In today’s edition:

• GoDaddy throws down a cool half-million in support of the WordPress community.
• Post Status is turning into a Dutch nonprofit and folks are pretty happy about it.
• The internet has finally decided on the correct pronunciation of GIF.

Hot Off The Presses: What’s New?

Hope you’re all having a lovely January 76th! This meme pretty much sums it up:

 
But anyway, here’s what’s been happening so far this year:

Woah Daddy!

GoDaddy (or maybe we should say SugarDaddy) recently announced that they’ve donated $520,000 to support the WP Community Collective, an initiative that focuses on funding and empowering WordPress contributors.

According to the GoDaddy press release, the donation will help finance the collective’s “programs and partnerships that strengthen open-source communities, drive innovation and promote collaboration.”

GoDaddy employs two full-time developers, Kira Schroder and George Mamadashvili, who work exclusively on WordPress core development. They also support 46 contributors, dedicating 255 hours per week to WordPress across 17 teams.

WPCC President Sé Reed said the significant boost in funds will help them launch more sustainable paid Fellowship opportunities, which means more folks can dedicate their time and expertise to building WordPress. This is exactly along the lines of what Ryan McCue suggested in his blog post back in October, “A Stronger Foundation for the Ecosystem.”

If you wanna join in and donate to the collective too, you can sign up here. (Don’t worry, memberships start at $5 in case you don’t have an extra half-a-mill lying around. )

New Core Interface, Who Dis?

As you may have already noticed, the WordPress.com user interface went through a bit of a switcheroo last week.

We’re all familiar with the custom “Calypso” interface for logged-in WordPress.com users, but according to the blog post about the change, having two different interfaces between .org and .com was becoming “increasingly challenging.”

So, all WordPress.com users were transitioned to the standard wp-admin .org interface, with the promise that they’ll “enjoy a consistent and intuitive experience no matter where you WordPress.”

The feedback? It’s uh… not been entirely enthusiastic. Some were onboard with the change, but in the post comments, many complained about the abrupt shift and said they had found Calypso more efficient and easier to use.

The phrase, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” was used more than once.

What do you think about the change? Do you like it? Or do you think it only makes things easier for the WordPress team without taking into account the needs of the users? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Post Status Gets a Status Update

Yoast SEO Founders Joost de Valk and Marieke van de Rakt have announced that they’ve acquired Post Status, the popular WordPress business community. They’ll be turning it into a Dutch nonprofit foundation, which means it’ll be covered by the country’s robust privacy protections and legal system.

With a Slack channel over 1700 members strong, an active job board and a weekly newsletter, Post Status has grown to become an important part of the WordPress ecosystem since it was founded in 2013 by Brian Krogsgard.

Joost de Valk announced on the Slack channel that the membership fee would be reduced, taking advantage of Slack’s 85% discount to nonprofits.
Tia Wood, Founder of TheWPGirls.com, writes, “So happy the de Valks have purchased Post Status and are turning it into a nonprofit. You guys are awesome Joost & Marieke. Congratulations to everyone involved.”

Developer and consultant Carrie Dils also celebrated the purchase, saying, “I remember Post Status’ visionary era with @Krogsgard, the shepherding under @LindseyMillerWP & @corymiller303, and look forward to its future as a safe place to gather and talk shop.”

Mind Bloggling Facts & Stats

• According to the State of Enterprise WordPress 2024, 61% of enterprise organizations contribute to the WordPress project. That’s a massive increase from 38% in 2023! (Source)
• The 2024 Annual Spam Report by OOPSpam has been released. Can you believe that the USA and China are responsible for nearly 58% of global spam? Yikes! (Source)
• Plus, nearly 69% of spam targets websites that use WordPress, which is no surprise due to its popularity. Make sure your site is secure and up-to-date, folks! (Source)
• Based on this survey, 84% of people are correct in thinking it’s pronounced GIF (as in gift) and not JIF (as in giraffe). The other 16% of people are wrong. #fightme (Source)

Blogs & Resources You Shouldn’t Miss

Is your 2025 goal to finally get your workflows more organized this year? Abby Wood’s in-depth round-up on project management tools you’ll actually use might help. | Wondering whether or not you should take on that professional opportunity? This simple test gives you the answer. | That client on the other side of the world wants to schedule a call? This is probably the best visualizer we’ve seen for figuring out a time that works for both of you. | The deadline for nominations for Core Team Reps for 2025 is January 31st, so head here to nominate folks (or yourself!)

Coffee Break Distractions

Got young ones and wanna teach em’ to code? Scratch is a pretty amazing kids coding resource.

You might think you’re speedy on the keys, but how fast CAN you type? Get your WPM here.

Not happy with your typing speed? This is a pretty cool touch-typing teacher that’ll help you improve.

You’ve got the popcorn ready, you’re curled up under the fuzzy blanket, but no idea what to watch? Movielens will give you personalized movie recommendations based on your past IMDB ratings.

When you’ve found the perfect thing to watch, this is what you’ll look like, probably.

And finally, my dream car doesn’t exi…. (Wait for the rear view mirror harmonica!)

From revolutionizing hosting with our High-Frequency plans to launching game-changing features like Domain Reseller and Webmail, we’ve been working tirelessly to make your WordPress experience smoother than ever.

Grab a cup of coffee (or whatever fuels your hustle), and join us for a journey through a year packed with innovations, improvements, and exciting developments that have made WPMU DEV even better for you!

Keep reading, or jump ahead with these links:

• Executive Summary from Our Founder, James Farmer
• What Changed in The Hub & Hub Client in 2024
• What’s Coming in 2025: The Hub’s Next Chapter
• What Changed for our Premium Hosting in 2024
• What’s Coming in 2025: Premium Hosting Gets Even More… Premium?
• What Changed for our Plugins in 2024
• Forminator: Forms That Actually Look Good (Finally)
• What’s Coming in 2025 for Forminator
• Smush: Speed Meets Style — 2024 Edition
• What’s Coming in 2025 for Smush
• Hummingbird: Performance That Packs a Punch
• What’s Coming in 2025 for Hummingbird
• Defender: Security that Never Sleeps
• What’s Coming in 2025 for Defender
• Link Checker: Breaking Up with Broken Links
• What’s Coming in 2025 for Link Checker
• Snapshot: Backups That Actually Have Your Back
• What’s Coming in 2025 for Snapshot
• And that’s a wrap, folks!

Executive Summary from Our Founder, James Farmer

“2024 has been a transformative year for WPMU DEV, marked by bold innovations and strategic expansions that have redefined what’s possible in WordPress management and hosting.

Our introduction of High-Frequency Hosting plans, powered by blazing-fast 3GHz+ Intel Xeon processors, has set a new industry standard for performance. We’ve expanded our global footprint with 12 new hosting regions, ensuring lightning-fast speeds for users worldwide.

The launch of our Domain Reseller program and Webmail service marks our commitment to being your complete WordPress solution. These additions, combined with our new Expert Services, demonstrate our evolution from a plugin provider to a comprehensive web services platform.

The Hub continues to be the cornerstone of our ecosystem, now enhanced with features like Tickets for improved client communication and our innovative Broken Backlinks Checker. Our plugins have seen significant updates too, from Forminator’s new PDF capabilities to Defender’s enhanced malware detection.

Looking ahead to 2025, we’re not slowing down. We’re already working on exciting features like the Bot Pool for improved performance, advanced static cache features, and expanded monitoring capabilities for third-party sites.

Thank you for being part of our journey. Your feedback and trust continue to drive our innovation, and we’re excited about the road ahead.”

Want to hear more from James? Check out this Post Status interview from the Product Founder Series: WordPress in the Long View with James Farmer.

All right, off to explore the individual products and services. Starting with…

What Changed in The Hub & Hub Client in 2024

If you find managing multiple WordPress sites a total nightmare, 2024 was the year The Hub said “hold my beer” and transformed into an even more powerful command center to make your agency life even easier.

Hosting Reseller Program: For that Extra Moolah

We kicked off the year with a huge update — the Hosting Reseller Program. It’s the side hustle of dreams for all those agency owners who want to sell domains and make extra cash while lounging on the beach (because why not?).

