A 6-year-old accessibility fix was reverted in 19 hours, plus WordPress plugin sales down 48%, an open letter to Matt Mullenweg, an MCP server guide, and 47.6% of Europe on WordPress.
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Hello WordPressers!
Welcome to this week’s WP More roundup. This is WP More newsletter issue 61, where you get curated news about WordPress and the WordPress community all in one place.
Hi5 to the 22 WordPressers who joined us in the last 7 days! We are now 1122! Hip Hip Hurray!!!
This week’s biggest story starts on a Trac ticket about accessible admin notices and ends with a long-time core committer losing his WordPress.org positions. We also have a plugin founder on why new sales are down 48% in two years, an open letter to Mullenweg on accessibility in WordPress, a hands-on MCP server tutorial, and data on WordPress across 32 European countries.
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In this Issue:
- Why WordPress Plugin Sales Are Falling
- An Open Letter to Matt Mullenweg on Accessibility
- How to Build an MCP Server in WordPress
- WordPress Across 32 European Countries
- Mullenweg Orders an Accessibility Revert
Why WordPress Plugin Sales Are Falling and What to Do About It
Katie Keith of Barn2 explains why new plugin sales have dropped for about two years. Over two years to September 2026, her company’s new sales revenue fell 48% while renewals rose 32%. Paid Memberships Pro and GravityKit saw drops of 48% and 47%. She names five causes: collapsing search traffic, a smaller market, plugins AI can replace, a category leader, and features added to core. Some of the lost traffic is not coming back, so she is leaning on partnerships, email, marketplaces, and platforms beyond WordPress.
Read the full blog on WP Product Talk →
Next, an open letter to Matt Mullenweg puts accessibility in WordPress under the spotlight.
An Open Letter to Matt Mullenweg on Accessibility in WordPress
Darrell Hilliker, a blind screen reader user and publisher of Blind Access Journal, has published an open letter to Matt Mullenweg about Trac ticket #50486. He says reverting an imperfect change is normal, but he objects to how the decision was made, since no technical reasoning accompanied the comment removing Andrea Fercia’s roles. He also points to Mullenweg’s August declaration that the Accessibility Team overstepped and the 2025 idea of a canonical accessibility plugin. The letter asks five questions, including whether accessibility is a core requirement, what the timeline is for accessible admin notices, and what process governs removals. Hilliker says Blind Access Journal will publish any response from Mullenweg in full and without edits.
Read the full blog on Blind Access Journal →
Now for something hands-on: how to give AI tools a way into your site.
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How to Build an MCP Server in WordPress with the Abilities API
WS Form’s Mark Westguard walks through building an MCP server in WordPress so AI clients like Claude can work with your site. He registers a simple ability that returns the site title, exposes it as an MCP tool, and locks it behind a permission check. Testing runs through MCP Inspector, VS Code, and Claude Desktop. The guide covers Abilities API 0.4.0 and MCP Adapter 0.3.0. It is meant for local experiments only, and Westguard warns both tools are still in development and may break your code.
Read the full blog on WS Form →
Next, a data report on the hosts, versions, and plugins behind Europe’s WordPress sites.
Nearly Half of European Homepages Run WordPress
Nettingale, a WordPress host, analyzed 4,096,194 homepages across 32 European countries using Common Crawl data from September 2026. WordPress runs 47.6% of them, from 59.4% in Estonia to 34.5% in Czechia among countries with at least 3,500 WordPress sites. In Lithuania, Hostinger serves 74.3% of WordPress sites, while the Netherlands’ largest host serves just 8.8%. 21.6% of sites run a version older than 6.9, and 23.0% of those showing a PHP version use PHP 7, which stopped getting security fixes in November 2022.
Read the full blog on Nettingale →
Finally, a dispute over accessibility work that played out on a Trac ticket.
Matt Mullenweg Orders an Accessibility Revert and Removes a Core Committer
Matt Mullenweg told long-time core committer Andrea Fercia he no longer holds any WordPress.org positions, titles, or authority. The comment came on Trac ticket #50486, a six-year-old effort to make admin notices accessible, where Mullenweg wrote, “Please revert all of this.” The ticket aimed to alert screen reader users when an admin notice appears. Core committer Joe Dolson had committed the change days earlier, then reverted it about 19 hours after Mullenweg’s comment, saying the complexity of notices in the admin made it premature.
Fercia, who got commit access in 2015 and has contributed to 33 releases, saw his WordPress.org account locked, then restored. The admin notices work now moves to a future release, possibly through the Feature Notifications project. Mullenweg later said in Slack the removal was no mistake because he was no longer interested in Fercia’s contributions.
