This week on The WP Week, we break down the conversations shaping WordPress’s future, starting with a proposed 2026 release schedule that aligns major WordPress versions with flagship community events like WordCamp Asia, WordCamp US, and the State of the Word. We also look at progress on the Contributor Dashboard pilot, the WordPress 6.9 retrospective, and new calls for volunteers supporting Campus Connect and education programs.

Gutenberg 22.3 lands with better typography controls, responsive layouts, and improved image editing, while WooCommerce 10.4.3 ships important security and stability fixes. Security remains a key theme, with a critical vulnerability patched in the Motors Theme and renewed debate around data transparency in WooCommerce. Beyond WordPress, we cover Google’s DMCA lawsuit against SerpApi, new CSS Grid Lanes for masonry layouts, and growing concerns around AI-driven web traffic.

Community highlights include the ongoing impact of the WordPress Gives A Hand initiative, the return of Do the Woo as a dedicated WooCommerce podcast, Stephen Wolfram joining Automattic as a special advisor, and WordPress.com’s massive effort to migrate thousands of Typepad blogs before shutdown. We also touch on new tools, plugins, and AI experiments pushing WordPress forward, from block animations to smarter visual workflows.

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Tune in for a packed episode covering releases, security, community initiatives, and the ideas shaping what’s next for WordPress.

This week, we’re unpacking one of the biggest internet disruptions of the year — a major Cloudflare outage that rippled across the web, taking down sites and services worldwide after a critical database issue. Meanwhile, WordPress rolls out Release Candidate 2 for version 6.9, the first-ever WordPress AI Client SDK, and a call for mentors for the new Campus Connect program.

Security was also in the spotlight with active exploits in the Post SMTP plugin, affecting over 400,000 sites, while WooCommerce 10.4 prepares for its December release featuring major accessibility and performance improvements. In business news, Seahawk secures investment from CloudLinux, and Adobe announces its $1.9B acquisition of Semrush.

The WordPress community mourns the loss of contributor Zeel Thakkar, whose work with WordCamp Ahmedabad and Asia inspired many. On the product side, DesignSetGo adds new accessibility-focused blocks, Perfmatters introduces in-plugin code snippets, and ACF Pro 6.7 Beta 1 debuts inline editing for blocks.

Rounding things out, Patchstack celebrates 1,000+ plugins now using its platform for vulnerability reporting, Rocket.net expands hosting into India, and Yoast surprises the community with Yoasie Runner, a fun SEO-themed browser game.

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Stay tuned for this week’s mix of WordPress innovation, security alerts, and community stories shaping the open web.

WordPress 6.9 Release Candidate 1 is here, bringing new Notes, improved Interactivity and Block Binding APIs, border-radius presets, and key fixes across the editor. The community is also watching the situation in Bangladesh, with the Community Team coordinating closely to keep events healthy and safe. Core discussions this week focus on unified roadmaps, better contributor recognition, and preparing developers for the iframe-based editor coming in WordPress 7.0.

The big security story comes from Imunify360, where a critical flaw in its AI-bolit scanner allowed attackers to execute arbitrary PHP—one of the most severe hosting-level issues in a decade. WooCommerce 10.3.5 landed with important compatibility fixes, Google Search Console added custom annotations, and Human Made with WordPress VIP released an AI Readiness Report for enterprise teams.

Beyond core, the ecosystem is buzzing: ElasticPress adds semantic search powered by OpenAI, Elementor 3.33 ships a new Variables Manager and improved CSS controls, Cloudways announces award winners, and GoDaddy launches Airo.ai to bring conversational AI into small-business workflows. CookieAdmin crosses 200k installs, Charitable hits 1M downloads, and WPConsent powers 100k+ sites just months after launch.

New projects this week include lightweight analytics tools, design block collections, country-based pricing for WooCommerce, modern CAPTCHA options, and fresh plugins for loyalty programs, filters, archives, and more.

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Dive in for another week of releases, security alerts, community news, and fresh innovation across the WordPress world.