Going with the times, AI is spanning across the WordPress ecosystem in a big way. Be it Automattic opening an office for the AI team, many WordPress projects for AI, Elementor’s Angie AI , and more products with AI focused features.
Call for Sponsorship is closing soon, for ‘The WP Awards 2025’ event. Book your sponsor slot, and support this event for the WordPress community.
All-in-One WP Migration is the #1 WordPress migration plugin used by over 60 million websites. Migrate your site with zero downtime, no technical skills needed.
mySites .guru is the Ultimate Toolkit for managing multiple WordPress sites with the award winning Site Audit, Backup, Update, Secure, Monitor, & Alerting features.
Enhance Contact Form 7 with 45+ powerful features: multi-step forms, styling tools, smart integrations to build high-converting forms with Ultra Addons for CF7.
Kinsta managed WordPress hosting with unparalleled speed, leveraging Google Cloud and the latest C3D servers, it ensures lightning-fast performance.
↑ Community Sponsors supporting this weekly
What’s Buzzing in WordPress 💖
- Liquid Glass in Elementor… easily add liquid glass effect to your Elementor layouts with the newly released Liquid Glass Module in the ElementsKit plugin. It comes with pre-made presents and also works with third-party Elementor widgets and sections.
- Standalone GreenLight Blocks… GreenLight Blocks has been part of the Greenshift plugin, but now it is available as a standalone product. Out of the box, it is fully white label with no branding and promises the best code output with easy to implement animations and interactions.
- New Partnership… WP Amelia has announced (LinkedIn) partnership with WP Umbrella. New users of WP Amelia will get one month of free access to the WP Umbrella service for their WordPress sites.
- WP Foundational Challenges… Kevin Geary shared his perspective on the WordPress architecture crisis and how Gutenberg was a wasted opportunity. Daryll Doyle shared (LinkedIn) insights on the WP Framework initiative at Fueled for “A Better Foundation for our WordPress Scaffold”.
AI Buzz From: Automattic, WordPress, & Elementor
Automattic’s AI Team… “Looks like we’re no longer fully distributed!”, because Automattic has announced (Links X) the Automattic AI team, which will be based in an office in New York City, focusing on integrating AI in their products.
AI Projects in WordPress… James LePage shared about the collection of projects that form technical Building Blocks for AI within the WordPress project, like PHP AI Client SDK, Abilities API, MCP Adapter, and AI Experiments Plugin.
Elementor’s Angie… the team at Elementor has opened early access to Angie, the first agentic AI plugin for WordPress. This AI engine aims to help you execute real tasks inside WordPress – interesting!
New AI Features: Search, Support Bot, & Create Content
Smart Search AI… the team at WP Engine has introduced Smart Search AI for WordPress websites on WP Engine. It is an AI-powered semantic search and automated content suggestions feature promising accurate and faster results.
SEOPress + AI Support… 8.9v has introduced AI powered support chatbot directly into the SEOPress Pro settings pages for faster access to resources. This feature will be removed automatically when using the white label feature.
AI Content Generator… All in One SEO plugin now features a new AI Content Generator feature that allows you to create content for key points section for your blog posts, FAQ section, social media posts, meta title and SEO description.
Extended WordPress Buzz 🔥
- WordPress Update Time…WordPress 6.8.2 Maintenance Release is now available for download and update. This release fixes 20 Core tickets and 15 Block Editor issues – update your websites.
- Gutenberg Update… 21.2v allows the Navigation Link block to open links in a new window. Also added were numerous DataViews enhancements and new features, like new media, boolean, email, and array field type definitions.
- New WooCommerce… 10.0v has been released with front-end accessibility improvements, shareable checkout URLs, better coupon experience, and rich content support in CSV Product importer.
- Selective Push & Pull… Nick Diego shared about the new selective push and pull feature in WordPress Studio. It makes it easy to sync content between your local and live sites – currently supports websites hosted on Pressable and WordPress (.com).
