Issue #259 | February 17, 2026 | Reading time: 18 mins
Hello!
This week on The WP Week Newsletter, we cover WP Engine’s new filing, WordPress 7.0 release schedule, Bertha.ai exiting plugin repository, WP Accessibility Day 2026 crowdfunding campaign, WC Asia 2026 Contributor Stories, 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 ProfilePress and WP Job Openings
🗣️TALK OF THE TOWN
WP Engine has filed a new amended complaint in its lawsuit against Automattic and WordPress co-founder Matthew Charles Mullenweg, revealing previously redacted portions of the case. The filing alleges that Automattic planned to target at least ten other competitors and even tried to pressure Stripe to end its business relationship with WP Engine.
The updated filings also show the company categorizing competitors as “friends,” “would-be friends,” and “charlatans”. The complaint also adds WooCommerce and the WordPress Foundation as defendants.
📰 WORDPRESS & AROUND
All the updates around WordPress and its closely related technologies
A recent post by Matt Mullenweg on the Make WordPress Community blog has sparked discussion across the WordPress community about whether Global Sponsors should be allowed to present product-specific talks at meetups and WordCamps. Mullenweg noted that product-focused sessions are currently discouraged, despite most users interacting with WordPress through commercial tools.
- WordPress 7.0 Release Party Schedule: The beta 1 is scheduled for February 19, and the final release on Apr 9, 2026 during WordCamp Asia 2026 contributor day.
- Some provocative AI Thoughts by Matt Mullenweg: Matt shared ideas for leveraging WordPress in AI development, including making all URIs available in markdown, emphasizing Playground as a sandboxed environment for testing and iterating code, and improving Data Liberation with WP-to-WP.
- What’s new in AI Experiments 0.3.0: This version introduces Content Summarization Experiment, Featured Image Generation Experiment, Alt Text Generation Experiment, and various other improvements.
- What’s new for developers? (February 2026): Justin Tadlock covers the latest WordPress updates for developers, including the upcoming changes in WordPress 7.0 Beta 1, recent Gutenberg releases (22.4 and 22.5), and more.
- Wordfence Intelligence Weekly WordPress Vulnerability Report (February 2, 2026 to February 8, 2026): Last week, there were 121 vulnerabilities disclosed in 100 plugins and 10 themes.
- Bing Webmaster Tools officially adds AI Performance report: New insights include total citations, average cited pages, grounding queries, page-level citation activity, and visibility trends over time.
- OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger joins OpenAI: He has announced that OpenClaw will move to a foundation and stay open and independent.
🔧 TIP OF THE WEEK
Don’t Put Everything in functions.php
Keep functions.php as a loader only.
Example:
inc/
├─ setup.php
├─ enqueue.php
├─ acf-blocks.php
├─ helpers.php
├─ security.php
Cleaner + faster debugging.
👥 COMMUNITY NEWS
Updates and News from the WordPress Community
The AI content assistant Bertha.ai is exiting from the WordPress plugin repository after a compliance review identified code, licensing, and naming issues, according to co-founder Andrew Palmer.
- Support WP Accessibility Day at WordCamp Europe 2026: WP Accessibility Day is raising $30,000 to host a dedicated accessibility booth at WordCamp Europe 2026. The booth will offer free accessibility reviews and remediation advice, guidance on the European Accessibility Act, and practical support for WordPress professionals.
- Katie Adams Farrell resigns as President of The WP Community Collective: She announced her resignation as President of the Board of Directors of The WP Community Collective, effective December 31, 2025. She will remain involved with the organization as a member and advisor.
- WordCamp Asia 2026 Contributor Stories: Astha Jain, Bigul Malayi, Alje Ybanez, Huzaifa Al Mesbah, and Sunil Kumar Sharma have shared their WordPress journey story.
