Pier #118 - How To Effectively Stop WordPress & BuddyBoss Spam

Stefan from Ahoi.dev | The Pier #118 | September 19, 2025

Welcome to the 118th issue of The Pier. This week, CVC has acquired a majority stake in Namecheap, valuing the domain registrar at $1.5 billion.

Price Increase: SureForms has just surpassed 300k active installs and will soon be shipping powerful new features. Native integration and a payment feature are on the horizon. Get SureForms now and save up to $150 before the price increases on 23 September.

Nice: TranslatePress, our favourite WordPress translation plugin, has released a fully redesigned and rebuilt language switcher (X) that is also available in the free version.

Launch: Weezly Connect has finally been released! It’s an all-in-one upgrade to LinkedIn messaging, built directly into your LinkedIn inbox and set to replace your current LinkedIn Inbox. With Weezly, you can instantly organize conversations with labels, send voice and video messages, schedule meetings with a single click, record and share your screen, and much more besides — all without leaving LinkedIn!

Milestone: ThriveCart has finally given its website a modern, clean makeover.

Exciting: Really Simple Licensing (RSL) is an open standard which enables publishers to define machine-readable licensing terms for their content. These terms can include attribution, pay-per-crawl and pay-per-inference compensation.

Webinar: “Best practices for scaling websites globally” by DeepL & Weglot.

Tutorial: Find out how to create custom booking systems with start/end dates, time blocking, and even price filters using Formidable Forms (video).

Here is a selection of the latest and greatest blog posts we published this week on Ahoi.dev. You will also find some interesting industry news, the latest directory listings on The Port, job openings, and deals. Enjoy!

👋 How To Eliminate WordPress Spam

Are you receiving lots of spam registrations, comments and contact form entries on your WordPress site? Simply install WP Armour Extended to stop WordPress spam once and for all (see below)!

🗞️ Bites & Pieces

WordPress

TranslatePress 2.10.4 adds support for Breakdance.

Newsletter Glue 4.0.3 introduces the ‘Send Now’ feature to the ‘Automations’ section, which allows you to schedule the automation to be sent immediately alongside the regular sending time. The Salesforce integration has been merged into the core plugin, and now supports tracking of email opens.

ClickWhale 2.5.0 implements a REST API for third-party integrations, as well as a new link scanner for links placed on posts and pages.

Voxel Toolkit 1.2.0 introduces two new features to your Voxel-powered directory: A Featured Posts feature and a Fluent Forms Post Author feature. The latter adds a dedicated field that automatically populates the post author’s email address in a Fluent Forms form. Users can therefore send a message directly to the author of a blog post via the contact form attached to each post.

Tutor LMS 3.8.1 enables admins to export courses with user data, including student details, course progress, reviews, orders, subscriptions, and more.

FluentBoards 1.85 introduces a new Table View that displays your tasks in a clean, spreadsheet-like format. This helps you to plan and manage projects more effectively. Also new are outgoing webhooks.

WPForms releases a new long-awaited PDF add-on that allows you to generate PDFs from form submissions.

ShortPixel 6.3.4 now preserves existing SEO data. An option has been added to keep your existing ALT, caption and description fields untouched when using AI-generated image SEO.

SureDash announces that events are coming soon to the community plugin.

DebugHawk is a performance and debugging tool for WordPress that allows you to view browser and server-side performance data in a single dashboard.

BlaBlaBlocks Formats is a new, free plugin that offers a collection of rich text formats for the WordPress block editor. It comes with interactive elements such as interactive tooltips and animated text highlights.

E-Commerce

SureCart 3.14.0 introduces the ability to quickly add items to product lists and line item notes on product pages and invoices. Coming soon: Product reviews!

Modern Cart is the ultimate cart enhancement plugin for WooCommerce. It now has a free version on WordPress.org.

Paddle for WooCommerce now adds multi-currency support. With the new payment method controls, you can select which payment options to display in the Paddle checkout.

Swell adjusts the pricing for its monthly plans. However, they have increased the discount on its annual plan to 25%.

