#210- Jetpack Tracking Search Query, WP Foundation Secures Trademarks For Managed & Hosted WordPress In The UK & Australia

Issue #210 | March 11, 2025 | Reading time: 15 mins

Hello!

Today we cover the Jetpack plugin tracking search query, WordPress Foundation securing trader marks for Managed WordPress and Hosted WordPress in the UK and Australia, Speculative Loading to be a part of Core with the release of WordPress 6.8 and new projects.

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

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🗣️TALK OF THE TOWN

Does Jetpack track searches in your WordPress dashboard?

Mehbub Rashid on X notified the community about how he received a recommendation email from Jetpack shortly after searching for a security plugin in the repository. He followed up later confirming that Jetpack does indeed track the search history. A discussion about this is also happening on Reddit.

📰 WORDPRESS & AROUND

All the updates around WordPress and its closely related technologies

WordPress Foundation secures trademarks for “Managed WordPress” and “Hosted WordPress” in UK and Australia

The WordPress Foundation has secured trademark registrations for “Managed WordPress” and “Hosted WordPress” in the United Kingdom and Australia, as part of its broader efforts to enforce WordPress trademark compliance.

WordPress 6.8 Beta 1 released: The beta 1 is now available for download and testing. An issue in beta 1 related to parent and child themes is being worked on and a resolution is expected in the coming weeks. We can expect beta 2 later today.
Speculative Loading set to arrive in core with WordPress 6.8: WordPress 6.8 introduces speculative loading, which can lead to near-instant page load times by loading URLs before the user navigates to them. The feature relies on the Speculation Rules API, a web platform feature that allows defining rules for which kinds of URLs to prefetch or prerender, and how early such speculative loading should occur.
Spectator role in the WordPress support forums: Following the linking of the plugin owner field to user profiles, only individual accounts can now respond to support requests. If a company or brand uses a branded account as the owner of a plugin (or theme), such an account usually gets the support role “Spectator”, which means that this account is not allowed to post in the forums. This is primarily for security and accountability.
The second round of Global Sponsor announced: The newest Global Sponsor is Automattic (Jetpack + WordPress.com). Earlier, A2 Hosting and Woo were also announced as the Global Sponsors.
Matt Mullenweg on organizing a Zoom meeting for core committers: A Zoom meeting is being planned for core committers to discuss the future WordPress release schedule, testing for WordPress 6.8, and bringing together conversations from the past six weeks.
Matt Mullenweg on the real cost of security: Matt criticizes many WordPress hosting providers for claiming to offer security but charging high fees for malware removal and security plans when a site gets hacked. It highlights WP.cloud-powered hosting, including WordPress.com and Pressable, as a more secure alternative, with free hack recovery services.
Unauthenticated arbitrary file upload vulnerability in Chaty Pro plugin: The vulnerability that allowed an attacker to upload a malicious file to the system and take over the WordPress site by performing a series of HTTP requests was recently patched.
Performance insights from refactoring the custom Block Registration in WooCommerce: The insights revealed a reduced number of callbacks (only 24 subscription callbacks down from 4,550) and reduced execution time to 0.63s (down from 2.47s).
Developer Advisory: WooCommerce is upgrading all Monorepo React 17.0.2 Dependencies to React 18.3.X: This update brings WooCommerce in line with WordPress, enhances compatibility with upcoming React 19 improvements, and ensures our platform remains maintainable and future-ready.
Upcoming changes to the WooCommerce release process: Starting with WooCommerce 9.8, an Alpha period will be included in the release cycle to provide earlier access to upcoming changes. The Beta and Release Candidate (RC) phases are being shortened while maintaining the overall 5-week release cycle.
WooCommerce 9.7.1: Dot release: This release includes a Product Name XSS fix, safer coupon notices in shortcodes and refactored string-based HTML in JavaScript.
Google discontinues controversial “Page Annotations” on iOS: Google has discontinued its Page Annotations feature in the iOS app, which automatically added search links to webpages. The feature was introduced late last year and converted certain website text into Google Search links without publisher consent.
Google CTR study: AI overviews rise as click rates decline: A new study on Google search behavior examines changes in clickthrough rates across industries. The data correlates with increased AI Overviews (AIOs) in Google’s search results. Research from Advanced Web Ranking (AWR) reveals that AIOs appeared in 42.51% of search results in Q4, up 8.83 percentage points from the previous quarter.
Google updates robots meta tag document to include AI mode: The updated document now specifies that you can control the appearance of your content in Google’s AI-powered features, including AI Overviews and the new AI Mode.

💵 INVESTMENTS, ACQUISITIONS & PARTNERSHIPS

Burst Statistics has been acquired by UpdraftPlus: Rogier Lankhorst posted on LinkedIn about this recent acquisition, He will be joining the UpdraftPlus along with Hessel De Jong to work on Burst Statistics.

👥 COMMUNITY NEWS

Updates and News from the WordPress Community

Hostinger among the FT 1000 ranking of Europe’s fastest-growing companies

Hostinger has once again secured a spot on the Financial Times’ FT 1000 list, ranking among the fastest-growing companies in Europe for the sixth consecutive year.