- Underrepresented in Tech to host live International Women’s Day 2026 event: A live YouTube event will celebrate International Women’s Day 2026 on March 8, hosted by Samah and Michelle. The program will feature 15 live interviews with women in technology from around the world, along with audience interaction. Women interested in joining for a 25-minute live interview are invited to apply.
- CrawlWP has introduced the SEO Performance Email Report feature: This new feature automatically sends key search metrics like impressions, clicks, rankings, index status, and top keywords to your inbox.
- Modular DS introduces Scheduled and Smart Automated updates: Users can now set smart rules for updates, schedule one-time updates, and choose how automatic updates are performed. The release also includes a new admin users panel.
- Infinite Uploads 3.1 released: This release introduces user-controlled folder exclusions directly in the plugin settings, smarter default exclusions for caches, logs, and temp files, along with several performance improvements and security hardening with improved validations.
- All new Smart Sync extension for Ollie Pro: This allows users to sync their style changes across grids, columns, and groups.
- Crocoblock introduces CodeLab: This is a collection of useful code snippets to extend JetPlugins functionality.
- JetEngine extension is now available for Gato GraphQL: The extension lets developers query Custom Content Type (CCT) data, access field values with type casting, and filter, paginate, or sort entries directly within their GraphQL schema.
- LearnDash 5.0 released: This release features a fully stabilized REST API v2, improved response formats, new endpoints, and much more.
- SureRank 1.6.3 is now available: It introduces multilingual sitemap support for WPML and Polylang and Google Search Console now shows the average position of posts and pages in the content analysis table.
- DesignSetGo Blocks 2.0.27 is now available: The release adds the Fifty-Fifty block for 50/50 split layouts with edge-to-edge media and constrained content, new scroll-driven rotation support for parallax extension, and much more.
- Matt Paulson on how WordPress has at most 18 months left: He voiced that vibe-coding tools will eliminate the need for basic content management systems by creating custom CMS solutions tailored to specific needs. Matt Mullenweg and several others expressed their take on this, too.
- Brad Vincent seeks collaborators for a new WordPress plugin: He is seeking developers with experience in AI, WordPress, and OpenClaw to collaborate on a new plugin idea. Interested builders should DM him to get involved.
- James LePage seeks feedback on WebMCP Adapter Experiment for WordPress: The PR adds a new webmcp-adapter experiment that exposes layered WebMCP tools for WordPress abilities in the wp-admin.
- Sybre Waaijer alleges Rank Math’s former owners hired a hacking group after fake review exposure: He claims that after publicly exposing what he described as the purchase of over 9,000 fake reviews, his servers were bombarded with millions of automated hacking attempts over several days.
- Carolina Nymark has updated the Block Bindings API lesson: She has also requested users to take part in a new survey aimed at improving the site.
- Katie Keith on the AI skills gap between developers and everyone else: She reflects on how AI is amplifying developer skills, creating a gap between those who can build secure, complex apps and those who struggle with basic AI tasks. She emphasizes that AI isn’t replacing developers, it is enhancing their expertise. She also shared her growing frustration with YouTube videos that use obviously AI-written scripts.
🚀 NEW PROJECTS
| “It’s basically Cursor, but for Gutenberg editor.“ – Muhammad Zafar about creating Superkit. |
- SuperKit: Muhammad Zafar has shared an update on his new plugin, SuperKit, designed to bring AI-powered capabilities directly into the Gutenberg editor. The plugin allows users to autocomplete sentences, rewrite content, brainstorm ideas, and chat with AI about the posts without ever leaving WordPress.
- WPFeatureLoop: An upcoming project by Eduardo Villão that adds a feature voting widget to a WordPress plugin and allows developers to collect feedback and prioritize features that matter.
- Strakture has been released: This is an AI-powered WordPress pattern generator, developed by Aleksandr Samokhin, that analyzes your theme and generates perfectly matched FSE patterns in seconds.
