WPBeginner Spotlight 08: WordPress.com Interface Overhaul, Major Acquisitions, and Yearly Recaps

The WordPress ecosystem is off to a strong start in 2025. WordPress.com is updating its interface, bringing it closer to the core WordPress experience.

Automattic is also making waves with its decision to reduce sponsored contributions, while OptinMonster has added new browser targeting and event tracking features.

As we reflect on 2024, several WordPress companies share their achievements and plans for 2025. WPForms, All in One SEO, and Uncanny Automator are all setting ambitious goals for the year ahead.

We also have new plugins to check out, including tools for faster image loading and writing books with the WordPress block editor.

Let’s explore what’s new and exciting in the world of WordPress this month!

WordPress.com Starts Bringing Their User Interface Closer to Core WordPress

WordPress.com has rolled out a significant update to their user interface, bringing it closer to the core WordPress experience.

This change is part of a larger effort to align the WordPress.com interface with the standard wp-admin interface. This will phase out the custom “Calypso” interface previously used for logged-in users.

Jacopo Tomasone, Staff Engineer at WordPress.com, explained the reasoning behind the update:

“By transitioning all WordPress.com users to the standard wp-admin WordPress interface, we aim to: offer familiarity, improve support, and allow our team to innovate into the future. Supporting two different interfaces has become increasingly challenging, and this update will streamline the experience for our users.”

Maintaining both the Calypso interface and the core WordPress admin dashboard has become increasingly difficult. This has led to duplicated efforts and an inconsistent user experience.

The transition to the standard wp-admin interface is designed to offer a more consistent and intuitive experience across WordPress products. In turn, this will make it easier for users to follow tutorials and take advantage of existing WordPress resources.

This update is just the beginning of a gradual process that will continue over the next few months as WordPress.com works toward a more unified user experience.

OptinMonster Added New Browser Targeting and Multiple Event Tracking Features 🎯

OptinMonster, the leading tool for lead generation and conversion optimization, has rolled out new features. They aim to help businesses and marketers deliver the right message to the right user, in the right place, at the right time.

The new browser targeting update allows site owners to show personalized offers based on the browser visitors are using—whether it’s Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or others. This can create a more tailored experience by making campaigns even more relevant to visitors.

By combining browser targeting with device-based targeting and other powerful personalization rules like geolocation, site owners can experiment with different strategies and create highly specific campaigns.

Additionally, OptinMonster has introduced multiple-event tracking. This feature allows businesses to track various user actions on their website and see the data in Google Analytics.

Rather than just focusing on one event, like a button click, users can now monitor multiple interactions such as scrolling, form submissions, or engagement with specific content.

This level of tracking gives a deeper view of how visitors are interacting with a site and can help businesses optimize their campaigns for more conversions.

Automattic Announces Shift in Contributions to Strengthen WordPress Ecosystem

Automattic has announced that they will reduce their sponsored contributions to the WordPress open-source project. This is part of a larger effort to strategically plan the resources they spend on contributing to WordPress.

As part of this reset, Automattic will be redirecting their resources to focus on for-profit projects within the company, including WordPress.com, Pressable, WPVIP, Jetpack, and WooCommerce.

Additionally, Automattic will now match their volunteering pledge with those made by other key players in the WordPress ecosystem. The focus will likely be on security and critical updates.

Related: Contributing to the WordPress Ecosystem (My Thoughts)

Charitable Releases New Onboarding Tool to Launch Nonprofit Campaigns in Just 5 Minutes

Charitable, a popular WordPress donation plugin, has announced their new release. It brings a range of new features that are aimed at making it quicker and easier for nonprofits to launch their fundraising campaigns.

The standout addition is the new onboarding tool, which enables organizations to set up and start their fundraising campaigns in just 5 minutes.

This update makes it easier than ever for nonprofits to get their donation drives up and running without a complicated setup process.

In addition to the onboarding tool, this release also introduces several enhancements designed to improve the user experience:

• Auto Color Contrast: To ensure better accessibility, donation forms now automatically adjust the color contrast. This can improve readability and usability for all visitors.
• New Donation Form Templates: With new templates, creating visually appealing and professional donation forms has become much quicker and easier.

By simplifying the setup process and providing powerful new tools, Charitable continues to offer solutions that help nonprofits maximize their impact and easily run campaigns.

New FunnelKit Automations Features: WooCommerce Transactional Emails + Multilingual Support & More

FunnelKit Automations has introduced exciting new updates to help businesses better engage with customers and streamline their sales processes.

The latest release brings powerful improvements to WooCommerce transactional emails. It also introduces tools for upsell offer recovery, allowing businesses to personalize and optimize customer communications.

