Read to the end to see an adorable epic battle.
In today’s edition:
- Basel’s upcoming WordCamp has more useful sessions than your Swiss Army knife has tools.
- The Admin Bar’s 2025 survey is your chance to spill your hot takes, and maybe discover you’re not the only one Googling, “how to deal with clients” every day.
- The web has become an overengineered mess. Joost de Valk’s suggestion? Embrace your inner MySpace kid and go back to 2005.
Hot Off The Presses: What’s New?
You ever drop a perfectly timed joke in Slack and rack up 18 laugh reacts? Feels like winning some sort of award, honestly.
Bad news: You’ll spend the rest of your career chasing that high and nothing else will ever come close.
Good news: We’re here to distract you from the pain with some fun WordPress news and other nonsense.
Sit back and enjoy!
WordCamp’s Basel Workshops Deliver Peak Content
Get your fondue forks ready. WordCamp Europe 2025 is just around the corner, and this year, it’s taking over Basel, Switzerland from June 5 to 7. What could be better than three whole days of WordPress wizardry in a city known for its art, history, and an abundance of Wi-Fi?
(That’s not to mention all the Swiss chocolate you’ll no doubt be stuffing your face with.)
The event will feature 52 speakers from 23 countries on 5 continents. Umm… maybe it’s dangerous to have that much WordPress expertise in one location at the same time. 
What’s on the Docket?
The schedule is packed tighter than your inbox after a week-long vacation. Attendees can look forward to:
- Workshops: Dive into hands-on sessions covering coding, design, and marketing. For example, Birgit Pauli-Haack will show you how to master WordPress Playground Blueprints and Karin Christen explains how to go headless without losing your head.
- Contributor Day: Whether you’re a WordPress newbie or a seasoned contributor, this day is all about rolling up your sleeves and digging into contribution activities – whether that’s coding, learning, reviewing or helping others.
- Talks and Sessions: From AI to SEO, the topics are as varied as your Spotify playlists (or at least, the playlists you make when you’re trying to make everyone think you have very cool eclectic taste.) With 45+ sessions across three tracks plus hands-on workshops, there’s something for everyone.
For more details and to view the full schedule, visit the official WordCamp Europe website.
P.S. The best thing about the event being in Switzerland this year? Well… the flag is a big plus! *ba dum tiss*
Survey Time: The Admin Bar Wants Your Hot Takes
It’s that time again: The Admin Bar’s 2025 Web Professionals Survey is officially open. Kyle Van Deusen’s annual survey is back to track trends and insights from the world of solopreneurs and agencies. It’s only 20 multiple-choice questions, so no need to stress, you’ll finish faster than you can say “client support ticket.”
The best part? You’ll join over 1,100 global pros who weighed in last year, helping shape the future of web work. Plus, you might get some surprising insights into the state of the industry. Want to know if other web pros are struggling with growing their agency, or handling their work-life balance? This survey’s got you covered.
Some interesting insights from last year’s results:
- The Riches are in the Niches: Only 28% of agencies without a niche exceed $100k revenue, while 41% with a niche make more than 6-figures.
- Robots ARE Taking Our Jobs: 53% of people said they are now using AI for work they used to pay a human to do.
- Times are Tight: Less than 10% of freelancers and agency owners cracked the $100k salary mark. Guess “exposure” doesn’t pay the bills, huh?
- Where’s The Content? Only 20% of agencies and freelancers are creating content on a weekly basis.
- Word of Mouth is King: 71% of respondents listed referrals as their top source of leads.
You can dive into the full database of results from last year for more.
If you want to chip in with your experiences this year, you can take the survey here.
The Web Is a Mess, So Let’s Party Like It’s 2005
According to Joost de Valk, the internet has officially eaten itself. It’s bloated. Overengineered. Held together with frameworks duct-taped to plugins duct-taped to more frameworks. And guess what? We’ve looped right back to 2005.
In a recent blog post, Joost makes a surprisingly compelling case that websites should go back to being simple. Remember those days? You edited some HTML, tossed in a GIF of a flaming skull, and boom, you had a website. As Joost says, “No complex JavaScript rendering or tons of chained requests… Clear valid HTML, not div soup.”
He argues we should build for speed and sustainability, not SEO wizardry or whatever hot new AI vibe-coding trend the web is obsessed with this week. The solution? Maybe it’s good old-fashioned clear, valid HTML. Maybe it’s leaning into WordPress’s strength: publishing stuff quickly without needing a PhD in build tools.
In the end, making websites simpler and better for everyone just makes sense.
So if you’re feeling nostalgic (or just tired of spending 14 hours debugging a Lighthouse score) maybe it’s time to unplug from the matrix, re-embrace the web’s messy, chaotic roots, and build something simple. Maybe even add a hit counter, or a guestbook. We won’t judge.
BRB, just getting side-swept bangs and putting on some heavy eyeliner. Long live 2005.
Hey TeamUpdraft… is that… The HUB? 
Umm… Couldn’t help but notice that on your Careers page, you’ve got a photo of a laptop featuring our HUB.
Didn’t expect to see that there – but hey, maybe you were just looking for inspiration!
We can’t blame you. The HUB’s pretty great, if we do say so ourselves. 
Mind Bloggling Facts & Stats
- According to the WordPress 6.8 Field Guide, there are more than 300 Core Trac tickets included in this release – including 170 bug fixes and 104 enhancements and feature requests. 34 are focused on accessibility, 16 on modernizing code and 23 on performance. Not too shabby! (Source)
- 34 people made their first contribution to WordPress Core in March, according to the aggregate data. Welcome to the party, y’all! (Source)
- WordPress just finalized its 2025 Global Sponsors dream team with Bluehost and Kinsta. What’s better than community support? Community support with a budget. (Source)
- Release Candidate 3 of WordPress 6.8 will drop at 3pm UTC on April 8th. This is the last Release Candidate scheduled before the Dry Run & 24-Hour Code Freeze on April 14th. Mark your calendars! (Source)
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Blogs & Resources You Shouldn’t Miss
Turns out the real WordPress treasure was the friends we made along the way. 
At least, according to Donata Stroink-Skillrud in her HeroPress essay.
InstaWP founder Vikas Singhal created a prototype MCP server for WordPress, which lets you “chat” with any WP site.
Brian Coords built flexible WordPress Playground blueprints using Cloudflare Worker that let you spin up demo WooCommerce stores super quickly.
Why you shouldn’t build ALL the things at once: an ode to modular WordPress development.
Some insights into how WordPress price increases will affect end users – especially folks from developing countries.
Morgan Hvidt noticed these ads injected into the WordPress block editor. Yikes. Nobody wants that. 
Check out this handy code snippet that’ll give you a meta box with internal link suggestions while you write a post. Cool, right?
Fascinating(ly troubling) read: “Something bizarre is happening to people who use ChatGPT a lot.”
Coffee Break Distractions
“Forks or No?” This odd glitch replaced the word “yes” with “forks” in a Pew Research Survey.
Karol K putting the “curse” in Cursor AI.
Everyone at the airport is stressed out… except for Charlotte.
Perhaps the most fun anyone has ever had on an office chair.
Feeling Lucky? Here’s a way to add a “Random Post” button to your WordPress site.
Matt Medeiros created Rocket Fuel Rush, a simple but highly addictive AI-created game.
The Severance Theme in SuperMario 64 Soundfont absolutely slaps.
And finally…
In an epic battle, sometimes you are your own worst enemy.
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