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Pier #173 – SureContact Goes Sales-First, Affinity Deepens RAW Control, Phox Form Guard Blocks Spam & Referral Programs Level Up
Stefan from Ahoi.dev | The Pier #173 | October 9, 2026Welcome to the 173rd issue of The Pier. Shader is a new way of building with WordPress, combining human-built foundations, AI execution and creativity into one system. It requires VX Framework Pro (mentioned in The Pier #110), which was developed by the creators of Voxel.
Deeper RAW Control: Affinity has released its most significant photo editing update to date. Take control from the first adjustment to the final image. RAW development now goes even deeper with nine new colour, sharpening and detail adjustments, as well as complete edits that can be saved as reusable presets for an entire shoot.
Mac App & WP: Connect Quill directly to your self-hosted WordPress site and write, edit and publish content from a native macOS app.
Beta: Fancy Headless WooCommerce? Get PhantomWP!
Milestone: xSpeed Cache has reached 10,000 active installations!
Link Management: Replug has been completely overhauled. You’ll find a cleaner, faster dashboard, ready-made templates for bio links and QR codes, and new bio link blocks to help you grow your audience.
Coming Soon: PinkDocs 2.0 will come with MCP support, enabling you to connect your WordPress documentation directly to AI. With new API blocks, you will be able to build beautiful API documentation with code examples.
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!
Deals, Pipelines & Two-Way Sync ©SureContact
👋 SureContact ❤️ Sales CRM
SureContact is also becoming a sales CRM, which is currently in beta. Until now, SureContact has focused solely on email marketing automation, offering features such as email campaigns, contact lists, segmentation and automation.
However, users have always wanted to be able to manage sales in the same place, including deals, pipelines and real conversations with leads.
Here’s what’s coming soon: Deals, pipelines and two-way conversations. Create and track every deal from the first point of contact to closure. Set up your own sales stages and move deals through them. Send emails to contacts right from SureContact and receive notifications when they reply. Keep the entire conversation thread in one place.
Finally, you can run your marketing and sales activities from one platform. No more switching between tools!
Quarantine ©Phox Elements
👋 New: Phox Form Guard
Phox Form Guard scores every Breakdance form submission against 13 signals that you can view and adjust. Obvious junk is discarded, borderline submissions are held for review, and genuine enquiries caught by mistake can be released with one click, including attachments. It also monitors every form and notifies you the moment one stops delivering. It is included in the Phox Bundle or available on its own.
Prices for the lifetime plans will rise soon. Buy before 19 October to secure today’s price, which includes access to unlimited sites and all future updates. The Bundle includes Form Guard and every other Phox Elements plugin.
Give Customers a Real Reason to Refer ©Partnero
👋 Monetary Payouts for Refer-a-Friend
Discounts and store credit are effective for some programs. However, for customers who make consistent and high-volume referrals, cash is a stronger motivator.
Refer-a-friend programs on Partnero can now pay out cash rewards directly. Customers can view their balance, request a payout when they are ready and select their preferred payment method: PayPal, bank transfer, Venmo or cryptocurrency.
You can set a minimum threshold before rewards become payable, approve requests manually or automatically, and pay in batches or on a schedule via PayPal or Wise. A refer-a-friend program that pays cash tends to attract a different kind of referrer: They are more likely to track their earnings, refer deliberately, and keep coming back.
🗞️ Bites & Pieces
WordPress
With Novamira HQ 1.0.0 Beta 3, you can link your xCloud account and every WordPress site in it (including staging sites) with an API token.
WP ULike 5.2.4 introduces a new gallery block control that allows you to display a ‘Like’ button on each image. Each image has its own count.
Weglot 2.0 introduces a whole new way to translate your WordPress website. It provides smarter translations with context-aware AI and offers a redesigned user experience.
WPForms introduces a new Paystack add-on that allows users to accept payments in Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and Kenya.
The Tribune theme from WPZOOM now comes with four complete designs instead of one: Classic, Editorial, Modern and Broadsheet, which is a revival of the original Tribune 1.0 look.
Videozoom has been its video theme since 2011, and version 5.0 is its most significant update yet. The new Editorial style is a minimalist black-and-white video magazine with a toggle for dark mode. The featured slider has a new full-width cinematic look, and it is possible to drag it using either a mouse or a touchscreen. The mobile menu has been completely redesigned with accordion submenus.
Font Hero 2.5 now lets you import fonts from a folder.
WordPress Performance
With xSpeed Cache 1.4.0, saving a post, comment or product only clears the pages that change, such as the post itself, its archives and the listing pages that show it.
E-Commerce
FluentCart 1.7.1 adds Airwallex as a payment method and product review support for Divi and Bricks.
