Unicode email, Divi 5.8, agentic commerce, earn AI recommendations, domain migrations, World Cup and brands, TikTok slop and Sumo stew. I’ve been a fan of the World Cup for many years and I’ve been enjoying the tournament this year as so many stadiums familiar to me have been modified to the point where they are almost unrecognizable. Of course one change is that all stadiums are known by a generic name based on the city where it is located. If a brand sponsored the stadium, it had to cover up its name and/or logos. The best cover-up was done by Levi’s in San Francisco as the cover is the shape of their logo. Gillette had the next most interesting coverup as it looks like a pile of shaving cream outside of the “Boston” stadium. Kudos to those marketing teams for finding a clever workaround to the rules. Check out all of this week’s news in the stories listed below.

For those of you in the world of Web design, I invite you to join our new Divi Unleashed Facebook group.

• Uncanny Automator Breach Confirms Five Awesome Motive Products Compromised in Security Incident
• WordPress Testing Opens for Long-Awaited Unicode Email Address Support
• WordPress Education at WCEU 2026: More Than Learning to Build a Website
• Analyzing a persistent WordPress infection used for SEO spam
• It’s Time to Pay WordCamp Organizers and Speakers
• PSA: Supply Chain Compromise Targets ShapedPlugin, Backdoored Pro Plugins Distributed via Official Channels
• Attackers Actively Exploiting Sensitive Information Exposure Vulnerability in Gravity SMTP Plugin
• Critical Unauthenticated Arbitrary File Deletion Vulnerability Patched in Avada Builder WordPress Plugin
• Awesome Motive Breach Widens as Uncanny Automator Confirms Customer Data Theft, MonsterInsights Users Hit With Phishing Campaign
• Developer Traces 13-Year Backdoor Campaign Across 44 WordPress.org Plugins to a Single Operator
• WordPress.org Marketing Director Open Sources AI Agent Skills and Brand Writing Guide Powering Project’s Social Media
• FluentCart 1.4.2 – Introducing FluentCart customer rights, EU Withdrawal Compliance

• The Digital Renaissance: Why 2026 is the Most Exciting Year to be a Web Creator
• How to use AI to become a genius
• Agentic Commerce For Small Merchants: Which Protocol Spec Actually Matters For Your Website
• Written For Readers Who Don’t Read
• AI referrals to travel sites surge 194% as engagement rises: Adobe
• How I Use My AI Marketing Assistant After 200+ Hours
• 9 Marketing Trends I’m Seeing Firsthand in 2026 (With Data)
• Google Research Shows How AI Spam Can Be Detected
• AI Mode Sends A Different Visitor. Your Website Wasn’t Built For Them
• A German Court Made Google Liable For What Its AI Says About You
• Preferred Sources & AI Mode Are Creating Filter Bubbles – A New Discovery Problem
• Make Something Agents Want
• The Content Framework That Worked In 2019 Is Now Working Against You

• What new AI search data reveals about visibility and trust
• How travel brands can earn AI recommendations
• Google Says Markdown For AI SEO Strips Away The Parts That Matter
• Schema, LLMs & The Low Bar For ‘Evidence’ In GEO
• Google says llms.txt files won’t harm or help your search rankings
• How AI is merging paid and organic visibility
• Google penalties: Why prevention is cheaper than recovery
• Google Explains Why URLs Blocked By Robots.txt Can Still Be Indexed
• Why Publishing More Content Is Making Your SEO Worse
• Topics matter for third-party authority signals
• Google Tightens Requirements For Domain Migrations
• Rank And AI Citation Aren’t The Same Number
• Why Calling Yourself The Best Could Be Helping Your Competitors Win In AI Search
• We Analyzed 137K Sites: 97% of llms.txt Files Never Get Read
• For site moves, specify all domain variants with Google’s Change of Address tool
• Google Says X-Frame-Options Matters For SEO

• KFC’s The Colonel gets a subtle makeover in new rebrand
• The World Cup forced this brand to hide its logo – then it backfired
• New Adobe Creative Cloud updates will genuinely save you time
• From Microsoft Mico to Apple’s Little Finder Guy: why a cute brand mascot isn’t enough
• Adobe Adds More User Control to AI Features Inside Lightroom and Photoshop
• Adobe solves one of AI’s most maddening problems amongst a ton of other announcements
• The Lidl logo is forever ruined for me thanks to this weird internet conspiracy
• 4 things you won’t learn in design school (but you really need to know)

• The irritating words and phrases I wish I could mute on Designer LinkedIn
• TikTok Shows 3x More AI Slop Than YouTube, Report Finds

• The Father and Son Who Ate Every Animal Possible
• The Special Stew at the Heart of Sumo Wrestling
• The Biggest Sports Rivalries This Year Are Between National Foods
• Norway’s Olympic Team Bought 15,000 Eggs due to a Google Translate Mistake

If you see some important news that you feel we should share with our readers, please let us know and we’ll consider including it in our next post.