Pier #158 – New Etch Connector, BuddyNext Challenges Community Plugins, Filament Gets Custom Dashboards & Astro 7 Lands

Ahoi.dev
Stefan from Ahoi.dev   |   The Pier #158   |   June 26, 2026

Welcome to the 158th issue of The Pier. With AB Split Test 2.6.0, the Magic Mode point-and-click editor can now hide or move an element on the page with a live drag preview — not just swap text and images. In the new Full-Page High Speed Mode, Split-URL tests can redirect instantly when the page loads, meaning visitors reach the correct page more quickly. You can also end a running test and optionally forward all traffic to the winner, or restart a finished test with its existing data, straight from the test panel. Finally, AB Split Test now supports Meta Pixel and Matomo tracking, as well as CallTrackingMetrics. Conversions from phone calls tracked by CTM can now be attributed to the right variation.

One Less Plugin: FlyingPress 5.6 introduces Redis object caching support.

Wow: FluentCRM has announced that a native WhatsApp integration is being developed for the next release. This will allow you to contact your customers via a channel that they actually use, and send campaigns, automations and one-off messages alongside your email communications.

Launch I: BuddyNext is a new Community OS for WordPress. It offers a real-time feed, spaces, gamification and member profiles. The Wbcom ecosystem extends this to include forums, courses, job listings, a marketplace, directories, media and advertising. BuddyNext claims to compete with BuddyBoss, FluentCommunity, and SureDash.

Launch II: Filament’s new Custom Dashboards plugin has officially left beta! Use code CDSTABLE10 to receive a 10% discount before the end of the week.

Launch III: The free version of FluentPlayer is now available on the WordPress repository.

Terminal: Automattic has launched Pressship to streamline plugin publishing workflows via the CLI. It validates, packages, submits, releases, inspects and demos WordPress.org plugins, while keeping the review, SVN and local setup steps explicit and the processes quiet.

Exciting: The new Etch Connector allows you to quickly and easily connect any IDE or harness, and use any AI model to build directly within Etch. It even supports multi-project workflows. Watch this video to find out more.

Acquisition: Your.Online has acquired the Progress Planner plugin. Joost and Marieke, the founders of Yoast SEO, and their team have joined the group to lead the development of AI capabilities across its platform.

Milestone: The Tutor LMS community has surpassed 10,000 members!

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Last Call: The SleekWP All Access Pass will no longer be available after 1 August 2026. Get lifetime access to all plugins, including future releases. Next up: SleekTrack, Plausible-style, privacy-friendly analytics as well as SleekOS.

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 more. Enjoy!

Live Sessions
Monitor All Active WordPress Login Sessions ©Activity Log Pro

👋 New: Live Sessions

With Activity Log Pro 1.0.9, you can now monitor all active WordPress login sessions from a dedicated admin screen, even in the free version. You can view the following information for each session: user, role, IP address, browser/OS, login time, session ID and session expiry. You can search and filter by username or role, highlight concurrent sessions and enable live polling. There are also one-click links to trace activity for each session. You can also see which users are currently active in the WordPress dashboard.

The premium version allows you to terminate individual sessions, implement an emergency lockdown (logging out everyone except you), set limits on the number of simultaneous sessions, view the geolocation of users, display the full IP address and set up session management email alerts (new login, terminated, blocked or emergency lockdown).

🗞️ Bites & Pieces

WordPress

Flowguard‘s new AI-powered test generation creates test steps from natural language. Simply describe what you want to test and the AI will build the entire flow for you. For example, it can create a test that checks the entire page for broken images. It works with both Claude and OpenAI (BYOK).

SureMail 2.0.0 adds support for the new SureContact SMTP (see The Pier #157), offering guided onboarding and support for multiple senders.

Gravity Forms 3.0 beta introduces international phone formats to the Phone field as well as built-in accessibility. It also supports Block API v3.

With the new Remote Sync feature, you can now push a Builderius project from one WordPress installation to another with a single action. This includes templates, components, the dynamic data structure and optionally selected WordPress data.

ACPT 2.0.63 enables you to restrict posts by logged-in users and provides a complete overhaul of its Etch integration.

SearchWP 4.6.0 introduces a new WPFilters integration for results templates, enabling filter elements to narrow down SearchWP results while maintaining relevance ranking.