ThriveCart announces five new features: ThrivePages, a new visual page builder; Advanced Adaptive Pricing, which allows you to sell in the buyer’s local currency; and Subscription Bumps, which allow you to add recurring offers to a purchase. Other new features include Retention Offers, which help to prevent subscription cancellations, and Anchored Subscriptions, which give users more control over subscription renewal dates.
Referral Marketing
Viral Loops adds a new GoHighLevel integration, enabling businesses using GHL to incorporate referral marketing more closely into their existing customer and marketing workflows. There is also a better referral experience for Shopify, with a redesigned Milestone widget offering more customization options, and a new How It Works widget that makes referral mechanics easier for customers to understand.
CMP
SureCookie 1.6.1 now credits SureCart affiliates even if visitors browse a few pages before accepting cookies. The affiliate code is preserved on internal links until the tracker runs; nothing is stored on the visitor’s device. Visitors who decline cookies are still not credited. Pro 1.5.0 adds more privacy law templates, including POPIA, PIPEDA, PDPA, the Privacy Act, APPI, PIPA, PIPL and DPDP.
CRM
With version 4.9, you can now receive email replies right inside Groundhogg. What’s more, AI assistants can now read, edit, test and publish your flows, and the flow editor is much faster.
Directories
You can now use Directorist with Elementor to visually build responsive directory pages, listings, archives, profiles and searches. The new Directorist Gutenberg extension allows you to build directory layouts with dynamic directory data and customizable blocks. Meet the new Directorist Builder Integration Pack!
Voice Notes
With the new AudioPen Notion Connector, the voice notes you record can be sent directly to Notion. No more copying and pasting or using Zapier!
Client Portals
Customer Support
With LiveAgent, your AI agent can now handle email conversations as well as WhatsApp. It can read the entire email thread, understand the context and reply to everyone who needs an answer. It can also automatically adjust the ‘To’ and ‘Cc’ recipients.
LMS / E-Learning
Klasio releases a new Zapier integration. Previously, every new sign-up meant adding the student to Klasio manually. Now, however, Zapier creates the student account and enrols them automatically. If they already have an account, Klasio uses that instead. Students get access right away, without having to wait for you.
Social Media
Whenever you publish a new article, Nuelink automatically detects it and shares a link to your article across your social channels with a caption. It works with WordPress, Blogger, Substack, RSS feeds, Tumblr, Wix, Medium, Ghost, Squarespace and Weebly.
Automation
Voice support is now available in Pabbly Connect‘s AI Integration Builder, making it easier to build AI integrations that can work with voice in multiple languages.
Email Marketing
Postcards introduces AMP for Email. Add an accordion or image carousel to your email template, export it in AMP format, and your subscribers can expand sections and swipe through images in Gmail. Every design comes with an HTML fallback, so the email works everywhere else too.
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.
Customer Support
Isabella from Gleap has just announced the October update for their AI-native customer support platform. Say hello to Surveys 2.0, new AI models, and rebuilt emails.
Product Demos
Joe from Supademo has just introduced a new feature that allows you to turn Loom videos into clickable demos and add AI demo agents to your website.
Event Platforms, Virtual Events
Ben from HeySummit has introduced a new Drip integration, scheduled chat messages, threaded replies and more to the event planning and hosting platform.
🔥 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.
Headless WordPress with Astro: Get lifetime access to PhantomWP.
Black Friday: Get notified about the Pabbly Plus Black Friday deal, which gives you unlimited tasks, emails and usage across the entire suite.
Free Credits: Create a free WPGlotty account, activate the WordPress translation plugin on a live site, and receive 10,000 free extra words.
WordPress Search: Save 20% on Relevanssi with code HELLO20.
Birthday Promo: Save up to 40% on Amelia.
Bulk: Get 40% off when you buy 2+ Barn2 plugins for WooCommerce.
Spring Sale: Save 35% 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 Bundle LTD. It includes all existing plugins, including SleekPixel, SleekAI, SleekMotion, SleekView and more.
Recurring: Save 10% on Publer, the social media management platform.
That’s all for this week. We hope you enjoyed the 173rd 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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Tags
# Affinity# Astro# AudioPen# Bit CRM# Breakdance# Bricks# Directorist# Divi# DPlugins# Drip# Elementor# Etch# FluentCart# Giststack# Groundhogg# Gutenberg# HeySummit# Kitchen# Larkpulse# LiveAgent# Notion# Novamira# Nuelink# OttoKit# Pabbly Connect# Partnero# PhantomWP# Phox Elements# PinkDocs# Postcards# Quill# Rank Math# Replug# Shader# Shopify# Supademo# SureContact# ThriveCart# Viral Loops# Voxel# VX Framework# Weglot# WP ULike# WPForms# WPZOOM# xSpeed Cache# Yoast# Zapier