Key Features in the Latest Update:

• Transactional Email Automations 🤖: Users can now use automations with 11 types of WooCommerce transactional emails, including order confirmations, new account notifications, and completed orders.

• Bump Upsell Offer Recovery: FunnelKit Automations has also introduced a new feature for Bump Upsell Offer Recovery. This tool helps businesses recover lost upsell opportunities by automatically offering customers a second chance to accept an upsell or bump offer, even after they have abandoned their cart.
• Email History Tracking: A new feature allows businesses to track email history and view all emails sent through the FunnelKit Automations system. This improves email performance tracking and visibility for customer communications.
• Multilingual Support: The update offers multilingual support for transactional emails, allowing businesses to communicate with their customers in their preferred language. Compatibility with popular multilingual plugins offers a seamless experience for global audiences.

With these updates, FunnelKit Automations provides businesses with more control over their email communication and sales processes.

Yearly Recaps & Future Goals 📝

Many WordPress companies and thought leaders reflected on their achievements in 2024. These recaps provide a glimpse into the growth of the WordPress ecosystem and future goals:

• Syed Balkhi, CEO of Awesome Motive shared his year in review, talking about WordPress, entrepreneurship, and mental health.
• Cloudflare published their annual recap:
  • WordPress remains the top website-building platform.
  • React is the most popular framework, and PHP is the most popular programming language (Both are used widely by WordPress developers).
  • Google remained the top service provider, dominating the browser and mobile markets with several apps and services.
• WPForms published their yearly update:
  • It is now the 7th most popular WordPress plugin with over 6 million active installs and 245 million downloads.
  • WPForms introduced significant new features, including WPForms AI for form generation, a Repeater Field for dynamic form entries, and Form Themes for enhanced design customization.
• Uncanny Automator shared their successes and future plans:
  • Last year, they launched several new integrations with platforms like MemberMouse, Stripe, Kadence, Notion, and Campaign Monitor.
  • They also added features such as CSV, JSON, and XML file import, custom actions, loopable tokens, and email attachment support.
  • Additionally, they launched a Recipe Template Library to make it easier for users to create automations.
• All in One SEO published their end of year review:
  • It is now the #18th most popular WordPress plugin, with over 3 million active installs (up from 2 million in 2021) and 170 million downloads.
  • Last year, they introduced LowFruits and SEOBoost, two powerful new SEO tools designed to make keyword research easier and boost SEO performance.
  • Other highlights include improvements to their local SEO features, new schema markup options, and better integrations with popular tools like Google Analytics and WooCommerce.

In Other News 🗞️

• The WordPress Community team has announced the 2025 Global Sponsorship Program. It invites organizations to support WordPress events worldwide and gain visibility.
• WordCamp Asia 2025 is happening on February 20-22 in Manila and will feature workshops, talks, and networking. Limited tickets are available 🎫.
• Kadence is updating their pricing and licensing structure, with changes taking effect on February 1, 2025.

• PushEngage launches a Flutter SDK, making it easier for developers to add push notifications to Flutter apps.
• Group.one has acquired GTmetrix, adding it to its portfolio alongside Rank Math and WP Rocket.
• WPCode v2.2.5 introduces a new filtering feature, allowing users to organize code snippets by type (e.g., PHP, HTML) within the WordPress dashboard.

• WordPress.com announced a new Studio Sync feature, which allows users to deploy local Studio projects directly to their live WordPress.com-hosted sites.

• MemberPress introduces email automation for online courses to improve online course engagement.
• Themify adds new design and performance features, including overlay blur effects, scrolling sliders, sticky headers, and Cloudflare Turnstile support.
• Post Status, a popular WordPress online community, has been acquired by Joost de Valk and is now a non-profit organization.
• WooCommerce announces a new Artistic Director and outlines plans for the future of WordPress eCommerce.

New Plugins 🔌

• Edge Images – Optimizes and delivers images via CDNs like Cloudflare and BunnyCDN, automatically resizing and converting the image files for faster loading.
• BlockDocs – Enables users to write books offline using the Block Editor. Users can easily write, organize, and export content as EPUB files using the familiar WordPress Block Editor.
• Click Social – A powerful social media scheduling and posting tool that helps you effortlessly manage your social media presence directly within WordPress.

That wraps up this edition of WPBeginner Spotlight. We appreciate your continued support and enthusiasm for this series.

We are looking ahead to another exciting year for WordPress, and we’d love to hear your feedback and ideas for how we can make this series even better. If there are any WordPress news, updates, or developments you’d like to see in the next issue, feel free to reach out.

We’ll be back next month with more WordPress news, updates, and community highlights. Until then, thank you for being a valuable part of our community.

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