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#278 – Elementor Layoffs, New CPT Proposal, State of WordPress Themes, Radical Speed Month Projects

Issue #278   |   June 30, 2026   |   Reading time: 24 mins

Hello!

This week on The WP Week Newsletter, we cover the layoffs at Elementor, a proposal to introduce a new Post Type in Core, a look at several projects from Automattic’s Radical Speed Month Initiative, a discussion on how community members are incorporating AI into their workflows, along with 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.

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See you next week!

Team WP-CONTENT.CO

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🗣️TALK OF THE TOWN

Elementor will lay off around 100 employees, about 30% of its workforce, as part of an organizational reset. The company said the restructuring is intended to prepare for the next generation of website creation in the AI era and will introduce a flatter organizational structure.

📰  WORDPRESS & AROUND

All the updates around WordPress and its closely related technologies

It seeks to merge a new wp_knowledge custom post type into WordPress 7.1, with Guidelines serving as the first feature built on it. If adopted, the proposal would introduce a new primitive for storing author-facing and agent-facing site knowledge in WordPress, including support for knowledge types such as guidelines, memories, and notes.

  • WordPress 7.1 to hide classic block from inserter ahead of planned phase-out: A newly merged change slated for WordPress 7.1 will make the insertion of Classic block unavailable from the block inserter by default, while preserving support for existing Classic blocks. Users who wish to continue inserting the block will be able to re-enable it through an opt-in filter.
  • Guidelines for Syncing Code From Gutenberg Into WordPress Develop: Jonathan Desrosiers has published new guidelines for syncing Gutenberg code into the WordPress core repository, defining a standardized release cadence, branching workflow, and merge process designed to keep wordpress-develop aligned with Gutenberg while improving stability and consistency.
  • WordPress Credits meets its 2026 partnership goal in the first half of the year: Isotta Peira shared that the WordPress Credits program has surpassed 20 school partnerships in the first half of the year, successfully completed two pilot programs, and is introducing a new regional mentorship structure after reaffirming the importance of mentor support. The second half of 2026 will focus on improving program quality, graduate retention, sponsorship, and expanding into new countries while targeting 35 partnerships by year-end.
  • The WordPress Contributor Dashboard adds new views and a customizable contributor ladder: Kel Santiago-Pilarski announced the update, which introduces new ways to explore contributor activity, track progression over time, customize contributor ladders for different teams, and analyze engagement patterns.
  • The WordPress Core AI team will host a booth at WordCamp US 2026: They will host a dedicated booth during Showcase Day and the main conference, where attendees can meet team members, discuss AI in WordPress, learn about ongoing and upcoming initiatives, and share feedback to help shape the project’s roadmap. The team is also seeking volunteers to help staff the booth.
  • The WordPress AI Client is set to gain streaming support and embeddings: Jason Adams outlined the planned enhancements for the AI Client, including generation streaming through the underlying PHP AI Client, support for AI embeddings to enable semantic search capabilities, and additional reliability improvements as the Core AI team continues building the foundation for AI-powered WordPress development. The team also published their AI Contributor weekly summary and reaffirmed that new AI capabilities should be developed and tested in the AI Plugin before consideration for WordPress core, while also clarifying that the AI Plugin itself is intended to remain an experimental incubator rather than become part of core.
  • WCEU 2026 Contributor Day Retrospective by the Polyglots Team: During the event, 74 contributors translated 92,979 strings and reviewed 18,793 more across 30 languages. The event also welcomed 15 new contributors, with experienced volunteers helping participants learn the WordPress translation workflow and contribute to WordPress.org projects.
  • WordPress.com introduces Feature Clips for creating social-ready videos from posts: Feature Clips is a new experimental feature that generates short vertical videos directly from posts and pages within the WordPress editor. Available on Premium, Business, and Commerce plans, it lets users create, preview, and share clips for platforms like Instagram Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts without leaving WordPress.
  • Automattic marks the graduation of the first AI Leaders cohort at the University of Illinois Chicago: Around 40 students completed WordPress-based projects, earned a UIC- and WordPress Foundation-backed micro-credential, and received a $1,000 stipend. Automattic also highlighted its broader commitment to open source education, including a $500 million pledge in hosting credits over five years to support AI literacy, workforce development, and future web contributors.
  • Automattic’s Radical Speed Month initiative produced a wave of experimental WordPress projects: Running from April 22 to May 21, the company-wide hackathon gave more than 400 teams a month to build ideas outside their day-to-day work, resulting in projects ranging from AI-powered WordPress and WooCommerce tools to experimental admin interfaces, developer utilities, knowledge management systems, content creation features, and workflow enhancements.
  • WooCommerce 10.9.0 released: The release introduces checkout and database performance improvements, refinements to WooCommerce admin screens, and built-in transactional email logging for easier troubleshooting. The release also expands WooCommerce MCP capabilities for products, orders, and extensions while including various developer-focused updates and feature enhancements. Also, WooCommerce 10.9.1 is now available, which fixes a change to an internal interface that caused issues with older versions of the WooCommerce Stripe Payment Gateway extension.  The team has also opened a call for testing for the two experimental shopper-list features introduced in WooCommerce 10.9.
  • Wordfence Intelligence Weekly WordPress Vulnerability Report (June 15, 2026 to June 21, 2026): There were 146 vulnerabilities disclosed in 127 plugins and 1 theme.