Read the full blog on The Repository →
WordPress Must Read
→ Inside the 33-hour failed boardroom coup to overthrow WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg (fortune.com) – Fortune reports that on September 9, Automattic’s six-member board voted to put Matt Mullenweg on paid leave and named CFO Mark Davies interim CEO. About 33 hours later, Mullenweg was back in control, directors Toni Schneider and Sue Decker had resigned, Ann Dunwoody was removed, and Davies and chief legal officer Andy Missan were fired. The piece ties the vote to months of division over the WP Engine lawsuit, including evidence problems in court filings.
→ Shopify vs WooCommerce market share: Who’s really winning? (barn2.com) – Katie Keith uses HTTP Archive data to show the winner depends on which sites you count. Shopify leads the biggest 100,000 sites 4.7 to 1, while WooCommerce leads across all crawled sites, 6.39% to 5.06% in August 2026, down from 6.94% a year earlier. She projects Shopify passing it around the end of 2027 if the recent trend holds.
→ Pushing Standards (ma.tt) – Matt Mullenweg says WordPress 7.1’s client-side media processing relies on Chrome’s Document Isolation Policy, which worked only in Chromium-based browsers at launch. Mozilla has since expressed support and WebKit withdrew its initial concerns, with WordPress contributor Adam Silverstein driving the standards work.
→ Automattic’s New Lawyers Lose Bid for More Time in Legal Fight With WP Engine (therepository.email) – Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín denied Automattic’s request for two more months, so expert witness questioning must finish by November 17 and the first major arguments are due three days later. Susman Godfrey, which replaced Gibson Dunn, filed the request about two weeks after being hired. The jury trial is still set for October 19, 2027.
On Other WordPress News
→ What’s new for developers? (October 2026) (developer.wordpress.org) – Justin Tadlock’s monthly guide covers the WordPress 7.2 roadmap, with Beta 1 on October 20 and the final release on December 8. It also covers the wp_kses() rebuild on the HTML API, the new Ipsum default theme, and an automated security review for plugin releases.
→ What’s new in Gutenberg 24.2? (14 October) (make.wordpress.org) – Notes now float in a margin beside the content, the Navigation block’s link search covers every content type at once, and the Gallery block gets sorting and duotone. React 19 is also on by default unless an incompatible theme or plugin is detected.
→ Call for Code Review Help: Repairing Gutenberg GitHub Actions Workflows for wp/x.y Branches (make.wordpress.org) – Jonathan Desrosiers needs reviewers for “Operation Tall Stack,” roughly 500 pull requests across 20+ branches that restore broken CI on older Gutenberg release branches so security patches can be validated. He built the stacks with AI, and drafts stay unverified until a human reviews them. Reviewers claim a fix on GitHub issue GB-84853.
→ Call for feedback: the W and the site name in the Toolbar (make.wordpress.org) – A proposal would make the W always link to the Dashboard and the site name always link to the site, with the same menu in the admin, on the front end, and in the Post and Site editors. Feedback was requested by October 16, ahead of 7.2 Beta 1 on October 20.
→ Real-time Collaboration: A Guide to Sync Engines (make.wordpress.org) – Compares three sync engines being tested for server-side real-time collaboration: yjs-server, DE-RTC, and intent-log, all in the experimental gutenberg-sync-engines plugin. Each handles merge conflicts differently, and testers need WordPress 7.0+ and the Presence API plugin.
→ WordCamp Jinja 2026 Recap: Three Tracks, Two Days and Creative Currents on the Nile (central.wordcamp.org) – The fifth WordCamp Jinja ran September 19 and 20 in Uganda with more than 300 participants, nearly half of them students. It included a Charity Website Hackathon, hands-on labs, and an after-party on a double-decker boat on Lake Victoria that ended at the source of the Nile.
→ Our First WordPress Campus Connect Hackathon: What Worked, What Didn’t, and What’s Next? (make.wordpress.org) – Muhibul Haque reports on a hackathon at Stamford University Bangladesh that produced 40 websites and 82 WordPress profiles, though about half of registered students did not take part. He suggests a workshop, then a small challenge, then a hackathon, and asks the community for feedback.
→ WooCommerce 11.2.1: Release notes (developer.woocommerce.com) – A dot release that fixes two checkout regressions from 11.2.0: classic checkout on stores that remove address fields, and postcode validation on the checkout block for Argentina and a few other countries. It has no security or database update.
