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#264 – Do You Need a CMS, Elementor V4’s 100 Classes Limit, Does WP Really Power 40% of the Web?

Issue #264   |   March 24, 2026   |   Reading time: 20 mins

Hello!

This week on The WP Week Newsletter, we cover Joost de Valk’s view on whether you need a CMS, the struggle of new plugins to get visibility, an interview with the WC Asia 2026 organizers, Elementor V4’s 100-class limit, new projects, 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.

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See you next week!

Team WP-CONTENT.CO

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🗣️TALK OF THE TOWN

He argues that the traditional need for a CMS is fading as simpler tools and static site approaches make it easier to build and maintain websites. Joost, the former Marketing & Communications Lead for WordPress & man behind the YoastSEO plugin, moved his own site from WordPress to a static site built with Astro on Cloudflare Pages, using Markdown files deployed to a global CDN. While CMS platforms like WordPress remain valuable for complex, collaborative, or dynamic projects, they’re often unnecessary for smaller, simpler sites.

Reacting on X, Matt Mullenweg said, “ Glad you’re finally off WordPress, which was inevitable after your and Karim Marucchi ‘s failed coup attempt. Seems FAIR!”

Recently, Chris Lema also moved his site from WordPress to Astro with Payload CMS. Shaun Anderson also plans to move his WordPress blog, active since 2007, to a setup that doesn’t need a CMS.

📰  WORDPRESS & AROUND

All the updates around WordPress and its closely related technologies

This extra beta focuses on fixes from Beta 5, including reducing package size, reverting the  Client-side Media Processing feature, and improving performance, especially for real-time collaboration. It also includes more than 132 updates and fixes since the Beta 5 release. Also, the RC1 was delayed last week, due to concerns regarding enhancements for Real Time Collaboration performance, Client-side Media image optimization, and release package size.

🔧 TIP OF THE WEEK
Don’t Load Fonts from Google (If You Care About LCP)

Self-host fonts and preload only the main one.

This alone can boost PageSpeed massively.

👥 COMMUNITY NEWS

Updates and News from the WordPress Community

With WordCamp Asia 2026 on the horizon, we spoke with the event leads Regan Khadgi, Adiya Kane, and Meher Bala to learn more about the planning process, the team behind the scenes, and their vision for the next chapter of this growing regional event.

