Alright let's settle this once and for all 👀

Team WordPress: flexible, huge plugin ecosystem, been around forever

Team Webflow: clean visual builder, faster to design, no plugin hell

If you had to pick ONE for a client project today, which are you going with and why?

Bonus points for horror stories 😅

I spent a while stacking caching plugins and wondering why things weren't as fast as they should be. The thing that fixed it wasn't a plugin, it was understanding that the three caching layers do completely different jobs and you build them from the bottom up.

OPcache is the foundation. It caches compiled PHP bytecode so the interpreter isn't recompiling your code on every request. It helps every single PHP app, it operates independently of everything else, and you basically never turn it off. In production I set validate_timestamps=0 and just flush it on deploy.

Object caching (Redis or Memcached) sits above that. It stores the results of expensive database queries so WordPress isn't making dozens of DB round trips per page. This is the layer that matters most for logged-in users and anything dynamic, because those requests skip page caching entirely.

Page caching (Nginx FastCGI cache for me) is the big hitter for anonymous traffic. A cached page never touches PHP or MySQL, it just serves HTML. Massive for traffic spikes, but useless for logged-in users, so you set proper bypass rules for wp-admin, carts, checkout and logged-in cookies.

The lightbulb moment was realizing they don't compete, they cover for each other. Page cache handles anonymous hits, object cache carries the cache misses and logged-in users, OPcache speeds up all the PHP underneath both. The mistakes I'd been making were running two page cache solutions at once and expecting object cache to help on pages that were already fully page-cached (it doesn't, page cache bypasses WordPress completely).

The other thing that clicked: the right strategy depends on your site. Marketing sites lean hard on page caching. Membership and ecommerce lean on object caching because everyone's logged in. Frequently updated content sites need shorter TTLs and smart invalidation.

I wrote the full guide up with the actual php.ini, wp-config and Nginx config snippets in this article Understanding WordPress Caching Layers: A Developer's Configuration Guide. Curious how you guys handle cache invalidation on fast-moving sites, that's the part I still tweak most.

Been doing wp work and my setup feels stuck in 2018. laragon for local, vscode, wp-cli, and a terminal open just to watch debug.log lol.

Is everyone on localwp / ddev now or does that not matter much? and the php version thing across older sites drives me nuts, curious if you just keep separate stacks or something smarter

whatever you're using, even if it's ugly, I want to hear it...

Hi,

I need to change the attached header to include two seperate images in the middle.

The website uses Avada and I understand I need to create a new Layout section to replace this.

The problem is that it's proving difficult to apply the style of the red contacts/ social row at the top and the Nav section at the bottom to the new header.

Is there an easier way of doing this in Avada?

The client understandably assumes this is a simple change!

Thanks

Hello!

Here's what I'm not understanding about Docker:

You have to essentially write out the environment for each project, so you will have a docker-compose file that will potentially change from one project to the next.

Say over time you have 10 projects, your oldest project is maybe running an outdated version of php described in the docker file. Or maybe some setting has changed... and this happens on each project.

How do you keep each docker configuration, of which there are now 10, up to date and in sync?

Maybe keep a repo with your up to date WordPress-Docker config and pull it down to each project?

Thanks!

Hi, has anyone had a similar issue with WordPress 7.0.3?

I have a custom plugin that works fine on my demo site (also WP 7.0.3), but on the live site its settings page keeps loading forever.

No PHP/debug errors. Other wp-admin pages work normally.

The weird thing is that if I open the same settings page with &noheader=1, it loads immediately. Without it, the request just hangs and doesn't even return headers.

So I'm guessing something is getting stuck during the admin header/hooks, possibly a conflict with another plugin or security/cache layer.

Just what the title says. I can't get at the photo but I can see a tiny preview of it. How do I change it?

I work in higher ed, mostly instructional design and Canvas LMS support type stuff. WordPress has been a growing chunk of work for me, and is now solely on my plate following the retirement of my coworker.

I’ve been in my current role for seven years and have gradually picked up some work from a long time colleague who has now retired on short notice. This work is now completely on my shoulders and I worry I’m in over my head. I did get a pay bump to pick up this work, which is great, but I fear I didn’t realize what I was getting into when agreeing to this.

I feel confident with “visual” Wordpress editing but do not have a development background. I’m working through the “Beginner WordPress Developer” course now and it has me freaking out a bit that I have so much to learn in a few weeks. I follow the course content just fine when it’s presented linearly, but I worry that in a troubleshooting scenario I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

Background… Over the years I’ve picked up some WordPress support work from a long time colleague. Essentially, several classes use a WordPress site to publish their work in the class. It’s a learning experience for students and a way to get their work published for awards, portfolios, etc.

