Pier #160 – Elevated Site Search, SleekTrack & SureDonation Take On SearchWP, Fathom Analytics & GiveWP

Ahoi.dev
Stefan from Ahoi.dev   |   The Pier #160   |   July 10, 2026

Welcome to the 160th issue of The Pier. Most go-to-market issues are not caused by a lack of effort, but by a lack of structure. Uxcel’s new online course, Go-to-Market Strategy Fundamentals, helps you to define the system behind your growth, ensuring that your decisions regarding positioning, channels and pricing work together effectively. You will learn how to diagnose your company’s stage, define your target customer, select channels that align with buying behaviour and set prices that reflect value. You will also learn how to evaluate CAC, LTV and market timing, enabling you to scale up with clarity instead of guesswork.

Launch I: Elevated Site Search is a new drop-in search bar that shows live, ranked results as visitors type. It’s a real alternative to SearchWP! See it in action on the homepage of Ahoi.dev!

Launch II: SleekTrack is a privacy-first, cookieless, self-hosted analytics tool that lives right inside your WordPress dashboard. No cookie banners, no third parties — your data stays on your own server. SleekAI 2.2 will come with full Gutenberg support, Etch agents & Codex integration for the terminal agent.

Launch III: As its name suggests, SureDonation is a new donation and fundraising plugin for WordPress, developed by the SureCart team. There is also a migration path from GiveWP. The free version is already available on the WordPress repository.

Launch IV: Tutor LMS 4.0 has officially been released, featuring a completely revamped learning experience, a native app-like mobile interface, and new interactive quiz types. There is also a new Kids Mode. The new version is fully GDPR compliant and features a new dashboard.

Exciting: As great infrastructure shouldn’t come with unnecessary barriers, Bunny DNS is now free. It no longer charges for DNS queries and includes free DNS hosting for up to 500 domains per account.

Milestone I: Bricksforge 4.0 introduces a standalone animation panel featuring a brand new rendering engine that generates GSAP code in the background. Scroll animations now play live in the preview as you scroll. New features include viewports and image sequences. Simply drop in a video and it will turn it into a scroll-scrubbable sequence right in your browser — just like the Apple product page. Alternatively, upload your own frames from Blender or After Effects and scrub through them as you would with any other animation.

Milestone II: Modula 3.0 Beta is a complete rewrite of the plugin from the ground up, introducing a brand-new gallery editor and clearer, section-based navigation. In addition, it also supports more gallery types, such as Uniform Grid, Polaroid, Parallax Masonry and Story. Finally, it also features improved hover effects and a new dark mode.

Summer Sale: Get 33% off Independent Analytics Pro, the WordPress analytics plugin. Valid for both annual and lifetime licenses until 13 July.

Closure: Ronald from DLX Plugins has made the difficult decision to close his WordPress plugin business, ending its commercial operations on 1 October 2026. However, the code will be open sourced.

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!

Automations
New Automations in Early Access ©EMR

👋 Reputation Management Automations

TL;DR: ‘Reviews on autopilot’ – less work, more reviews.

EmbedMyReviews has launched some new automations in early access, including integrations with Square POS, Stripe, Calendly, and inbound webhooks. EMR will automatically send out review requests when customers make successful payments, and will also send out review requests to attendees after your meetings have finished.

Next up: WooCommerce, Shopify, Housecall Pro, ServiceM8, Workiz, Jobber, Zenbooker, Cal.com and simPRO.

🗞️ Bites & Pieces

WordPress

Meta Box 3.8.0 introduces Abilities that enable AI agents, such as Claude, Codex and Cursor, to interact with your website data. You can manage custom post types and taxonomies, as well as create, retrieve, update and delete posts and terms.

Novamira Pro 1.6.1 adds support for its own Dynamic Shortcodes plugin, while version 1.6.2 now supports Bricksforge. Shipping with version 1.9.0, Novamira Chat (BYOK; video) enables you to describe a change in plain language, after which it will show you a plan and wait for your approval before applying any changes. It’s perfect for quick, on-the-fly edits without leaving WP-Admin. For more in-depth work, the full Novamira MCP is still the best option.

With ACPT 2.1.0 Beta 3, Custom Content Types (CCT) now connect to Forms, Elementor, Bricks, Divi, WPGraphQL and more.

Elegant Themes introduces new CSS Grid Editor for Divi 5.

Gravity Labs introduces the new Gravity Forms Feedback add-on, which turns your Gravity Forms entries into a professional, public-facing idea board complete with voting, filtering, sorting, searching and commenting.

GravityView 3.0 is the biggest release of GravityView in years. It includes one-click styling, page builders and AI.

GenerateBlocks 2.4 and GenerateBlocks Pro 2.7 are now available as alpha releases. The new Editor Access feature enables developers to customize access to the editor for different user roles.

Developed by Elicus, Neural Forms is a new form plugin offering a built-in lead inbox and Neural AI analysis of every submission.

SWIS Performance 2.7 now integrates with LiteSpeed and Varnish. You can now use SWIS with almost any server-based cache without needing any additional plugins. SWIS also automatically purges LiteSpeed and Varnish caches when you update your site.

WP Rocket will soon become the first WordPress performance plugin to offer MCP access. This will allow AI tools such as Claude and Codex to connect directly to real website performance data and WP Rocket settings. This feature is included in every WP Rocket licence at no extra cost.