  • Contributor Day Workshops at WordCamp Asia 2026 schedule is out: There are four workshop sessions: WordPress Core Development Setup, which teaches attendees how to set up a local environment for WordPress Core development; Beginner’s WordPress, a guided introduction to WordPress basics for new users; Full Site Editing (FSE) Theme, a hands-on session on building and customizing sites using block themes and Full Site Editing; and Beginner’s Guide to SEO, which provides insights into SEO fundamentals. Also, Matt Mullenweg confirmed that he will be attending WordCamp Asia and is looking forward to meeting the community.
  • WordPress Campus Connect Jinja 2025 recap: The program successfully introduced over 1,200 students and educators across 12 schools and institutions in Eastern Uganda to WordPress and digital skills. Through hands-on workshops, mobile ICT labs, and student-led clubs, the initiative brought technology education directly to underserved schools, empowering students to explore digital careers and build sustainable learning communities despite logistical challenges.
  • WordCamp Europe Insights launched: This is a podcast that goes behind the scenes of WordCamp Europe, exploring how the event is organized, the people involved, and the community that makes it happen. The first two episodes are now live on their YouTube channel.
  • WP:26- Event Replay: This offers a recap of all the sessions for those who missed the virtual event, including the keynote, WordPress in 2026 by Noel Tock (CGO, Human Made and Altis), From SEO to AI Search Optimisation talk by Alex Moss (Principal SEO, Yoast), Accessibility is Essential in 2026 by Rian Rietveld )Web Accessibility Specialist), State of the Web by Chris Reynolds (Senior Developer Advocate, Pantheon), and the panel discussion, Why We’re Backing WordPress in 2026.
  • The 2026 Web Designer Survey by 20i: A survey of 500 U.S. web designers shows a resilient but rapidly evolving industry shaped by AI and competition. Around 75% say AI has already made their job more challenging, and 72.4% report difficulty finding quality clients, over 36% earn more than $100,000 and 78.6% feel fairly compensated.
  • Universal by Design, a free course on web dev fundamentals by Builderius: A free 14-lesson course by David Denedo teaches web fundamentals through Builderius, focusing on semantic HTML and CSS, with accessibility integrated from the start.
  • Miriam Schwab revamped her WordPress site with the help of Claude Code: The website gained rapid attention after being shared by Matt Mullenweg across various social media profiles.
  • PluginJam hackathon session is now live: This month’s theme is “Reveal” and interested folks can take part with the deadline being on March 25.
  • Grid Gap control for WordPress Core Grid block: The snippet shared by Matt Cromwell adds per-block gap settings, letting you adjust spacing directly.
  • Layoffs at StellarWP: Jeff Chandler reported on the recent layoffs at Stellar WP, where the Customer Success team was let go.
  • Elementor V4’s 100-classes limit sparks concerns: Kevin Geary shared a user’s screenshot showing Elementor V4’s 100-classes limit being hit, sparking concerns about usability. Elementor clarified that the limit is temporary so as to ensure stability during the testing and launch phase, and will be improved in the future once the challenges are resolved.
  • Pavel Ciorici highlighted that most new plugins struggle to gain traction: A quick review of 1,000 new plugins shows that 96% have fewer than 10 active installs, with only two exceeding 1,000. Pavel highlighted this in response to the featured plugins experiment and how there are issues that need to be addressed.
  • Is WordPress really powering 40% of the Web?: James Welbes questions the widely cited claim that WordPress powers 40% of the web, sharing data from 5,000+ local businesses across 28 cities that suggests the figure is closer to 27%, with many sites using platforms like Shopify, Wix, and Squarespace instead.
  • Marcus Burnette raises concerns about potential unexpected costs with WordPress 7.0’s AI Connectors: He questions how users can track and control API usage across plugins. The discussion highlights the need for better visibility, usage controls, and safeguards to prevent a single plugin from consuming limits or racking up costs.
  • New milestone for FluentCart: The plugin has now crossed over 5k active installs. On this occasion, Md Shahjahan shared how the journey started and what’s coming next.
  • ClassicPress 2.7.0 RC1 released: This brings APCu object cache support, core widgets converted to vanilla JavaScript, improved translations, admin view transitions, plus security fixes, dependency updates, and other enhancements.
  • Angie Code is now live: Angie is an agentic AI for WordPress, and its first feature, Angie Code, lets you create custom functionality in minutes from a simple prompt, with everything built and tested in a sandbox before going live.
  • FluentCommunity 2.3.0 now available:This adds Custom Profile Fields, follower search and sorting, synced WordPress time formats, CSV export for courses and quizzes, and FluentCRM messaging actions, along with various bug fixes and improvements.
  • Strakture 1.1.3 released: The latest update adds full support for WooCommerce, responsive margin/padding controls, 14 color schemes and 7 typography presets, and much more.
  • WP Password Policy adds LMS integrations: WP Password Policy Free 3.6.1 and PRO 3.11.0 now include integrations with Tutor LMS, LearnPress, and LifterLMS.
  • FAIR for TYPO3 is now live: Taco Verdo highlighted FAIR for TYPO3, an initiative that brings FAIR Package Manager to TYPO3, while linking the WordPress and TYPO3 communities under the Linux Foundation.
  • Hostinger shares €11.8 million with employees through stock options: The company continues to scale rapidly while expanding its use of AI across products and operations.
  • Akramul Hasan receives the Yoast Care fund for his contribution to the WordPress community:  Akramul Hasan, a member of the WordPress Community Team is the latest recipient of the Yoast Care fund.
  • Clay has been rebranded to Mesh: The rebranding reflects a broader vision focused on moving beyond managing contacts to understanding and working with your entire network. Me.sh (formerly Clay) is a modern relationship management platform that helps individuals and teams organize, track, and nurture their professional and personal networks. Clay’s team joined Automattic in 2025.
  • Veils of Fate: Tales of Eldermoor launched: Created by Troy Chaplin, this is a free browser-based RPG built with WordPress and the Interactivity API, along with Claude and Miles.
  • Introducing Unslop: This allows users to detect the repetitive defaults a model falls back on, then turn those findings into a reusable instruction file that makes future outputs less generic.
  • All new PlayerZero: This is an AI-powered engineering tool that automates debugging, testing, and issue detection by creating a unified world model of a company’s code, systems, and history.
🚀 NEW PROJECTS
“This isn’t a product. I built a tool to incrementally but significantly improve WP Admin search and I’d love you all to join in the fun!“