→ AI Literacy through WordPress (learn.wordpress.org) – A Learn WordPress course of about 10 hours for university students and early-career professionals, with no prerequisites. Four modules cover professional identity, using AI tools ethically, building a WordPress portfolio site, and career skills.
→ Meet Purple: A free low-code block theme for WooCommerce stores (woocommerce.com) – Purple is a free block theme with ready-made templates for the homepage, catalog, product pages, search, cart, checkout, and order confirmation, plus patterns you can edit in the Site Editor. It is available from the WooCommerce Marketplace, and the post links a demo store.
From WordPress Community
→ Rae Morey, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief of The Repository on Independent WordPress Journalism | E167 (youtube.com) – In WP Legends episode 167, Rae Morey traces her path from hand-laying out a 20-cent community newsletter at 14 in rural Tasmania to running The Repository full time after WordCamp Asia 2024. She also explains why she built it around up to 10 sponsors at once and why WordPress needs more serious journalism.
→ Eleonora Anzini on Music, Art, WordPress, and a Creative Life Beyond Design (seriouslybud.substack.com) – Bud Kraus talks with Eleonora Anzini, a longtime brand designer and WordCamp Europe contributor, about piano, playing bass in rock bands, photography exhibitions, and hand cross-stitched QR codes. They also cover her years in Berlin and her view that art should communicate emotion over technical perfection.
→ Thank you Elementor, but I’m moving on (youtube.com) – Rino de Boer says that after seven years of using Elementor almost every day, he is moving on, and points viewers to his new brand, Living With Prompts. The video runs 24 minutes.
→ WordPress Day for AI Faro 2026 | Faro, 24 de outubro (events.wordpress.org) – WordPress Day for AI runs October 24 at AP Eva Senses in Faro, Portugal, with two tracks, AI for Development and AI for Business, 16 speakers, and 100 seats. Talks are in Portuguese and English.
→ Agenda | CMS Conf 2026 (cmsconf.com) – CMS Conf 2026 runs November 12 to 14 in Gdynia, Poland, with workshops, a developer track, a creator track, and a Polish track. Sessions include Matt Kane on building the EmDash CMS, Robert Abela on WordPress security, Milana Cap on accessibility with the HTML API, and Tammie Lister on “The CMS Humans Need.”
→ WordPress Community Mourns Eric Binnion, Longtime Automattic Engineer and Core Contributor (therepository.email) – Eric Binnion, a longtime Automattic engineering leader and WordPress core contributor, has died months after writing publicly about his illness. Matt Mullenweg added an X-Remembering header to Automattic’s servers for 30 days in his honor. Binnion spent 12 years at Automattic across Jetpack, WordPress.com, and Woo, and is credited on seven core releases.
→ Who I Want on Stage to Show What Works in Marketing Today (checkoutsummit.com) – Rodolfo Melogli lists the people he wants to hear from at Checkout Summit 2027, April 28 to May 1 in Palermo, including Beau Lebens and Tamara Niesen of Woo, Bryce Adams of Metorik, and Syed Balkhi of Awesome Motive. The call for speakers is open, and selected speakers receive up to €1,000.
→ WP Accessibility Day 2026 Draws 2,210 Registered Attendees From 77 Countries (wp-content.co) – The sixth WP Accessibility Day ran October 7 and 8 as a 24-hour virtual conference with 24 sessions and a keynote from GitHub’s Ed Summers on generative AI and people with disabilities. Organizer Amber Hinds said earlier that sponsorships were hard to get this year and the event was running at a loss.
→ Greyd Conversations #19 – How Can Product Companies Grow in WordPress Right Now (youtu.be) – Greyd COO Sandra talks with Katie Keith of Barn2, Aurelio Volle of WP Umbrella, and Matt Cromwell of Roots & Fruit about growing a WordPress product company. Topics include Elementor’s 30% layoff, falling new sales, raising prices, defining an ICP, sharing numbers publicly, and diversifying beyond WordPress.
→ One Year at Automattic: The Ups, the Downs, and What’s Next for Jetpack (devin.org) – Devin Walker marks one year leading Jetpack at Automattic. He found Jetpack work spread across about a dozen teams, unified the admin interface, and launched a rebuilt jetpack.com in August. He says a late-July reorg added too much structure too fast, reports Jetpack AI up about 12x this year, and lists modular features, smarter onboarding, and clearer pricing as year-two goals.
Until Next Week
A six-year-old ticket to make WordPress admin notices accessible was reverted about 19 hours after Matt Mullenweg asked for it. Who should have the final say on accessibility changes in core? What would a clear process look like to you?
Hit reply with your take. If this issue was useful, pass it along.
— Nishat, WP More
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