Matt Mullenweg was in the spotlight this week, yes or no – as CEO of Automattic. Many new AI resources like AI in WordPress Guide, Vibe Coding Products Course, and AI updates for SEOPress, wpDataTables, LovedByAI, and WPCodeBox. WordPress 7.1.1 RC1 is now available, and planning for WordPress 7.2 release.
The WP Awards 2026 – Nominations phase closes this week, Submit Nomination of own or your favorite WordPress products/services.
The WP Awards supported by WPManageNinja (Enter Fluent ecosystem that powers up over 1 million websites), & Infinite Uploads (Faster Sites, Lower Costs, and WordPress Media That Runs Itself). Also, by Crocoblock & WinRocket.
Universally allows you to easily translate your WordPress site into any language within minutes, so you can benefit from multilingual SEO & grow your traffic. It seamlessly integrates with popular SEO plugins, WooCommerce, and more.
FluentCart combines performance, flexibility, and control in one powerful WordPress eCommerce plugin. Easily sell physical or digital products, hybrid product listings, subscriptions, memberships, and more.
WP Engine Newsroom: Designed specifically for media organizations publishing at scale, learn how WP Engine Newsroom simplifies publishing with fewer tools, connected workflows, and performance insights.
Leave single-server hosting in 2015. Choose 20i’s autoscaling Managed WordPress Hosting, built for traffic surges, complex sites & demanding PHP workloads, all without missing a beat.
↑ Community Sponsors supporting this weekly
What’s Buzzing in WordPress 💖
- AI in WordPress + Free Guide… Alok Jain has published a free online book, AI in WordPress 7.0: A Practical, Code-First Guide. It explains the new WordPress AI Client through small, working examples covering prompts, temperature, token limits, structured output, multimodal responses, and more. Readers build one companion plugin as they progress through the book.
- Vibe Coding Products + Course… Alex Standiford, founder of Siren Affiliates shared (Links X) about opening the founding enrollments for a new course, Vibe Coding Products for Scrappy Founders. “I’m teaching the process I actually use to build with AI, and giving you the guides my own agents use”.
- FounderPostAI + Initial Interest… Matt Thorn is building FounderPostAI, a WordPress SEO plugin with a workflow for reviewing titles, descriptions, and internal links before applying changes. He has put together the Forgotten Post Challenge, a free worksheet for choosing ten useful older posts, recording a baseline, reviewing a small set of changes, and following up honestly.
- Gmail’s POP Ending + Options… Serge Sagan, Founder of EpicMail, shared migration guide process – as Gmail on the web is ending continuous retrieval from third-party mailboxes through POP. EpicMail’s Gmail transition guide includes an account inventory, checks for receiving, sending identity, history, and desktop access. It compares several replacement paths and links to Google’s docs.
AI Stuff: SEOPress, wpDataTables, LovedByAI, WPCodeBox
SEOPress + Easier AI… 10.2v has introduced a new AI Assistant step in the installation wizard, which allows you to enable AI and connect your provider without leaving the wizard. Also added new features like Opening hours set post by post, the ability to test a redirect without leaving the list, and Site Audit searches your entire list of issues.
wpDataTables + AI First… Alexander Gilmanov shared (LinkedIn) about the 8.0v as the AI First update with many AI specific features like REST API for accessing tables and data. Also, improved MCP support allowing AI assistants/clients to work with wpDataTables, Angie AI (Elementor AI agent) integration, AI-powered SQL query generation, and chart suggestions.
LovedByAI + New Tools… Dean Peer from LovedByAI WordPress plugin for AI search optimization has introduced two new tools: Schema markup generator and GEO Checker. Also, shared their AI-referral dataset: 47,402 AI-referred sessions across 239 GA4 properties, split ChatGPT 56.3%, Brave 19.3%, Gemini 9.9%, Claude 7.5%, Perplexity 5.8%. The Brave share surprises most people.
WPCodeBox + MCP Access… 1.4.0v has added MCP access for AI clients, with read tools by default and administrator opt-in for writes and execution. AI clients can configure snippet placements and conditions through MCP, excluding custom PHP conditions.
New Addons for: Directorist & Gravity Forms
Directorist + New Extensions… the new Directorist Notifications Pro extension gives instant browser push notifications for every important event on your directory website – new listings, orders, payments, reviews, and more. Also, launched a new M-Pesa Payment Gateway extension designed to help directory website owners in African markets accept payments through M-Pesa more conveniently.