We even gave away a million dollars to kick things off. (No, seriously. A million dollars. Who are we? Oprah?).

Check out the Domain Reseller Program — and start making it rain domains!

Webmail: It’s Like Email, But Cooler (No, Seriously)

Raise your hand if you’ve ever had to email a client from your personal email address (no judgment, but, yikes). With Webmail, you and your clients can send emails like a true professional — right from your WPMU DEV dashboard.

It integrates seamlessly with our platform because, let’s face it, if you’re not running your hosting and emails from one place, are you even really hosting?

Plus, we also increased the storage space up to 50GB!

Get to know Webmail — email never looked this good.

Expert Services: Because Sometimes You Just Need A Dev

 
It’s 2 AM. Your client’s site just went down. What do you do? Panic? No. You call in an expert… but there’s no need for you to hire an expensive freelancer or bring one in-house.

We launched Expert Services — a premium suite of services to make your life as easy as ordering takeout on a Friday night (and almost as cheap too!), including:

• On-Demand Development: For that custom feature you needed yesterday.
• Proactive Monitoring: So you can sleep while we do the heavy lifting, monitoring and implementing quick fixes 24/7 for your hosted sites.
• Speed Optimization: To turbocharge your site and ramp up your PageSpeed scores to 90+ on desktop and 75+ on mobile.
• Malware Removal: No one wants to deal with hackers at midnight.

It’s like having a superhero squad on call all year round (without the spandex).

Don’t wait for a crisis — check out Expert Services.

Annual Hosting Plans: Sweet Deals and Free Stuff? Yes, Please!

Who doesn’t love a good deal? In 2024, we launched Annual Hosting Plans (excluding Quantum) that come with not only awesome rates but also a free .com domain and Webmail.

Ready to save and get free goodies? Snag your Annual Hosting Plan here.

Client Tickets for Agencies: Seriously, Who Has Time to Juggle Emails, WhatsApp, SMS, etc?

 
We know you’ve been there — juggling multiple client requests like a performer on stilts.

Enter Client Tickets, our white-labeled ticketing system that helps you manage client inquiries like an actual pro (instead of that over-caffeinated person on their third double-shot latte).

Gone are the days of lost emails and forgotten requests. Now, you’ll have everything neatly organized, even while you’re pretending to be “busy” with your other tasks.

Get the lowdown on Client Tickets here.

Broken Backlinks Checker: Fixing the SEO You Didn’t Know You Needed

Nothing kills your SEO game like broken backlinks. Luckily, we launched the Broken Backlinks Checker to save you from that SEO nightmare.

It scans your site for dead links and lets you fix them before Google starts docking your site’s reputation. It’s like having a personal SEO bodyguard for every site.

Fix Your Broken Backlinks — and keep your SEO in the green.

Hub Speed Improvements

Significant improvements were made to The Hub so your site lists load much faster than before.

Here’s an example of the average number of seconds needed to load your sites, before and after 2 rounds of performance enhancements:

What’s Coming in 2025: The Hub’s Next Chapter

We’re kicking off 2025 with some serious upgrades to The Hub that’ll make managing your WordPress empire even smoother. Here’s what’s cooking:

Proactive Monitoring for ALL Sites

Ever wished you could keep tabs on your third-party hosted sites just like our hosted ones? Well, that’s exactly what we’re rolling out.

Our 24/7 monitoring service is expanding beyond WPMU DEV-hosted sites, so you can catch and fix issues before your clients even notice them.

Clients & Billing Gets a Power-Up

We’re supercharging the client management experience with features you’ve been asking for:

• Flexible coupon creation for your services
• Schedule invoices for better payment planning
• Support for multiple clients per site (perfect for those complex projects)

Hub Experience Improvements

The Hub itself is getting some love too. We’re working on:

• Centralized white-labeling controls for a more consistent brand experience
• Streamlined WP Users Management with Multi-user SSO
• A completely redesigned Reports 2.0 system for better insights
• Email-based Tickets so your clients can create tickets and reply to them without even logging into The Hub
• White labeled support via Tickets
• ccTLD Domains
• Hub Folders for better organization of your sites
• Notes across various parts of The Hub so you can add notes to sites, domains, webmail, etc.
• Even more performance enhancements, focusing on individual service pages

Plus, we’re putting the pedal to the metal on overall Hub performance improvements—because nobody likes waiting around for pages to load.

Next up, the crazy changes we made to hosting…

What Changed for our Premium Hosting in 2024

2024 saw the launch of our High-Frequency hosting plans for even better performance than our supercharged regular plans. which makes regular hosting feel soooo sloooooooowwwww. Here’s a quick overview at the next-generation technology behind our HF plans.

High-Frequency Hosting: The Next Generation (Gen Beta?)

Blazing-Fast 3GHz+ Intel Xeon CPUs

• Purpose-built for high-performance sites
• Significantly outperforms standard 2GHz CPUs

Next-Level Storage

• NVMe SSD storage for maximum throughput
• Perfectly matched to the increased CPU power
• Dramatically faster than traditional SSD storage

Unbeatable Value

• Industry-leading pricing for the performance
• Excellent margins for resellers
• Top-tier features at competitive rates

Upgrade to a high frequency hosting plan today.

Going Global: 12 New Regions

But we didn’t stop there—we went global with 12 new regions, ensuring your sites are lightning-fast wherever your clients call home (for both HF and regular hosting plans). We added new data centers in:

• Asia Pacific: Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Osaka, Melbourne
• Europe: Madrid, Manchester, Stockholm, Warsaw
• Middle East & Africa: Tel Aviv, Johannesburg
• Americas: Mexico City, Santiago

Plus Some Neat Upgrades for the Tech-Savvy Crowd

• Custom SFTP/SSH paths — you can now specify exactly where you want your SFTP/SSH access
• XML-RPC blocking for enhanced security
• PHP 8.3 support to keep your sites on the cutting edge
• Fail2ban integration with Antibot for better security

What’s Coming in 2025: Premium Hosting Gets Even More… Premium?

Our development team is kicking off 2025 with some serious server-side improvements.

Redirect Management

Redirect Management is landing first—a powerful system that handles traffic flow at the server level. This means cleaner redirects, better SEO, and a proper system to prevent those pesky 404 errors that can hurt your search rankings.

The Auto Bot Pool

The Bot Pool is our answer to handling automated traffic intelligently. By directing bots to a separate PHP pool, your server resources stay focused on real visitors, leading to better Core Web Vitals scores and smoother user experience.

Lightning Fast Caching

We’re taking static caching to the next level with two new features:

• Lightning Mode transforms your entire site by caching all GET requests (except wp-admin and logged-in users), dropping query strings, and setting extended cache lifetimes. Perfect for company blogs and static sites that need blazing speed.
• Lightning Pages brings that same power to specific high-traffic pages like your homepage or landing pages, giving you precise control over what gets the turbo treatment.

And since we never stop improving, we’re adding PHP 8.4 support and some serious SSL improvements… because security should never be an afterthought.

Next up, our plugins!

What Changed for our Plugins in 2024

Our plugins got some serious gains in 2024 (and they didn’t even need a gym membership).

From Forminator flexing its muscles with new payment options and cloud templates, to Smush getting even smarter about WebP optimization, each plugin in our arsenal received meaningful upgrades that make your WordPress life easier.

Let’s dive into what each of these powerhouses brought to the table this year.

Forminator: Forms That Actually Look Good (Finally)

Gone are the days of boring, basic forms. This year Forminator embraced its creative side with features that make form-building actually fun (yes, really).

Payment Power-Up

Boost your conversions with our shiny new Stripe Dynamic Payment Method. Now your forms handle payments as smoothly as butter. Apple Pay, Google Pay, Amazon Pay, Klarna—if it’s a payment method your customers love, we’ve probably added it.

Fresh Fields & Features

We didn’t stop at payments. The new Rating field lets your users share their thoughts with style, while the Range slider adds some sliding satisfaction to provide more nuanced data capabilities.

