely, and more.
New Woo Plugins: Import Export & StoreAccountant
Woo Import Export… Hardik Mehta from Dazzlebirds Solutions shared the new Woo Import Export plugin. This helps Woo users import and export products, orders, customers, coupons, product reviews, categories, and tags from one organized workflow, without depending on repeated manual spreadsheet work.
StoreAccountant… Thomas Baier from LaunchLab shared the launch of the new StoreAccountant plugin (free version) for WooCommerce users. It helps Woo users create accounting-friendly exports of orders and customer data in CSV or JSON format. Developers can add custom export adapters, formats, fields, filters, and other integrations through hooks and registry interfaces.
New Plugins: Feedback, Forms, SEO, Modals
Gravity Forms Feedback… the team at Gravity Labs has released feedback addon for Gravity Forms users. It transforms Gravity Forms entries into a polished, public-facing idea board, with features like voting, filtering, sorting, search, and comments, enabling you to collect feedback and prioritize what to build next directly on your WordPress site.
Neural Forms… the team at Elicus has built a new Neural Forms plugin (free version). Besides collecting submission through forms, the main focus is how you search and interact with submission like through email inbox style interface. Plus AI powers to sort and focus on submissions important for you.
Aetos SEO… got noticed a new audit plugin called Aetos SEO in the plugin repository, that runs along side your SEO plugin. It tells you what is broken, missing, or risky across technical SEO and AI-readiness, then shows you a prioritized list of what to fix first.
Super Modal… Bas Buis from WP Insights has released a new Super Modal plugin for fast modal, popup, or flyout on your WordPress website. It is a Gutenberg plugin allowing you to select any element as a trigger with an anchor or class, or even multiple triggers on the page.
Extended WordPress Buzz 🔥
- Elementor cut 100 Jobs… Elementor has laid off 100 employees, that’s 30% of the company’s workforce. CEO Yoni Luksenberg shared on this, “Elementor is a healthy, profitable, and independent company, and from that position we chose to do a reset: a lean, flat, and agile organization focused on our core product and community. This is a very painful step, and I am grateful to everyone who has built Elementor with us so far”.
- More on Elementor Jobs cut… check the co-founder, Ariel Klikstein message (LinkedIn). Marc Perel shared about (LinkedIn) the incredible trio of developers from the Elementor team, who are now all open for work: Hein van Vlastuin, Louis Wolmarans, and Batsirai Muchareva. Louis Wolmarans shared (LinkedIn) that the entire South African branch was closed in this restructuring.
- Static WordPress + AI… Patrick Posner shared about the Static Studio CLI, which leverages AI for your static WordPress sites. Static Studio CLI is a command-line interface for Static Studio that lets you manage sites from your terminal, as well as scripts, CI workflows, and AI coding agents like Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor.
- Gutenberg + Media Cropping… 23.5v update brings media editor cropping and cover block support. Also, you can now drag the editor canvas to any width, instead of being limited to the Desktop, Tablet, and Mobile presets. Note that Gutenberg plugin now requires WordPress 6.9 or later.
- WordPress Credits Milestone… the WP Credits program has completed six months full of learning and accomplishments. It has already met the 2026 goal of signing 20+ partnerships with schools worldwide. At WCEU saw tangible outcomes in a way that is hard to capture in a report.
WordPress 7.0.1 RC1 & Core Updates
WordPress 7.0.1 RC1 is now available for your testing. It is intended as a bug-fix only maintenance release. Tickets will be included provided they are issues introduced during the 7.0 cycle or intentionally deferred at the end of the 7.0 cycle.
- Check the bug scrub schedule for WordPress 7.1 release.
- WordPress 7.1 release party schedule, August 19, 2026.
- Call for testing responsive styling in the WordPress 7.1
- Merge proposal for expanding WordPress core abilities.
- Guidelines for syncing code from Gutenberg into WP dev.
