Issue #229 | July 22, 2025 | Reading time: 17 mins
Hello!
This week on The WP Week Newsletter, we cover the legal battle between WP Engine vs Automattic, the release of WordPress 6.8.2, the AI building blocks for WP, applications open for the Women in WordPress mentorship program, the Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship, 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.
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
On July 9, 2025, a six-hour settlement conference was held in the WP Engine vs Automattic case, but no settlement was reached. The court asked both parties to consult with decision-makers who weren’t present and consider a follow-up session with principals and in-house counsel. Another lawsuit Keller v. Automattic is also progressing alongside this.
📰 WORDPRESS & AROUND
All the updates around WordPress and its closely related technologies
James LePage introduced four new AI-focused projects for WordPress, the PHP AI Client SDK, Abilities API, MCP Adapter, and AI Experiments Plugin. These Building Blocks aim to make it easier for developers and users to build and integrate powerful AI features into WordPress.
- WordPress 6.8.2 released: This minor release includes fixes for 20 Core tickets and 15 Block Editor issues.
- What’s new in Gutenberg 21.2: The release brings improvements to DataViews, improvements to the navigation block, and much more.
- First WordPress Quality Analysis Report: The report reveals a significant gap between the Test team’s efforts and their actual use in Core development. Despite 366 test reports by 58 contributors, only 8% were reflected in commits, with an average quality score of 2.47/5 across 52 improvement commits.
- How to talk about and support the new WordPress education initiatives: Destiny Kanno highlights three key WordPress education initiatives, WordPress Campus Connect, WordPress Student Clubs, and the WordPress Credits Program, and also explains how individuals, institutions, and companies can get involved as organizers, contributors, or sponsors.
- WP Core translation projects 4.1 — 4.6 to be archived: With security updates ceasing for WP versions 4.1-4-6 in July, the corresponding translation projects for these versions will also be archived.
- WooCommerce 10.0.3: Dot Release: This release fixes the migration path for the new template in the Product Details block and introduces additional sanitization on the payment settings screen.
- Woo block theme submission to the themes repository has been paused for now: This is due to the team exploring combining two existing themes into a unified Woo starter theme.
- Account takeover vulnerability patched in Password Policy Manager plugin: The vulnerability affects plugins version 2.0.4 and below. Users are to update to the latest version immediately.
- Google homepage search box rolling out AI Mode button: It seems Google is adding an AI Mode button to the Google homepage. Google has been testing this for a couple of months now.
- Google CTRs drop 32% for top result after AI Overview rollout: A new analysis finds Google’s top organic CTR dropped from 28% to 19% following the expansion of AI Overviews, highlighting how behavior is changing.
💵 INVESTMENTS, ACQUISITIONS & PARTNERSHIPS
- WPAmelia announced partnership with WP Umbrella: The partnership will result in new users getting one month of free services of WP Umbrella.
👥 COMMUNITY NEWS
Updates and News from the WordPress Community
WP Includes has announced that applications are now open for the Autumn 2025 cohort of its Women in WordPress Mentorship Program, set to begin this October. Designed to support women navigating their careers within the WordPress space, the program brings together mentees and mentors for five months of shared learning and professional growth.
- Nominations for regular TSC Co-Chairs are now open: The FAIR Package Manager community has opened nominations for three TSC Co-Chair positions, currently held on an interim basis. Community members can nominate themselves or others by July 28. Self-nominations should include name and employer, while nominations of others require prior consent.
- Pressidum announced Edge, a new layer of infrastructure: Pressidium EDGE is a next-gen infrastructure layer for WordPress that delivers sub-100ms performance, real-time threat mitigation, and global availability by processing both static and dynamic content at the network edge instead of traditional servers all without plugins or reconfiguration.
- SiteMait, AI Agent for WordPress, to be discontinued: Amadeu Arderiu announced on X about this decision stating, “ We were chasing innovation for innovation’s sake instead of solving real problems.”
- Introducing selective push and pull in WordPress Studio: WordPress Studio 1.5.5 introduces Selective Sync, allowing developers to push or pull only specific parts of a site like individual themes, plugins, or database content between their local environment and a connected WordPress.com or Pressable site.
- SpeedyCache reaches a new milestone: The plugin now has 500,000+ active installations.
- TranslatePress crosses a new milestone: The translation plugin has now over 400,000+ active installations.