Plus, our new Basic Style mode plays nice with your theme—because nobody likes a form that clashes with their design.

Finally, if you need to whip up a form fast, our new Preset and Cloud Form Templates have your back. And if you’re into email marketing (who isn’t?), our MailerLite integration makes growing your list a breeze.

PDF Power

Creating professional receipts just got easier with our new PDF template system. Generate unlimited PDFs from your forms and submissions—perfect for making your business look polished and professional.

What’s Coming in 2025 for Forminator

Next year’s going to be even better:

• A sleek new Product Field that makes selling stuff simple
• Professional PDF Quote templates
• More ready-to-roll templates (starting from scratch is so 2024)
• New integrations starting with Constant Contact—because your marketing tools should play nice together

Start creating powerful forms today.

Smush: Speed Meets Style — 2024 Edition

2024 was all about making image optimization effortless. Our dev team took Smush’s already powerful compression tools and cranked them up to eleven with some seriously smart updates.

WebP Without the Headache

The new Direct WebP method is a game-changer. One click and you’re serving WebP images to your visitors — no server configuration or CDN required. It’s the kind of simple we love, and your site speed will thank you for it.

Bulk Smush Gets Buff

We completely rebuilt our Image Optimization Engine from the ground up. For you that means a leaner, meaner Smush that uses less memory while crushing more images. Your server resources can breathe easy while your images get smaller.

What’s Coming in 2025 for Smush

We’ve got a TON of upgrades planned for Smush:

• AVIF support is landing — think WebP’s cooler cousin with even better compression
• Smart LCP Image optimization to boost those Core Web Vitals scores
• Video lazy loading with facades because why should images have all the fun?
• Automatic missing image size generation to fill those pesky gaps
• A fresh UI that makes optimization feel like a breeze
• Supercharged PNG compression for even smaller file sizes
• Better stats to show off your optimization wins

Start Smushing your images here.

Hummingbird: Performance That Packs a Punch

This year Hummingbird got serious about keeping your sites blazing fast with updates that matter. We ditched the old metrics and embraced the future of performance measurement — staying current isn’t just nice, it’s necessary.

Speed Essentials

Performance testing got a major refresh. We’ve added INP (Interaction to Next Paint) while saying goodbye to FID and TTI. It’s not just about keeping up with Google — it’s about giving you the metrics that actually matter for your site’s success.

Mobile Magic

Mobile optimization leveled up with separate cache preloading, mobile-specific Critical CSS, and smarter viewport meta handling, as well as font optimization. We also boosted Critical CSS across the board with delay-until-interaction for above-the-fold content. The result? Major gains for mobile users.

Smart Controls

Got specific performance needs? Our new granular controls for Delay JS and Critical CSS let you fine-tune exactly what gets optimized. Target specific files, post types, post URLS, plugins, themes and keywords.

Plus, we optimized the Autoloader to cut down database queries — because every millisecond counts.

What’s Coming in 2025 for Hummingbird

Hummingbird is set to take flight in 2025:

• Asset optimization is getting a major overhaul for faster, smarter, safer improvements
• Zero cache downtime to keep your hit rates high
• Font subsetting for lightning-fast text loading
• Speculative link preloading for instant site navigation
• Global Safe mode to preview optimizations before they go live

Experience Hummingbird’s performance for yourself here.

Defender: Security that Never Sleeps

Security isn’t just about blocking bad guys — it’s about being smart with how we protect your sites. This year, Defender stepped up its game with some serious security muscle.

Malware Detection 2.0

Our scanning engine got a major upgrade. Now Defender dives deep into your site’s root directory, catching nasty code that other scanners might miss. We’ve also fine-tuned our malware detection rules to stay ahead of evolving threats.

Smart IP Protection

Say goodbye to IP detection guesswork. Defender’s Smart IP Detection is your ultimate security gatekeeper, using the most secure and reliable method to identify users’ IP addresses. It’s designed to block bad actors while ensuring real users and admins sail through without a hitch. Compatible with most sites and a pro at preventing spoofing — because your site deserves nothing less.

Self-Service Security

And if you do manage to get locked out, we added the super convenient “Unlock Me” feature. Admins can now verify their identity through email and get back to work without waiting for support. No more locking the door and leaving the keys inside!

What’s Coming in 2025 for Defender

Get ready for some HUGE upgrades for Defender including:

• AntiBot Global Firewall — tapping into security intelligence from 500,000+ sites to block malicious IPs automatically
• Advanced Malware Scanner that goes beyond core files and checks JavaScript files and database tables (because we all know malware loves to hide in unexpected places)
• User Session Management to protect against stolen session cookies and keep browsing sessions secure

Cover your sites with ultimate defense against any attack.

Link Checker: Breaking Up with Broken Links

Links are the highways of your website, and this year we made sure they’re smoother than ever. Our team rolled out some smart updates that make finding and fixing broken links feel less like a chore and more like a superpower.

Cloud Connection Made Simple

No more Dashboard plugin required — connect straight to BLC Cloud from The Hub. It’s like taking the scenic route and finding a shortcut you never knew existed.

Query Parameter Scanning

Those tricky URLs with query parameters? Yeah, we scan those now. BLC Cloud leaves no URL unturned, making sure every corner of your site stays connected.

Backlink Magic

Introducing our “Broken Backlink Checker”! Now you can find and fix dead backlinks that might be hurting your SEO juice. Because good SEO isn’t just about what’s on your site — it’s about who’s linking to you too.

Cleaner Reports

We heard you about those ignored links cluttering up your reports. Now you can hide them and focus on the links that actually need your attention.

What’s Coming in 2025 for Link Checker

We’ve got a couple little (but powerful) tweaks coming up:

• Bulk actions to edit, unlink, and ignore broken links in one go
• Advanced URL exclusions for more precise link monitoring
• Fewer false positives for even more reliable results

Check your links now with one click.

Snapshot: Backups That Actually Have Your Back

Nobody gets excited about backups until they need one. That’s why we made Snapshot smarter about how it protects your site data, with features that work before you know you need them.

Pre-Backup Intelligence

The new Preflight Check is like having a co-pilot for your backups. It scans your server resources, large files, and database tables before takeoff, making sure your backup journey goes smoothly.

Selective Restore Power

Sometimes you just need to restore one piece of the puzzle. Now you can download and restore your database or files separately — no need to restore everything when you only need a portion.

For multisite users, we’ve added the ability to restore individual subsites from a full backup.

Cloud Storage Options

Azure joined our backup destination family this year. More options mean more ways to keep your backups safe and sound.

What’s Coming in 2025 for Snapshot

We’re expanding our cloud storage horizons with iDrive and Cloudflare R2 as new S3-compatible destinations — because your backups deserve options.

Never get caught out again — keep your backups automated!

And that’s a wrap, folks!

Phew. We made it through another wild ride of a year.

Thank you for being part of the WPMU DEV family and for all your amazing feedback, bug reports (we see you!), and love for our platform. We can’t wait to make 2025 even better, faster, and just a little bit wilder.

Here’s to 2025 from WPMU DEV — where hosting is never boring, and client tickets get sorted faster than your New Year’s resolutions!

Let us know in the comments what upgrades you’re most excited about!

In today’s edition:

• Why can’t the web be both weird AND accessible, at the same time?
• The 6.8 Release Squad is assembled and ready to roll out.
• Content Warning: There’s a really dumb knock-knock joke in this one. Watch out.

Hot Off The Presses: What’s New?

My Resolution is to Stop Procrastinating. Gonna Start Tomorrow for Sure.

Welcome to 2025, you gorgeous thing. Missed you! How ARE you? You look great.

We’ve finally emerged from our festive roast potato coma and we’re in full New Year mode. Everyone’s “circling back” and “touching base” and “putting their left foot in and shaking it all about” or whatever. We’re just gonna simply join in and pretend we know what’s going on.

We were going to quit all of our bad habits this year but hey… no one likes a quitter.

So instead let’s start this year full of energy and potential, like a goofy kid at the top of a waterslide, ready to flail screaming, hair flying, swim trunks flapping, into 2025!