- Site Updates Report: The plugin automatically tracks WordPress, plugin, and theme updates, and generates branded, professional client reports in email or PDF format. David Allsop created this plugin 5 years ago for personal use, but it has now been made available in the repository.
- Logtastic: A PHP and JavaScript error logging plugin. The future features include email logging, http request logging, user activity logging, alerts and notifications, and more.
- PressBot: A new AI chatbot plugin for WP powered by Claude & Gemini (BYOK) set to be released this week. The plugin is developed by Diego.
- GT Link Manager: The plugin by Gaurav Tiwari allows users to create branded short URLs, quick redirect management, category organization, CSV import/export, and comes with block editor integration.
- ReadEase: Text Resizer: Created by Troy Chaplin, the plugin provides a Gutenberg block that lets site visitors resize text for improved readability and accessibility.
- Sticky Headers: A new free plugin by Jamie Marsland that makes it easy to add sticky headers and includes extra effects like background blur, shrink on scroll, and hide on scroll.
- Markdown Alternate: Developed by Joost de Valk, the plugin provides markdown versions of posts and pages for LLMs and users who prefer clean, structured content over HTML.
- WP System Report: A comprehensive WordPress system status report plugin developed by Christopher Smith featuring AI-optimized export.
- WP-Pinch: A new project by Nick Hamze brings OpenClaw into WordPress. It can run different tasks like stale content detection, SEO gap analysis, broken link detection, and so on.
- MCP Tracker: The plugin developed by Gajendra Singh from WPVibes monitors and logs MCP (Model Context Protocol) requests made to the Abilities API on your WordPress site.
- My WP Photos: The plugin by Marcus Burnette allows you to display your WordPress Photo Directory photos as a shortcode or Gutenberg block gallery.
- WPVibe: An upcoming AI site builder from the SeedProd team, and John Turner has provided a demo preview of it. The waitlist is now open.
- PressMeGPT: An AI WordPress theme generator that creates real, installable WordPress block themes you can edit using Gutenberg and the Full Site Editor.
- AI Grader: A collaborative project between Convesio and Sirvelia, the tool analyzes e-commerce product pages to identify opportunities for improving conversions. It generates an AI-powered score along with a detailed checklist of actionable recommendations.
- Virtual Consultant: An interactive product finder plugin that guides shoppers through a short question flow and recommends a best-fit shortlist of products.
- WP Trac Triager: A Chrome extension by JuanMa Garrido that enhances the WordPress Trac ticket triage workflow with smart timelines, universal role badges, keyword change history, and a fully customizable sidebar.
🔖 INTERESTING READS & PODCASTS
More posts and podcasts from the WordPress Community you don’t want to miss
- Matt Mullenweg took a pause from his CEO duties at Automattic in February 2026 to attend Leadership at the Peak, a program from the Center for Creative Leadership.
- In this episode of Do the Woo, co-hosts Katie Keith and James Kemp talk with James LePage, AI lead at Automattic and WordPress core co-lead, about how AI, new protocols, and developer tools are shaping the future of WooCommerce.
- On Seriously, Bud? Eric Karkovack shares his journey from aspiring radio DJ to web designer and WordPress developer.
- This episode of The WP Minute+ features a live demo of WP Engine Newsroom, presented by Jason Konen from WP Engine.
- Russell Aaron, in this episode of WP Tavern Jukebox, talks about the little-known options.php page in WordPress, revealing a hidden interface to edit your site’s options table.
- Builderius recently shared how an independent developer Israel Reyes built Builderius’s main website using a beta version of the Pro builder, working from a detailed Figma file.
- Aditya Shah shared how WordCamp Bhopal 2025 celebrated a decade of community, bringing 400+ attendees together for learning, contribution, and connection.
- Mark Westguard announced that WS Form now integrates with the WordPress AI Client SDK, aligning the plugin with the broader AI Building Blocks initiative.
- Jonathan Bossenger explained why he ultimately settled on GitHub Copilot for his personal projects.
