March has been a busy month across the WordPress ecosystem. We’re excited that WordPress 6.8’s first release candidate (RC1) is now available for testing, and we’ve also seen innovative new features roll out for popular plugins.

AI continues to be a recurring theme — from smarter form calculations in WPForms to StoreAgent’s automated WooCommerce helpers.

There’s also a wave of quality-of-life improvements worth mentioning. Uncanny Automator now integrates with Discord and RSS, AIOSEO added new crawl controls, and WP Simple Pay has made Stripe compliance easier for users.

Whether you’re a developer, site owner, or just like keeping up with the latest tools, there’s plenty to catch up on this month.

WPForms Adds AI-Powered Calculations for Smarter Forms 🪄

Creating complex calculation forms just got a whole lot easier. WPForms now includes a powerful AI Calculations feature that builds custom formulas for you.

You can chat with the WPForms AI Assistant to create dynamic, real-time formulas in seconds. Just describe what you want to calculate in simple terms — no syntax or logic-building needed.

It works great for eCommerce pricing, event quotes, tuition fees, and more. Simply type in your request, and the AI does the rest.

This new feature builds upon WPForms’ existing AI tools. You can generate entire forms with a single prompt, fill in field choices automatically, and even translate forms into other languages in seconds.

WordPress 6.8 Release Candidate Now Available. Final Release Expected April 15, 2025 🎉

The first Release Candidate (RC1) for WordPress 6.8 is now available for testing. This marks a significant step toward the final release, which is scheduled for April 15, 2025.

This update brings a lot of enhancements aimed at improving site performance, security, and user experience.

Key features in WordPress 6.8 include:

• Speculative Loading: This feature predicts and preloads resources that users are likely to access next. This results in faster page load times and a smoother browsing experience.
• Enhanced Password Security with bcrypt: WordPress 6.8 transitions to bcrypt for password hashing. This provides improved security against brute-force attacks and aligns with modern security standards.
• Block Editor Improvements: Users will benefit from better block interactions, more style controls, and an improved editing experience. These features will make content creation more intuitive and flexible within the block editor.

Developers and testers are encouraged to explore the Release Candidate now. This will allow you to get familiar with the new features and ensure compatibility with themes and plugins ahead of the final release.

For a comprehensive overview of what’s coming in WordPress 6.8, including detailed features and screenshots, you can read about What’s Coming in WordPress 6.8: Features and Screenshots.

StoreAgent Launches AI Assistants for WooCommerce Stores 🤖

Josh Kohlbach, a longtime name in the WordPress and WooCommerce space, has launched StoreAgent — a set of AI-powered tools designed to save store owners time and effort.

Instead of just chatting with AI, StoreAgent acts like a smart co-worker that can handle real tasks for your online store.

These AI agents can write product descriptions, create short summaries, suggest tags, and even monitor your store’s content. They can also summarize reviews and help with customer Q&As, all from inside your WooCommerce dashboard.

Josh says the goal was to go beyond ChatGPT-style chatboxes and build something that feels more like an actual assistant.

StoreAgent is the first step in that direction—a collection of AI agents that do the boring work, help you stay creative, and suggest ways to improve your product pages.

StoreAgent works on a pay-as-you-go credit system, and new users get 500 credits for free. A Shopify version and other platform extensions are also in the works.

PushEngage Adds AI Campaigns and WooCommerce Order Notifications 🔔

PushEngage just made it easier to boost customer engagement and save time. They’ve added two big features to their push notification plugin: AI-powered message generation and automated WooCommerce order notifications.

The new AI tool helps you write high-converting push messages in seconds. Just enter your goal, and the system generates optimized text that’s ready to send.

It’s ideal for marketers who want results without spending hours on copywriting. ✍️

The WooCommerce update is even more exciting for store owners. You can now send push alerts for order events like purchases, processing updates, and delivery notifications.

This helps keep customers in the loop, reduces support tickets, and even alerts your team internally.

