WP Weekly 225 - Wins - New Launches, 2025 Predictions, Year 2024 Recap

All the 2024 stuff is behind us; hoping everyone is a winner going forward in this amazing WordPress community. Let’s start 2025 with WordPress goodness upfront and winners of The WP Awards 2024 event.

The WP Awards 2024 Result: The Top Five Winners are ACF Pro, WooCommerce, Elementor, Wordfence, and The Admin Bar. Check the Full 2024 Result with the top three winners in every category. This event was made possible by: GoDaddy, 20i Hosting, Pressable, Crocoblock, WP Division, & Dynamic.ooo.

↑ Community Sponsors supporting this weekly

• Progress Planner Pro Launch… led by the original founders of Yoast, launching this week on Jan 09, 2025, is the Progress Planner Pro solution. The first 99 buyers can secure Progress Planner Pro for just €99 /yr; after that, it will be priced at €149 /yr.
  
  
• For Breakdance Effects… the creator of BricksFusion for the Bricks Builder has launched BreakFusion for Breakdance users to add animated effects. Also, Jose Tamu of NextBricks for Bricks has launched Dancepad for adding beautiful animated elements to websites made with Breakdance builder.
  
  
• Firebox launching LTD… Firebox, popup plugin for WordPress users, is changing plans with new pricing and site limits from February 2025. Also, they are introducing Lifetime plans like Basic Plan (€249.50), Pro Plan (€349.50), and Growth Plan (€549.50).
  
  
• AI WordPress Workflows… got noticed is AI Workflow Automation no-code visual drag and drop workflow builder allowing users to build complex multi-step AI workflow within the WordPress dashboard.
  
  

New Launches: Security, SEO, Social, & Woo

Patchstack API for All… Patchstack App is now accessible entirely as an API. All Patchstack Developer accounts can access API for free with the availability of more than 100 endpoints for integration and workflow setup.

SEO for WordPress… Robert DeVore has released a free SEO for WordPress plugin promising a light weight way for on-site SEO things on your WordPress website – minus dashboard clutter and performance drag.

ClickSocial… Syed Balki and the team have launched ClickSocial for scheduling and posting posts on social sites directly from the WordPress dashboard.

Woo Journey Map… the team at Mini Plugins has released a free Customer Journey Map plugin for WooCommerce users. It automatically records every page a customer visits until they place an order.

More: New Updates & Releases

• WooCommerce site has added 2 year plan option, for example.
• WP Rocket introduced new pricing plans for up to 500 sites.
• Kinsta’s new PHP Performance tool for easy resource allocation.
• Brain Gardner has moved Powder theme to personal website.
• Marko Krstic released Finder plugin for blocks & synced patterns.
• EZ Smith launched a design inspiration gallery at DesignInspo.

1. WordPress Predictions… David McCan published his 10 predictions for the WordPress ecosystem in 2025. Like forking will become much easier with AI, pricing will see an upward trend, Divi 5 Rewrite and Etch builder will have good start.
   
   
2. B2B Business Predictions… Todd E Jones shared five predictions for the business world. Like building a brand is more important with the rise of AI, connecting with our target audience will happen differently, and people are craving community.
   
   
3. Namecheap Domain Trends… the .com is still the number one TLD choice, followed by .shop and .xyz TLDs. The .dev TLD has the best renewal rate at 57% . Also, 59.4% of people own one domain only, and 0.4% own over 100+ domains.
   
   
4. Cloudflare Internet Trends… revealed an increase in global Internet traffic by 17.2% in 2024. Close to one-third of mobile device traffic came from Apple iOS devices, and Android had more than 90% share in 29 countries or regions. Almost 4.3% of emails were identified as malicious in the year 2024.
   
   

Updates: FluentCRM, FlowMattic, WebberZone KB

FluentCRM… 2.9.31v has added email preview on all campaigns screen. They have also replaced Google Fonts URL with the Bunny CDN for faster loading.

FlowMattic… 5.0v is a big update that added a visual workflow builder with a tree-based interface. The tables module got the database integration.

WebberZone KB… Ajay D’Souza has done a full codebase rewrite, introducing classes and autoloading, in 2.3.0v of the WebberZone Knowledge Base plugin.

