Read to the end to see a pooch who has snuggling down to an art.
In today’s edition:
- Testers Wanted: 6.8 is ready for you to poke, prod and play with.
- The folks at Wordfence want you to start a bug-hunting streak. Are you ready?
- Good news! International Women’s Day fixed gender inequality in WordPress! Oh wait…
Hot Off The Presses: What’s New?
47!? Amateur.
If you, dear reader, don’t have at least 5-6 dozen tabs open right now, what are you even doing?
Oh, your computer just crashed? Because of all the tabs?
Okay fair enough.
Either way, don’t close this tab YET, keep reading for all the hot WordPress updates, baby!
Testing 1… 2… 3… 6.8
WordPress 6.8 is set to launch on April 15th, 2025, but if you want to take it for a spin and get a sneak peek, Beta testers are now wanted.
It’s always fun to jump over to the new release (in a staging environment or in Playground of course, just in case) and mess around with it for a bit to see what works, what doesn’t and if there are any bugs that make your site self-destruct (oopsies!)
By the way, you don’t have to be the world’s most expert dev to do this! Just use WordPress like you normally would and holler on WordPress Trac if something goes wonky.
WordPress 6.8 is aiming to be a “polish release” so the goal is to make it as shiny and perfect as possible before it’s officially unveiled next month.
What’s 6.8 got going for it?
The release promises lots of sparkly new upgrades, such as:
- 370+ Enhancements and 520 Bug Fixes: The editor has been spiffed up, with easier ways to see your options in Data Views and other little tweaks.
- Speculative Loading: Get near-instant page load times by loading URLs before your visitor even navigates to them.
- A Sexy New Style Book: It’s got a structured layout, so you can preview site colors, typography and block styles more easily.
- Beefed Up Security: The new release will use bcrypt for password hashing, a long overdue update that will make things much harder to hack.
What we don’t know yet? Which jazz legend this upcoming release will be named after.
Anyone wanna take bets on who it’ll be?
Don’t Break Your Bug-Squashing Streak! 🐛
The Wordfence team have announced several updates to their Bug Bounty Program, including a “Monthly Bug Detector Streak Bonus” that’ll earn you bonus rewards based on both the quantity and quality of your vulnerability reports.
Maybe they should employ their own version of the (now deceased) DuoLingo Owl to enforce streak-keeping with passive-aggressive messages and thinly-veiled threats?
If you’re ready to start your streak, here’s where you can sign up for the program.
Happy bug-hunting!
Wanna Grow Your WordPress Business? Hire a Woman in a Leadership Role
The International Women’s Day flowers have wilted and the chocolates have all been eaten, but we still need to talk about women in tech.
Lawrence Ladomery on the WP BizDev blog breaks down a simple but powerful growth strategy: hire women in leadership roles.
It’s not just good for diversity, it’s smart business. The studies cited show that companies with women in leadership tend to grow faster, perform better and make more money than those without. In fact, this Peterson Institute for International Economics study actually crunched the numbers and found that organizations with 30% female leaders could add up to 6 percentage points to their net margin.
Why?
- Teams with a range of leaders make better decisions, spark more creativity, and avoid major mistakes.
- Companies whose leadership reflects diverse backgrounds and experiences can tackle problems more easily, adapt to change, and reach a wider customer base.
- Having women in leadership positions often leads to happier, more engaged employees who stick around longer.
Of course, this isn’t just about hiring one woman and calling it a day. It’s about creating leadership teams that truly reflect the real world—and benefiting from all those awesome fresh ideas and insights.
As Rae Morey laments in her post, “Who Leads WordPress Businesses? The Data Confirm It’s (Still) Not Women,” only 4% of companies that have pledged to WordPress’s Five for the Future initiative have a woman in the top leadership role. She mentions there’s a “Broken Rung” effect, which prevents women from stepping into WordPress leadership roles at all – nevermind the Glass Ceiling waiting for them at the top.
P.S. Rae’s been saying the same thing for a while – here’s a 12-year old post from our blog called “Where are the Women in WordPress?” Here’s hoping things change, and soon!
The World Server Throwing Championships:
If thinking about the lack of diversity in tech gets you so angry you want to yeet a server as hard as you can… we have good news for you.
The World Server Throwing Championship is back at CloudFest 2025!
This event is open to all genders and ability levels, the only requirement is a “desire to throw a server really %*ing far.”
Hey, we’ve all been there, right?
Taking place in Europa-Park, Germany, this event invites techies, sysadmins, and hosting veterans to channel their inner Viking and chuck a retired server as far as humanly possible.
The competition features multiple categories, including Men’s, Women’s and even a Master League where current local champions of the Netherlands and Spain and the winner of Day 1 get to throw against reigning champion Bartosz “The Beast” Wojciak. Everyone gets a shot at glory! (Or at least a GIF-worthy moment of awkward flailing.)
Beyond sheer brute force, there’s also a strategic element: do you go for a discus-style spin, a clean-and-jerk-style toss, or just a full send with a primal scream? Strategy is everything.
If you’re attending CloudFest and think you’ve got the arm to compete, registration is open. The grand prize? Eternal glory and some serious bragging rights..
Sign up here and start warming up!
Mind Bloggling Facts & Stats
- March is the month with the most Presser birthdays according to The WP World, with June as a close second. (Source)
- Over 1,000 WordPress websites have been infected with a third-party JavaScript code that injects four separate backdoors. You know, so the hackers have a backup just in case you spot one. (Source)
- Jamie Marsland writes about the 3 biggest existential threats facing WordPress: AI Site Builders, Zero-Click Search Results & The Decline of Traditional Blogging. His solution seems to be to inject AI into pretty much everything WordPress. Do you agree? (Source)
Blogs & Resources You Shouldn’t Miss
Stop trying to make Prefetch happen, Gretchen! Speculatively loading pages with this technique is supposed to improve performance, but it can slow down your website if it’s not done correctly.
Who needs to actually know how to code when you can just like, totally go on vibes, man? (What could go wrong?)
For the 50th episode of Seriously, BUD?, Marcus Burnette turns the mic around and interviews Bud himself about his own WordPress story.
In a thought-provoking HeroPress essay, Alexis Bocklin, CEO of Ukrainian agency DreamDev, shares how their European partners helped the company stay afloat when war with Russia began in 2022.
So no one told you life was gonna be this way? On the DoTheWoo Podcast, Alex Kirk chats about his Friends plugin, which lets you follow content from other WordPress sites and interact with them on your own site.
“Your WordPress site is a living, breathing pile of plugins, themes and databases that can – and will – break if you ignore it.” – Codeable on web maintenance tasks you probably should be doing.
Coffee Break Distractions
When you go bird-watching on “Easy” mode.
Aliens walk among us. Here’s proof.
And finally…
A pup who takes cuddling seriously.
Found this interesting? Forward it to someone who you think might also love it! 💗
