Issue #266 | April 7, 2026 | Reading time: 21 mins
Hello!
This week on The WP Week Newsletter, we’re diving into the new EmDash CMS released by Cloudflare, a Community Summit proposal, the WordPress Facilitator Training Program, WordCamp Asia 2026 scholarship recipients, new projects, and more.
WordCamp Asia is happening this week in Mumbai, from April 9–11, just two days away!.
If you’re attending WC Asia this year, keep an eye out for our team. We’d love to meet you and hear what you think about the newsletter.
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
Cloudflare has launched a new content management system called EmDash, built over the course of two months with assistance from AI coding agents. It is written entirely in TypeScript, powered by the Astro framework, and fully open source under the MIT license, and is available on GitHub.
Matt Mullenweg also shared his perspective on the launch, “Some day, there may be a spiritual successor to WordPress that is even more open. When that happens, I hope we learn from it and grow together.”
He also noted, “You can come after our users, but please don’t claim to be our spiritual successor without understanding our spirit.”
There was also an attempt to add the Block Editor to EmDash, but licensing concerns around Gutenberg and EmDash seem to currently prevent this adoption.
Regarding licensing concerns, Matt shared, “ MPL and MIT licenses are totally compatible, right? You can ship both in the same project, it doesn’t change anything. WordPress is GPL but includes libraries with lots of other compatible licenses like MIT, Apache, MPL, etc.”
Several community members like Brian Coords, Maciek Palmowski, Miriam Schwab and Jamie Marsland also shared their views on the new CMS. Matt Cromwell also shared his experience at porting his personal website to EmDash.
📰 WORDPRESS & AROUND
All the updates around WordPress and its closely related technologies
Matias Ventura shared that the release has been postponed by a few weeks to finalize key architectural decisions, particularly around real-time collaboration. Ongoing discussions around data storage, caching, and the potential introduction of a custom table led to the delay, ensuring a more robust and future-proof implementation. The collaboration feature will launch as an opt-in. In line with this, Jonathan Desrosiers outlined how the WordPress 7.0 cycle will proceed during the delay.
- Building a custom sync provider for real-time collaboration: Chris Zarate outlined how WordPress 7.0 lets developers replace the default HTTP polling provider with custom sync providers like WebSockets for better performance, along with key implementation and security considerations.
- Exploring a Community Summit alongside a flagship WordPress event in 2027 or 2028: Patricia BT invites the WordPress community to discuss the possibility of organizing a Community Summit alongside a flagship event in 2027 or 2028, such as WordCamp Asia or WordCamp Europe. Drawing on past summits, she outlined what organizing such an event would involve and called for community members to share ideas and express interest by April 30, 2026.
- Introducing the WordPress Facilitator Training Program: This is a free, community-driven initiative designed to help anyone confidently teach WordPress. The program provides self-guided courses, practical facilitation guides, and a comprehensive playbook. The first course, Leading WordPress Education Programs, is now available, offering everything facilitators need to lead WordPress Education Programs at their institutions and communities.
- Education Table at WordCamp Asia 2026 in Mumbai: Destiny Kanno invites WordPress contributors to the upcoming Education table at WordCamp Asia 2026 Contributor Day in Mumbai. Attendees can learn about the various education initiatives and contribute by helping improve resources, sharing experiences, and brainstorming ideas.
- Monthly Education Buzz Report – March 2026: The report highlights strong global growth across WordPress education initiatives. Campus Connect expanded to new countries and events, WordPress Credits saw a surge in partner institutions and new course formats, and Student Clubs continued to grow from campus engagement.
- JuanMa Garrido introduced @wordpress/build: This is a next-generation build tool designed to modernize WordPress plugin development. It replaces the traditional webpack/Babel setup with a faster, convention-based system that auto-discovers code, generates PHP registration files, and simplifies configuration.
