DEV: The Dark Mode Rises

Welcome to DEV, your fortnightly roundup of WordPress news, clever builds, and the humans (for now) behind it all.

Things are changing fast. We’re here to try to keep up… and help you stay in the loop.

Stick around to the end to see the cutest unboxing video of all time.

In today’s edition:

WordPress hands AI the keys. (Don’t worry, it asked first.)

Meanwhile in Opposite Land, EmDash is the one obsessed with AI.

How we made our Premium Plan even more of a handy toolkit for busy devs.

Hot Off The Presses: What’s New?

Is it just me, or is the absolute worst thing for your productivity… having a 2pm meeting?

Your brain refuses to start anything meaningful before it. You’re not quite resting, not quite working, just… buffering.

If you’re in procrastination mode right now, we’ve got you. Scroll on for the latest WordPress updates to fill the void until motivation (hopefully) kicks in.

WordPress Now Lets AI Run Your Site (Kinda)

WordPress has shifted from letting AI read your site… to letting it actually do things.

The change is powered by Model Context Protocol (MCP), which allows AI tools to plug directly into your site and perform 19 new types of tasks, including drafting and publishing posts, building pages, managing and replying to comments, and creating, renaming, and restructuring categories and tags.

As Ana-Maria Stanciuc described, it’s like AI agents used to have a “window” into your site, and now they have a “door.” Knock knock. Who’s there? Not a human anymore!

Don’t worry, you’re still in control:

• The AI agent checks with you before publishing, creating, updating, or deleting anything
• New posts default to drafts, so you can catch any wild hallucinations before they go live
• Even “delete” isn’t forever, you can restore content within 30 days
• It won’t randomly go rogue and turn your company website into a hobbit fanfic blog (without your approval)

For the average WordPress wrangler juggling dozens of client sites and a half-written blog post from 2022… this could actually help. You can spin up draft posts in seconds, clean up formatting and categorization messes, organize content you were definitely going to sort “later,” and maybe even keep client blogs alive without chasing them for content (again).

But of course, there’s a potential dark side: AI content flooding the web, SEO turning into even more of a battlefield, and readers wondering if a human wrote anything on your site.

Turning your site into a “slop factory” still isn’t a strategy. Low-value content is low-value, even if humans are no longer required to produce it.

Have you experimented with giving an AI agent the keys to your WordPress door? How’s it going… and how much do you trust it? We’d love to hear your take.

EmDash: A New “Spiritual Successor” Just Entered the Chat 👀

Cloudflare has just launched something called EmDash, which they are very casually calling a “spiritual successor to WordPress.” Cool cool cool. No pressure.

So what is it?

• A CMS built from scratch
• Runs on Cloudflare’s serverless platform
• Written entirely in TypeScript
• Treats plugins like sandboxed apps with permissions
• And is very, very into AI

In other words: WordPress… but if it grew up in 2026 instead of 2003.

The big pitch? Plugins can’t mess with each other or core. Which, considering most WordPress vulnerabilities come from dodgy plugins, makes sense.

Unsurprisingly, the April 1st announcement got everyone talking. (Including a GitHub issue asking if it was literally an April Fools joke.)

So… what are people saying?

• The Big M himself, Matt Mullenweg, insists that EmDash isn’t “spiritually tied to WordPress at all” and warns against claiming to “be our spiritual successor without understanding our spirit.”
• Hendrik Luehrsen says it exposes Gutenberg’s biggest weakness: a slick interface sitting on top of a system that was never redesigned for how content actually works today.
• Brian Coords calls it a genuinely smart rethink of CMS architecture… just not one that’s ready to compete with WordPress’s real-world ecosystem anytime soon.
• Olivier Dobberkau goes full philosophical, calling the admin panel a façade and arguing the real product is an API for AI agents, not humans… meaning you might not be the main user of your own CMS for much longer.

EmDash is interesting not because it’s going to dethrone WordPress tomorrow, but because it says a lot about where the web is going.

What do you think? Is EmDash a full stop for WordPress, or just a pause?

Our Premium Plan Just Got a Whole Lot More Premium

In news a little closer to home… we’ve been busy.

As in “turning our Premium Plan into a full digital agency starter pack” busy.

We recently rolled out a bunch of new upgrades to the Premium Plan, built around what you actually need day-to-day to build cool stuff for your clients.

Some of the new features packed into the Premium Plan include:

• Front-of-the-queue VIP support: Skip the line, fix things faster.
• $900 in free credits: For hosting, on-demand dev, and proactive monitoring. 🤑
• Sweet discounts: Half price hosting and Pro Email = bigger margins.
• Zero-fee billing: A feature that could save you a ton over time if you’re billing multiple clients monthly.

One of our members, Flavio, wrote:

“Thank you VERY much to the WPMU DEV team for listening, improving the Premium plan, and making it far more “reseller‑friendly.” This update shows real commitment to supporting agencies like ours.”

Cheers, Flavio! You know we’ve always got your back. 😉

👉 Read the full scoop on what’s new.

Mind Bloggling Facts & Stats

• On April 1st, SolidWP’s WordPress Vulnerability Report revealed 225 new vulnerabilities that had emerged in the WordPress ecosystem, including 91 that still remain unpatched. Don’t be a fool. Keep your site safe! (Source)
• WordPress can no longer boast that it powers 43% of the web. The number has dropped to 42.4%. It’s the first time that figure has dropped below 43% since 2022. The interesting part? The category of sites being built without any content management system (aka. AI-produced sites) has increased for the first time in a decade. (Source)
• The robots aren’t just building the sites, they’re also visiting them. Human Security’s State of AI Traffic & Cyberthreat Benchmark Report revealed that non-human internet traffic is growing EIGHT TIMES faster than human traffic. (Source)

Blogs & Resources You Shouldn’t Miss

Bryce Culp calls WordPress 7.0 a “foundational leap forward” and explains how to prepare your site for the impending AI era.

Built your side-hustle pre-AI? A Hostinger survey says you’re more likely to still be doing things the “old-fashioned way.”

Elementor has launched their own agentic AI for WordPress. Describe what you want and Angie will build it for you.

Meanwhile, Nick Hamze has been chatting with Dewey, his WordPress version of the ever-helpful Clippy.

Jason Coleman doesn’t do anything without Flint, his 24/7 AI assistant who lives on an old gaming PC in his basement.

The 100th episode of Seriously, BUD? features AI hosts having a surprisingly human chat about the folks behind WordPress.

WP Plugin Insights uses AI to scan your plugins for trouble. Javier Casares and Mark Heijnen explain how.

Coffee Break Distractions

In contrast to all of the stuff above, here’s something whimsical and amazing built in the real world, no AI required.

A fascinating thread about a dinosaur question you probably never thought to ask.

This senior dog came last in the race, but he’s won first place in our hearts. 🥹

Our brains are biological computers. So, can they run DOOM?

Maybe not, but you can render Doom in 3D with just CSS. Niels Leenheer made it happen.

Is it worth tattooing “Patchstack” on your ankle to get stock options in the company? Soeren von Varchim thought so!

The goodest of good dogs. (Is someone chopping onions?!)

XKCD: Came for the “Dark Mode” joke, stuck around for the drop down menu below it. (My fave is “Airplane Mode”)

And finally…

Duck in a box. 🦆🥹

Love this mix of nerdery and nonsense? Share it with your fave human. 💗