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

Radio.

Radio who?

Radio not, it’s a new year, baby!

Ooof… okay sorry about that. But anyway…

In The Words of Shania Herself, “Let’s Go Girls!”

The WordPress community team has proposed hosting women-centric events on International Women’s Day (March 8th) throughout local WordPress communities around the world.

We’re talking networking sessions, workshops, learning activities and talks and all that awesome, collaborative stuff. The initiative, proposed by Pooja Derashri, aims to “spark meaningful conversations and encourage more women to join, lead and contribute to WordPress.” We love to see it!

Keen to host an event? Apply via the Creative WordPress Events Form. Want to help out by designing banners, logos and female Wapuu designs? Comment on the post here.

“Make the Web Weird Again!”

In a recent blog post, Nick Hamze raises a call to arms to all us creative little freaks out there to “make the web weird again.”

Lamenting the samey and monotonous look of many websites, Nick wants us to embrace quirky and distinctive designs that truly reflect our “unique voice and vision.” He even put together a collection of the kind of wacko themes that he has in mind, including a pretty bitchin’ 80s vaporwave aesthetic theme that we wish we had a reason to use.

Of course, we’re totally big fans of creativity, thinking outside the box and strange, personality-packed websites. But as Amber Hinds points out, accessibility is important too.

And when it comes to that, we’re with the Old El Paso kid when she says, “¿por qué no los dos?”

As Amber points out, “Themes can be both accessible and weird. They’re not conflicting goals.” As Steve Jones adds to the conversation, “Accessible isn’t a type of theme. All themes should aim to be accessible.”

There’s room for personal expression AND inclusion on the web. Thinking about how to make your sites accessible and easy-to-use for all is part of the creative challenge.

As the W3C Statement on Ethical Web Principles states, “the web is for all people.” But, unfortunately, at the moment that’s far from reality. A new report reveals that no U.S. state website fully meets the upcoming Department of Justice accessibility requirements. Over 96% of the world’s top one million web pages are not accessible to WCAG 2 standards.

Does accessibility restrict the possibilities of your design? Well, yeah of course it does. There are certain limits on what you can build and still have it accessible.

But does that hinder your creativity? Not necessarily. Sometimes, restrictions can enhance creativity and provide opportunities for brilliant problem solving.
Want to learn more about making WordPress more accessible?

• This recent episode of the WP Tavern Jukebox podcast featuring accessibility consultant Elena Brescacin is a very insightful listen.
• A great article by Vanessa Preast: “Digital Accessibility Myth #1: Accessibility Kills Creativity”
• Try WebAIM’s color contrast checker next time you’re choosing font colors.
• Oh, and whatever you do… don’t use AccessiBe, the bogus AI accessibility startup that was just fined a million bucks by the FTC for misleading claims. Yikes.

6.8 Release Squad… Assemble!

The lean, mean, release machine of WordPress 6.8 was just announced a few days ago. The tight team is focused less on new features this time around and more on fine-tuning and bug-fixing, to make sure everything is as polished as possible.

The squad is helmed by Matt Mullenweg, with Jeffrey Paul and Michelle Frechette coordinating efforts.

In addition to Mullenweg and the coordinators, we’ve got:

• Tech Leads: Joe McGill, Jonathan Desrosiers, George Mamadashvili
• Triage: Jb Audras
• Design: Tammie Lister
• Performance: Felix Arntz
• Testing: Krupa Nanda

So, why so minimalist? This smaller crew continues the experiment that started with 6.7 of merging together the Marketing and Communications Lead with Release Coordination in order to gather more feedback on that experiment.

Turns out, after reviewing ongoing initiatives, the team decided fewer features were ready for primetime. That means WordPress 6.8 is laser-focused on stability and performance. But hey, if something shiny is ready to go, we’re sure they won’t hold it back.

Key Dates to Remember

• Beta 1: March 4, 2025
• Release Candidate 1: March 25, 2025
• General Release: April 15, 2025

Want to get involved? Although the release squad has already been chosen, it takes a village to raise a new version of WordPress. If you want to roll up your sleeves and take part, you can join the #core channel in Slack, where the next weekly chat is happening on Wednesday January 15th at 8pm UTC.

One Last Dumb Joke for You…

Did you hear about the guy who was caught shoplifting a calendar on New Years?

He got 12 months.

Mind Bloggling Facts & Stats

• According to the Cloudflare Radar 2024 Year in Review, Global internet traffic rose more than 17% in 2024. That might sound crazy, but it’s actually a slow down from last year when traffic grew by 25%. (Source)
• Over 41% of that traffic came from mobile devices. Plus, there are nearly 100 countries where mobile traffic is the majority! For example, over 77% came from mobile devices in Syria, Cuba and Sudan. (Source)
• In 2024, there were approximately 4,740 enhancements and fixes across all areas of WordPress between the three major new releases. Talk about a glow-up! (Source)
• Can you believe we’re on the 200th release of Gutenberg already? And that it’s been four years since the 100th release? Time flies, man. (Source)

Blogs & Resources You Shouldn’t Miss

A LOT happened in the WordPress world in 2024. Martin Dubovic over at Themeisle recaps it well in this post. | The 2024 WP Awards have been well, awarded… and you can check out the full results here. | Stefana offers some smart advice on the art and strategy of building a community. | “Sheep are not like ideas.” Seth Godin muses on the magic of the commons. | Love the free tools Meta Box offers for custom fields and dynamic content? Now there’s a Lite version. | On this episode of the Seriously, Bud? Podcast, Bud Kraus has a fascinating conversation with Anna Hurko from Kherson, Ukraine about running Crocoblock while trying to stay safe during the war. | Karol Krol figured out a FREE way to export all your WordPress posts to Google Sheets… automatically. Say whaaat? Now that’s clever.

Coffee Break Distractions

The viral dress will turn 10 this year?! Find out where your own personal blue-black/white-gold threshold lies.

In this surprising hard challenge, you’ve gotta guess which clickbait headline got the most clicks. You won’t believe #3!

Oohh this little song maker gadget is so fun… could waste a LOT of time on this one.

Or you could play the simple but addictive old-school Minesweeper.

If one of your 2025 goals is to read more, check out this very handy reading tracker spreadsheet.

And of course, here’s the stripper video we promised.

In today’s edition:

• Congrats to the first ever winner of the Kim Parsell Memorial WordCamp Europe Scholarship – Lena Stergatou!
• What’s 122 feet tall and has skis for eyelashes and spruce trees for arms?
• WP Gives a Hand celebrates five years of well, giving a hand.

Hot Off The Presses: All the Jingle Bell That’s Fit to Rock

Sleigh Whaaat?!

2024 is almost over already? Damn, my clumsy little fingers just got used to typing it. You’re telling me I have to start typing 2025 soon? Ugghhhh…

Anyway, we won’t take up too much of your time because you’ve got important stuff to do, like playing Xbox with your cousins, destroying your elderly parents at Scrabble, fumbling with the assembly instructions for that new scooter and fighting the post-Turkey sleepies.

But Christmas has us feeling all Santa-mental… so here’s a little song for you:

Have Yourself a Merry Little DEVmas

Have yourself a merry little DEVmas
May your plugins load right
From now on, all errors will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry little DEVmas
We’ll keep sending memes
And an update on the newest WordPress themes

Here we are as in olden days
Posting stupid puns galore
While faithful readers who are dear to us
Comment on our blogs once more

Through the years we all will work together
If the sites allow
Maybe we will change the world with code, somehow
So have yourself a merry little DEVmas now!

It’s Giving… Uh… Giving.

Feeling like you want to be more generous this holiday season? Even if you haven’t been spooked by three guilt-tripping ghosts, you might be thinking about how you can give back. We certainly are, especially after hearing that WP Gives a Hand is celebrating it’s fifth birthday!

The charitable initiative unites businesses to donate a portion of their revenue to support various non-profit organizations. Over the past five years, 29 companies have collectively raised more than $52,000 for 19 different charities. Nice one!