- 200,000 WordPress sites affected by arbitrary file deletion vulnerability in Perfmatters WordPress plugin: The vulnerability, which allowed unauthenticated threat actors to delete arbitrary files, including the wp-config.php file, which can make site takeover and remote code execution possible, has been patched. Users are to update to the latest version immediately.
- Wordfence Intelligence Weekly WordPress Vulnerability Report (March 23, 2026 to March 29, 2026): Last week, there were 106 vulnerabilities disclosed in 77 plugins and 22 themes.
- Google is fixing a Search Console bug that inflated impression counts: Google Search Console misreported impression data since May 13, 2025 due to a logging error. Corrections will roll out in the coming weeks.
🔧 TIP OF THE WEEK
Avoid Inline JS in PHP Templates
Tip: Don’t write <script> inside PHP templates.
Why:
Breaks caching, harder to maintain, and blocks rendering.
Instead:
Put logic in JS files
Pass data using wp_localize_script()
👥 COMMUNITY NEWS
Updates and News from the WordPress Community
The survey by The Admin Bar, based on 622 respondents across 51 countries, shows that most agencies are small, full-time operations with modest revenue. While many experienced growth in 2025, profitability varies, with word-of-mouth driving most new business.
- WordCamp Asia 2026 Scholarship Recipients announced: Dorcus Nalubega is the recipient of the Kim Parsell Scholarship, and Rajan Lama is the recipient of the Diversity Scholarship. Also, the Open-Source Library returns to WordCamp Asia 2026 Contributor Day, offering attendees one-on-one conversations with contributors who share their real-world open source experiences. There will also be a Career Corner, which is a dedicated hiring and networking zone. The full schedule is also now available.
- Checkout Summit Reloaded on May 7-8, 2026: This is the live, online edition of Checkout Summit, happening two weeks after the in-person event. Across two focused half-days, WooCommerce founders, developers, and makers share practical insights, actionable strategies, and real-world insights. Rodolfo Melogli, the organizer of Checkout Summit, has clarified that each speaker will deliver their session live, tailored specifically for the online audience, and it won’t be a recording of the in-person event.
- WooCommerce Data Insights, 2026 Edition: Wombat analyzed 15,000 sites to reveal trends in platform usage, site speed, plugin setups, and adoption of new features like block-based carts. Key findings show that 32% of sites are inactive, 14% migrated to other platforms, WooCommerce sites load slower than non-Woo sites, average installs use 30 plugins, and block-based carts are growing but still limited at 18% adoption.
- BigScoots launches Optimization Pro and Security Pro packages: These have been launched for their clients on their Managed Hosting for WordPress plans and for clients on the Managed Hosting for Mediavine plan, with an active Boost by BigScoots account. They focus on optimizing speed, continuously monitoring factors that affect performance metrics, and strengthening site protection through proactive security measures.
- Pressable MCP is now available: With this, users can connect their AI tools to their Pressable account, allowing for managing a WordPress site with natural language.
- Responsive controls arrive in Ollie: Mike McAlister previewed the new controls that allow users to easily adjust typography, spacing, padding, margin, and alignment at specific breakpoints directly within the block editor.
- JetEngine and JetSmartFilters are now available for Divi 5: JetEngine brings tools for structuring and managing content, such as custom post types, fields, dynamic listing, and so on. JetSmartFilters adds interactive filtering powered by AJAX, allowing users to sort and refine content instantly using multiple conditions. Now users can build dynamic, content-rich websites right within the builder with no coding required.
- All-in-One WP Migration and Backup v7.104 now live: The latest version has added CRC32 checksum verification for wpress archives, fixed a compressor infinite loop, improved extension version checks, and ensured compatibility with WordPress 7.0.
- Advanced Custom Fields version 6.8 is now available: This release brings WordPress Abilities API integration, automatic Schema.org structured data, and new WP-CLI commands for managing ACF JSON.
- Groundworx GTM v1.1.0 released: The update introduces a revamped settings page with React using WordPress components, added REST API for settings, lowers the PHP requirement to 7.4, and more.
