Issue #218 | May 6, 2025 | Reading time: 20 mins
Hello!
This week on The WP Week Newsletter, we cover the WordPress project leadership reviewing blocked accounts and reinstating access, the release of WordPress 6.8.1, the Scallywag ad-fraud operation targeting WordPress sites, acquisitions, and more.
Don’t forget to subscribe and listen to the podcast version of this newsletter, where you can hear more details and discussions about these topics and more.
See you next week!
Team WP-CONTENT.CO
🙌 This weekly newsletter is kindly sponsored by Kinsta, Omnisend, and WP Job Openings
🗣️TALK OF THE TOWN
The project leadership is reviewing accounts blocked between August 2024 and now, especially those banned without notification across WordPress.org and Slack. The goal is to fairly reassess these cases and reinstate members where appropriate, based on factors like the severity of the infraction, time passed, willingness to follow guidelines, and community impact.
📰 WORDPRESS & AROUND
All the updates around WordPress and its closely related technologies
WordPress 6.8.1 is now available, and this minor release includes fixes for 15 bugs throughout Core and the Block Editor
- A Month in Core – April 2025: The month of April saw the release of WordPress 6.8 and 6.8.1, the WordPress Core team shipped 102 commits (-124 compared to last month). 171 tickets were opened (-2), 182 tickets were closed (-11), and 34 were reopened (+2).
- WordPress leadership reinstates 32 banned WordPress.org accounts, launches formal review: Project leadership is reviewing WordPress.org and WordPress Slack bans following months of tension, with dozens of reinstatements already made and more under evaluation. Heather Burns responded to this development on X.
- Canonical plugin proposal for accessibility prompts concerns from contributors and experts: Matt Mullenweg says a canonical plugin could accelerate accessibility improvements. Experts say the move risks sidelining accessibility and undermining WordPress’s core values.
- Matt Mullenweg on what would be the best agency to elevate the WordPress brand: Several members of the community joined the discussion and shared their thoughts.
- WooCommerce 9.8.3: Dot release: WooCommerce 9.8.3 addresses two targeted issues, one related to scheduled actions for product-related transients, and another affecting postcode field validation in the Checkout block.
- The Importance of Trust: Automattic at the Trust & Safety UK Summit, 2025: Automattic participated in the 2025 Trust & Safety Summit UK to advocate for a transparent, values-driven approach to online trust and safety, emphasizing their commitment to user rights and freedom of expression amid growing digital regulation.
- WordPress ad-fraud plugins generated 1.4 billion ad requests per day: A large-scale ad fraud operation called ‘Scallywag’ is monetizing pirating and URL shortening sites through specially crafted WordPress plugins that generate billions of daily fraudulent requests. Scallywag was uncovered by bot and fraud detection firm HUMAN, which mapped a network of 407 domains supporting the operation that peaked at 1.4 billion fraudulent ad requests per day.
- 33% of Google users stuck with Bing after a two-week trial: Study: A study found that 33% of Google users continued to use Bing after trying it for two weeks. This challenges the prevailing notion about search engine preferences and Google’s market dominance.
- Google expands AIO coverage in select industries: AI Overviews are now appearing more frequently in Google Search, changing visibility patterns across major industry verticals.
- Google Lighthouse to undergo major audit overhaul: What to know: Google announced plans to revamp Lighthouse’s performance audits. The new version will match the recently launched insights in Chrome DevTools’ Performance panel. This shift will alter how performance data is organized and presented, impacting SEO professionals who utilize Lighthouse for website optimization
💵 INVESTMENTS, ACQUISITIONS & PARTNERSHIPS
- Cloudflare has partnered with 10 major companies to showcase remote Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers built on Cloudflare: Cloudflare is teaming up with Anthropic, Asana, Atlassian, Block, Intercom, Linear, PayPal, Sentry, Stripe, and Webflow and these MCP servers let users interact with services like invoicing, project management, database queries, and deployments directly from AI assistants like Claude, without leaving the chat.
👥 COMMUNITY NEWS
Updates and News from the WordPress Community
On May 15th, in honor of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, individuals can pledge their time to improve accessibility in WordPress. You can contribute by reporting accessibility issues in WordPress themes and plugins, addressing accessibility issues in WordPress Core, testing patches, submitting your own patches, and more.