FleekDash 2.6.2 can now detect installed builders such as Elementor, Bricks, Divi, Etch, Breakdance, Brizy, Builderius and Oxygen. It also turns the ‘Edit’ action into an ‘Edit with’ menu, allowing you to open the correct editor for each post or page with a single click.

Blockstudio 7.3 adds a UI layer and editing functionality to create richer block applications. Meanwhile, version 7.4 transforms file-based pages into comprehensive docs-style page systems and introduces content sync for selected database content.

Content Lifecycle Manager adds ownership, review scheduling and lifecycle statuses to WordPress posts and pages, ensuring that content remains up to date. The plugin also supports review tracking, archiving and a small ideas area, as well as a setup flow for bringing existing content into the workflow.

Mosaic 1.0.4 introduces a new Vimeo element featuring autoplay, muting, lazy loading, scroll-based playback and privacy mode. New features include ACF support and link search. Next up: Native forms.

E-Commerce & A/B Testing

As announced in The Pier #157, the new SureCart EU Helper plugin is now available. It enables SureCart merchants to provide a withdrawal request flow directly within the customer dashboard.

AB Split Test now integrates with Cloudflare Workers. This means that your split test logic runs at the edge before the page loads, with no URL changes or flicker.

Affiliate Marketing

FluentAffiliate 1.5.0 now supports lifetime commissions. Other new features include a one-click importer for Ultimate Affiliate Pro, faster migrations for large programs and a new Customers tab, which shows exactly which customer belongs to which affiliate.

With Partnero, you can now send emails automatically based on partner activity. Simply pair any partner trigger with a custom or existing email template and Partnero will send it the moment the condition is met, whether that’s sending a nudge when a partner has gone quiet or sending a reward email when a revenue milestone is reached.

Astro

Astro 7 is a performance-focused release that speeds up builds by rewriting the  .astro  compiler in Rust, running Markdown/MDX processing through a new Rust pipeline, and switching rendering to a faster queue-based engine. When used together with Vite 8 and its new Rolldown bundler, Astro 7 builds are 15–61% faster. Beyond speed, Astro 7 offers advanced routing with an src/fetch.ts entrypoint, providing full control over the request pipeline. It also features AI-friendly capabilities such as coding agent detection, background dev server support and structured JSON logs for machine-readable feedback.

PhantomWP has evolved into PhantomStudio, having grown beyond its original concept of a ‘headless WordPress’. It is now a visual, AI-assisted development environment for creating modern Astro sites. PhantomStudio provides a visual workflow, BYOK AI assistance, Git integration, local development, WordPress integration and deployment to Vercel and Cloudflare Workers, as well as complete control over the project structure with no lock-in.

Appointment Bookings

LatePoint is currently working on adding PayPal as a payment method to the free version of the appointment scheduling plugin.

With FluentBooking 2.2.0, you can now book appointments from a FluentCRM contact. Simply open a contact in FluentCRM to see the FluentBooking section containing the ‘Book Appointment’ button. One click takes you to the booking screen with their details already filled in.

Helpdesk

With the new AI Text Extractor in Zammad 7.1, support tickets appear on your agents’ screens fully ready to go. The AI agent scans the text and pulls out key information such as order IDs or customer numbers, placing it directly into the custom fields.

AI Video Generation

Poko Motion introduces a new Agent Canvas feature, which enables you to view your entire project as a living map as it takes shape (video). All your script, scenes, voiceovers and renders are laid out and connected in one unified space. With Parallel Agents, you can speed up your workflow by running multiple agents simultaneously. You can set up a whole team of agents — including Claude, Opus, GPT and Gemini — to work on your project simultaneously (video). For the Agency plan only: With Accent Voice Search (BYOK), simply type in the accent you are looking for, such as British, American, Australian or Southern, to find the perfect voice in seconds.

Mockup Generation

With Artboard Studio, you can now place videos directly into mockup items, making it easier than ever to showcase animations, app demos and video content on realistic, high-quality mockups. 

Customer Support

Gleap adds support for GLM 5.2. Additionally, you can now create personalized email signatures that are automatically filled in with the details of the relevant human agent with every reply.