The 2024 campaign is still in swing, with participating companies donating a percentage of their sales until December 29th. Some of the charities supported include SOS Children’s Villages Latvia, World Bicycle Relief, Italian animal shelter ENPA Mira, One Tree Planted and UNICEF.

Lena Stergatou Wins WordCamp Europe’s First Kim Parsell Scholarship

The first ever WordCamp Europe Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship has been awarded, and the recipient is Greek WordPress developer Lena (Eleni) Stergatou.

Previously exclusive to WordCamp US, this scholarship now includes WordCamp Asia and Europe, recognizing contributors from around the world who embody Kim Parsell’s spirit of community and advocacy for women in tech.

Lovingly referred to as #wpmom, Kim contributed countless hours of volunteer time to the WordPress project and her commitment lives on in the people she inspired.

Inaugural winner Lena describes herself as a “Code Wrangler” and “Happiness Engineer” and has expertise in multisite setups, Greek translations and plugin development. She holds a Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Democritus University of Thrace, and currently develops web services for the Greek educational community at the Computer Technology Institute (CTI Diophantus).

Lena says, “I love to debug, fix broken things, extend functionalities and share them with others.”

The scholarship will cover Lena’s travel to the host city of Basel, Switzerland, hotel accommodation for the event duration and a WordCamp ticket for the June 2025 event.

Lena, you’re a legend and we’re very happy for you! Have fun in Switzerland!

Go Away, I’m Working On My Novel!

So, if this winter is when you plan to finally hunker down and finish that book you’ve been planning to write, we’ve got good news for you.

You can now use the WordPress Block Editor to write your book – then export it as an EPUB file that can be read on any e-book app like Kindle or Apple Books.

It’ll treat each heading as a chapter, so you can easily navigate the content from within the e-book reader. You can even add a cover with a custom image.

Writing a book on WordPress ain’t a new thing. In fact, we wrote a tutorial on how to organize an online book using WordPress waaaaaay back in 2012.

(2012?! In internet years, that blog post is approximately the same age this very bitchy cuneiform tablet.)

But before now, it wasn’t as easy to do this and you’d have needed to use one of the many third party services out there to turn your blog posts into a book. As developer Ella writes in the blog post linked above, this is definitely a full circle moment for Gutenberg!

A Few Fun & Festive Facts

• Apparently when Robert May wrote the story of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer in 1939, he almost named him Rollo, Romeo or Reginald. Imagine Santa saying, “Hey Reggie! Bring that glowing nose over here for a sec, will ya?” (Source)
• In order to deliver gifts to all the children in the world, Santa would have to fly at a speed of 4,705,882km/h. Yeeeesh. (Source)
• Online shopping on mobile made up 51% of holiday purchases last year. (Source)
• According to Gen Z, Brussel sprouts are like, totally lit, fam. (Or at least they were in 2023.) They became a TikTok trending veggie and supermarkets in the UK reported a 150% boom in sales last year. (Source)
• You’ll get a frosty reception if you ever visit Bethel, Maine… it’s where the world’s largest snowperson was built. At 122 feet tall, she was only a few feet shorter than the Statue of Liberty, her eyelashes were made from skis and her buttons made from truck tires. (Source)

A Stocking Stuffed With Blogs & Resources

All you want for Christmas is the “good, old Twitter?” Eric Karkovack from the WPMinute hopes Bluesky will be a fresh new start.

OpenVerse, the platform that’s like Santa’s workshop for openly-licensed creative media, now has a Dark Mode toggle that makes browsing very easy on the eyes.

If you could ask Santa for any feature, enhancement or bug fix on Gutenberg/WordPress, what would it be? Riad Benguella asked the question, Martin Dubovic recapped the responses.

And since we can’t send you actual candy for your stocking, how about some eye candy? These creative website layouts shared by Jamie Marsland should do the trick.

Doing some last minute decorating? Here’s a site that calculates the amount of baubles you’ll need based on the height and width of your tree.

And if you’re all about those twinkly light vibes, this site will help you find the best decorated homes and official displays in your area.

Sippin’-Boozy-Hot-Chocolate-In-Your-Fuzzy-Onesie Distractions

This guy drunkenly bought an inflatable Santa that’s bigger than his house, but he’s making the most of it.

Speaking of Santa, where’s the big man right now? Check in on him with NORAD’s Santa Tracker

Apparently my Elf Name is Noodles BrightToes, what’s yours?

Speaking of elves, wanna use code to make an elf dance? Of course you do.

If your gift-wrapping skills leave something to be desired, just watch this video in slow-mo and follow along. Easy, right?

Speaking of wrapping, if you thought your Spotify Wrapped was a bit… underwhelming this year, you’re not alone. (Maybe those massive lay-offs are to blame?)

Set the cosy winter vibe by adding falling snow to your WordPress.com website.

And as for pineapple on pizza? We’ll defer to the wisdom of Mario.

In today’s edition:

• We’re changing things up. Please like us.
• You’ll be RAVEing about this new security tool. *Cue “Sandstorm” by Darude*
• If you use the Jobify theme – there’s a nasty bug you should know about.

Hot Off The Presses: What’s New?

We’ve Been Watching You…

This is the 10th edition of DEV, and if you’re still here reading our silly nonsense, we must be doing something right. Thanks for sticking around!

But of course, we can’t win em’ all. We noticed that while you’ve been gobbling up the news stories, you’ve been breezing right past the educational stuff in the middle to the juicy little “Coffee Break” section at the end.

This is according to our click-through metrics, of course. Don’t worry, we’ve not been lurking behind your computer chair. (Or have we? )

So, you’d rather read a bunch of bite-sized funnies, news and links, huh? Who can blame you? We get it!

Even though my therapist said I should stop trying so hard to please others, we’ll be mixing things up with DEV in the hopes that you’ll like it even better.

This edition’s Deep Dive is a round-up of links to other helpful how-to articles around the web. Let us know what you think and if that format is more fun for you to explore.

And if you have any other feedback on DEV, please hit us with it in the comments!

Got Your Glowsticks? We’re Heading to the RAVE

 
John Blackbourn, the creator behind the Query Monitor plugin, has created a smart new tool called RAVE.

RAVE stands for “Reproduce and Verify” and the automated tool does just that. It allows you to reproduce WordPress builds, so you can make sure the official and unofficial packages haven’t been tampered with.

RAVE compares the contents of the published packages with the canonical source code, immediately identifying any anomalies.

Why test the official package? Well, there are plenty of opportunities for the official WordPress package to be tampered with, such as an attack on the build server, on wordpress.org or anyone else who gains access.

RAVE will spot right away if the official package differs from the actual source code in the source control repos – no neon beaded bracelets or JNCO jeans necessary.

Using the Jobify Theme? Watch Out!

If you’re currently rocking the Jobify theme, your site is wide open to a serious security risk.

Patchstack recently issued a warning to Jobify theme users due to an unauthenticated arbitrary file read vulnerability.

This bug means hackers could poke around in your server and access sensitive files, without even needing to log in. Any malicious actor could download a file from your website by using the download_image_via_ai function. If your WordPress site is running on cloud like AWS or Azure, it can lead to the access of secret keys leading to full server compromise. Eeeek.

The vulnerability is so far still unpatched in the latest version 4.2.3. If you’re a Jobify user, you should delete or deactivate the theme until it can be fixed.

Patchstack has issued a virtual patch to mitigate the issue by blocking attacks until an official fix becomes available.

And while you’re at it, let this be your regular reminder to always keep backups of your sites and stay on top of vulnerability updates. Hackers never sleep, ya’ll.

Mind Bloggling Facts & Stats

• WordCamp Granada 2024, held October 26-27 was the first industry-specific WordCamp ever. It was dedicated entirely to tourism and the travel industry. (Source)
• According to Jamie Marsland’s official polls on the WordPress YouTube account, 49% of respondents use Gutenberg to build their websites, with only 1% using Divi. (Source)
• Karol Krol asked bloggers (not developers) what they think of the Block Editor. A whopping 40% are not big fans. (Source)
• Marcus Burnette from Bluehost has also been polling folks. He asked his followers what their most important consideration was when choosing a hosting company. 44.9% said “support” and only 4.1% chose “price.” (Source)
• Weglot raised €70k this year in charity donations with their annual Black Friday campaign. Nice one! (Source)

Deep Dive Special Edition: Your Favourite Deep Dive’s Favourite Deep Dives

There’s a lot of great expert advice from super smart developers and WordPress folks out there.