In the past my colleague did the setup part (creating site files) and archiving (converting to static sites, migrating sites to new domains). He did this all manually because for him it was easier that way. We use DreamHost shared hosting. I have no problem creating the sites with DreamHost’s installer, but archiving/converting to static/migrating seems much more complex. He was using a tool called Simply Static to convert to static HTML and then manually moving the files around via FTP.

I did everything else, the “soft” stuff — training the students, adding users, first line for troubleshooting issues, customizing design, reviewing plugin/theme requests when students wanted something specific. Rarely if something completely stumped me I’d ask for his help, maybe 1-2 times per year. Frankly I think some of my anxiety around this is because former colleague was a classic old school IT grump (in the same position 35 years) who tended to make mountains out of molehills. I’ve found that several things he would complain and doomsday about didn’t actually take the hours and hours they pretended they did, he just insisted on doing it the manual way he liked rather than using the host tools.

These are pretty simple sites in terms of content, but often have many plugins, sometimes ancient ones (Knight Labs pls update your shit) and I know that’s a security issue but these aren’t exactly high traffic or sensitive sites -- just text, images, and links.

With all the fuss I see about WordPress security problems I’ve never seen any of our sites hacked… but maybe colleague was just doing more than I realized? Or maybe our sites aren't great targets?

There is also just a large quantity of sites and users to manage, so I think the big challenge is scale rather than depth, if that makes sense. I’m looking into setting up a custom role for the students and faculty that lock them out of most functionalities to prevent issues in the first place.

Before this next school year starts, can someone either walk me back from this ledge or tell me if I need to just abandon ship and tell my department we can’t sustain this and classes need to transition to using Google Sites? Obviously that's much less flexible and doesn't give students CMS experience.

Or... if I keep everything basic, set expectations low, can I build this plane as I fly it? (i.e. tell everyone we’re sticking with Twenty Twenty Five, standard theme, restricted roles, no outdated plugins, while I upskill?)

For this fall semester I only need to worry about four new sites for one course. I can keep hand updating themes and plugins from last semester while I figure out how archiving works I guess. I did one archive test successfully but the second failed and I just had to throw in the towel to get back to the rest of my “main” job after wasting half a day. Bleh.

This work really does interest me but I don't want to let the students or faculty down with my ignorance.

Hi!

Im back to ecomm world since a long break and i see everyone using Claude with Shopify, but monthly rates are far expensive compared to woocommerce.

Why everyones disagrees with wordpress nowdays?

It's woocommerce + vibe coding a good idea? Plan to make 5-10 small sites with few products

I've just released WP-Autoplugin v2, a free plugin for building and modifying WordPress plugins with AI.

V1 was essentially an AI code generator. V2 is a complete rewrite and works much more like Claude Code or Codex, except the coding agent runs directly inside wp-admin and understands that it's working with WordPress plugins and themes.

It uses actual agentic tool loops: the model can explore an installed codebase, search/read relevant files, follow hooks and dependencies, make a plan, generate focused changes, review the result, and iterate based on what it finds.

The basic workflow is Plan → Code → Review.

https://preview.redd.it/pyk693qpdyhh1.png?width=1278&format=png&auto=webp&s=eb9fd824225867422046adc624fac28c3353de06

Some things you can do with it:

• Create a complete plugin from a description
• Fix or extend an existing installed plugin/theme
• Have the agent explore an unfamiliar codebase and explain how it works
• Create a separate add-on plugin by inspecting the target plugin's actions/filters
• Review generated changes as diffs and manually edit them
• Iterate on plans and code without losing previous revisions
• Package/download the result, install it as a fork, or apply it to the original plugin/theme

One thing I was particularly careful about: the agent never directly edits the live plugin/theme while it's working. Changes are staged as separate revisions, and modifying the installed code requires explicit approval.

The agent's access is also deliberately limited: it gets bounded, read-only tools for exploring source code rather than unrestricted access to the WordPress installation.

It's completely free (no Pro version, no subscription) and it's BYOK, with support for OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, xAI and compatible APIs. You can also use a ChatGPT subscription via its Codex credits, so you don't necessarily need API keys at all.

The whole thing runs through WordPress/PHP (with background jobs for longer agent loops), so there's no Node service or separate coding environment to set up.

GitHub: https://github.com/WP-Autoplugin/wp-autoplugin

I'd love to hear what you think, feedback, bug reports, ideas, and real-world use cases are all very welcome.

This sub gets the "how do I add AI chat to my site" question constantly and the answer is usually a plugin that wants an API key in the WP database. Here's the version I ended up with instead, in case it's useful to anyone else.

What's actually in WordPress: one block, 481 bytes. It sets an endpoint URL on window and injects a script tag. That's it. No plugin installed, nothing in the database, no key stored in WP.

Everything else lives in one external serverless file. It serves the widget itself from a /widget.js route, so the ~19KB of markup, styles and logic never enters WP content at all. The API key is an env var on that service. Shipping a widget change is one external deploy — I don't touch the site.