Affiliate Marketing

FluentAffiliate 1.1.0 introduces a new Affiliate Creatives feature, which allows you to upload promotional assets such as banners, images, QR codes and text directly to your affiliate dashboard. These creatives already have their unique tracking links embedded, so affiliates can use them straight away.

Customer Support

HelpSpace introduces a new Custom Fields feature, allowing you to create fields manually or fill them in automatically via the API for tickets and contact profiles. Examples include customer IDs, product types and contract durations. Available in the Business plan.

Customer Testimonials

Shapo now allows you to import customer reviews in bulk using a CSV file, as well as manually import them from Discord. The badge widget can be linked to any page, which is perfect for directing visitors straight to your reviews page, landing page or special promotion.

No-Code Website Builder

Framer introduces Design Pages, turning Framer into a true design tool rather than just a web builder. With Design Pages, you get a freeform canvas to work with, complete with all the tools you could possibly need, including vector editing, P3 colours, image exporting, advanced masking and more (video).

Social Media

Giststack introduces a new post saving feature, a new asset library, and an improved X thread editor. It has also improved the Reddit, newsletter, and custom post editors (video).

E-Learning

Created in collaboration with Google UX researcher Dr Slava Polonsky, Human-Centered AI is a new Uxcel online course that will teach you how to design AI experiences that meet the needs of real users.

AI Audio

ElevenLabs introduces Voice Remixing, which allows you to edit any property of your AI voices. With a prompt, you can change the age, accent, gender or recording environment.

Virtual Events

HeySummit introduces a new setting that enables you to automatically cancel refunded tickets. This ensures that only paying attendees can access events.

Automation

OttoKit releases a new Kitchen.co integration with 69 actions for the client portal software for agencies.

From the Editor: Biff.codes

We’ve launched a new side project called Biff.codes, a free job board for WordPress developers and more. Find out why Biff can get paid in burgers. 🍔

🚨 Latest Posts

The following highlighted articles have been published in the last 7 days. All posts can be found on our blog.

👋 Latest Jobs

Looking for a new professional challenge? Find your new job.

🔥 Quayside Deals

A few irresistible offers that might be of interest to you, don’t you think?

⏰ Last Chance: Secure your Etch LTD before annual subscriptions replace them on 30th September.
New: Origits LTD – Professional video hosting, lead capture & A/B testing.
Exclusive: Get 50% off the Gleap Team plan for 3 years. The support OS comes with features such as bug reporting, engagement, onboarding and a help center.
3rd Birthday: Save up to 50% on annual Nuelink plans.
Promo: Save 30% on Sendr, the personlized outreach platform, for 3 mo.
Exclusive: Get 20% off Replient for 3 month(s) with code Glumpler20.
Summer Sale: Save 20% on Kitchen.co lifetime plans, the client portal platform for agencies.
Exclusive: Save 10% on all CookieYes plans (valid for first billing cycle).
Summer Sale: Save 40% on all Trafft plans.
LTD: Get Modern Cart for WooCommerce for $129 by CartFlows.
Last Chance: Get a Blockstudio LTD before it is retired on October 1.
New: Save 10% on all Greyd plans with code ref_10_SG563924.
Special Offer: Save $354 with the AffiliateWP + RewardsWP bundle.
First Year: Save 30% on Content Control for WordPress.
Early Adopter: Save 30% on SnipVault LTD. Only 120 licenses available.
Exclusive: Save 15% on PassiveWP with code AHOIDEV.
Save $200: Get Breakdance Pro for just $199.99 per year.
Extended LTD: Don’t miss out on the Bit Flows lifetime deals.
Exciting: Save BIG on the SleekWP All Access Pass LTD, which includes SleekPixel, SleekAI, SleekMotion, SleekView and all future plugins.
Recurring: Save 10% on Publer, the social media management platform.
It’s Back! Get the FlowMattic LTD. Split payment options available.

That’s all for this week. We hope you enjoyed the 118th issue of The Pier. Until next week! Please tell your friends about The Pier if you like it.

Curated and published with lots of ♥ by Ahoi.dev!
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