Gravity Forms + Version Control… Gravity Labs has released a new Gravity Forms Versioning Add-On, which automatically log changes to your site’s forms, including comparing two versions to see what changed, restoring older versions, importing/exporting entire version histories, and more.
New Plugins: PublishPress Shortlinks & SecureHold WP
PublishPress Shortlinks… Steve Burge shared (Links X) about their newest plugin release, PublishPress Shortlinks – The Link Manager for WordPress (free version). It allows you to create custom shortlinks for your posts, password protection to access your links, automatically expire your links on a specific date, and track all the clicks on your links.
SecureHold WP Stripe Security Deposit Holds… Hugo Godebert brought to notice the SecureHold WP, a WooCommerce plugin available in plugin repository for managing Stripe security deposit authorization holds. Instead of charging a security deposit upfront and refunding it later, SecureHold creates a separate card authorization. The merchant can then capture the full amount, capture only part of it, or release the authorization without charging the customer.
More New Plugins: Seofable Audit & Beardo Multisite
Seofable Content Visibility Audit… Tobias Lochau shared the new Seofable Content Visibility Audit plugin available in the repository. It scans every published post and page and sorts them into four lists: posts carrying a noindex flag nobody set on purpose, posts under 300 words, posts with no meta description, and posts nobody has touched in 18 months.
Beardo Multisite Activation Console… Mike Biolsi has released the free Beardo Multisite Activation Console plugin to support those who use the WP Multisite platform. With the purpose to save time – activate, deactivate, and manage plugins across every website in your network from one screen.
Extended WordPress Buzz 🔥
- WordPress Playground & WebMCP… WordPress Playground brings compatibility for WebMCP, a proposed browser API that lets web applications expose actions as tools with descriptions and structured inputs. MCP and WebMCP provide different connection paths. MCP connects an AI application to a local or remote server. WebMCP exposes actions through an open webpage.
- Flagship WordCamps Budget… Harmony Romo shared about the proposal of one budget file per event for four flagship WordCamp events: Europe (Spain), Asia (Malaysia), US, and a first edition in India. “This is a first version and I fully expect it to have problems I haven’t caught yet”.
- WordPress Credits Update… August 2026 was the WordPress Credits program’s biggest graduation month, with 145 students completing their internship in a single month. It enters September at 42 partner institutions across 16 countries and 91 active mentors, with 191 students currently working on contribution projects and 352 graduates in total.
- WordCamp Asia & Switzerland… WordCamp Asia 2027, the first batch of tickets go on sale at 12:15 UTC on September 15, 2026, for the event scheduled from 9 to 11 April 2027 in Penang, Malaysia. The call for speakers is now open for WordCamp Switzerland 2027 until September 30, 2026.
- WordCamp Rajasthan & Bengaluru… WordCamp Rajasthan 2026, scheduled for October 3 – 4, 2026, student ticket option is live, which gives the same access as the General Ticket, plus a digital certificate of participation. The call for Volunteers is open for WordCamp Bengaluru until October 15, 2026, for the event scheduled for November 21 & 22, 2026, in Bengaluru, India.
- WP Milestones… Adi Spiac shared (LinkedIn) about TranslatePress reaching the 9 years milestone 9 today, a multilingual tool powering close to 500,000 websites. Syed Balkhi shared (Links X) about WPVibe .ai, which brings AI powers to WordPress, has crossed the 20,000 active installs milestone.
Core WordPress Updates & Buzz
WordPress 7.1.1 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) is now available for download and your testing. This is intended as a bug-fix only maintenance release. Tickets will be included provided they are issues introduced during the 7.1 cycle or intentionally deferred at the end of the 7.1 cycle.
- Matt Mullenweg is back as release lead for WordPress 7.2 release.
- Check the bug scrub schedule for upcoming WordPress 7.2 release.
- Join the PHPUnit test cleanup for WordPress 7.2, by Lance Willett.
- Share your feedback for WordPress 7.1 release, by Sep 30, 2026.
- David Perez on automated security review for plugin releases.
- Manzoor Wani on updating WordPress to use Node.js 24 & npm 11.
- Joe Dolson shares on the planning for the Accessibility Lab Plugin.
Updates: FluentCart, Perfmatters, SureRank, Gravity
FluentCart + Product Videos… 1.6.4v brings the option to add videos to your products in the store catalog. Powered by Fluent Player, product videos option allows you to display videos within the existing interface and makes it easy to display demos and walk throughs in a video format.
Perfmatters + Safe Mode… 2.6.8v has introduced a highly requested Safe Mode option to disable all Perfmatters performance optimizations sitewide. Also, added the new Inline Excluded Stylesheets advanced option to automatically inline stylesheets excluded from Remove Unused CSS.