You can also recover abandoned carts or request reviews automatically with follow-up campaigns. Overall, these new features are designed for store owners who want more repeat traffic and fewer missed sales.

Uncanny Automator Adds RSS and Discord Integrations ⚙️

Uncanny Automator, the most powerful WordPress automation plugin, has added two new integrations. It now allows users to automate actions using RSS feeds and send automated messages straight to Discord channels.

The new RSS integration lets you trigger actions when a feed updates or create a feed from actions on your site. For example, you could automatically post new blog content to Slack, Discord, or a newsletter tool — all without touching a line of code.

On the other hand, the Discord integration is great for online communities. You can set it to send channel messages when users complete a course, submit a form, or place an order.

It’s perfect for membership sites, LMS platforms, or WooCommerce stores that want to keep their audience informed in real time.

Plus, these new features work seamlessly with Automator’s existing integrations. That means you can connect RSS and Discord with tools like LearnDash, WPForms, BuddyBoss, WooCommerce, and more.

AIOSEO Adds Advanced Crawl Controls for Better SEO 🚀

All in One SEO, the popular WordPress SEO toolkit, just got a major update. This new release brings powerful new tools that help you clean up crawl data, block unwanted bots, and improve your site’s performance.

One standout feature is the upgraded Crawl Cleanup. It lets you limit the length of internal search URLs. You can also remove emojis and spam patterns from search terms. Plus, it can redirect pretty search URLs to raw formats.

All of this helps prevent duplicate content and wasted crawl budgets.

You can now also stop search engines from crawling internal search pages entirely. AIOSEO automatically adds disallow rules to your robots.txt file for common search query patterns like ?s= and /search/.

AI Crawlers are on the rise, and all this crawling could affect website performance. AIOSEO’s new bot-blocking feature lets you block known bad bots or AI crawlers that may use your content for training without permission. These settings are built directly into the plugin’s robots.txt editor for easy access.

AIOSEO also updated its Query Arg Monitor to improve how UTM parameters are handled. Now, UTM links automatically redirect using # fragments instead of ?. This setup keeps analytics intact while avoiding duplicate URLs in search results.

WP Simple Pay Adds Stripe Compliance Alerts and Smarter Pricing Options 💳

WP Simple Pay just rolled out new features to help WordPress users manage Stripe payments more confidently.

The latest update includes Stripe alerts within the WordPress dashboard, flexible pricing rules, and payment limits to keep your checkout forms clean and compliant.

The standout feature is the in-plugin Stripe account notifications. Instead of checking your Stripe dashboard every day, you’ll now see important alerts directly inside WordPress. These include payment verification issues, compliance reminders, and other account requirements — all in real time.

They’ve also introduced required price options, letting you add mandatory fees or add-ons to any payment form.

This is perfect for things like support fees, booking add-ons, or one-time setup charges. You can build more transparent and flexible pricing models without writing custom code.

And if you’re worried about fraud or regulatory limits, there’s a new feature for setting custom amount maximums. You can cap donation sizes, limit gift card values, or prevent accidental overpayments — all directly from the visual payment form builder.

MonsterInsights Adds Cart Abandonment Reports to Help You Recover Lost Sales 📈

MonsterInsights, the #1 Google Analytics plugin for WordPress, has introduced new Cart Abandonment reports that give store owners more visibility into what’s being left behind.

Instead of guessing which products are getting dropped at checkout, you can now see exactly what’s being abandoned — and when.

The new reports are split into two key sections. The Products report shows which items are being abandoned, how often, and how much revenue is potentially being lost.

On the other hand, the Daily report helps you spot trends by showing peak abandonment times and revenue impact by day.

It’s a helpful tool for store owners, marketers, and product managers who want to fine-tune their strategy and recover missed sales. The insights can guide inventory planning, promotional timing, and even design changes at checkout.

If you’re using MonsterInsights Pro, just update to the latest version and head to eCommerce » Cart Abandonment in your WordPress dashboard to start exploring your reports.

