WordPress 7.1, NoDaddys, variable fonts in Divi, AI marketing tools, meta descriptions, World Cup logos and font, social media strategy and ceviche. I’ve been fighting through bugs in two tools that are a big part of my workflow. One of those tools is the one used to email these blog posts to our subscribers. I still don’t know the exact reason why, but something caused sending for fail for three weeks in a row. I hope it is resolved so that you’re seeing this post in a timely manner. You’ll find all of this week’s news below and you may want to visit the site to catch up on past weeks.

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

• FluentCart 1.5.0 – Advanced Variations, Built In the core – Free
• WordPress 7.1 Release Squad Announced, Focus Shifts to AI, Collaboration, Media, Performance, and More
• From a 7 KB file to a 13-year backdoor operation
• Ultimate Member WordPress Plugin Vulnerability Affects Up To 200k Sites
• WP Rocket Now Offers Free CDN For Your Most Important Pages
• WordPress Developers Say New AI Feature Does Not Belong In Core
• Automattic Wins Privilege Fight Over Pre-Lawsuit Trademark Strategy Slack Messages, Court Set to Rule on Motions to Dismiss
• Plugin Developers and Site Maintainers Push Back on WordPress.org’s 24-Hour Update Delay
• WordPress AI Team Proposes Adding Knowledge Post Type and Guidelines to Core
• GoDaddy’s Adam Warner Challenges “NoDaddys” After Top Tier Benchmark Result, Company Reveals Engineering Push Behind the Numbers
• Novamira Pro 1.4.0: Beaver Builder specialization
• WordPress page builder market share 2026: Elementor leads at 32.67%

• AI-Recommended Brands Saw 2.5x More Site Visits: Similarweb
• Cloudflare and beehiiv give publishers new AI crawler controls
• ChatGPT recommendations drive more brand website visits: Study
• A 13-word edit can steer what deep-research AI agents recommend
• Stop trying to replace people with AI
• How to Start Building Your Own Marketing Tools with AI (The Only Beginner’s Guide.)
• Your AI salesforce is already selling your brand. The question is who trained it.
• What if you were held accountable for your AI slop?
• A Third Of Fintech Is Invisible To AI Agents
• 6 content audit workflows to build in Claude

• 3 ways to build a more complete SEO ROI model
• Why continuous learning is now part of search performance
• Google Says SEO Tools Lack Access To Its Internal Metrics
• ChatGPT Is Secretly Googling Things: This Tool Shows You Exactly What
• Google Cautions Against Markdown Versions Of Websites For AI SEO
• Why AI Visibility Does Not Only Depend On SEO
• The Grounding Wars Are Coming: How AI Visibility Creates Its Own Black-Hat Playbook
• B2B brands rank in Google but appear in just 3% of AI Overviews
• Tailor Your Feed: The Google Discover fan-out that surfaces niche sites
• 81.8% Of My ‘AI Assistant’ Traffic Was Fake. The Googlebot Number Was Worse
• 10 SEO Trends I’ve Seen Firsthand in 2026 (With Data)
• Google Answers Question About SEO For AI Agents
• Page indexing report in Google Search Console delayed
• Google: Meta Descriptions Not Required For SEO. But They’re Worthwhile.
• Why Internal Links Quietly Decay & How To Reclaim The Equity You’re Losing
• Google Says AI Visibility Hinges On Content People Actually Want To Read

• Adobe’s AI Assistant Wants to Give Photographers More Time for Actual Creative Tasks
• Delightful new Warner Bros Animation logo reveal is the perfect antidote to CGI saturation
• The viral World Cup logo-covering joke is already getting old
• From beginner to pro artist in 3 years: the 5 art lessons that made it possible
• Does the 2026 World Cup font have a problem?
• Why drawing dragons can be such a rewarding creative exercise
• Adobe Acquires AI Upscaling Specialists Topaz Labs
• What does Adobe’s Topaz Labs acquisition mean for creatives?
• Is AI creating a divide among creatives?
• Why are we all obsessed with anti-design?
• No, you haven’t accidentally downloaded a banking app – that really is the new Winter Olympics 2030 logo
• Elephant Seal Scolds Penguins in Superb Photo Shortlisted for Wildlife Award
  
  

  ‘Right of Way’ by John Harrison. A group of royal penguins draw the ire of an elephant seal as they walk to the shoreline, prompting them to change course.

• Instagram looks to take on streaming services with longer-form, episodic and live formats for its TV app
• Five shifts in social media strategy that separate winners from wallpaper
• Meta to Scrap ‘Off-Facebook Activity’ Feature That Curbed Web Tracking

• Make ‘Travel Cake’ for Your Next Journey
• In Search of Where My Grandparents Met, I Found the Best Ceviche of My Life

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.