In this special edition of the Deep Dive we wanted to highlight some super-useful guides and how-tos you’ll want to add to your bookmarks list.

Wanna become the best on the block at Block Development?

Deryck Oñate wrote a complete tutorial on creating multiple Gutenberg blocks and the Interactivity API.

Wanna know how to build a “code sandbox” so you can make live edits in-browser and see changes in real-time in an isolated iframe?

Grab your plastic shovels and sandcastle moulds, because Chris Ferdinandi is here to walk you through it.

Wanna ditch project management apps and consolidate ALL your workflows in Slack?

Here’s a deep dive into how the team at We Are AG went all in.

Wanna make your WooCommerce store more secure than Fort Knox?

The folks at Patchstack have put together this comprehensive checklist for locking it down.

Wanna make this meta Deep Dive even more meta?

Learn the difficult skill of learning difficult skills, with Julia Evan’s classic guide, How to Teach Yourself Hard Things.

Blogs & Resources You Shouldn’t Miss

Forget partridges and turtle doves! KrautPress has a plugin-a-day advent calendar instead.

According to Tom McFarlin, AI hasn’t completely destroyed developer content – but it has changed it.

Real IP addresses being stored in your WP comments? Yikes. That’s a privacy nightmare. Try this plugin instead.

Search Engine Journal ranked 20 website-building platforms by accessibility, and WordPress is NOT at the top.

We’re loving this episode of the WP Tavern Jukebox, where Stephen Dumba speaks about how WordPress is changing the lives of children and educators in Uganda.

The WordPress Sustainability Team are looking for contributors to help with projects like writing sustainability guidelines, eco-optimizing events, and creating a plugin that tells you how “green” your site is (spoiler: probably not green enough).

Coffee Break Distractions

Developer Daniel Mangum built a website inside of Bluesky. Crazy, right?

You say Potato, I say Tomato.

TV writers recently discovered, to their horror, that 139,000 of their scripts were hoovered up to train AI.

Speaking of AI: Don’t listen to chatbots that give mushroom foraging advice – it just might kill you.

Did you hear about the guy who tried to buy Greenland to “unlock it’s potential” as a “crypto-native” country?

If you remember Homestar Runner, it’s probably time to take an Advil for your back.

A man who found a totally smooth Mars bar was the talk of the Dull Men’s Club on Facebook. He received £2 in compensation for the “hideous” un-rippled horror.

And finally, meet Stop and No’s Dad. (Wait for the hoop skirt…)

In today’s edition:

• Hey Boo… Automattic acquires open-source grammar checker named after American novelist Harper Lee.
• 6.7.1 is just like 6.7 but with like, 16 fewer bugs.
• Deep Dive: Make sure your site can scale up and handle the traffic when you inevitably go viral.

Hot Off The Presses: What’s New?

Grammar? I Hardly Know Her!

If you’re grammer and speling leavs somthing to be desird, your gona be happy to here this.

Automattic have snapped up another company to their portfolio. Harper is an open-source grammar checker for developers, which runs on-device, so it’s pretty private and super fast. It’s named after Harper Lee, of To Kill a Mockingbird fame. (Hemingway was already taken, after all.)

Elijah Potter, the founder of Harper, has also joined the team at Automattic.

That official Automattic announcement boasts that Harper offers corrections in under 20 milliseconds, less than 1% of the time it takes a “certain popular online grammar tool.” (Throwing shade at Grammarly, hey?)

It would be super cool if this was integrated into the WordPress editor as a free grammar checker tool. Remember the days of After The Deadline? But at the moment it looks like it may only be part of their paid services, so we’ll have to see.

Oh, and at the moment Harper claims to only support American English, so it may not do any favors (favours?) for Brits and Canadians trying to spell things like aluminum/aluminium or yoghurt/yogurt.

Code is Music: This is Just Really Cool, You Guys!

Every now and then, a clever person creates something that is just so damn creative that it reminds you of the joy, curiosity and playfulness that got us all into this business in the first place.

A few days ago, freelance developer and Core contributor Aki Hamano shared his creation – Piano Block. It’s been around for a while, but if you haven’t seen it – it’s a custom block plugin that lets you tinkle the ivories of a lil’ virtual piano using your keyboard.

Hamano says it’s for when you get “stuck writing an article” or when you “just want a little distraction.”

It’s pretty irresistible. Here’s developer Justin Tadlock playing a lovely rendition of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”

Nathan Wrigley of WP Builds described it as “profoundly cool” and wrote “Sometimes you see something that makes you put down all-the-things and ponder for a while. This is that!”

Fellow Core contributor Nick Diego called it “one of the most incredible things I have seen in WordPress.”

It’s simple, it’s silly and we love that it doesn’t serve any function, other than to bring a little bit of fun into our lives.

Waiting to Update Until 6.7.1? We Get It.

If you’re one of those who likes to hold off on updating while you wait for the .1 release: it’s now available.

The minor release features 16 bug fixes throughout Core and the Block Editor.

Word on the street is that updating to 6.7 this time around was not necessarily any buggier than usual. Many users said that the only issues they saw were from plugins that needed updating.

Except for the odd thing of course, like some pretty spooky flagging as malware by Wordfence, a translation issue and this funky image distortion problem. Oops!

Did you get any errors this time around? Let us know in the comments!

There’s one thing we all seem to agree on: It’s always a good idea to install WordPress locally first, so you can try it out without having it affect your live site.

Mind Bloggling Facts & Stats

• Umm… hey… where’s everyone going? The WordPress Contribution Health Dashboards reveal a recent spike in contributors becoming inactive. (Source)
• Despite it’s slowing growth, WordPress remains the dominant CMS on the web, with 36% market share. (Source)
• As of writing this, 17,446,251 people have downloaded WordPress 6.7. Oh no wait, it went up again. 17,449,063 now. Ah… you get the idea. (Source)
• In his seven-decade career, Sonny Rollins (6.7’s namesake) has recorded more than SIXTY albums. What a legend! (Source)

Deep Dive: The Art Of Handling Traffic Surges Without Crashing

So, your WordPress site just went viral (or you hope it will). The problem? It just can’t handle the heat, and visitors get stuck staring at loading screens or error messages.

If your site crashes, your reputation—and probably your revenue too—takes a nosedive. Scaling WordPress isn’t just a good thing to do; it’s critical for survival. Avoid the crash-and-burn with these foolproof scaling strategies:

Prepare Your Site for Traffic Spikes

• Upgrade Your Hosting Plan: Shared hosting? That ain’t gonna cut it when fame hits. Opt for VPS, cloud hosting, or managed WordPress hosting that offers scalable resources.
• Cache It Like It’s Hot: Plugins like WP Rocket deliver static content faster, cutting down load times.
• Use A CDN: A Content Delivery Network stores and shares your content with visitors from geographically closer servers, making sure your site loads fast whether your visitors are in Tokyo or Topeka.
• Clean That Database: Database looking like a junk drawer? Regularly clean up old revisions, transients, and spam comments. Tools like WP-Optimize make this painless.
• Leverage Lazy Loading: Load images only when they’re needed. It’s not just good for your user experience, it’ll also improve your SEO. Just make sure you do it correctly, or it can inadvertently hide your stuff from Google.
• Pick Streamlined Themes and Plugins: Bloated themes are the fast lane to slow sites. Go minimalist for speed and do your best to make sure your code and markup are clean and well-structured.

With these tips, your site will handle big-time traffic like a pro. No crashes, no drama, just smooth sailing all the way to fame and fortune, baby!

P.S. We should probably mention our Performance Suite here, which has a pretty sexy 123-point CDN, Smush for image optimization and Hummingbird for boosting site speed. Just saying…

Blogs & Resources You Shouldn’t Miss

Creeped out by scope creep? Fed up with clients who want champagne services on a beer budget? Laura Elizabeth of Client Portal reveals how paid discovery can help agencies weed out tire-kickers and time wasters.