Quick Bits

• WordPress Org is now all open again after the holiday break.
• Vinny McKee shared (Links X) new look of Wicked Plugins site.
• WP Coupons is open for acquisition (LinkedIn) and new home.
• Matt Medeiros has acquired (Links X) MasterWP .com domain.
• WP Community Collective announces nonprofit incorporation.
• 2025 WP Global Sponsorship program at $160,000 per year.
• Nice to get featured among 25+ WordPress Influencer names!
  
  

Community Members on WordPress Status Quo

Joost de Valk published about breaking the status quo and vision for new WordPress. “We need to supplement WordPress.org updates with other sources, so that what happened to Advanced Custom Fields, can’t happen again. Lots of hosts are currently experimenting with or already putting in place mirrors…”.

Matt Mullenweg commented on this, “I think this is a great idea for you to lead and do under a name other than WordPress. There’s really no way to accomplish everything you want without starting with a fresh slate from a trademark, branding, and people point of view”.

Karim Marucchi expanded on this, “We need to prevent a single entity from doing to WordPress what befell other open-source projects that shrank or died while protecting one party’s market position”.

Patricia Brun Torre published an open reply to Joost de Valk’s post, “I understand that some people have moved beyond this and can no longer trust Matt; this is not my case. I might be an eternal optimist, but I want to believe that, once he realises what is best for WordPress…”.

Ben May shared (Links X) and published, “I don’t buy the idea that some kind of board or committee replacing photomatt is in WordPress’ best interest. Rather, accept WP is a Matt/Automattic project, get over the petty squabbles and refocus in 2025 on building with a world class CMS”.

Year in Review 2024: WordPress Brands & People

• WordPress Brands…
• Elementor with 22 new features & 105 GitHub requests – video.
• WP Manage Ninja with new launches & 1 million active installs.
• Barn2 ended 2024 with $1,699,326 revenue from plugin sales.
• xCloud had a growth year with six cloud providers integration.
• NitroPack with mention at Google Google I/O 2024 and more.
• Kadence 2024 with new launches like AI, Patterns Hub, & more.
  
  
• WordPress People…
• Carrie Dils on WordPress state & new show about menopause.
• Sujay Pawar on more WP products, no smoking, and kittens.
• Syed Balki detailed recap & products powering 30 million sites.
• Robert DeVore 2024 with launch of many WordPress plugins.
  
  

2024 was amazing here at TheWPWeekly as many more folks joined and flourished in the WordPress goodness. Thank you, and have a great start to 2025!

mySites .guru is the Ultimate Toolkit for managing multiple WordPress sites with the award winning Site Audit, Backup, Update, Secure, Monitor.

Merchants love Omnisend. So will you – Omnisend is trusted by 125,000+ brands who love using it for email & SMS marketing. Sign up now

Kinsta managed WordPress hosting with unparalleled speed, leveraging Google Cloud and the latest C3D servers, it ensures lightning-fast performance.

↑ Community Sponsors supporting this weekly

Trending WordPress Deals

• Admin & Site Enhancement, ASE Pro Lifetime Offer from $59
• Dancepad LTD from $139 unlimited website for Breakdance.
• Create Frontend WP Admin Dashboard, LTD from $119.99
• All-In-One WordPress Login Security Plugin, LTD option available.
• Storage for WordPress backups at pCloud 100GB at $139 LTD.
• Lifetime Deals Database with 100+ WordPress product LTDs.
  
  

Upcoming Events

January 11, 2025: WordCamp Kolhapur 2025, Maharashtra, India.
January 18, 2025: WordCamp Kolkata 2025, West Bengal, India.
February 02, 2025: WordCamp Pune 2025, Maharashtra, India.

February 20, 2025: WordCamp Asia 2025, Manila, Philippines.
March 07, 2025: WordCamp Madrid 2025, Comunidad de Madrid, Spain.
March 21, 2025: WordCamp Nepal 2025, Kathmandu, Nepal.

New Here? Get the Next Issue of WP Weekly.
Promote in 2025? Book for 2025 Sponsorship Slots.
More Goodness! Connect on Twitter (X), Facebook, LinkedIn

Got a new WordPress product or service or update to feature in the newsletter? Use the Submit Form to get started. Note: Some part of this content may contain affiliate and sponsored links, read the disclosure.

By
Davinder Singh Kainth
A creative who Loves to Create Online Spaces powered by WordPress.

Twitter / Facebook / LinkedIn