Pier #167 – SureCart Supports Shippo, OpenRouter Joins Stripe, xSpeed Cache Rivals WP Rocket & Livada SEO Challenges SEOPress

Ahoi.dev
Stefan from Ahoi.dev   |   The Pier #167   |   August 28, 2026

Welcome to the 167th issue of The Pier. SureCart 4.7.0 introduces a new Shippo fulfilment integration that enables you to ship orders directly from the fulfilment drawer. You can also obtain live shipping rates, purchase a label and track the package. There is also new warehouse management and real-time carrier rates from your connected Shippo account, with separate test and live mode support. Furthermore, customers can view shipment tracking and status on their dashboard order page as soon as a label is purchased.

Anniversary Sale: Voxel Toolkit launched a year ago as a free plugin. To celebrate this anniversary, all Code Wattz plugins are 30% off. Offer valid for one week only (26 Aug – 2 Sept).

Launch: WPDeveloper has released xSpeed Cache, a new WordPress performance plugin offering an alternative to WP Rocket and FlyingPress.

Launch II: Livada SEO is a new WordPress plugin for SEO, AEO and GEO, and is set to rival Yoast SEO, SEOPress and Rank Math.

Acquisition: OpenRouter is joining forces with Stripe!

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!

SureDonation
WordPress Donation Plugin for Fundraising Campaigns ©SureDonation

👋 New: Donation Campaign Templates

SureDonation 1.5.0 introduces campaign templates, allowing you to start with ready-made designs for causes such as medical care, education, animal rescue, disaster relief and faith, or begin from scratch. Guided campaign tours provide first-time users with a short walkthrough of the campaign screen. You can also now restyle a donation form without editing your theme using custom CSS with built-in syntax highlighting.

SureDonation Pro 1.1.0-beta adds more form styling controls and customisable PDF receipts. Choose from classic, stacked or minimal layouts, customise them globally or per form and automatically attach receipts to the email sent when a donation is completed. Finally, the Pro version now includes translation support for seven languages.

Newsletter Glue ESP
©Newsletter Glue Adds Native Email Sending

👋 New: Newsletter Glue ESP

Newsletter Glue can now send emails natively from the core system without the need for any add-ons.

If you’re happy with your current email provider, such as Mailchimp, MailerLite or ActiveCampaign, you don’t need to do anything. Newsletter Glue’s sending engine is simply an additional option. It’s there if you want to send newsletters without connecting to an external email service provider (ESP).

🗞️ Bites & Pieces

WordPress

Elevated Extensions adds support for AI agents (MCP) and full translation support to Discount Rules, Site Search, Product Search and Instagram Feed.

Mosaic now supports Meta Box, enabling you to pull custom fields into any element as dynamic data. This includes post, term, user and settings meta, as well as MB Relationships for connected content. No PHP is required.

Voxel Toolkit 1.9 introduces detached filters and moderation actions, such as ‘Approve’, ‘Decline’ and ‘Verify’, as native Advanced List actions. New features also include guest submissions, notification preferences and PWA support.

TranslatePress Business 1.8.6 introduces a pop-up configurator for automatic language detection.

Classic Monks builds an MCP integration featuring agent-driven theme building and content operations, as well as basic, modular SEO settings and Schema via MCP.

Breakdance 3.0 Beta 5 allows AI agents to set the display conditions of elements and override their variables individually. There is also an FAQPage schema on the FAQ element.

The new WPForms QR Code generator gives any form its own scannable, print-ready code.

Beaver Builder AI is now available with all plans except the Starter plan. You can now transform a chat conversation into an editable starting point within WordPress.

Smart Search AI, which was previously available exclusively to WP Engine customers, can now be deployed on any WordPress site.

Ollie Pro introduces interactive padding handles and native responsive styling. The native Icon block now includes over 1,200 icons (video).

WordPress Performance

WP Multitool 1.9.5 improves its Site Doctor feature even further. It can now optimize expired transients, settings left behind by disabled plugins and finished background jobs with one click.

E-Commerce & Analytics

Kirki eCommerce Alpha 2 introduces a full-fledged coupon system, a customer dashboard and support for Klarna and Square, as well as cart syncing.

WP Travel Engine releases PayLexer, which enables you to connect any payment gateway to your existing WordPress setup. No developer is required.

uiXpress 1.5.0 introduces a new WooCommerce store dashboard, full traffic analytics, and a new click-to-filter feature.

Für deutsche WooCommerce-Shops: German Market 4.0 bietet ein Gewährleistungslabel, ein Garantielabel sowie eine Elektrogeräte-Rücknahme mit optionaler Altgerätemitnahme im Checkout.

CMP

SureCookie 1.4.0 introduces a new ‘Data Requests’ screen where GDPR and CCPA requests from visitors are received and tracked against their response deadlines. The Pro version enables you to respond to these requests, while the free version provides an overview of the workflow. A new import/export option has also been added for settings, cookie categories and custom cookies, enabling you to copy a configuration between sites or create a backup.

You can now connect CookieYes to Claude and manage key consent tasks via straightforward conversations. For example, you can ask Claude to check the status of the cookie banner across sites, run cookie scans or update banner styling.

Appointment Bookings

Amelia can now connect to any MCP-compatible AI assistant, including Claude. This means that appointments, customers and schedules can be created and managed using plain language, without the need to open the WordPress dashboard.