🔧 TIP OF THE WEEK

Reserve Space for Images

Prevent layout shifts:

.hero img {
  aspect-ratio: 16/9;
  width: 100%;
  height: auto;
}

Benefits:

  • Better CLS
  • Faster perceived loading
  • More stable rendering

👥 COMMUNITY NEWS

Updates and News from the WordPress Community

Analyzing 14,822 themes in the WordPress.org directory as of June 2026, Pavel Ciorici found that the top 20 themes account for 61.7% of all active installs, while fewer than 80 themes have surpassed 10,000 active installs. The report also found that 44% of themes published in 2026 are block themes, yet classic themes continue to dominate adoption. Separately, Ciorici also shared data suggesting several long-established WordPress plugins are seeing gradual declines in active installs, attributing the trend to aging websites going offline and new installs failing to outpace losses.

  • Remembering Om Malik: Following Om Malik’s passing at the age of 59, Matt Mullenweg reflected on their longtime friendship, Malik’s role as one of WordPress’ earliest adopters, and how his introductions to early investors and key collaborators helped shape Automattic’s early growth. Toni Schneider also shared how Malik introduced him to WordPress and connected him with Mullenweg, a relationship that led him to join Automattic as its first CEO in 2006.
  • The State of the Community Survey is open through July 17: More than 350 responses have been submitted to the WP Community Collective’s independent State of the Community Survey, prompting the organization to extend the survey to gather broader feedback from the global WordPress community. The survey explores sentiment around the WordPress project, AI, and open source values, with the results set to be published ahead of WordCamp US 2026.
  • State of WordPress Agencies 2026 Report: CloudLinux and WebPros have published The State of WordPress Agencies in 2026, drawing on a global survey of 210 WordPress agencies and freelancers. The report finds that 78% of agencies are solo operators or small teams, 83% influence or choose hosting decisions for clients, and 92% already use AI tools, while plugin and theme updates remain the top security challenge for 65% of respondents.
  • GravityKit’s analysis finds Elementor remains the most widely used WordPress page builder in 2026: The analysis of HTTP Archive data found Elementor is detected on 32.67% of WordPress sites, ahead of the WordPress Block Editor (20.62%) and WPBakery (8.52%). The report also compares year-over-year changes across major page builders, with Elementor recording the largest gain in share and Bricks posting the fastest origin growth.
  • The WordPress Security Workbook by WP Expert: A new free e-book that offers practical guidance for improving WordPress security, including explanations of common attack types, security checklists, action plans for key protections, a monthly audit routine, and steps to take after a suspected breach.
  • Hostinger says Kodee now resolves most VPS issues without human intervention: The data from more than 914,000 VPS conversations shows its AI assistant, Kodee, now resolves 91% of issues with a recorded outcome on its own after evolving from a chat assistant into an AI capable of taking actions on servers through the Model Context Protocol (MCP).
  • Cloudways Managed Node.js hosting is here: Cloudways has launched a private preview of its managed Node.js hosting platform, offering a fully managed environment with Git-based deployments, zero-downtime updates, process management, monitoring tools, and built-in security features. The service is designed for developers, agencies, startups, and AI builders seeking a managed alternative to serverless platforms, PaaS offerings, and self-managed VPS hosting.
  • Softaculous brings agentic AI development directly to hosting control panels: Softaculous has introduced Code with AI, a control panel-integrated AI assistant that can plan, generate, edit, and debug code directly within a user’s hosting environment. The feature supports multiple AI providers, project management, and development workflows while emphasizing local execution, privacy, and security, with the company positioning it as a productivity tool for developers and a value-added feature for hosting providers.
  • James Welbes on how WordPress users are integrating AI into their workflows: Welbes is seeking input from the community on how they are using AI, including whether they rely on AI website builders, plugins, agents, or WordPress’s built-in AI tools. He also asks what tasks AI is being used for, such as creating content, auditing SEO, building pages, or adding functionality to sites. Several community members responded with examples of how they are using AI in their WordPress workflows.
  • Jean Galea says WordPress is entering a period of narrowing rather than collapse: He argues that changing demographics, hosted website builders, artificial intelligence, the plugin economy, and governance are driving a gradual narrowing of WordPress’s role. He says these forces are affecting different parts of the ecosystem in different ways rather than signaling the platform’s collapse.
  • Carla Pumutxa receives the Yoast Care fund for her contribution to the WordPress community: Carla Pumutxa, a valued member of the WordPress community, is the latest recipient of the Yoast Care fund.
  • The WP Awards 2026 call for sponsorship is now open: Three sponsorship tiers are available, with Gold priced at $3,000, Silver at $1,500, and Supporter at $500, ahead of nominations running from July 22 to September 16, voting from October 1 to November 25, and the announcement of winners between December 8 and 15.