- WooCommerce 10.9.3 fixes fatal error of WC_Email filters.
Updates: GravityView, wpDataTables, WPBakery, FuseWP
GravityView + Big Release… 3.0 version promises to be a big release in years, from one-click styling to page builders to AI. You can now build Views (the front-end displays for your Gravity Forms data) with AI through the GravityKit MCP. This also adds native embedding in Divi, Elementor, and Beaver Builder, a set of modern themes, and frontend bulk actions.
wpDataTables + Bubble Chart… 7.5v update of wpDataTables has added Bubble and 3D Bubble chart types to Highcharts. Also, added sized bubble and 3D sized bubble chart types to Highcharts.
WPBakery + Big Beta… 9.0 beta version is now available and promises to be a big update with significant performance improvements. Also, new attributes for developers, improved user interface, and editing experience.
FuseWP + Copper CRM… FuseWP has added integration for Copper CRM, which is a customer relationship management tool built for Google Workspace. MailOptin has also added integration for Copper CRM to save captured leads from your website.
Updates: SearchWP, Siren Affiliates, SCP, AffiliateWP
SearchWP + WPFilters… 4.6.0v brings SearchWP and WPFilters pairing to the results templates. Once WPFilters Integration is enabled, WPFilters filter element on the page will refine the ranked results – by category, tag, product attribute, or any custom filter you’ve set up.
Siren Affiliates… Alex Standiford shared (Links X) about the availability of Siren Affiliates plugin’s free version on the plugins repository. Siren Affiliates is an affiliate and partner program manager for WooCommerce stores.
Smart Creator Press + Email Templates… 21v update has introduced new features like a revamped dashboard, new email templates available in the welcome section, upgraded video player with more control, skins, themes, captions, styles, and more.
AffiliateWP + Own Currency… users of AffliliateWP can now pay international affiliates in their local currency, straight from their Stripe. It is built into the Stripe payouts, so there is no new tool to learn and nothing extra to install.
Quick Bits 👍
- New Raya Theme with clean design added to StyleCloud.
- Directorist new pricing plan is live, starting $39 per year.
- Grab founding member offer for new Website Toolkit service.
- WPBeginner is celebrating 17 years, & $10K worth giveaway.
- Pressable earns top tier in 2026 Review Signal Benchmarks.
- Matt Mullenweg shared OmFest idea & the interest form.
- Let’s Learn
- Build a WP plugin with AI, using Cursor & WordPress Studio.
- Meta undid change that broke Instagram embeds in WordPress.
- Insights & Perspectives
- Digging into WordPress market share dropping to 41.5%.
- Why are WordPress sites still running EOL PHP? By Censys.
- How I think about the Agentic Web, by Kasper Kulikowski.
- Learn at YouTube
- Popovers with animation & no JavaScript, by Kevin Powell.
- Preview Instatic, new alpha visual builder, by Paul at WPTuts.
- People of WordPress
- Greyd has appointed (LinksX), Barry Kooij as their CTO.
Business of WP: Domain, Conflict, & Rebrand
Automattic Acquires Domain… Elliot Silver over at DomainInvesting has revealed Automattic as the new owner of the WebHosting .com domain. It was previously owned by AT&T, and they never used it, only forwarded it to the AT&T website. “I presume the domain name was acquired privately. Perhaps AT&T will disclose the sale in a future SEC filing”.
Seahawk vs CloudLinux… Seahawk has taken legal action in the Delaware Court of Chancery against CloudLinux for its AutopilotWP service that competes with Seahawk partner services like WP Maintain and WP Care. Sometime back, CloudLinux announced about ending partnership with Seahawk.
BricksSync Rebranded… Gert Wierbos shared about rebranding BricksSync to the new WPChangeSync name. The existing BricksSync licence holders will receive the same license for WPChangeSync. Also, existing BricksSync workflows, storage, remotes, and Bricks-focused sync features should keep working after the update.
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