- Survey on the State of WordPress in Higher Education: The survey conducted by WP Capus in partnership with Human Made, aims to spotlight the challenges, goals, frustrations, hopes, and dreams of people working with WordPress in higher education.
- AltCtrl.org nearing its financial goal: The event set to take place on June 6th in Basel still needs €1,500-€2,000. Those interested can make individual contributions via Open Collective.
- Wordfence claims to be the undisputed leader in WordPress vulnerability intelligence and security: The report compares Wordfence with other WordPress CNAs, specifically Patchstack and WPScan, focusing on disclosure practices, patch rates, and vulnerability severity. Wordfence advocates that, “ While we continue to prioritize meaningful, actionable research, we’ve observed a concerning trend among other WordPress CNAs who focus on quantity over quality, using inflated vulnerability counts to claim “leadership.” “
- Kisnta survey reveals consumers prefer human customer service over AI: The findings revealed that 93.4% of consumers prefer interacting with a human over AI, 71.0% encountered situations where AI struggled with complex issues, 78.3% say humans resolve customer service problems faster and so on.
- GoDaddy reports first quarter 2025 financial results: GoDaddy reported strong financial performance in Q1 2025, with $1.2 billion in revenue (up 8% YoY) and $1.4 billion in bookings (up 8%).
- The WP Accessibility Day website received an honorable mention in the 2025 Webby Awards: The mention was in the Charitable Organizations/Non-Profit category.
- Big Bite collaborates with Speakers for Schools and The Hg Foundation: The collaboration resulted in a four-hour workshop led by Engineering Mentor Michael Bertram, teaching 99 students from the UK on how to build websites using WordPress.
- Tutor LMS 3.5.0 released: The latest version introduces a new trial options for membership plans, Paddle gateway support, new visibility control for Course Builder fields, and more.
- WPML 4.7.4 released: This release introduces the first stage of compliance with the European Accessibility Act (EAA) and also includes a security fix and compatibility improvements for popular page builders.
- The WordPress Swag Store has been revamped: The store has been redesigned and now has a new look.
- OSS things to watch coming out of Automattic AI: James LePage on X shared links to WordPress Feature API (The WordPress Feature API is a system for exposing WordPress functionality in a standardized, discoverable way for both server and client-side use), WordPress MCP (A WordPress plugin that implements the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to expose WordPress functionality through a standardized interface) and MCP WordPress Remote (The mcp-wordpress-remote package acts as a bridge between local Model Context Protocol (MCP) clients and remote WordPress MCP servers.).
- A new milestone reached for the Equalize Digital Accessibility Checker plugin: The plugin now has over 5k active user installs.
- Next chapter unfolding for Vedanshu Jain: He reflects with gratitude on the seven-year journey at Automattic, and as he moves on from Automattic, he has announced plans to build a polished hosting solution for WooCommerce. More details will follow as the project develops.
- 0.email public beta is now live: The new service is now available to all to try out.
🚀 NEW PROJECTS
- The WP Security 101 course is launching at the end of May: This course, created by Tim Nash, covers the fundamentals of WordPress security and includes 9 modules, 52 individual topics and lessons, over 4 hours of video content, practice labs, and additional resources.
- Introducing the Modern WordPress Fast Track course: This 10-week course, created by WP Shout and led by Kaspars Dambis, will focus on building high-value block themes and plugins with AI and automation.
- WooCommerce REST API Explorer by Chad Yoder: A lightweight, browser-based WooCommerce product explorer that lets you pull, filter and export live store data without logging in.
- Diff for Gravity Forms plugin: This plugin, created by Johnathon Williams, allows users to compare entries within the forms instantly.
- Announcing SEO Warning plugin: The plugin developed by Andrew Hoyer adds a warning to the WordPress admin bar when search engine visibility is off.
- Introducing Connect: This new project, created by Matt Cromwell, is a 100% free link-in-bio style template for your GitHub page. It has support for Gravatar, 5 themes with Theme Switcher, and much more.
- All new Thread Block: The plugin developed by Bhargav Bhandari allows users to create Twitter-like threaded posts in WordPress.
- Thoreau Theme by Biran Gardner: The theme has been submitted to the repository and will be available for all soon.
- Elementor integration for Gato GraphQL is now ready: Gato GraphQL’s Elementor extension can be used to access and mutate Elementor data from a page via GraphQL. Also, the Elementor integration for Gato AI Translations for Polylang is also now available.