  • Studio can now build a WordPress site from a single command: Benguella demonstrated how Studio can generate a locally running WordPress site from a natural language prompt. In the example, a small pet-themed website is created with a specified design style and page structure using a single command.
  • DPlugins is offering 40% off all of its WordPress plugins: DPlugins owner Marko Krstić shared that the company is offering 40% off its entire WordPress plugin catalog with the discount code DSUMMER2026.
  • WPBakery lowers its Theme Integration License price: The one-time lifetime license now costs €69 instead of €299, reducing the upfront investment for independent developers and small studios that want to include the page builder with commercial themes.
  • Accelerate demonstrates AI-powered self-optimizing WordPress pages: Noel Tock shared how Accelerate uses AI agents to automatically test and improve WordPress blocks by generating new variants, evaluating performance, and iterating toward higher conversions. Built on WordPress’ new AI foundations, including the Abilities API and MCP Adapter, the system continuously optimizes content while using Bayesian testing and multi-armed bandits to identify winning variations with minimal manual intervention.
  • FluentCart brings advanced product variations to every store for free: The latest release introduces Advanced Variations directly into the core plugin, allowing merchants to build and manage complex multi-attribute products with reusable attributes, bulk editing, and a storefront that automatically guides shoppers to valid in-stock combinations.
  • Elementor 4.2 Beta introduces CSS Grid and Loops to the Atomic Editor: The release adds native CSS Grid and Loop support to the Atomic Editor, alongside enhancements to Atomic Forms, new AI capabilities for Angie, and performance improvements for nested Containers. The version also includes legacy Loop template support, customizable pagination, accessibility improvements, and numerous stability fixes.
  • Oxygen 6.1 is now available: The release introduces multi-element selection, variable font support, conditional classes, component visibility controls, PHP 8.4 compatibility, and builder performance improvements. The release also includes updates to Breakdance Elements and Breakdance Forms for Oxygen 6, adding features such as conditional form emails, renamed global color variables, and Swiper 12 support.
  • WP Rocket 3.22 adds built-in RocketCDN: The release introduces a new Content Delivery tab that lets users enable RocketCDN on up to three pages at no extra cost, with optimized settings and unlimited bandwidth included.
  • Jetpack Search 7.0 helps WooCommerce shoppers find products more quickly: The latest release adds product-focused search features for WooCommerce stores, including filters for attributes, price, ratings, stock status, categories, tags, and brands. It also introduces product card search results, sorting options, and active filter chips, aiming to improve product discovery and streamline the shopping experience.
  • Radio Station 2.7.0 is now live: The version includes the feature enhancements and bug fixes from versions 2.5.18, 2.5.19, and 2.5.20, which were not publicly announced because they addressed station-specific support needs.
  • FlyingPress 5.6 brings built-in Redis object caching: The latest release adds one-click Redis integration, allowing site owners to enable and monitor object caching directly from the FlyingPress dashboard. By storing database query results in memory, the feature helps reduce server load and improve performance on dynamic pages such as WooCommerce stores, membership sites, and user account areas.
🚀 NEW PROJECTS
“I started playing with AI in WordPress since 7.0 dropped and the first thing that I realized was that I wanted control over which LLMs did what things in my WordPress site with preferences based on what I had access to (through work or whatever) as opposed to what’s technically best for those capabilities.“

Chris Reynolds about creating jazzs3quence Priority Manager for AI Connectors.
  • jazzs3quence Priority Manager for AI Connectors: Developed by Chris Reynolds, this allows users to choose which AI provider to use for each task type when multiple providers are connected.
  • llms.md: A new plugin by Per Søderlind that provides a generated site.tld/llms.md endpoint for WordPress using cached AI-driven site analysis.
  • Block Runner: A CLI tool by Human Made that converts AI-generated or design-tool HTML into valid, native Gutenberg blocks. It preserves nested block structures, resolves media to real WordPress attachment IDs, validates every conversion against headless Gutenberg, and can automatically fix invalid block markup before it reaches the editor.
  • AllFeedback: A feedback and survey plugin from ThemeGrill that lets site owners create surveys, collect visitor feedback, and analyze responses without relying on external services. It includes a drag-and-drop form builder, customizable feedback widgets, analytics, response management tools, and stores all feedback locally in the site’s WordPress database for greater privacy and control.
  • Jamie’s Visual HTML Editor: The plugin by Jamie Marsland enhances the WordPress Custom HTML block by letting users paste any HTML and then edit its text, images, and supported background images through a visual interface without touching the markup.
  • Local Last Update: The plugin by Topher DeRosia, shows when each plugin was last updated on your server, right in the plugins list.

