Here’s your roundup of new tools and goodies, clever developer tricks, bug battles, new features and community creations. Brought to you by WPMU DEV.
Stick around until the end to see a weatherman’s Halloween costume that left his co-anchor in a fit of giggles.
In today’s edition:
- Defender Pro’s ability to fend off malicious bots has been boosted with a very powerful new weapon.
- A handful of dev candy in the form of useful tools and cool projects from the community.
- The magic of Blueprints comes to WordPress Studio 1.6.0.
Hot off the press: what’s new?
Forget Freddy Krueger. The real nightmare is trying to log in something on a new device.
“Use a different password for everything! It’s safer!” they say. Sure, but now I’m haunted by 47 variations of the same password and zero memory of which one works, while my mind is possessed by nothing but random trivia and K-Pop Demon Hunters lyrics.
Honestly? I’ll take the ‘or else’.
Fortunately, no password is required to stay up to date with what’s new in WordPress. Just keep scrolling.
Spooky seasonal projects from scary smart people
There are so many brilliant people in the WordPress world creating tools that are terrifyingly GOOD and will make your developers’ lives a little easier.
Here’s a look at the WordPress wizardry that recently caught our attention:
- Made per Sønderland WordPress Readmea VS Code extension that delivers live previews of readme.txt directly into your editor. No more formatting gremlins sneaking in unnoticed. 👉 Give it a spin.
- Reyes Martínez introduced Update Copilot, a Modular DS feature that analyzes plugin updates and assigns security scores based on more than 15 risk factors that can quickly turn your site into a haunted house of terror. 👉 Make updates less spooky.
- Lesley Sim unleashed EventKoi Litethe free version of the EventKoi plugin, perfect for your Rocky Horror Picture Show movie night or David S. Pumpkins-theme party. 👉 Start planning events.
- This adaptive reading time calculator is a little gem of a tool, which dynamically calculates reading time based on content length and reading level, perfect for preventing visitors from ‘ghosting’ your site. 👉 Grab it for your blog.
Consider this your treat bag of tools, not tricks. 🎃
Summon sites in seconds: WordPress Studio 1.6.0 unlocks blueprints
WordPress Studio just got magical powers in version 1.6.0 thanks to built-in Blueprint support. Now you can start new sites based on your own recipes. No more staring into the yawning abyss of an empty WordPress installation and wondering where your life went wrong.
What actually is a blueprint?
If you’re new to Blueprints, think of them as a recipe (in JSON form) for a WordPress site. They define PHP and WP versions, which themes/plugins to install, which settings to enable, and even demo content. WordPress Studio then reads the blueprint and brings your site to life.
Here’s how it works
- Hit Add site → Start with blueprint.
- Choose one of the new presets (Quick Start, Development or Commerce).
- Give your site a name, adjust the advanced settings if necessary and click “Add” and abracadabraa pre-configured developer site.
Studio Blueprints are a lightweight and portable way for teams to stay consistent without having to lug around entire site archives. It’s basically a lightning bolt for your development workflow. The current version of Studio is included three starter blueprints:
- Start quickly: Reflects the WordPress.com Business installation
- Development: debug settings, dev tools, plugin/theme settings
- Trade: WooCommerce + companion plugins ready to use
Why this is kind of a problem (especially for agencies and developer teams)
- Standardization FTW: Add a blueprint.json to your repository and every teammate gets the same local environment.
- Faster customer onboarding: Create a WooCommerce or custom theme blueprint once and spin it over and over again, like a magician pulling sites out of a hat.
- Reliable testing: Do you need to reproduce that one weird bug in staging? Start an exact clone of your installation.
Easy to use blueprint builders
There are also some really nice community projects that provide a user interface for creating blueprints, giving you a more visual way to build:
Ultimately, blueprints allow more time to be spent on the fun, creative work of building things (the fun form of witchcraft), rather than the tedious task of setting up. If you get them right, they open the door to faster and more collaborative WordPress development.
👉 View the official message
👉 Learn how to create your own custom WordPress blueprints
Defender Pro’s supernaturally powerful new feature
You don’t have to draw salt circles around your server to keep the demons out. Just update Defender Pro.
The latest version introduces the new Malicious bone detectoran eerily powerful set of features that give you two supernatural layers of defense against malicious bots before they can wreak havoc on your site’s performance (or your sanity). Think of it as an exorcism for bad traffic.
The two combined layers of protection are:
- Catch fake bots pretending to be legitimate crawlers. This means that any mysterious bots claiming to be Googlebot or Bingbot will be fully investigated, using IP and DNS validation to block any impostors.
- Trap bots that ignore robots.txt. This feature adds an invisible booby-trapped link to the footer of your site. It is safe from real crawlers, but it immediately activates and blocks any suspicious visitor who breaks the rules.
Together, these features strengthen your firewall, reduce fake traffic, and keep your site safe, stable, and wonderfully unoccupied. No garlic, silver bullets or arcane rituals required.
If your bandwidth has disappeared like a ghost in the night, this one’s for you.
👉 Meet your new digital demon slayer.
👉 Learn more about the malicious bot detector
Mind Blogging Facts and Statistics
- WordPress Campus Connect has already met six times this year, with five more events planned or currently underway in classrooms in Spain, India, Uganda and Bangladesh. (Source)
- With 2,297 participants from 64 countries, 28 speakers and 24 unique lectures, WordPress Accessibility Day was a resounding success and showed that inclusion is serious business. (Source)
- Wordfence detected 1,857 new WordPress plugin vulnerabilities in the third quarter of 2025, which is 32% fewer than the previous quarter. They also paid out over $25,000 to all the brave hunters in their bug bounty program. (Source)
Blogs and resources not to be missed
Stop looking for ideas. The WP Girls have created one kit that allows you to… a whole year of content inspiration.
Discover how Joni Halabi is making the internet more inclusive, one translated transcript at a time.
Are you spreading the peanut butter too thinly? Why focus really matters in the WordPress space.
Your plugin only has 10 installations? Hey, we all have to start somewhere! Here’s how to get more.
Remkus Devries walks through his eerily efficient 15 minute process for diagnosing an underperforming WordPress site.
Pssst…did you hear? Ollie’s menu designer can be added to WordPress core… 👀
Nightmare thoughts that keep you awake at night: how many turnover, downtime can cost you on Black Friday?
Distraction during the coffee break
A Halloween costume you’ve probably already done that.
Alex, founder of ProgrammerHat, wants to make WordPress the fastest CMS in the world rewrite in C (or Rust). Yes, it’s a wild idea, but the result could be a 20x speed boost. 😳
AI talks the talk, but is that trust dangerous? Here it is why grumpy designer Eric Karkovack is on his guard.
The same energy is a visual search engine full of atmosphere, no words needed.
Build your own sticker cat-a-log of all the cute kitties you see IRL this adorably smart app.
“To write a blog post, you first need to redesign your blog.” (Umm…anyone else feel called?)
“Why didn’t you do anything today?” ‘That was me hypnotized by the galloping CSS horse.”
And finally…
Receive your weather updates only on Halloween Ferdinand, the mystical meteorologist.
Do you like this mix of nerdery and nonsense? Forward it to your favorite WordPress geek. 💗
#DEV #Pumpkin #Spice #Nice