Monthly journals are updated weekly, as each InfluenceWP Weekly newsletter drops.
Partner Spotlight
WP Security Ninja
WordPress sites face attacks every day, yet many site owners still feel stuck when security tools get too technical. That gap is where WP Security Ninja has built its name. It presents WordPress security in a way that feels usable, practical, and far less overwhelming for normal site owners, agencies, and busy professionals.
Visit WP Security Ninja on InfluenceWP to learn more about the brand and the plugin, watch the first look video, read video companion posts, and get an exclusive deal.
InfluenceWP Updates
Plugin Palooza
InfluenceWP is hosting an event called Plugin Palooza, offering $2k in premium solutions from some of the most reputable vendors in WordPress, for 90% off.
This is your chance to load up on battle-tested, pro-level plugins from names you already know and respect—at the lowest prices they’ve ever offered.
Partnerships
Exclusive Deal. No Affiliation. Just Savings. 👇
- EventKoi—Fast, Modern Events Plugin Built for Today’s WordPress. 20% off
FREE Giveaways 🎉
InfluenceWP ran viral giveaways for the following partners. Want to do the same? Great! Please submit your giveaway using our simple form, and we’ll take care of the rest.
- Termageddon (IWP Deal) protects websites from over 120 privacy laws, rules, and regulations. Plus, the policies auto-update as laws change or new laws go into effect, making it a fantastic set-it-and-forget-it option for web designers and agencies with multiple clients. Now’s your chance to protect two websites with the most comprehensive website policies and cookie consent solution on the market.
Updates From Our Partners
- SEOPress v9.7 (IWP Deal) is a major update that brings their first React-powered settings screens—designed to deliver a smoother, faster, and more intuitive user experience, even better URL redirects, author schema improvements, two new endpoints (automatic schemas and SEO alerts), and a ton more improvements and fixes.
- WP Umbrella v2.22.1 (IWP Deal) brings improved broken link checker crawling, backup scan performance for large sites, redirect router performance, and a support page redesign with data counts, as well as some fixes.
- Fluent Forms v6.2 (IWP Deal) brings improvements to the internal framework for better performance and PHP 8.4 support, Stripe payment confirmation security, data export security, database query performance for reports, and overall plugin security and stability, as well as a filter hook for conversational form extra inputs.
- Coupon Affiliates for WooCommerce v1.3.2 (IWP Deal) brings a new SMS Notifications feature, a “Send Notification Email” checkbox to the Add New Affiliate and Add New Coupon admin forms, and performance improvements, as well as numerous fixes and improved security.
- uiXpress v1.2.21 (IWP Deal) is a small but meaningful maintenance release focused on stability, polish, and a handy new settings option, bringing smarter hover submenus, dashboard tab reordering, and dark mode polish, as well as numerous bug fixes. For those not familiar with this plugin, it completely modernizes the WordPress dashboard.
- Independent Analytics v2.14.7 (IWP Deal) adds URL filters to the User Journeys report, integration with the Complianz plugin, form validation to Campaign Builder, WordPress 7.0 compatibility, and numerous other enhancements and fixes.
- Infinite Uploads v3.2 (IWP Deal) is a massive update, bringing full folder management, improved filtering, sorting, and enhanced search to the WordPress Media Library—unlimited nested folders. drag-and-drop files, color coding of folders, folder support in the media picker for popular page builders, and more.
Other WordPressers Not to Be Overlooked
- Mike McAlister (X) announced an intuitive and unobtrusive way to bring responsive controls to your typography, margin, padding, and alignment styles within the WordPress block editor when using OllieWP. I’m using OllieWP on more and more sites, and I highly recommend giving it a try. ThemeSwitcher Pro (IWP Deal) makes it easy to switch from a classic theme over to a block-based theme like Ollie.
- Two Factor v0.16 (Changelog) brings new features such as a dedicated settings page for plugin configuration in the WordPress dashboard, support links filter so consumers can customize contextual recovery/help links, and a refreshed backup codes UI styling/behavior, as well as a breaking change with the removal of legacy FIDO U2F provider support and numerous developer updates and bug fixes. I use this powerful (and free) plugin on every website under my management.
- Per Soderlind (X) announced the free Virtual Media Folders—Migrate plugin (GitHub), which allows you to import folders and file assignments from other media folder plugins like FileBird, Enhanced Media Library, Real Media Library, HappyFiles, and more.
- Mahdi Khaksar (X) announced the free Conditional Payment Gateways for WooCommerce plugin (Changelog) that allows you to hide certain payment gateways based on criteria like cart totals, shipping destination, coupons applied, and more.
- ACF Pro v6.8 (Announcement Post) brings three powerful features: WordPress Abilities API integration, automatic structured data, and new WP-CLI commands for managing ACF JSON—all working together to make your ACF content discoverable, interoperable, and ready for the next generation of AI tools and search experiences, with improved developer workflows to match.
- Auto-Close v3.1.0 (Changelog) brings taxonomy-based exclusions, automatic comment reopening when you update a post, and email notifications after each scheduled run. This free plugin allows you to close comments, pingbacks, and trackbacks automatically in WordPress.
WordPress Tidbits
EmDash announced itself as the “spiritual successor” to WordPress. The WordPress block editor finally gets responsive controls, kind of. I was on the WP-Tonic podcast talking about WordPress plugins in the world of AI.
EmDash
I stay out of the “business” side of WordPress. EmDash, or at least the discussion of it falls into that category. Instead, I concentrate on areas where I can potentially make a positive impact.
So, when I was asked on the WP-Tonic podcast about my thoughts on EmDash, I really didn’t have any, other than to draw attention to a wonderful article I read from Brian Coords (X) right before the show, by mere coincidence. As I told Brian, “It’s refreshing to read content where folks really try to see both sides and not blanket-bash WordPress or emDash, in this case.”
Honestly, I have zero desire to look deeper into EmDash. I bought a .com domain from Cloudflare (my recommended registrar, by the way) related to EmDash as an investment play. I own Cloudflare stock. That’s it.
The WordPress inner circle, which can influence its direction, appears to be paying attention to EmDash, and that is what really matters. Let’s take the good from the technical side of EmDash and learn from it. As a community, they can’t touch WordPress.