Patrick from Simply Static releases Static Studio CLI, a command-line interface for Static Studio. This allows you to manage sites, scripts, CI workflows and AI coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex and Cursor, all from your terminal.

wpDataTables 7.5 adds Sized Bubble and 3D Sized Bubble chart types to Highcharts.

Minn Admin is a modern, minimal dashboard served at /minn-admin/. It is a single-page app built using the WordPress REST API. There is no React or build step, just one vanilla JS file. It sits alongside the classic WP Admin.

Atlant Security is a new, comprehensive WordPress security plugin that is free to use. It provides enterprise-grade protection through 17 integrated security modules, which are organized into a five-layer defence architecture. Watch David McCan’s video for more details!

E-Commerce

With AB Split Test, you can now conduct competitive analysis and test your website’s sales pitch against those of your competitors. You can then generate winning improvement ideas in seconds.

Donations & Fundraising

If your WordPress site uses WP Charitable to accept donations, Heroic Inbox will now display each donor’s full giving history within the support ticket. This includes lifetime giving, recent donations and their status, and the campaigns they have supported, all of which are matched automatically by email.

SEO

Aetos SEO is a free audit plugin that works with your existing SEO plugins, such as Rank Math, Yoast, AIOSEO and SEOPress. It identifies issues related to technical SEO and AI readiness, and provides a prioritized list of fixes.

SureRank 1.9.2 and Premium 1.8.1 introduce a new FluentCart integration to help store owners manage important SEO requirements such as meta, schema and sitemap visibility for their products. Additionally, SureRank now handles comment reply URLs more effectively by redirecting ‘?replytocom’ URLs and adding the correct ‘rel’ attributes to comment reply links. This helps to keep comment links cleaner from an SEO point of view.

CRM

SureContact 1.5.3 introduces new WS Form integration for lead capture.

FuseWP and MailOptin release integrations with Copper CRM, a customer relationship management tool designed for use with Google Workspace.

Customer Support

Gleap introduces knowledge scoping, allowing you to decide precisely which content each AI agent can use to answer, using simple tags. This is great for internal vs. external use, multiple products or brands, and VIPs and segments.

HelpSpace expanded its API. The Task API allows you to read or automatically create tasks. The Agents API allows you to read information about your HelpSpace users and use it in your systems. You can now also read information about teams via the API.

Laravel

Laravel WhatsApp is a new package that allows you to send and receive WhatsApp messages from a Laravel application.

Affiliate Marketing

AffiliateWP now allows you to pay affiliates in their own currency using Stripe.

Events

EventKoi 1.3.21.0 adds a new ‘Price from’ option, which displays a starting ticket price on event pages. Passed events can be automatically unpublished after a grace period, with 301 redirects set up from their old URLs to a custom one. You can also add multiple agreement checkboxes at checkout.

No-Code Website Builder

Framer Forms now offers two new modes of spam protection. The Basic mode runs rule-based checks on every submission, while the Advanced mode uses AI to flag spam and is available on Pro plans and above.

Antispam

WP Armour 2.4.02 adds support for a spam keyword filter.

WhatsApp Automation

The Pabbly Chatflow mobile app now allows you to create, edit and manage your AI assistants directly from your mobile device anytime, anywhere.

Social Media

ContentStudio is now integrated with OpenClaw, enabling you to connect your communication channels and manage social media via text message (video).

Customer Testimonials

Feedspace releases a new Floating Badge, which is best used in the review section of a landing page.

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

FluentCommunity Rolls Out Space Media Gallery & FluentPlayer Integration for Lessons

Jewel from FluentCommunity has released version 2.7.0 of the WordPress community plugin. New features include a space media gallery, FluentPlayer integration for lessons, and smarter moderation….

Product Demos

Supademo Introduces AI Voiceovers 2.0 With New Expressive Mode

Supademo introduced Voiceovers 2.0 with an expressive mode, Command K search and a new Seismic integration to the interactive product demo platform.

WordPress

FluentPlayer: New LearnDash, Cloudflare & Gumlet Integrations

FluentPlayer has officially launched today. This next-generation video player plugin for WordPress is the latest addition to the WPManageNinja family of Fluent products. For 24 hours only, purchase an EarlyBird…

WordPress

Elevated Site Search – New Live Search Plugin With Ranked Results for WordPress

Elias from Elevated Extensions has announced the release of Elevated Site Search. It adds a fast, typo-tolerant search bar to any WordPress site and provides live, ranked results as visitors…

Web Analytics, WordPress

SleekTrack – New Privacy-First Analytics Plugin for WordPress

Developed by Dennis from SleekWP, SleekTrack is a new, lightweight analytics plugin for WordPress that is designed to provide you with the key information you need without cluttering up your…

Event Platforms, Virtual Events

HeySummit: New Sponsor Packages, Sponsor Placement Controls & Automatic Talk Playlists

Ben from HeySummit has introduced sponsor packages, automatic talk playlists for stages, and a dashboard search feature to the event planning and hosting platform.

👋 Latest Jobs

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

Southeastern University

Web Developer (Back-End)

🔥 Quayside Deals

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

Exclusive: Save 10% on Novamira Pro Agency (first year) and Agency Lifetime plans with code AHOIDEV10.
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Launch LTD: Get UGCify, a UGC and social proof plugin for WooCommerce.
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LTD Ending Soon: Get SureContact, the email marketing and CRM platform for WordPress.
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Exclusive: Get 20% off Replient for 3 month(s) with code Glumpler20.
Exclusive: Save 15% on PassiveWP with code AHOIDEV.
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.

That’s all for this week. We hope you enjoyed the 160th 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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