- WordPress Core Contribution History tool: The tool was created by Peter Wilson and allows us to review an individual’s contribution history to WordPress Core and view the credit they received in each release.
- Announcing Jotform Appointments: This new release allows users to manage appointments, automate reminders, and sync with Google Calendar, Calendly, and Outlook Calendar all from one place.
- All new Chai.new: Langbase has released its new offering, Chai.new which turns your prompts into prod-ready agents.
🔖 INTERESTING READS & PODCASTS
More posts and podcasts from the WordPress Community you don’t want to miss
- PressConf Recap: Why showing up matters in the WordPress community: Rae Morey shares her experience of the recently concluded PressConf 2025.
- Pressconf reflections: Tammie Lister reflects on the recent experience on attending and speaking at the first-ever Pressconf. She gave a talk titled “Burning Bright, Burning Out: The Hidden Cost of Open Source,” where she talked about her own experience with burnout during the early days of the block editor project. From Tammie Lister.
- Tammie Lister’s April in WordPress: Tammie Lister highlighted her contributions to WordPress in the month of April, along with her plans for the future. She played a key role as the design lead for the 6.8 release and focused on improving editor extensibility and managing the project backlog and plans to hold weekly backlog triage sessions and address key papercuts.
- Lessons in longevity: How Matt Mullenweg scaled Automattic to $500M+ (and what’s next): The podcast discussion spanned over several topics such as bringing AI into the WordPress ecosystem, lessons on scaling SaaS to $500M ARR, how Matt stays motivated after 10+ years as Automattic CEO. From SaaStock.
- In conversation with Milana Cap: In this podcast episode, Milana Cap shares stories from her life in Serbia, her professional journey in the WordPress community, her passion for documentation, and how she bridges technical and creative work through music and plant care. From Seriously, Bud?
- Recap of Elementor’s Q2 Roadmap Event: The event opened the doors to the new Editor v4 alpha, with signup now available for early access, unveiling of new tools, updates, and enhancements. From Elementor.
- What does it feel like to be banned from WordPress? I’ll tell you: Chris Reynolds recounts being banned from WordPress.org without warning or explanation and states that after months of silence, the account was reinstated without comment, leaving him uncertain about their place in the WordPress ecosystem.
- David Pérez second year with the plugin review team: David Pérez reflects on his second year contributing to the WordPress Plugin Review Team, where he conducted nearly 6,000 plugin reviews thanks to Hostinger’s sponsorship. He highlights his talks at WordCamps, involvement in developing the Plugin Check Plugin, and the team’s recognition in the 2024 State of the Word.
- The 3 C’s of becoming a WordPress professional: Matt Medeiros defines WordPress professionalism through three pillars: caring for your craft, customer, and company, emphasizing quality work, honest client relationships, and sustainable business growth. From The WP Minute.
- Evolution of a WordPress agency: Matt interviews Ross Johnson, founder of 3.7 Designs, about his 20-year journey running a WordPress agency, from early 2000s web design to custom WordPress development, and now embracing block-based builders and recurring revenue models. From The WP Minute.
- Bud Kraus on podcasting and finding inspiration in WordPress stories: In this episode, Bud Kraus discusses his shift from building websites to creating content, including his podcast “Seriously, BUD?”. He shares how the show focuses on real, unscripted conversations with WordPress community members, and his tips for storytelling and interviewing. From WP Tavern Jukebox.
- Top 10 SEO trends in 2025 that will define the future of search: This post explores the top SEO trends, focusing on how advancements like AI-generated content, Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE), and entity-based SEO, and other trends are transforming the way websites rank. From BloggingJoy.
- How Woo’s support team uses AI to improve the customer experience: Job Thomas explains how Woo initially focused on reducing support load through deflection metrics, but then Woo shifted its approach after realizing that customer satisfaction should be the real goal. From Woo.
- Bring Federated events to your WordPress Site with André Menrath: Matthias Pfefferle converses with André Menrath, who shared his journey into software development, driven by his passion for events and democracy, and his vision for a federated future. From Do the Woo.
- Navigating the WordPress media ecosystem with Rae & BobWP: Rae Morey and BobWP discuss why media coverage matters, the value of genuine relationships with journalists, and why even small businesses should care about WordPress storytelling. From Do the Woo.