Michael Willman on the recent update to the WordPress.org plugin and theme repos and their impacts: He highlighted how WordPress.org removed all author website links from its plugin and theme repositories, severely impacting developers’ organic SEO and paid plugin sales. While links in readme files remain, they now have a nofollow attribute.
Copywriting challenge webinar By Progress Planner: On March 13.2025 Progress Planner is hosting a copywriting challenge webinar, where they will focus on the art of writing customer-focused content that grabs attention and drives action. The hosts for this webinar are Jono Alderson, Katie Thompson, and Taco Verdonschot.
ClassifAI now with Ollama support: Darin Kotter on X notified the community about the recent update to ClassifAI created by 10up and that it has added support for Ollama as an AI provider. This allows users to run various AI features in WordPress, 100% local and offline, allowing you full control over your data.
Tailwind Plus website launched: Jonathan Reinink introduced the brand-new website and identity for Tailwind UI and this new launch is part of a rebrand process.
Alkesh Miyani receives the Yoast Care fund for his contribution to the WordPress community: Alkesh Miyani, a member of the WordPress Community Team is the latest recipient of the Yoast Care fund.

🚀 NEW PROJECTS

Introducing WPConsent: WPConsent is a new cookie management plugin and it automatically detects cookies, manages consent preferences, and keeps your site compliant with GDPR, CCPA, and other privacy regulations.
Content Sparks, a new show from Doo the Woo: Hosted by BobWP and other hosts at Do the Woo, this show dives into the art of blogging, social media, podcasting, and video. The first episode is coming out this Thursday.

🔖 INTERESTING READS & PODCASTS

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

WordPress.org themes of 2024: Reflections & stats: Dumitru Brinzan explored data from over 1,700 themes released on WordPress.org and these themes are active on 481,560 websites. The insights include that out of these themes, only 6 themes have more than 10,000 active installations, 8 themes exceed 5,000 active installations and 300 individuals or teams uploaded new themes in 2024, and 7 authors contributed 30 or more themes each. From ILOVEWP.
70% of all new WordPress themes are classic: Lawrence Ladomery explored two years’ worth of WordPress themes data from WordPress Themes Trac and found out that 70% of themes published in the last two years are classic themes but at the same time FSE themes are also growing. As per the report, 81% of themes submitted by the top 10 Theme authors are classic themes. From WPBakery.
DICT ICT industry development lead and WordPress founder team up to Enhance Web Development Skills in the Philippines: DICT Undersecretary Jocelle Batapa-Sigue met with WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg to discuss web development in education, provincial community collaboration, WordPress’s evolution, and its potential role in the Philippine education system. From Jocelle Batapa Sigue.
Who leads WordPress businesses? The data confirms it’s (still) not women: On the occasion of Women’s Day, Rae Morey revisited the Gender Equality in WordPress Businesses report launched by WP Includes and co-authored by WP Includes co-founder Siobhan McKeown and herself. The report highlights the severe underrepresentation of women in WordPress business leadership. Lawrence Ladomery from WP BizDev also touched up on the issue.
Core committers struggle to keep WordPress moving as Automattic steps back again: WordPress core development is under strain as committers work to keep projects moving despite stalled Block Editor projects, a lack of short-term direction, and an increased workload on veteran contributors amid a further reduction in pledged hours from Automattic, the project’s largest contributor. From The Repository.
Designing State of the Word Tokyo: Heritage meets innovation: The State of the Word 2024 event, held on December 16th in Tokyo, seamlessly blended Japan’s cultural heritage with modern innovation. From Automattic Design.
In conversation with Bud Kraus: Marcus Burnett interviews Bud Kraus in his own show and explores various aspects of Bud Kraus’s life such as his upbringing, high school years, and his wife, Arlene, also joins the discussion. From Seriously Bud?
Coding an accessible WordPress plugin for multisites, Irn Bru: Amber and Steve, along with special guest (and Equalize Digital Senior Plugin Developer) William Patton, take a deep dive into how the team approached building an accessible WordPress plugin for multi-sites. From Accessibility Craft.
Managing technical debt as a WordPress freelancer: Eric Karkovack explored how to manage technical debts in the WordPress freelance business.
Community is the foundation of great journalism, with Matt Medeiros: On this episode of PublishPress Podcast, Steve Burge is joined by Matt Medeiros and they discuss Matt’s journey into WordPress.
Why most brands suck at YouTube!: Jamie Marsland has listed out five points on why he thinks most brands fail on the YouTube platform.
Secure Custom Fields issues for users and plugin developers: David McCan explored the forked SCF plugin and listed out the pros and cons of it so that the users can decide whether to opt for it or not. From WebTNG.
5 Essential Cursor AI features for WordPress developers in 2025: Elliott Richmond has shared five Cursor AI features that WordPress developers can make use of to accelerate development cycles while maintaining code quality.

🛠 GUIDE ZONE – HOWTO’S and MORE

Handpicked fresh guides from WordPress circle

How to customize WooCommerce templates with Gutenberg blocks: From Hostinger
WordPress security research series: WordPress security architecture: From Wordfence
Building a WooCommerce AI bundle generator with React & AI services: From Brian Coords
How to improve custom WordPress plugins with Plugin Check: From Speckyboy
How to edit the footer in WordPress (Step-by-step guide): From Jetpack

📆 SAVE THE DATES

Do not miss a WordPress event ever again

The Dutch PHP Conference 2025 on March 18-21, 2025: The tickets are now available.
EmpowerWP Bhopal on March 9, 2025: The call for speakers is out.
DE{CODE} 2025 on April 15, 2025: The registrations are now open.
PressConf 2025 on April 23-26: A conference for WordPress Professionals and the tickets are now available.
WordCamp Lisboa 2025 on May 16-17, 2025: Tickets are now available.
WordCamp Europe on 5-7 June 2025: Tickets are expected to be available soon.
WordCamp US on August 26-29, 2025: The call for organizers is now open.
WordCamp Asia 2026: It is tentatively planned for early February 2026 and the call for organizers is now open.

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