Matt Cromwell about creating the FullText Search for WP.
  • FullText Search for WP: Created by Matt Cromwell, this plugin improves WordPress admin search by adding FULLTEXT, meta, taxonomies, and better relevance. With this, you can find posts by tag, custom field, or SKU, and not just by title and content.
  • SessionQuota: Developed by Mustafa Uysal, the plugin prevents account sharing and controls how many devices each user can log in from. Perfect for membership sites, online courses, and eCommerce platforms.
  • Claudaborative-editing: An MCP server by Gary Pendergast that lets Claude Code collaboratively edit WordPress posts in real time, alongside human editors in the Gutenberg block editor.
  • WP Private AI: The plugin by Varun Dubey, adds a fully functional AI assistant without sending any user data to OpenAI or other third parties.
  • SiteSkite: This allows users to manage, monitor, back up, and optimize their WordPress sites from a single dashboard.
  • Simple Share Buttons: A new social sharing plugin by Chris Eggleston.
  • MilliCache: A full-page caching plugin for WordPress using Redis, ValKey, KeyDB, or Dragonfly.
  • Strix Google Reviews: The plugin by Mark Hasanov from StrixBox allows users to display real Google reviews on their site with multiple widget layouts with customizable colors, fonts, and star style.
  • Open World Multilingual: A completely free and open-source multilingual plugin for WordPress and WooCommerce.
  • AnotherPanacea MCP: This plugin by Joshua Miller gives Claude full post lifecycle control over your self-hosted WordPress site via MCP.
  • Owlstack: The plugin by Ali Hesari allows users to automatically share their WordPress posts to social media platforms like Telegram, X (Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Discord, and more directly from WordPress.
  • WebberZone Code Block Highlighting: The plugin improves the default Gutenberg Code Block to use Prism syntax highlighting. Developed by Ajay D’Souza, the plugin has also been submitted to the plugin repository.

🔖 INTERESTING READS & PODCASTS

More posts and podcasts from the WordPress Community you don’t want to miss

  • Matt Mullenweg shared that the Bay Lights in San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge are being relit after a three-year break, calling it a meaningful public art project he helped fund.
  • WP Vanguard’s first 600-plus WordPress security scans revealed that 99.8 percent of sites had at least one issue, and 7 percent contained critical vulnerabilities.
  • On Seriously, Bud?, Manish Dudharejia shares how he moved from computer science into SEO and digital marketing, eventually building E2M Solutions into a successful agency.
  • On this episode of The WP Minute’s Agency Action podcast, Toby Cryns and Kurt Von Ahnen discuss how AI is reshaping business processes, marketing, and service delivery, along with strategies for adapting and managing costs.
  • In this WP Minute+ episode, Eric talks with Mary Job about her journey into the Nigerian WordPress community, the importance of sustainable open-source contributions, and why community, ethics, and giving back matter for the future of WordPress.
  • Simon Pollard on WP Tavern Jukebox, discussed how the WordPress community and local meetups have changed post-COVID, from declining attendance to the challenge of rebuilding in-person connections.
  • James LePage reflects on WordPress 7.0 as a major turning point where AI becomes a built-in, open part of the platform.
  • Darin Kotter highlighted the new WordPress AI plugin feature that auto-generates featured images. With a single click, AI creates the image, adds alt text, and sets it, all while showing progress messages.
  • Varun Dubey explained how he cut Claude code token usage by 37% in WordPress development.
  • Paul Charlton at WPTuts explored Novamira, a plugin that lets you run an MCP server on your WordPress site and connect it to Claude AI.
  • Matt Cohen emphasizes that WordPress plugins should feel like a natural part of WordPress by fitting into its existing patterns, menus, and workflows.
  • Coen Jacobs shares why he chose not to launch his product yet, after recognizing that it only solves part of the problem he’s been discussing.
  • Kenneth Reitz shares how open source gave him purpose and success, but also led to intense pressure and mental health struggles.

🛠 GUIDE ZONE – HOWTO’S and MORE

Handpicked fresh guides from WordPress circle

📆 SAVE THE DATES

Do not miss a WordPress event ever again

🎁 WORDPRESS DEALS OF THE WEEK

Again, these are the best deals of the week, handpicked by yours!

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This weekly newsletter is kindly sponsored by awesome WordPress Companies 🦸‍♂️🙌

ProfilePress – Create membership sites & sell subscriptions on WordPress Check it out  →

Create a career page and start recruiting talents in a few minutes Check it out  →

Last but not least, updates from WP-CONTENT.CO 👇

Roots Launches WP Composer as Open Source Alternative to WPackagist, Followed by a Rename to WP Packages

Roots has launched WP Packages (originally called WP Composer), an open source Composer repository for WordPress plugins and…

Read more

WordPress Plugins Team Seeks to Expand as Submissions Quadruple Following AI Adoption

The Plugins Team has opened a call for new contributors and organizational sponsors as it faces a rapid…

Read more

Call for Volunteers Opens for Upcoming WordPress Default Theme Twenty Twenty-Seven

A call for volunteers has been announced for the development of the Twenty Twenty-Seven default theme, which will…

Read more

Organizing Asia’s Biggest WordPress Gathering: A Conversation with the WordCamp Asia 2026 Event Leads

From bringing together thousands of WordPress enthusiasts to showcasing the best of the community, WordCamp Asia has become…

Read more

Team WP-CONTENT.CO

Issue #264   |   March 24, 2026   |   Reading time: 20 mins

This weekly newsletter is kindly sponsored by ProfilePress, and WP Job Openings

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