Timetics AI now offers localization, custom domains and support for progressive web apps (PWAs).

Events

With Eventin, you can now sync event customers with HubSpot to improve follow-up workflows. You can also connect events with your FluentCommunity spaces, connect tickets with LearnDash courses, and automate enrolment. You can also build automated workflows with Uncanny Automator from Eventin actions.

Communities

Waterhole 0.7 makes everyday community participation easier by offering features such as bookmarks, automatically saved drafts, group mentions and keyboard shortcuts. It also provides a more polished writing and reading experience.

Laravel

Lerd is a free, MIT-licensed local development environment for Linux and macOS. Simply run ‘lerd link’ to make your project live at ‘project.test’, complete with trusted HTTPS, its own PHP version and running services, all on rootless Podman with no Docker Desktop required. It’s an open-source alternative to Laravel Herd Pro, which we use for our projects.

NightOwl is self-hosted Laravel monitoring based on the official Laravel Nightwatch package. Telemetry data is sent directly to your PostgreSQL database, enabling you to store months of history while ensuring that your data never leaves your infrastructure.

SEO

There is good news for posts with multiple categories. Slim SEO now lets you set a primary term. This term appears in the URL structure (for %category% or %product_cat%) and in breadcrumbs.

Voice Notes

AudioPen is now also available for Windows.

Remote Work

Cosmos releases a preset statuses feature. It’s a shared set of words for your team to work from that is flexible enough to fit the way your team actually works. For example, ‘Having food, back in 30’ instead of the generic ‘Away’.

Digital Signage

Juuno releases a new app in beta that allows customers to connect to Wi-Fi by scanning a QR code.

Job Boards

Job Boardly now allows board owners to enable two-factor authentication (2FA) on their job board. Accounts can be secured using an app such as 1Password, Google Authenticator or Authy, which displays a new six-digit code every 30 seconds that must be entered after the password. You can also require all users of your job board to use 2FA when signing in. Backup codes are also provided, so they can still access their accounts if they ever lose access to their authenticator app.

Automation

Pabbly Connect introduces a new ‘Disable Individual Workflow Steps’ feature. This allows you to instantly turn off any step in your workflow without deleting it, giving you complete freedom to test, tweak and experiment without disrupting your automated processes.

Email Marketing

With ready-made layouts, custom colours, logos, typography and buttons, MailerPress 2.0.7 gives subscription pages a polished, on-brand look. The Pro version also offers instant desktop or mobile previews.

Mailercloud introduces a new one-click domain authentication feature, an AI-powered form builder and new location and activity tabs in campaign analytics.

Segments allow you to group contacts based on their commonalities. The challenge has always been knowing which conditions to select and how to combine them. In EmailOctopus, however, you can now simply describe what you want. Just write it in plain English — for example, “contacts tagged ‘customer’ who joined this year” — and the AI will build the segment for you.

LinkedIn Automation

HeyReach Analytics 2.0 introduces a new Sequence step breakdown, allowing you to see exactly how each step performs in real time. There are also 15+ pre-made filters to help you map your outbound funnel and instantly see the status of every lead in every campaign.

AI Audio & Video

ElevenLabs MCP is a new hosted connector that integrates ElevenCreative with the AI tools you already use. For example, you can generate audio in thousands of voices right from your chat, turn recordings into clean transcripts, and dub content into over 90 languages. You can also create, edit and animate images and videos.

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.

Social Media, WordPress

WP Social Ninja Adds Support for Video Testimonials

Jewel from WP Social Ninja added video testimonials, review search and filter options, as well as review categories to its WordPress social media plugin.

WordPress

FluentPlayer Now Supports Muted Previews, Modal Playback & Inline Chapters

Jewel from FluentPlayer has just released version 1.4.0 of the next-generation video player for WordPress, introducing a muted preview feature, modal playback and inline chapters.

WordPress

LoginPress 7.0 Adds TikTok Login, IP Intelligence & Custom Registration Fields

Adnan from LoginPress has just announced the upcoming release of version 7.0 of its custom login page plugin for WordPress. The major update will feature a new TikTok login option, IP intelligence,…

WordPress

xSpeed Cache: WordPress Performance Made Simple

Developed by the team behind WPDeveloper and xCloud, xSpeed Cache is a new all-in-one WordPress caching and performance plugin designed to deliver faster page speeds, enhanced Core Web Vitals and…

👋 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?

Summer Sale: Save up to 26% on Voxel plans (Starter, LTD Lite & LTD).
Exclusive: Save 10% on Novamira Pro Agency (first year) and Agency Lifetime plans with code AHOIDEV10.
WordPress Search: Save 20% on Relevanssi with code HELLO20.
Birthday Promo: Save up to 50% on Amelia.
Bulk: Get 40% off when you buy 2+ Barn2 plugins for WooCommerce.
Spring Sale: Save 30% on all Plugin Planet Pro plugins, e.g. BBQ Pro.
LTD Ending Soon: Get SureContact, the email marketing and CRM platform for WordPress.
Early Bird LTD: Get Sigmize, the new A/B testing platform for WordPress.
Early Bird: Get FluentCart LTD, the new WordPress e-commerce plugin.
Exclusive: Get 30% off the Gleap Team plan for 3 months. The support OS comes with features such as bug reporting, engagement, onboarding and a help center.
Promo: Save 30% on Sendr, the personlized outreach platform, for 3 mo.
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 167th 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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