On the latest episode of the WP Minute podcast, Roger Williams from Kinsta recommends completing at least 50 pieces of content before you worry about analytics and optimization. You’ve gotta find your voice first!

Gender gap? No thank you! Freemius donated 100% of its revenue from the company’s 10th anniversary fundraising campaign to Girls Who Code.

Attention bug hunters: Bag up to $31k by spotting vulnerabilities during Wordfence’s Bug Bounty Holiday Extravaganza (Until December 9th).

And for all you dark mode girlies… check this out.

Coffee Break Distractions

Can you guess the Owen Wilson movie, just from the “Woowww?”

Where do you draw the line between green and blue? It’s surprisingly subjective. Find out where your threshold is.

Falling teeth, snakes and flying: This stunning data visualization reveals what people are dreaming about.

Four insurance scammers in Los Angeles were charged with fraud. The “bear” they claimed damaged their cars was uhh… kinda sus.

Check out this project that compiles YouTube videos from 2009-2012 with default camera names like IMG_0123. It’s like a fascinating time capsule of random moments.

And as promised, this adorable orb-like alien creature.

We’ll handle all the work for you, while you get all the credit – and the profit margin.

Right now, our team of Expert Services specialists is ready to handle your clients’ WordPress needs, from the simplest request to the most demanding technical requirements. You can rebrand these services and sell them at your own price point to your clients.

It’s a great risk-free way to grow your business, because ROI is built in. Markup the cost at your desired margin, and you’ll only pay for what you sell.

No in-house dev team. No hiring specialists. No late-night emergency fixes. Just pure profit from services your clients already need.

Here’s How It Works

Here’s how easy it is:

• Your client requests a service (like speed optimization)
• You set your price and make the sale
• We do all the technical work behind the scenes (and you can claim our premium service as your own!)
• You keep the profit margin

Of course, we know that as an agency, your reputation is everything. WPMU DEV guarantee backs every service, ensuring your clients receive the quality they expect and deserve.

Any issues arising within seven days of service completion will be addressed free of charge.

Resellable White-Label Development Services We Offer

Ready to start earning more from every new and existing client?

We designed these expert services especially for agencies and developers like you. Spend more time growing your business, rather than debugging code or optimizing servers.

Let’s dive into the services we offer and how they work.

• Proactive Site Monitoring
• Site Speed Optimization
• Malware Removal
• On Demand Custom Development

Proactive Monitoring: Peace of Mind as a Service

Our 24/7 proactive monitoring service ensures your clients’ sites stay online and perform optimally. Our team promptly addresses any issues that arise.

The monitoring service provides:

• Continuous uptime monitoring
• Instant downtime detection
• Automatic problem resolution
• Regular performance checks
• Monthly status reports

(Note that the Proactive monitoring service is currently available only for the sites hosted with WPMU DEV and not for externally hosted sites.)

Site Speed Optimization: Transform Slow Sites into Performance Powerhouses

Our comprehensive speed optimization service delivers guaranteed results —PageSpeed scores of 90+ on desktop and 75+ on mobile.
When you resell our speed optimization service, your clients receive:

• A complete performance audit identifying all bottlenecks
• Implementation of advanced caching solutions
• Image optimization and delivery optimization
• Database cleanup and optimization
• Core Web Vitals improvements
• Custom-tailored performance recommendations

Malware Removal: Professional Security Resolution

Our malware removal service doesn’t just clean up infections—it prevents them from recurring. This service includes comprehensive security hardening that protects your clients’ investments.

The service encompasses:

• Complete malware detection and removal
• Security vulnerability patching
• Preventive measure implementation
• Post-cleanup security recommendations
• Implementation of advanced security protocols

On-Demand Development: Custom Solutions When Needed

Our experienced WordPress developers will implement the functionality you need, fix code issues, or customize existing features.

Services include:

• Custom CSS modifications
• Feature implementation
• Code optimization
• Plugin customization
• Theme modifications
• Technical problem solving
• And more, just ask!

Choose from three different pricing plans:

• Lite – Up to 5 requests per month
• Starter – Up to 10 requests per month
• Pro – Up to 20 requests per month
• Advanced – Up to 50 requests per month

Invoice your clients directly through your WPMU DEV Hub

The Clients & Billing portal in the Hub or Hub Client plugin makes invoicing clients easy. Create & sell product and service packages to your clients, and manage all aspects of your billing process with Stripe.

Simply:

1. Connect your Stripe account and configure your billing settings
2. Use Clients & Billing to invoice and bill clients for the services offered by WPMU DEV
3. Add your clients and send your first invoice!

Scale your business with white-label expert services today

With our competitive wholesale rates, you can offer premium service packages that suit any client size and budget, increasing your profit margins.

Visit the Services section in your WPMU DEV Hub to get started.

Introducing: Broken Backlink Checker!

This powerful tool scans the internet for all those annoying, broken links from third-party websites that point to your pages. This means you can keep your site and your external online presence healthy, alongside our already existing internal link checkup tools.

With the Broken Backlink Checker, you’ll get a detailed scan of your site’s backlinks every 24 hours, and the ability to detect up to 50 broken backlinks per scan.

Once the scan is complete, you’ll receive a detailed report with actionable insights to help you fix those broken links ASAP, so your SEO doesn’t take a hit.

You’ll find the tool under the Link Checker section of the HUB. Go ahead and check it out now!

Important FAQs

Why Are Broken Links a Problem?

A broken link, also known as a dead link, is a hyperlink that no longer works because it points to a page that has been moved, deleted or renamed.

Broken links can also happen when the link URL was typed incorrectly, or when the link points to a media element that is no longer available.

Why does this matter? Well, the consequences are more serious than just a few confused visitors hitting a dead end. Unresolved broken backlinks can harm your SEO by causing you to lose valuable referral traffic, and they can also signal to Google that your website isn’t up to par.

That’s why we built this tool – so you can spot the broken links before they do any damage to your website’s reputation and fix them promptly.

How to Fix Broken Links? Don’t Worry – It’s Easy!

When the Broken Backlink Checker finds a broken link, you’ve got a couple of options to fix it.

1. Update the URL: If you can get the source website to update the broken URL, that’s the easiest fix.
2. 301 Redirect: You can also set up a 301 redirect from the broken URL to the correct page on your site – so you can recover the traffic and preserve the SEO value.

Why Isn’t My Fixed Link Showing Up in the Report?

Don’t panic! It can take a few days to several months for the service to re-index a link that has been fixed, depending on factors like Page Rank and Domain Rank. Higher authority sites get scanned faster, while lower authority or spammy sites take longer.

But there’s no need to worry. The link will update once it’s crawled again, so just keep checking back!

More questions? Check out our detailed guide here.

What’s Next?

The Broken Backlink Checker is just the beginning. We’re constantly improving and adding more backlink data to make this tool even more powerful.

In today’s edition:

• A roundup of helpful walkthroughs & resources for the launch of 6.7.
• The verdict is in on what people think of WordPress’s tone of voice.
• Author? Editor? Contributor? Who? Some advice to help you better manage user roles.

Hot Off The Presses: What’s New?

The Results Are In: The WordPress Tone of Voice is “All Over The Place”

Remember when WP Shout asked for your thoughts on the WordPress brand tone of voice?

Well, the community had their say and word on the street is that the WordPress brand tone is… well… kinda chaotic.

22.1% of respondents thought the brand came across as “friendly” – but they also commented that it felt “unclear,” “inconsistent,” and even “confusing.” (And as far as we can see, nobody described the brand as “mindful,” “cutesy,” or “demure.”)

In response to, “I find that the WordPress brand speaks with a single, well-defined voice,” 46.51% of respondents answered either “Disagree” or “Strongly Disagree.” That’s compared to 22.09% who said “Agree” or “Strongly Agree.” Ooh boy…

But of course, brand voice is NOT easy.