LMS / E-Learning

Klasio introduces student impersonation and audio submissions in assignments, as well as course-specific testimonials.

Events

With EventKoi 1.3.18.0, you can now reschedule individual occurrences of recurring events. You can also set a total ticket quantity cap per event and require attendees to check a terms and conditions box. Each calendar now has a subscribeable iCal feed.

Tickera 3.6 replaces the old static ticket editor with a drag-and-drop Ticket Designer. This new feature renders a pixel-perfect, live PDF preview and comes with a library of ready-made templates.

SEO

SureRank 1.9.0 comes with frontend SEO editing, author SEO, headless REST API control, MCP settings and abilities, and more. SureRank Premium 1.8.0 also allows you to add custom JSON-LD to your metabox and schema builder.

SEO has moved beyond keywords. Search engines and AI assistants now aim to grasp the concepts covered by your content, rather than simply the words used. The new Entities feature in Slim SEO Pro does exactly that.

Mixpost Pro 6.0.0 introduces a new Engagement feature that allows you to manage comments from your connected social accounts in one place. This feature offers optional AI-powered tools, including auto-labelling, sentiment analysis, spam and hate speech detection, and an AI-powered reply composer. You can also connect your Pixelfed accounts and import post analytics. The new MCP server enables you to connect AI to your workspace.

Communities

The Next Gen BuddyBoss App v3.1.0 sees the release of four new app blocks: Image Carousel, Video Carousel, Icons Block and Profile Card (video).

Automation

The new Role-Based Access Control feature in Pabbly Chatflow allows you to create custom roles and specify exactly which modules team members can view, manage or access.

Social Media

FeedHive announces new agentic integrations. You can now create automation workflows in the style of n8n directly in FeedHive. You can also set up FeedHive with OpenClaw to run your social media accounts. Alternatively, you can use Claude Code to manage your social media accounts, and if you’re technically inclined, you can access its API/CLI directly to build full end-to-end custom content pipelines.

Experience Management

Version 5.0.0 evolves Formbricks from a dedicated survey tool into a fully-fledged Experience Management (XM) suite, combining survey collection, a unified feedback directory and cross-survey dashboards on a single platform.

Podcasts

Castmagic now allows you to connect your entire media library directly to Claude. The AI can search your transcripts, recordings, and generated content and pull any of these into a conversation. Access is read-only and limited to your account, so Claude can read your content but can’t change it.

Server Management

With xCloud 2.6.7, you can now directly add Git to an existing WordPress or custom PHP site. New features include Laravel site cloning and support for setting up your Hermes Workspace.

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.

WordPress

New BuddyBoss App Blocks For Creating Native Mobile Experiences

BuddyBoss has announced the release of four new App Blocks, which let you build richer native mobile experiences directly from your admin dashboard.

WordPress

AltPilot – New AI Alt Text Generator for WordPress

Nora from OneTap has announced the release of AltPilot, which automatically generates perfect, SEO-optimized alt text for every image on your WordPress site in seconds.

WordPress

FluentPlayer – The Next-Gen Video Player for WordPress

FluentPlayer is about to enter the WordPress video market with a clear ambition: to offer more than just a replacement for the default embed. Boasting interactive layers, analytics and native…

Product Demos

Supademo: New Free 4K Screen Recorder & Showcases 2.0

Joe from Supademo has just introduced a free 4K screen recorder, Showcases 2.0, and a pronunciation dictionary to the interactive product demo platform.

Social Listening

ContentStudio Releases New Social Listening Add-On

Waqar from ContentStudio has just launched a new Social Listening add-on for its social media management platform. The add-on is available with Advanced and Agency Unlimited plans.

AI Video

Poko Motion Adds Media Uploads, Audio, SFX & Background Music

Kushal from Poko Motion has just released a number of updates to its AI video generator for macOS and Windows. This app can turn project repositories, website URLs, PDFs, documents…

SEO, WordPress

SEOPress Introduces AI Agents & AI Assistant

SEOPress 10 is a significant AI-first update: it introduces support for the WordPress Abilities API, an in-editor AI Assistant, SEOPress AI Credits, a sitemap health check, more intelligent image metadata…

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That’s all for this week. We hope you enjoyed the 158th 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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