Issue #265 | March 31, 2026 | Reading time: 22 mins
Hello!
This week on The WP Week Newsletter, we’re diving into the delay of WordPress 7.0 (it won’t be launching during Contributor Day at WC Asia 2026), a dip in WordPress market share, a fresh proposal to rethink left navigation, some new projects, and more.
Wishing you all a joyful Easter in advance. May it be filled with warmth, happiness, and fresh new beginnings!
Will you be at WC Asia this year? Our team will be around, and we’d love to meet you, say hello, and hear what you think about the newsletter too.
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
Matt Mullenweg on the core commiters Slack channel has proposed pausing the current WordPress 7.0 release cycle to return to beta to ensure stability and for further work on Real Time Collaboration and the new database table.
Matías Ventura also shared that WordPress 7.0 is in good shape but will be delayed by about 3 to 4 weeks to properly design and finalize a new database table for real-time collaboration.
Currently, RTC has an issue where it disables persistent post caches whenever the editor is opened, and a new database table is being planned as a workaround for it.
The RC1 was released after a delay of 5 days and introduced two new features that were not in Beta 1. These features are an AI Connectors screen and a keyboard shortcut for the Command Palette.
📰 WORDPRESS & AROUND
All the updates around WordPress and its closely related technologies
This is the first time since Jan 2022 that the market share has gone down below 43%. Shopify, Wix, and Squarespace had a marginal market share increase with 0.1%. Recently, several users, such as Joost de Valk and Chris Lema, have migrated their websites away from WordPress.
- Matt Mullenweg proposes rethinking WordPress admin left navigation: He has suggested reorganizing the WordPress admin navigation to better structure plugins, proposing a clearer hierarchy where plugin menus are grouped and easier to access, with options like pinning or surfacing frequently used plugins for improved usability.
- WordPress 6.9.2 retrospective: John Blackbourn shared a retrospective on the WordPress 6.9.2 release to review what went well and what could be improved. While the release shipped quickly, it faced challenges like missing commits, fast-follow releases (6.9.3), and complex backporting across older branches. The review highlights key lessons and outlines action points to strengthen release processes.
- WordPress 7.0 Release Candidate 2 released: The RC2 is now available for testing.
- Nicholas Garofalo outlined a strategy to boost WordCamp attendance by engaging local WordPress users with strong online influence: By connecting with creators, businesses, and influencers near event locations, the approach aims to expand awareness, foster community growth, and attract a wide range of participants.
- 2026 Community Team Reps announced: Juan Hernando is the newest team member alongside continuing reps Pooja Derashri, Aditya Kane, and Kasirye Arthur.
- WordPress 7.0 Source of Truth: Gutenberg Times has published the Source of Truth that allows the community to get the latest information about the upcoming changes and new features in WordPress 7.0 quickly.
- Call for testing: Community AI Connector Plugins: Lauri Saarni invites the community to test the various community-built AI connector plugins, and testers are encouraged to try setup, connectivity, AI features, error handling, and provide feedback.
- Join the Community, Photos, and Core Teams at WordCamp Asia 2026 Contributor Day: Interested folks can join and participate in the Community, Photos, or Core Teams, with each team focusing on various aspects.
- What’s new in AI 0.6.0 (20 MAR 2026): This update introduces image editing and refinement workflows, improvements to AI Feature Structure, enhances the editor experience, and includes stability and developer-focused improvements. The plugin has also removed “Experiments” from its title with the launch of this version.
- Announcing the Training Team Cohort: “Block Theme Development in WordPress”: A free cohort-based training designed to teach developers, designers, and WordPress users how to build fully customizable Block Themes. Running 6–8 weeks with weekly 40–60 minute Zoom sessions starting mid-April, the course covers theme architecture, templates, global styles, AI-assisted workflows, and more.
- WP Packages is working the way open source should: Jonathan Bossenger highlights how WP Packages, a new open source Composer repository built by Ben Word, emerged as a faster, fully transparent, and community-funded alternative to WPackagist following its acquisition by WP Engine.
- Wordfence Intelligence Weekly WordPress Vulnerability Report (March 16, 2026 to March 22, 2026): There were 258 vulnerabilities disclosed in 212 plugins and 30 themes.