- Birgit Pauli-Haack walks through her workflow for creating local WordPress tutorials using Claude Code.
- Johanne Courtright on why WordPress developers should embrace block-based development.
- Louise North breaks down the strengths and weaknesses of Framer, Webflow, and WordPress in 2026.
- Mike Davey explains the WordPress Transients API and highlights how improper use can lead to database bloat and performance issues.
- Ivana Ćirković explores why WordPress still matters today, moving beyond market-share stats to focus on real-world value.
- Mark Weisbrod explained why WordPress needs a business reset.
- Kyle Corbitt shares a practical guide to navigating a future where AI may significantly disrupt knowledge work.
- Rafal Tomal shared his perspective on the future of WordPress in the age of AI.
- Diana Costa highlighted how Automattic Special Projects partnered with the Bedfordshire Bird Club to transform their website.
🛠 GUIDE ZONE – HOWTO’S and MORE
Handpicked fresh guides from WordPress circle
- WordPress website defacement: How to monitor, detect, and prevent: From Melapress
- What is e-commerce customer acquisition (2026 Guide): From Iconic
- WP-CLI: How to install WordPress via SSH: From Sucuri
- How to export and import your WordPress site: From WordPress.com
- How to make a professional WordPress website with Divi 5 (Step-by-step tutorial 2026): From Ferdy Korpershoek
- Building WordPress blocks with Telex: From Kinsta
📆 SAVE THE DATES
Do not miss a WordPress event ever again
- WordPress DevDay on February 21, 2026: The tickets are now available.
- WordCamp Nice on March 06, 2026: The call for sponsors and volunteers is now open.
- WordCamp Madrid on March 06-07, 2026: The call for sponsors, speakers, and volunteers is now open. The tickets are also available now.
- WordCamp Asia 2026 on April 9-11: The call for sponsors and participants for the Speed Build Challenge is open. The tickets are still available, and visa information details have been published, and also the list of speakers has been announced.
- Pressconf 2026 on April 8-11, 2026: The tickets are now available, and the first round of speakers has been announced, with more to be revealed soon.
- Checkout Summit 2026 on April 23-24, 2026: The call for sponsors is now open. The early bird tickets are now available.
- WordCamp Europe 2026 on June 4-6: The call for sponsors is now open. The tickets are also now available. The Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship applications are also now open.
- WordCamp US, Phoenix on August 16 -19 2026: The event is in the early planning stages.
🎁 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)
- Up to 84% off at Hostinger (Code NYSALE for an extra 10% off)
- 15% off yearly plans at Videvo (Coupon Code – WPV15)
MORE DEALS
- 30% off for 4 months on Cloudways + 10 Free migrations ( Promo code- TREAT25).
- Up to 50% off on BookingPress plugin
- Up to 50% off on Paid Membership Pro plans.
- Up to $100 OFF Essential Blocks PRO plugin.
- 50% off 3 months on Liquid Web’s Bare Metal server hosting
- 20% off for Constellation plugin
- 28.65% off for the lifetime plan for the Modern Cart for WooCommerce plugin.
- 33% off for the Uncanny Automator plugin.
This weekly newsletter is kindly sponsored by awesome WordPress Companies 🦸♂️🙌
Last but not least, updates from WP-CONTENT.CO 👇
WP Engine has filed a new amended complaint in its lawsuit against Automattic and WordPress co-founder Matthew Charles…
A recent post by Matt Mullenweg on the Make WordPress Community blog has sparked discussion across the WordPress…
The AI content assistant Bertha.ai is exiting from the WordPress plugin repository after a compliance review identified code,…
WPvivid Backup & Migration plugin, with more than 900,000 active installations, has patched a critical vulnerability (CVE-2026-1357) that…
Team WP-CONTENT.CO
Issue #259 | February 17, 2026 | Reading time: 18 mins
This weekly newsletter is kindly sponsored by Kinsta, ProfilePress, and WP Job Openings
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