- Mike McAlister previews the Quick Edit feature: The upcoming feature will detect blocks with similar patterns and prompt users whether to apply the same changes to the remaining blocks, streamlining bulk updates.
- Automattic’s new AI team announced: The team is based in New York (in-person), which now makes Automattic no longer a fully distributed workplace.
🚀 NEW PROJECTS
- AI HTTP Client for WordPress: Developed by Chris Huber, this is a WordPress library for unified AI provider communication and a drop-in solution for advanced WordPress plugin developers who need AI functionality with minimal integration effort.
- Introducing WP Debug Toolkit: A new plugin to manage debug constants developed by Elias Lista and the plugin also installs a standalone React-based Viewer App to visualize, filter, and trace logs in a user-friendly interface.
- WP Engine launches AI Toolkit: WP Engine launched an AI Toolkit for WordPress that includes smart search, personalized recommendations, and tools for building AI-powered features, making advanced AI easy to use for site owners and developers.
- Announcing Atarim AI: Early access to Atarim’s first AI-powered creative team is now available.
- Hide AI plugin: The plugin created by Andrew Hoyer hides AI buttons and links in the admin area.
- The Guide Block plugin: Developed by Bhargav, the plugin provides a new block that lets users create step-by-step guides, tutorials, or workflows directly in the editor.
- The CookieAdmin plugin: A new cookie consent banner plugin created by Softaculous.
- Announcing Angie- The first agentic AI plugin for WordPress: The early access to the upcoming plugin from Elementor is now open.
- Finix for WooCommerce: The new payment gateway plugin offers flexible payment methods, Apple Pay integration, and much more.
- WellThrive WordPress LMS theme: Tutor LMS has released this new theme designed for wellness coaches, mentors, and educators who want to create an eLearning platform.
🔖 INTERESTING READS & PODCASTS
More posts and podcasts from the WordPress Community you don’t want to miss
- The WordPress architecture crisis: How the web’s most popular CMS became its own worst enemy: Kevin Geary explored why WordPress’ confused approach to themes created a catastrophic design flaw that undermines flexibility, shareability, and scalability. From EtchWP.
- Ignore the theme? How WordPress found itself in an architectural crisis: David McCan discussed WordPress’s ongoing architectural crisis, highlighting Kevin Geary’s argument that themes are obsolete. With modern builders like Etch enabling users to override theme templates, traditional theming has become confusing and fragmented. From WebTNG.
- Making 7 million eCommerce websites more accessible: Equalize Digital’s role in enhancing WooCommerce core and extensions: Equalize Digital partnered with WooCommerce to improve accessibility across its core plugin and official extensions, helping it meet WCAG 2.2 AA standards ahead of the European Accessibility Act’s enforcement. From Equalize Digital.
- How open source contributions elevate your professional journey: Felix Arntz shares how contributing to open source especially WordPress Coretransformed his professional journey. He explains that open source allows you to gain real-world experience, grow your reputation, and build meaningful connections without needing formal credentials.
- Greyd Conversations- AI & WordPress – opportunities, disruption & vision: In this Greyd Conversations episode, Jakob speaks with two renowned AI experts: Jake Goldman (Partner, Fueled) and James LePage (Director Engineering AI, Automattic & Co-Lead of the WP core AI team). They discuss AI from an agency’s perspective and provide valuable advice on how to embrace the current changes. From Greyd.
- How does Clay fit into Automattic’s ecosystem?: Eric Karkovack welcomes Zachary Hamed and Matthew Achariam, co-founders of Clay, a personal relationship management tool recently acquired by Automattic. They examine how Clay unifies fragmented contact data from various platforms, like Gmail, iMessage, Notion, Facebook, and ChatGPT, into a beautifully designed and user-owned system for managing relationships. From The WP Minute.
- Content creators: Fleeing AI or fighting back?: Matt is joined by veteran writer Maddy Osman to discuss the evolving landscape of content creation in the age of AI. Maddy shares her journey, including her recent book and course launch, and reflects on the impact of AI on writing and content marketing. From The WP Minute.
- Charlotte Bax on reducing your website’s carbon footprint: Charlotte Bunyan discusses how web professionals can reduce the environmental impact of websites through sustainable design. From WP Tavern Jukebox.
- Jamie Marsland explores the View Transitions plugin: The plugin is now available in the repository and implements support for cross-document view transitions in WordPress.