- 800,000 WordPress sites affected by arbitrary file read vulnerability in Smart Slider 3 WordPress plugin: The vulnerability that made it possible for an authenticated attacker, with subscriber-level permissions or higher, to read arbitrary files on the server, which may contain sensitive information, was recently patched. All users are to update to the latest version immediately.
- Supply Chain Attack on Axios Pulls Malicious Dependency from npm: A supply chain attack has compromised the widely used JavaScript HTTP client Axios by introducing a malicious dependency in an unofficial npm release. The release falls outside Axios’s normal workflow, and maintainers currently cannot revoke the attacker’s access. Developers are urged to check for affected versions in their projects and roll back to safe versions immediately, as the attack is ongoing.
- Google brings its Veo video generation model to Google Ads globally: Veo lets advertisers turn up to three static images into 10-second videos ready to serve on YouTube, no video production required.
🔧 TIP OF THE WEEK
Use a Consistent Naming Convention
Example:
- ACF block name:
acf/banner-slider - Template:
template-parts/blocks/banner-slider.php - JS:
blocks/banner-slider.js
👥 COMMUNITY NEWS
Updates and News from the WordPress Community
WordPress Studio can now be installed and run via the command line and works across Mac, Windows, and Linux. Features like sync, import, and export are coming soon. Pablo Postigo, now Product Lead for Studio at Automattic, also highlighted Studio as a standalone CLI app, making it easy to create local WordPress sites directly from the command line.
- WordCamp Creator Studio at WordCamp Asia 2026: For the first time at WordCamp Asia, attendees can book the WordCamp Creator Studio, sponsored by WordPress.com. Available on April 10–11, this on-site recording studio provides creators, podcasters, and influencers with audio and video equipment to record podcasts, interviews, or other content. The After Party schedule has also been published.
- The WP Community Collective publishes Open Source Contributor Compensation Standard: The five-level pay framework, ranging from $50–$115/hr for employees and $61–$140/hr for contractors, provides a common reference point for contributor compensation, enables fair pay, and supports globally adjusted rates, with updates planned annually.
- Registration is open for DE{CODE} 2026 by WP Engine: The seventh annual free virtual conference will take place on May 6, focused on the “Intelligent Web,” bringing together developers, marketers, and digital leaders to explore how AI is reshaping web experiences.
- A visual refresh for OllieWP: The website has been revamped and also showcases that Ollie AI is coming soon, which will allow users to build sites through their preferred AI agent.
- New milestone for Fluent Forms: The plugin now has over 700,000+ active installs.
- Hosting.com has launched its AI Application Studio & Hosting platform: This is a secure, high-performance environment that helps developers and businesses build, deploy, and operate AI-assisted applications and is powered by Cloudflare Enterprise and AMD EPYC infrastructure.
- Bridget Willard asked if anyone in WordPress doing WordPressy things lately: She raised the question as much of the current WordPress conversation is focused on AI tools like Claude and Perplexity. Responses showed the community is active, with users building apps, launching plugins, and so on.
- SiteSkite expands into a WebOps platform for WordPress: It is evolving beyond a maintenance tool into a full WebOps platform for WordPress, introducing features like instant sandbox sites, recovery mode for broken sites, reusable blueprints, vulnerability detection, and so much more.
- Introducing Tutor LMS 4.0 Alpha: The latest Alpha release of Tutor LMS introduces a completely revamped student learning experience. A few of the features to improve student experience include an optimized interface for a mobile-first experience, a distraction-free interface, centralized notes, unified discussions, live lesson hubs, and more. Instructors benefit from streamlined workflows, enhanced dashboards, and detailed analytics.
- Infinite Uploads v3.2 launched: The update has added media folders, advanced sorting, and powerful search directly to the WordPress Media Library. Users can create unlimited nested folders, drag and drop files, upload directly into folders, color-code folders, sort by eight options, and search with six filters.
- Meta Box AIO 3.6 released: This version introduces major updates for WordPress 7.0 compatibility, including Block API v3 support, an iframe-friendly modal editing experience, and improved block management. The release also adds workflow enhancements like predefined block lists, flexible toolbar positioning, and faster saving to make development smoother and more efficient.
- SureForms 2.6.0 now live: This release introduces native quiz building, AI-powered form management, MCP (Model Context Protocol) settings, and Abilities API for AI-powered form management and much more.