🔖 INTERESTING READS & PODCASTS

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

  • In this episode of Seriously, Bud?, host Bud Kraus sits down with Chris Reynolds to discuss his journey into web development, family life, homeschooling, and the experiences that shaped his career in the WordPress ecosystem.
  • Katie Keith and James Kemp are joined by Woo Chief Marketing Officer Tamara Niesen on this episode of Do the Woo podcast to discuss how the WooCommerce community can better market the platform. The conversation explores community-driven marketing, WooCommerce’s positioning, the value of merchant success stories, and how agencies, developers, and partners can work together to communicate the platform’s strengths.
  • Shiva Shanker Bhatta sits down with ex-WooCommerce CTO Matt Cohen in this episode of Go with WP to unpack what really separates successful WooCommerce plugins from those that collapse under heavy e-commerce traffic, drawing on his experience reviewing over 1,000 extensions and scaling Automattic’s marketplace for 14+ years.
  • On The WP Minute+ podcast, GravityKit founder Zack Katz joins Eric to discuss Block MCP tool and a new cryptographic signing system for plugin updates. The conversation explores how recent supply chain attacks influenced GravityKit’s approach to plugin security and how Block MCP aims to improve AI interactions with WordPress by working directly with blocks instead of raw HTML.
  • In this interview reflecting on WordCamp Europe 2026 in Kraków, Jimmy from The Webonaut speaks with Local Team Lead Sebastian Misniakiewicz about what it took to secure and deliver one of the world’s largest WordPress events. They revisit the behind-the-scenes journey of pitching Kraków to the WordPress Foundation, navigating tight timelines, venue challenges, and the intense coordination required to host thousands of attendees.
  • Kevin Champlin argues that many agencies take the wrong approach to integrating AI into WordPress by treating it as a plug-and-play solution. Drawing on a failed AI deployment for a Fortune 500 client, he explains why system architecture, monitoring, caching, and planning for failure are critical to successful AI implementations.
  • Jonathan Bossenger argues it’s time for developers to rethink WordPress. Speaking at PHPVerse 2026, he challenged long-standing criticisms of WordPress by highlighting how the platform has evolved over the past decade. The talk explored advances such as block-based development, modern PHP practices, improved performance, and more.
  • Kevin Geary previewed Etch Connector, a new feature included with all Etch plans that lets users connect any IDE or AI coding harness and use any supported model directly in Etch.
  • Pressable highlighted how digital agency MAXBURST used its MCP integration to automate the management of more than 200 client websites. The case study details how the agency reduced fleet-wide performance audits from hours per site to under 45 minutes overall.

🛠 GUIDE ZONE – HOWTO’S and MORE

Handpicked fresh guides from WordPress circle

📆 SAVE THE DATES

Do not miss a WordPress event ever again

🎁 WORDPRESS DEALS OF THE WEEK

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This weekly newsletter is kindly sponsored by awesome WordPress Companies 🦸‍♂️🙌

ProfilePress – Create membership sites & sell subscriptions on WordPress Check it out  →

Create a career page and start recruiting talents in a few minutes Check it out  →

Last but not least, updates from WP-CONTENT.CO 👇

Automattic Gives Teams a Month to Build Anything. Here’s What They Created

What happens when more than 400 teams are given a month to build whatever they want? Automattic set…

Read more

WordPress 7.1 to Hide Classic Block From Inserter Ahead of Planned Phase-out

A newly merged change slated for WordPress 7.1 will make the insertion of Classic block unavailable from the…

Read more

New Proposal Seeks to Add a Knowledge Post Type and Guidelines to WordPress Core

A proposal has been published to merge a new wp_knowledge custom post type into WordPress 7.1, with Guidelines…

Read more

Popular Shopify Developer Platform Mantle Shuts Down, Impacting Hundreds of App Businesses

Mantle, the AI-powered business layer built for Shopify app developers, has announced plans to wind down its operations,…

Read more

Team WP-CONTENT.CO

Issue #278   |   June 30, 2026   |   Reading time: 24 mins

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