- A new trust seal backed by WordPress hosts aims to set the standard for ethical hosting: Launched in February, the Secure Hosting Alliance will begin certifying hosting companies in August, with early participants helping to shape the new program. From The Repository.
- DHH reignites criticism of Matt Mullenweg: “He failed to realize what he was destroying.”: The Ruby on Rails creator expands on his “mad king” critique in a new Lex Fridman podcast, warning that Matt Mullenweg is undermining trust in open source. From The Repository.
- The WPCC held its Q2 2025 Board of Directors meeting on July 2, 2025: Key actions included approving governance and project development frameworks, financial statements, and operational memos to strengthen transparency and member-driven processes. The meeting also launched new restricted funds (Sustainability and FAIR), and confirmed plans for board expansion. From The WPCC.
- All’s FAIR: Why WordPress needs a decentralized package management system: Pantheon is evaluating how to integrate the FAIR plugin into its WordPress upstreams. The current plan is to default updates to api.wordpress.org (rather than the AspirePress mirror) to minimize disruption, while still allowing users to opt into the FAIR-powered repository if they choose. From Pantheon.
- Beeper revamped with new updates: The new Beeper update, developed by Automattic, focuses on secure, seamless, and distraction-free messaging. It introduces Beeper Plus, offering premium features like message scheduling, reminders, incognito mode, multi-account support, AI voice note transcriptions, and more.
- Press Forward invests $22.7 million in local news infrastructure to meet the urgent challenges newsrooms face: Newspack, owned by Automattic, has received a $1.2M grant to develop “Emergency Mode for News,” a project that helps local newsrooms respond effectively during disasters. From Press Forward.
- What is federated identity management, and how does it work: The article explains how FIM works using protocols like SAML, OAuth, and OpenID Connect, compares it with single sign-on (SSO), and highlights tools like Gravatar that bring simplified, user-friendly federated identity to everyday users and developers. From Gravatar.
- Fueled’s WP Framework: A better foundation for our WordPress scaffold: Daryll Doyle introduced the new WP Framework at Fueled to improve their long-used wp-scaffold tool for WordPress projects. This Composer-based package pulls out shared logic into a centralized, versioned dependency, making wp-scaffold lighter, more maintainable, and easier to scale. From Daryll Doyle.
- “Not Intuitive” is another way of saying slow “time to value”: Matt Cromwell discusses how the phrase “not intuitive” is often a sign that users aren’t getting value from a plugin quickly enough and this kind of feedback usually points to poor user experience and a long time to value. From Matt Cromwell.
- The SaaS launch playbook: How to ship without the chaos: Goran Mirkovic discusses how to launch a SaaS product without chaos by focusing on backend stability, realistic testing, simple billing, security, clear team roles, and user-first onboarding. From Freemius.
🛠 GUIDE ZONE – HOWTO’S and MORE
Handpicked fresh guides from WordPress circle
- Create A Chatbot for headless WordPress in 10 minutes with WP Engine’s AI Toolkit, Gemini and RAG: From WP Engine Builders
- How to make an eCommerce website for free with WordPress & SureCart: From Ferdy Korpershoek
- Custom styling for WordPress block themes using a child theme: From Kinsta
- Merging WordPress sites: Consolidating multiple installs into a multisite network: From Delicious Brains
📆 SAVE THE DATES
Do not miss a WordPress event ever again
- 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 and sponsor applications is now open.
- LoopConf 2025 on September 25: The registration is now open.
- SomeConf 2025: The event is in the early planning stages. The call for sponsors and speakers is now live.
- WP Suomi 2025 on October 10: The call for speakers is now open.
- 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.
- WordCamp Europe 2026 on June 4-6: 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 50% off on BookingPress plugin
- 50% off 3 months on Liquid Web’s Bare Metal server hosting
- 20% off for Constellation plugin
- 20% 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 👇
WP Includes has announced that applications are now open for the Autumn 2025 cohort of its Women in…
The WordPress Plugin Review Team has officially adopted a new name, the Plugins Team, signaling a shift in…
The Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship for WordCamp US 2025 is now accepting applications, with the deadline set for…
The WordPress Foundation has launched a new internship initiative called WordPress Credits, aimed at helping university students get…
Team WP-CONTENT.CO
Issue #229 | July 22, 2025 | Reading time: 17 mins
This weekly newsletter is kindly sponsored by Kinsta, Omnisend, and WP Job Openings
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