- WordPressVIP CMS… 25.1v of WordPressVIP has been announced (Links X), as “a complete reimagining of the enterprise CMS”. It promises smarter workflows, sharper insights, and stronger growth with new features like remote data blocks.
- WP Milestones… SpeedyCache, cache and optimization plugin, has reached the 500,000 active installs milestone. Adi Spiac shared (Links X) about TranslatePress crossing the 400,000 active installs milestone.
- More Milestones… Academy LMS has reached 100+ reviews on WordPress org repository – with a 4.9-star rating, making it one of the top rated LMS plugins. GutenKit Block Editor Plugin has crossed the 20,000 active installs milestone.
Product Updates: Bricks, WPForms, & Perfmatters
Big Bricks Update… the 2.0v is now available with revamped builder UI, bulk edit elements, nested components, visual CSS grid builder, command palette, and manager for elements, fonts, and icons.
WPForms Entry Automation… WPForms has introduced an entry automation feature that allows you to schedule and automate exactly with customizations on when you would like to export or delete your entries.
Perfmatters Supports… 2.4.7v allows you to activate your license key using PHP code in wp-config .php. It has added built-in stylesheet exclusions for Elementor and Astra local fonts. Plus, additional parameters to excluded page builders array for Thrive Quiz Builder and Etch Builder.
Quick Bits 👍
- Kevin Geary’s new look Etch site, with loops, templating, & logic.
- Matt Cromwell on understanding the ‘not intuitive’ feedback.
- Grab early access to Atarim’s first AI-powered creative team.
- Automattic launched new Beeper version with plus plan option.
- Let’s Learn
- Ferdy Korpershoek 3hr video on eCom site build with SureCart.
- Wes Theron on using block columns (YouTube) to build layouts.
- Check guide to shipping SaaS product, by the Freemius team.
- Mike McAlister previewed (Links X) upcoming Quick Edit feature.
- New Themes
- TutorLMS released a new WellThrive Theme for health coaches.
- Sumit Singh has released a free lightweight FSE Ahmes Theme.
- People of WordPress
- Felix Arntz Look at 10 years contributions to WordPress Core.
- David Lockie in new role of Corporate Strategy at Automattic.
New Plugins: External Images, Cookie Consent, Hide AI
External Images… Josh Alia has released the External Images plugin, which allows WordPress and WooCommerce sites to load images directly from external URLs or CDNs, helping to reduce server storage requirements and improve image load speeds.
Cookie Consent Banner… the team at Softaculous has released a new CookieAdmin plugin, which allows you to display a personalized banner, enabling users to select which cookies they would like to use.
Hide AI Things… Andrew Hoyer has released (Links X) a free Hide AI plugin that hides AI buttons and options for more cleaner backend interface. Currently, it hides AI options of Elementor, RankMath, and PostX.
Hosting Buzz: Kiravo, Pressidium, & FlyWP
New Kiravo Pricing… kiravo Hosting has introduced new reduced pricing plans starting from €5 per month per site. The founder, Andrei Chira, shared (LinkedIn) “clients told us they’d love something better than cheap shared cPanel hosting, but not as expensive as the managed WordPress hosting plans”.
Pressidium EDGE… the team at Pressidium has launched a new layer of infrastructure called Pressidium EDGE, promising a system that delivers content faster, blocks threats earlier, and routes traffic with intelligence.
Domain Manager… FlyWP has introduced advanced domain manager feature for more control over your domain settings like set your primary domain, add domain aliases, manage redirects, and enable wildcard.
Platform InMotion with high performance servers for serious WordPress websites, comes with hassle free deployment tools and expert support.
Need to update a private WordPress plugin or theme, like it’s from the repo? With no more ZIPs or manual installs, wp-content.io does that in seconds.
Merchants love Omnisend. So will you – Omnisend is trusted by 125,000+ brands who love using it for email & SMS marketing. Sign up now
↑ Community Sponsors supporting this weekly