In Other News 🗞️

• WPConsent, a powerful privacy compliance plugin for WordPress, now supports Google Consent Mode V2. It can now automatically adjust Google tags based on user consent to improve privacy compliance. The update also introduces improved consent log management by allowing easy export of records in CSV format.
• The popular WordPress page builder plugin, SeedProd, has added 15 new industry-specific themes. They have also upgraded their Image Carousel block with support for custom headers, subheadings, and clickable buttons.
• WooCommerce is preparing Product Editor v3 to align with WordPress Data Views and Forms. They also advise developers to pause beta work for now.

• The popular WordPress backup and migration plugin, Duplicator, has introduced new features to streamline backup management. These include automatic backup log cleanups and one-click deletion options.

• UpdraftPlus, a leading WordPress plugin developer, have expanded their portfolio by acquiring Burst Statistics, a privacy-friendly analytics plugin. This acquisition follows UpdraftPlus’s commitment to improving website management tools while prioritizing user privacy.

• Hostinger, the popular WordPress hosting company, has launched Horizons. This AI-powered web app builder enables users to create custom web applications without coding knowledge.
• HeroThemes has launched the Heroic KB Chrome Extension, which allows users to access their knowledge base directly from the browser toolbar. This tool is designed to enhance productivity by allowing customer support teams to quickly search and view knowledge base articles without switching tabs.
• The popular WordPress code snippets plugin, WPCode, has introduced a Snippet Shortcode Finder. It allows users to locate where specific shortcodes are used across their WordPress site. Additionally, the update improves the WooCommerce integration by allowing users to run code snippets based on cart contents.

• Formidable Forms has introduced a GDPR Compliance field, which makes it easier to get explicit user consent in WordPress forms. This feature makes sure that data collection aligns with privacy regulations.
• Envira Gallery has added a Search Addon and a Vertical Focus Layout to improve image browsing and presentation. The search feature helps users find photos quickly using tags or descriptions. Meanwhile, the new layout highlights a featured image alongside a scrollable thumbnail strip for a more immersive gallery experience.

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• Wholesale Suite has introduced a new interface for its WooCommerce Invoice System, which allows store owners to manage invoices directly within the Payments tab. This update streamlines the invoicing process by grouping invoice tracking, payment status monitoring, and PDF invoice downloads in a single, user-friendly location.
• Smash Balloon has introduced integrations with WPForms and Formidable Forms, which allow users to collect and display customer reviews directly on their WordPress sites. This feature lets users make custom review submission forms and provides greater control over user-generated content.
• WP Mail SMTP has introduced push notifications that alert users immediately on their devices when emails fail to send. This feature makes sure that critical alerts are not missed.
• WPForms has introduced File Upload Restrictions, which lets users control access to files uploaded via forms. This feature allows for restrictions based on WordPress user roles, individual users, or password protection.

New Plugins

• WPConsent – A lightweight yet powerful WordPress plugin for managing user consent and complying with privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA. It supports multiple consent types and integrates with popular cookie plugins.
• Duplicate Post by AIOSEO 🔥 – Finally, a powerful Duplicate Post plugin for WordPress that allows you to easily duplicate posts and pages with a single click. It also features scheduled revisions for seamless content updates without affecting the live version.
• ClassifAI – A free plugin that uses AI to automate tasks like content tagging, image labeling, and more. It integrates with ElasticPress, WordPress core features, and many popular plugins.
• Remove Empty Shortcodes – A simple plugin that automatically strips out empty shortcodes from post content to keep things clean and error-free without making changes to the database.

That’s a wrap for this month’s WPBeginner Spotlight! We hope you enjoyed catching up on the latest news and updates from the WordPress ecosystem.

Got a product launch, feature update, or cool project you think we should cover? Send us a message, and we might feature it in our next edition.

We’ll see you again next month with another round of WordPress news. Thanks for reading and being part of the WPBeginner family!

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