SureRank + Link Manager Filters… 1.9.1v update brings Link Manager filters, which allow you to filter links in the Link Manager by post type, category, and tag. This should make things easy for those managing content-heavy websites with hundreds of internal links and finding links within a specific section.
Gravity Forms Entries + Newsletter… Doeke Norg has released 1.3.0v of MailPoet for Gravity Forms, which now adds Gravity Forms entries as another source, so a newsletter can be built from what people send you rather than only from what you publish, like traditional sources of posts, pages, supported custom post types.
Updates: GenerateBlocks, Dynamic, TutorLMS, SmartPay
GenerateBlocks + Design Tokens… 2.8v of GenerateBlocks Pro brings Styles Builder updates with the introduction of Design Tokens feature. Facilitates any Selector global styling and a dedicated design workspace to preview your design system and build your own style book.
Dynamic Templates & Elements + New Features… Bas Buis shared about new features in Dynamic Templates & Elements (formerly FSE template assigner), and nearly everything now also works on classic themes. Page and product elements to replace the content part of a page or product, floating buttons, export and import of templates and elements.
Tutor LMS + Customization Controls… 4.0.8v added an option to show or hide the Header and Footer in the Dashboard and Learning Area. Also, upload separate logos for Light and Dark modes, optimized Instructor Dashboard queries for faster page loads, control reference image visibility in Puzzle Quizzes, and improved assignment submission flow for learners.
WP SmartPay + Redesigned Interface… 3.0v brings a rebuilt admin experience and in-depth reports for WP SmartPay users. Also, native Gutenberg form builder, built-in invoicing, over 25+ native integrations, and multi-gateway security.
Quick Bits 👍
- New in WP Accessibility Knowledge Base, Tables in the content.
- StatWP has launched Chrome Extension for quick browser access.
- WP Engine is celebrating the 10th anniversary of its Limerick office.
- GoDaddy 1st in Hosting category of Reader’s Choice Awards 2026.
- Insights & Perspectives
- Sybre Waaijer compared 6 solutions for plugin distribution.
- Job Thomas shared on what is a good customer experience.
- Why plugin quality matters more than you think, by Emre Ekener.
- WordPress on YouTube
- New Oxygen Builder explained & unleashed, by David McCan.
- OpenClaw WordPress AI, full Control on your site with Novamira.
- Divi 5 sneak peek: The upcoming Components & Slots feature.
- People of WordPress
- Pablo Postigo published a reflection on 5 years at Automattic.
Big Story: Matt Mullenweg & Automattic
Samantha Cole from 404Media has reported, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg was put on ‘Leave of Absence’ from Automattic. Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress, wrote in a company-wide Slack messages on Wednesday, that board members conspired behind his back to vote to put him on leave.
Rae Morey at The Repository, detailed followup, “Matt Mullenweg Swears for the First Time in 42 Years and Posts Hiring Call to Move ‘My Stuff’ Off Automattic Servers”.
- WordPress Org should be all fine (Links X), confirms Matt.
- Mary Hubbard assures that (Links X) Matt continues to lead.
- Matt Medeiros asks, Did WordPress just lose? (YouTube)
Insights into Sources of WordPress Plugin Sales
Katie Keith from Barn2 shared about (Links X) about where their WordPress plugin sales come from, and how it has changed over 3 years. “Organic search keeps shrinking – 39% to 30%. It’s still our biggest trackable source by far – SEO is injured, not dead. Direct keeps growing, now 41%. That’s returning customers, plus AI visits with no referrer.”
“YouTube has almost halved in a year – 5.8% to 3.2%. Tracked AI jumped in 2025 and has been flat since, at 3.4%”. Plus many interesting comments in that thread, with others sharing their mix of sources of plugin sales.
WP Shell is an online course about self-hosting WordPress on a VPS or dedicated server. Learn how to configure Nginx, PHP, MariaDB, Redis, and more.
Melapress builds professional-grade WordPress security & management plugins: WP Activity Log, Melapress Login Security, Melapress Role Editor, & WP 2FA.
SEOPress is the WordPress SEO plugin for people who manage more than one site: full white label, one-click migration from Yoast & Rank Math. Bulk AI generation of titles, meta descriptions, & image alt text. One license, unlimited sites.
WPVibe.ai allows you to safely manage your WordPress site with Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, or any other AI agent. Use our deep integrations with popular plugins including Elementor, WooCommerce, and more. Try for free at WPVibe.ai
↑ Community Sponsors supporting this weekly