- Foodica PRO 5.0 out now: This introduces a new Minimal layout built with the block editor, giving users full control over their site design without code. The update also adds multiple homepage layouts, 20+ block patterns, and performance improvements.
- Gato AI Translations for Polylang v17.1 released: The latest update introduces support for self-hosted LLMs, allowing users to translate content using their own models instead of paying for AI API credits.
- MailOptin 2.2.77.0 is here: The release added new integrations with SendPulse and Bento, along with improvements to performance, email rendering, and the admin UI for WordPress 7.
- Joan Namunina receives the Yoast Care fund for her contribution to the WordPress community: Joan Namunina, a valued member of the WordPress Community Team is the latest recipient of the Yoast Care fund.
- Stock options given after getting a Patchstack tattoo: Mart Virkus (Head of Marketing at Patchstack) posted a LinkedIn video highlighting that Soeren von Varchmin received stock options after getting a Patchstack tattoo on his ankle.
- The New Publishing Standard in the AI Era white paper from WP Engine: This highlights how fragmented publishing stacks, disconnected plugins, scripts, and data create a Fragmentation Tax that slows teams, limits growth, and wastes resources. It outlines a unified approach that streamlines workflows, boosts publishing speed, and uses AI-driven discovery to turn content into a scalable engagement engine.
- The State of AEO/GEO in 2026: CMO Investment Report from Conductor: The report reveals that 94% of enterprises plan to increase their AEO/GEO investments. Based on a survey of 250+ executives, it details budget trends, in-house resourcing, effective technologies, content strategies, and KPIs.
🚀 NEW PROJECTS
| “Testing WordPress plugins/themes shouldn’t take much time.“ Ronak Ganatra about creating the WP Playground Preview. |
- WP Playground Preview: A Chrome extension by Ronak Ganatra, which adds “Try in Playground” and “Add to Playground list” to the theme and plugin repository.
- Twentig One: A modern, lightweight theme built for Full Site Editing with flexible templates, post formats, color presets, font pairings, and fluid spacing, along with four starter sites and an onboarding customizer.
- Promptless: A minimal WordPress theme by Breon Williams, designed to work seamlessly with the Promptless WP plugin.
- Lax Abilities Toolkit: Created by Lax Mariappan, the plugin allows users to connect their site to any MCP-compatible AI client. The plugin is built on the WP Abilities API (WordPress 6.9+) and the MCP Adapter plugin,and exposes your posts, pages, categories, tags, and media library as structured tools that AI clients understand natively.
- AI Valve: The plugin by Per Søderlind allows users to control, meter, and permission-gate AI usage from plugins that connect through the WordPress 7 AI connector.
- RanklineWP: Created by Justin, RanklineWP will be launching on April 1, 2026, and this is a new command-line SEO for WordPress and AI agents. With 70-plus CLI commands and an MCP server for AI agents, users can manage SEO, run audits, and automate workflows via WP CLI or tools like Claude ChatGPT and Cursor, and it also works with Yoast, Rank Math, AIOSEO, SEOPress, and more.
- Jetonomy: The plugin adds a fast, self-moderating discussion platform to any WordPress site. It stores forum data in dedicated database tables (not wp_posts), uses trust levels to automate moderation, and adapts to your theme via CSS custom properties.
- Power Coupons: The plugin by the team at CartFlows allows users to define complex WooCommerce discount rules in minutes, create auto-applied coupons, set up, and more.
- Jotform AI: With the new Jotform AI, instead of manually configuring forms, users can now describe what they want, and it will generate fully functional forms with fields, layout, logic, notifications, and integrations.
- WP Theme JSON Editor: A Visual Studio Code extension by Sérgio Santos that provides a form-driven visual editor for WordPress theme.json files.
- Contact Form Extender for Divi: Created by Satinder Singh from Cool Plugins, the plugin extends Divi Contact Form module with useful fields and features like file upload field, country code dropdown, and more.
- MapSwap for The Events Calendar: Developed by András Guseo, this replaces Google Maps with OpenStreetMap on single event pages of The Events Calendar.
- AI Provider for Hugging Face: The plugin by Aslam Doctor allows users to connect Hugging Face models directly into WordPress.