With so many different entities within the WordPress ecosystem, it’s almost impossible to unify the tone like you could at a small company or individual publication.

As Katie Keith, Co-Founder and CEO of Barn2 Plugins points out, “The main problem is the implementation, as (the brand voice) is not being used consistently by all parties.”

Nicholas Garofalo, Director of Marketing at WordPress.org, states, “The results raise the question of whether WordPress should or even can aim to speak with a single, unified voice… The WordPress brand represents a lot of people and interests.”

You can read the blog post analyzing the survey results here, and check out the full survey findings here.

They See Me Rollins, They Hatin’. WordPress 6.7 Is Finally Here!

Named after legendary jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins, WordPress 6.7 is finally rollin’ into our lives.

The newest release debuts the Twenty Twenty-Five theme, which looks pretty darn snazzy to be honest, alongside plenty of other new features.

Jazzed to jump into 6.7 and start exploring? Here are some helpful resources for you:
.

• Here’s a Roadmap to 6.7 so you can see what’s changed, including links to pull requests.
• Get every little nitty gritty detail on the new release on the 6.7 Source of Truth at the Gutenberg Times.
• Timothy Jacobs of Solid Academy walks through the new changes in this livestream. (Don’t worry, there’s a replay if you don’t catch it live.)
• Pascal Claro from WP Roads also gives a comprehensive tour of the new release, showing off everything from mix and match color palettes, typography settings, improved image lightbox effects and more.

Have you started playing with 6.7 already? Whaddya think? Let us know in the comments!

WordPress Theme Repository Hits Major 1k Milestone

WordPress.org reached a big milestone: there are now 1,000 block themes in the repository, up from 536 late last year.

This is good news for anyone tired of cookie-cutter site design, as the block themes let you tinker with layout detail and fully customize your site.

Ganga Kafle from the WordPress Themes Team credits community enthusiasm and contributions from developers like Automattic for this growth.
Sure, adoption has been a bit slow, but industry insiders like Brian Gardner and Mike McAlister have championed them, saying block themes are the future of WordPress customization. WordPress have even added a “Block Themes” filter to the theme directory, to make it easier to users to find them.

Looking to dive into block themes? There are plenty of great resources out there, like Carolina Nymark’s fullsiteediting.com or the handy Create Block Theme plugin.

Mind Bloggling Facts & Stats

• Since the first one in San Francisco in 2006, there have been 1275 WordCamps, in 404 cities around the globe. That’s a lot of business cards, lanyards and keynote speakers! (Source)
• According to Data USA in 2022, 30.6% of web developers were women and 69.4% were men. The average salary for a male web developer was $86,017, compared to $65,913 for the average woman. (Source)
• In their 2024 Developer Survey, Stack Overflow found that 76% of respondents were using or planning to use AI tools, but only 43% said they trusted the accuracy of those tools. Hmm… (Source)

Deep Dive: Locking Down Your WordPress Site with Smarter User Roles

Let’s be real: we’ve all seen user roles get wildly out of hand. Sometimes, you’ve got ten people running around with Admin access, and you’re practically inviting trouble.

WordPress’s built-in roles are great, but they can also be a recipe for chaos if you’re not careful. The fix? Smarter user role management.

Giving users only the permissions they need isn’t just sensible— it’ll protect against accidental (or intentional!) mayhem. Here’s how to keep your user roles tidy and your site safe:

Pro Tips for a Secure User Role Setup

• Stick to the “Need-to-Know” Rule – Ask yourself, “What does this person really need access to?” If someone’s only posting blogs, they don’t need editing powers. Keep it minimal. Trim permissions regularly and relentlessly.
• Custom Roles: Your Secret Weapon – Use plugins like Members or User Role Editor to create custom roles that match your needs. This is especially helpful for clients who might otherwise end up with more access than you’re comfortable with.
• Regular Permission Checks – Every few months, do a quick audit of who has what access. People change, roles shift, and permissions should follow suit. Got someone who’s moved on? Time to cut them loose.
• Admin Access Should Be VIP, Not An All-Access Party – Keep Admin access to a minimum. It’s tempting to make everyone an Admin to “keep things simple,” but this can turn into a free-for-all. Reserve Admin privileges for trusted users only.
• Nix Dormant Accounts – Unused accounts are like uninvited guests who never leave. If someone doesn’t need their account anymore, delete or deactivate it. Dormant accounts = easy hacking targets.
• Monitor Activity – A logging plugin (think WP Activity Log, Stream or our own plugin, Defender Pro) is like having a digital bouncer. It tracks what users are doing, so you’ll know if anyone’s getting up to no good. Within Defender Pro, there’s an Audit Logging feature that shows you a log of events, so you can easily spot what triggered any unwanted behavior on your site.
• Strong Passwords + 2FA = No-Brainer – Don’t let users skate by with weak passwords. Set a strong password policy and, ideally, add two-factor authentication to really keep things airtight. (Btw, Defender has 2FA and password security features too.)

When your user roles are in check, you’re doing more than tidying up—you’re building a fortress. Keep things locked down, and your WordPress site will be ready for anything.

Blogs & Resources You Shouldn’t Miss

WordPress.com recently released their AI-powered Studio Assistant, a digital chatbot co-pilot for building sites locally. Matt Medeiros from WP Minute Tutorials explores how it works.

Could WordPress shift into something more like a social media network? In this episode of The WordPress Way, Robert Windisch and Matthias Pfefferle discuss.

Are you an accessibility expert in the WordPress space? If so, Tia Wood wants to talk to you for the November issue of What’s the Word.

Warning: Turns out there’s a nasty security flaw in the WPLMS WordPress theme that allows hackers to play hide-and-seek with your files. Don’t forget to update to lock things down!

Seamless workflow, here we come! The design team have unveiled a new WordPress Design System library for Figma.

In a recent blog post, Marieke van de Rakt and Joost de Valk remind us that the real treasure is the WordPress friends we made along the way.

Coffee Break Distractions

If you feel like you need to scream into the void (who could blame you?) then here’s your chance.

With TiltShiftMaker, you can turn any photo into a tilt-shift style miniature.

Congratulations to Australia, new rulers of the galaxy.

The Cinema Cop counts up Walter White’s crimes in Breaking Bad and their probable sentences. Spoiler alert, he should have been locked away for centuries.

If you can’t afford the chair you want – why not just print it instead?

If you haven’t read this classic Wait But Why? about procrastination, you should check it out today. (Or like, tomorrow or whenever…)

And of course, THE best photo of Mount Fuji.

We’ve heard that while many of you love our Webmail service, the 5GB storage limit is getting tight. That’s why we’re introducing our new range of expanded Webmail plans to help take your email capabilities to the next level.

More Space, More Flexibility, More Power

We’re expanding our offerings to include six different storage tiers, allowing you to choose the plan that best fits your needs:

Pricing for Premium Members

• 5GB (our original plan) – $1
• 10GB – $2
• 15GB – $3
• 20GB – $4
• 25GB – $5
• 50GB – $10

Pricing for Pro Members

• 5GB (our original plan) – $2
• 10GB – $4
• 15GB – $6
• 20GB – $8
• 25GB – $10
• 50GB – $20

Plus, each plan remains packed with all the robust features you’ve come to expect from WPMU DEV Webmail.

Competitive Pricing for Maximum Value

We understand the importance of cost-effective solutions. That’s why we’re maintaining our commitment to affordable pricing:

• Premium members: Continue to enjoy discounted rates, starting at just $1/month per email account.
• Non-Premium members: Access competitive rates, starting at $2/month per email account.

Visit your WPMU DEV Hub for a full breakdown of pricing across all new tiers.

Upgrading is Simple:

You can create a new webmail account with the desired plan, or:

1. Login to WPMU DEV HUB
2. Navigate to Webmail section
3. Select the email account where you want to upgrade the plan
4. Click on modify plan button

Your email service will then transition seamlessly to the new plan with no interruptions.

Looking Ahead

This expansion of our Webmail plans is part of our ongoing commitment to enhancing your digital toolkit. We’re dedicated to providing solutions that grow with your business.