- Groundhogg v 4.4 now out: This version has added the new Contact Peek feature which allows users to view basic contact details in any non-Groundhogg screen in the WordPress admin whenever an email address is detected.
- SureCart 4.1.0 is here: This introduces a step-by-step guide on settings page and adds shipping parcel templates for easier rate calculations, along with other improvements and fixes.
- Tutor LMS 4.0 Beta 1 launched: This version builds on the alpha with new features, improvements, and bug fixes ahead of the final release. It introduces three new interactive quiz types (Draw Image, Pin Image, and Scale), a new certificate verification feature, course bundle expiry functionality, and more.
- Email Sequences and other enhancements in SureCart: The latest update introduces Email Sequences for automated drip campaigns, page visit automation, WooCommerce product category targeting, JetFormBuilder integration, and much more.
- SEOPress 9.7 released: This release introduces a new React-based settings ui, improved redirections and author schema, fixes long-standing licensing issues, and much more.
- Ryan Welcher shared a list of WordPress spinnerVerbs and tips: Interested folks can add it to their Claude Code settings.json to customize the spinnerVerbs and tips with WordPress-centric ones.
- Claude for WordPress: The repository by Seth Miller, offers a full development toolkit using Claude Code agents to create, test, and document WordPress plugins and Gutenberg blocks ready for production.
- Johanne Courtright asked the community what navigation feature they consider non-negotiable: The community responses emphasized mobile behavior, accessibility, and, for some sites, mega menus, along with search bars and clear contact info.
- Aaron Edwards shared his recent experience on building a website with WordPress: He shared his experience after helping his sister set up a WordPress site, describing it as overwhelming with 50 plugins pre-installed and upgrade prompts. He contrasts this with quickly building a simple, fast static site using Cloudflare Pages and AI tools, raising questions about WordPress’s usability.
- Alina Kakshapati receives the Yoast Care fund for her contribution to the WordPress community: Alina Kakshapati, a member of the WordPress Community Team is the latest recipient of the Yoast Care fund.
🚀 NEW PROJECTS
| “Netflix solved profiles years ago. WordPress still hasn’t.“ David Parker about creating the ProfileSwitch. |
- ProfileSwitch: The plugin by David Parker enables a single login for families, teams, or organizations while keeping each user’s profile, data, and activity separate. It essentially turns one account into multiple profiles.
- Two new plugins by Wbcom Designs: WPMediaVerse plugin turns your site into a full-featured media-sharing platform, combining the best of Instagram, Flickr, Pinterest, and Dribbble, and WP Sell Services turns your website into a fully functional service marketplace.
- RunCache: A new caching plugin combining full-page, object, and edge caching in one seamless solution. Rajendra Zore also confirmed that he will be open-sourcing it soon.
- WP Shadow: A diagnostics and remediation plugin developed by Christopher Ross, with features such as file-write review, local backup, activity logging, and more.
- WordWave Audio: The plugin by Rob Marlbrough of 5 Star Plugins converts blog posts, pages, and products into natural-sounding audio using AI narration.
- WP-Agentic-Admin: A CloudFest Hackathon project by Marcel Schmitz, this is a privacy-first AI assistant that runs entirely in the browser, helping users to troubleshoot issues through natural language commands.
- Paid Memberships Pro introduced three new add-ons: The Protected Downloads add-on offer secure file downloads to your members, like PDFs, templates, checklists, tools, and more. While the Magic/Passwordless Login add-on adds an “Email Me a Login Link” button to any PMPro login form, allowing users to receive a secure, one-time login link via email after entering their email address or username. The PayPal Gateway add-on enables modern PayPal payments for membership sites using PayPal’s newest payments API, supporting PayPal accounts, credit/debit cards, and guest checkout.
- WPVibe MCP: Developed by the team at SeedProd, this lets you connect AI assistants like ChatGPT and Claude to any self-hosted WordPress site, enabling you to manage content, settings, and media. It also offers full REST API access.