- Aida AI Website Builder: Launched by One.com, Aida AI lets users create a fully functional site in minutes through simple chat.
- Ask Joost: An open source tool by Joost de Valk that uses AI to deliver direct, source-backed answers from his blog.
🔖 INTERESTING READS & PODCASTS
More posts and podcasts from the WordPress Community you don’t want to miss
- For its milestone 100th episode, Seriously, BUD? takes a creative turn with AI-generated hosts, Eve and Adam, reflecting on recurring patterns across WordPress community conversations.
- On this episode of The WP Minute+, Eric Karkovack talks with Adam Warner from GoDaddy about the company’s community engagement, AI-powered Airo suite, and agency program. They discuss AI integration, the value of personal relationships, and more.
- On WP Tavern Jukebox, Zach Stepek explores the interconnected WordPress ecosystem, explaining how agencies, product companies, and hosting providers rely on each other to succeed.
- Brian Coords and Nik McLaughlin on this episode of Webmasters.fm explore the complexities of community feedback, open source contribution, and the responsibilities of platform maintainers.
- Remkus de Vries dives into the real impact of page builders on WordPress performance.
- Aleksandr Samokhin shares how Agentic WordPress is changing the way sites are managed. Using AI agents like Claude with WordPress’ MCP plugin, he can audit, fix, and update his site including SEO, templates, and content entirely through prompts, without touching the dashboard.
- Johanne Courtright explains that WordPress itself isn’t dying. What’s being disrupted is the low-effort, drag-and-drop tier of web development.
- Marcus Burnette argues that making AI Connectors too frictionless in WordPress risks hidden usage and costs, and calls for stronger controls, permissions, and transparency.
- Anne McCarthy explored how the new ability to hide blocks based on screen size in the upcoming WordPress 7.0 works and how it will support responsive web design.
- Jason Coleman explained how he relies on Flint, his AI agent with persistent memory and personality file, which has now become an essential collaborator handling coding, content, and daily tasks, so he can work faster and focus on what matters most.
- Adrian Tobey explained how Groundhogg’s Flow builder stands out from typical automation tools, being built on a unique Structured Flow Tree (SFT) model.
- A Hostinger survey finds that in the U.S., experienced side-business owners are significantly less likely to adopt AI than newer entrants.
- David McCan provided a walkthrough of the recently released Mosaic Builder from Nextend Web, covering installation, the setup process, settings, and much more.
- Rich Tabor on how WordPress 7.0 introduces a provider-agnostic WP AI Client, letting you choose which AI provider to use while plugins simply add abilities.
🛠 GUIDE ZONE – HOWTO’S and MORE
Handpicked fresh guides from WordPress circle
- How to create a WordPress sticky header for block themes: From Twentig
- The developer’s guide to wp_usermeta: Scaling membership sites: From Delicious Brains
📆 SAVE THE DATES
Do not miss a WordPress event ever again
- WordCamp Asia 2026 on April 9-11: The call for sponsors is open. The tickets are 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. The schedule is out.
- WordCamp Vienna 2026 on April 10-11: The tickets are now available, and the call for sponsors is also open. The schedule has been published.
- Checkout Summit 2026 on April 23-24, 2026: The call for sponsors is now open. The tickets are now available.
- WordCamp Europe 2026 on June 4-6: The call for sponsors and volunteers is now open. The tickets are also now available and the Side Event applications are now open.
- WordCamp US, Phoenix on August 16 -19 2026: The call for organizers is now open.
- WordCamp Rajasthan 2026 on 3–4 October: The call for organizers is now open.
- WordPress Accessibility Day 2026 on October 7th-8th: The call for sponsors is now open.
- CMS Conf 2026 on 12-14 November: The call for speakers 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)
- 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 👇
Roots has launched WP Packages (originally called WP Composer), an open source Composer repository for WordPress plugins and…
The Plugins Team has opened a call for new contributors and organizational sponsors as it faces a rapid…
A call for volunteers has been announced for the development of the Twenty Twenty-Seven default theme, which will…
From bringing together thousands of WordPress enthusiasts to showcasing the best of the community, WordCamp Asia has become…
Team WP-CONTENT.CO
Issue #265 | March 31, 2026 | Reading time: 22 mins
This weekly newsletter is kindly sponsored by ProfilePress, and WP Job Openings
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