- AI is coming for your job — But it might give you a better one: Jamie Marsland explores the growing fear around AI replacing jobs and reframes it as an opportunity to evolve. He emphasizes that AI isn’t just a threat but a tool that, when embraced, can elevate careers rather than end them.
- The unintended consequences of making SEO “for everyone”: Joost de Valk reflects on Yoast’s mission to make SEO accessible to everyone, which helped millions optimize content but also led to unintended consequences, such as prioritizing quantity over quality. From Joost de Valk.
- 2025 Webby Awards highlight the best of the web: WP Engine highlighted that 30% of all sites nominated for or honored by The Webby Awards were built on WordPress, of which 43% of those were powered by WP Engine. From WP Engine.
- Defending 70% of the WordPress web: 2025 Patchstack cybersecurity breakdown w/ Oliver Sild: The discussion centered around how virtual patching works, the story behind Patchstack, the common vulnerabilities in WordPress, and much more. From Mario Peshev.
- Jamie Marsland’s daughter takes the new WordPress.com AI builder for a spin: The challenge was to see if Jamie’s daughter, Lily, could build a website in just five minutes using the new AI builder.
- Testing the new Elementor v.4 beta – A problem with the class implementation: David McCan reviewed Elementor’s Editor v4 and highlights a key issue where custom class names created in the editor are not rendered on the front end.
- Daveden WebDev explored the all new Elementor Editor v4: He took the new editor for a spin and explained the new features along with two potential limitations with global cases.
- Post Status happiness hour session twenty six: Michelle Frechette interviews Neel Schivdasani a product manager in the AI division at Automattic, about the integration of AI into WordPress.com.
🛠 GUIDE ZONE – HOWTO’S and MORE
Handpicked fresh guides from WordPress circle
- How to secure student data in WordPress (FERPA and GDPR compliance): From Kinsta
- How to overwrite or remove core block styles: From Gutenberg Times
- How I migrated my WordPress blog to Next.js and MDX: From Remi Corson
📆 SAVE THE DATES
Do not miss a WordPress event ever again
- WordCamp Lisboa 2025 on May 16-17, 2025: Tickets are now available.
- WordCamp Europe on 5-7 June 2025: Tickets are now available.
- WPCampus 2025 on July 23–25, 2025: The call for proposals is now open.
- WordCamp US on August 26-29, 2025: The call for organizers is now open.
- SomeConf 2025: The event is in the early planning stages. The call for sponsors and speakers is now live.
- WordCamp Canada on October 16-17 2025: The call for sponsors is now open.
- WordCamp Asia 2026: It is tentatively planned for early February 2026 and the call for organizers is now open.
🎁 WORDPRESS DEALS OF THE WEEK
Again, these are the best deals of the week, handpicked by yours!
EXCLUSIVE DEALS
- 4 Months free offer on hosting plans of WP Engine (Coupon Code- FREEDOMTOCREATE)
- 10% off on monthly & annual plans at SureTriggers (Coupon Code- WPCONTENT10)
- 15% off yearly plans at Videvo (Coupon Code – WPV15)
MORE DEALS
- Up to 83% off web hosting plans of Hostinger (The offer is valid from May 1st until May 30th)
- Up to 50% off on BookingPress plugin
- Up to 70% off on Shared Hosting plans at InMotion Hosting (Till May 29, 2025)
- 50% off for the first 6 months on all monthly standard plans at Kinsta
- 50% off 3 months on Liquid Web’s Bare Metal server hosting
- 20% off for Constellation plugin
- 60% off for the lifetime plan for the Modern Cart for WooCommerce plugin.
This weekly newsletter is kindly sponsored by awesome WordPress Companies 🦸♂️🙌
Last but not least, updates from WP-CONTENT.CO 👇
In a significant turn of events, WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg has announced plans to lift…
Automattic has undergone a major restructuring, cutting its workforce by around 16%, bringing the total number of employees…
In a joint white paper released by Patchstack and Sucuri, alarming new findings reveal that the increasing use…
WordPress 6.8 “Cecil”, the only major release of 2025, has finally arrived. This version brings style book support…
Team WP-CONTENT.CO
Issue #218 | May 6, 2025 | Reading time: 20 mins
This weekly newsletter is kindly sponsored by Kinsta, Omnisend, and WP Job Openings
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