- Bouncer: A behavior firewall plugin developed by Nick Hamze.
- Repeater for Gravity Forms: The add-on by Ciprian Popescu adds repeatable field groups directly inside the form builder workflow.
- Dev Shortcuts: Created by Aslam Doctor, this is a Local WP add-on that gives users quick developer shortcuts like opening a terminal, launching Claude Code, copying folder paths, or revealing folders in Finder, all from within Local’s site interface.
- Antimanual Builder: An AI-powered visual page builder add-on developed by Md Jwel Miah, that works alongside the main Antimanual plugin.
- Conditional Payment Gateways for WooCommerce: The plugin created by
Mahdi Khaksar, allows users to show or hide WooCommerce payment gateways based on cart total, shipping country, coupon, login status, and more. - Codocraft Smart Notify: This is a notification bar plugin with which users can create notification bars, image banners, countdown timers, and promo messages to boost sales, engagement, and conversions.
- Lei theme: A dark personal portfolio theme developed by Roman Fink, suitable for creative directors, consultants, and professionals.
🔖 INTERESTING READS & PODCASTS
More posts and podcasts from the WordPress Community you don’t want to miss
- On Seriously, Bud?, Pam Aungst Cronin shared her journey from teaching herself WordPress and building websites to running a boutique SEO agency.
- In this episode of Melapress Live Show, Daniele Besana, CEO of WPOK-supporto, dives into what really happens when WordPress sites fail in production, sharing insights on common pitfalls, WooCommerce challenges, and strategies to keep sites running smoothly over the long term.
- On this episode of The WP Minute’s Agency Action podcast, Kurt Von Ahnen and Toby Cryns discuss planning for health emergencies, crafting effective agency offers, lead generation, pricing, client screening, and strategies for building long-term WordPress agency relationships while maintaining work-life balance.
- On The WP Minute+ podcast, Eric Karkovack talks with WordPress Executive Director Mary Hubbard about her first year, community engagement, upcoming WordPress 7.0 updates, and the challenges and opportunities in open-source leadership and AI integration.
- On this episode of WP Tavern Jukebox, Elliott Richmond shares how WordPress has fueled his 20-year career, from building sites and plugins to creating educational content and even running a pizza business.
- Roi provided a walkthrough of Elementor 4, exploring what’s new, the Atomic Editor, how to reuse components, and so on.
- Nick Hamze shared the results of Featured Plugins Round 2, which drove nearly 18,000 extra installs.
- Jason Coleman shared how AI-powered tools are transforming how the PMPro team builds and ships products, enabling faster development, better quality, and even side projects like simple games.
- Varun Dubey examined WordPress 7.0 AI Connectors, highlighting how they simplify AI integration, empower developers while also warning of risks like data privacy and cost surprises.
- Paul Charlton of WP Tuts explored Mosaic, the new theme builder, covering everything from getting started to working with starter sets, templates, and more.
- Karol K walked through how to host static websites for free on Sevalla, breaking down the process in a simple and practical way.
- Ferdy Korpershoek demonstrated how to automate a WordPress site using OpenClaw, including AI-powered content creation, SEO, and site management.
- Mike Demopoulos explained that SSL certificate lifespans are shrinking significantly from 398 days to 200 days now, and down to 47 days by 2029, requiring agencies to adapt.
🛠 GUIDE ZONE – HOWTO’S and MORE
Handpicked fresh guides from WordPress circle
- How to protect media files uploaded to WordPress: From Speckyboy
- WordPress CRON guide: Optimizing background tasks for high performance: From HostWP
- How to create and filter listing grids in Divi 5 with JetPlugins: From Crocoblock
📆 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 and the tickets are now available.
🎁 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 👇
Cloudflare has launched a new content management system called EmDash, built over the course of two months with…
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…
Team WP-CONTENT.CO
Issue #266 | April 7, 2026 | Reading time: 21 mins
This weekly newsletter is kindly sponsored by ProfilePress, and WP Job Openings
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