Three WP-specific things that cost me time:

• Scripts inside an HTML block get escaped at render time, and the failure is silent. Stored content stays byte-clean while the live page does nothing and the console is empty. Always check the rendered output rather than what the editor saved.
• Ampersands in inline script text were a repeat offender for the same reason. Keeping the injected block down to 481 bytes with no logic in it sidesteps the whole class.
• A block appended next to another does not inherit the page wrapper. Anything you insert needs to constrain its own width or it renders indented against everything else.

If a page is still classic/freeform, block-level edits refuse to target it and you're looking at a full-content rewrite. What worked better for me was editing through the REST API from the browser console on wp-admin — read the raw content, do a targeted string replace, POST it back. Surgical, no conversion needed, and the content never round-trips through a copy step.

Result: https://dhseadev.online/ask/ Full build notes: https://dhseadev.online/2026/08/06/ai-answers-desk-val-town-groq/

Hey everyone!

What WordPress news sources do you follow?

I’m looking for blogs, newsletters, YouTube channels, podcasts, X/Twitter accounts, anything that's worth keeping an eye on.

I've been trying to find a few reliable sources to stay up to date with WordPress news and upcoming changes, but I haven't found anything that really stands out yet.

I’d love to hear what you follow and would recommend. Thanks in advance!

I've been working on a lightweight WordPress activity logging plugin and just released version 1.2.0.

The idea behind it was simple: I wanted something that logs important admin actions without trying to be an enterprise security suite or adding unnecessary complexity.

At the moment it logs things like:

• post publishing, updates, trashing and permanent deletion
• user creation, deletion and role changes
• media uploads and permanent media deletions

It also includes log retention (auto-purge), search/filtering, pagination and a small dashboard widget for recent activity.

What's new in 1.2.0

This release is mostly focused on making the logs more useful on larger sites.

• Added severity levels (Info / Warning / Critical)
• Promotions to Administrator are now logged as critical events
• New severity filters and date range filtering
• Role changes now show both the previous and new role
• Media Library uploads are now logged
• Faster log searches thanks to fulltext indexes and query caching
• Separate setting for dashboard widget log count

I'm trying to keep the plugin focused on being fast and lightweight rather than adding every possible audit feature.

I'd be interested in hearing what admin actions you think are worth logging that most plugins tend to miss.

https://github.com/mobbi-dev/admin-activity-logger-lite

https://github.com/mobbi-dev/admin-activity-logger-lite/releases/tag/v1.2.0

Wordpress beginner, apologise if I'm misunderstanding something obvious.

I have a Wordpress.org site.
It's a list of people who offer various services. Each person offers a different combination of services, for example one person offers editing and proof reading, another offers ebook formatting and editing and so on.

I would like to set up the site so that one page has a complete list of everyone, and then you can also use a drop down menu to navigate to a page of everyone according to the service they offer, for example, if you're looking for editors, you can choose that from the drop down and the page will display all the editors on the list.

I don't know what terms to search for in order to find help on this.

I’m building a HTML website with Claude, then using Novamira to code it for WordPress.

Just spend 8 hours following this video and getting my website perfect… https://youtu.be/7YS6TFquvxk?is=YB0b1fxLh403kQie. I’m in the final step where you start cording the site for word press but I keep getting spammed in the chat by Claude with Novamira authorization request that half the time don’t work!

I connected Novamira to Claude but is there anyway to automate the authorizations? I’m using claude desktop and don’t see options for bypass permissions etc

Hey everyone, hoping someone here has seen this before.

I'm dealing with a persistent infection on a client's WordPress site. A few weeks ago I found obfuscated PHP code injected at the bottom of the child theme's functions.php file, wrapped in comment markers like this:

SC_TH_BEGIN followed by a version number and a hash, then the code block, then SC_TH_END with matching version and hash.

The code itself used deliberately meaningless function and variable names, decoded a large encoded payload at runtime, and wrote a hidden file into the mu-plugins folder. I also found a handful of small unfamiliar archive files sitting in the uploads directory that I hadn't put there. The injected code included logic to check a hash and quietly rewrite itself if anything was missing or changed — basically self-healing behavior.

Here's what I've already tried:

Removed the injected block from functions php by hand
Found and deleted the suspicious mu-plugin file
Changed every password — hosting, WordPress admin, database
Tested with a completely fresh WordPress install locally using a backup, confirmed that copy was clean
Re-uploaded and reapplied cleanup carefully

About two weeks later, the same block reappeared in functions.php — same hash, but a higher version number, and this time the actual malicious code was replaced with an innocent-looking comment saying something like "this file previously had malicious content but it's been removed and is safe now." It really does seem timed to specifically counter cleanup attempts, like it's tracking that we're actively trying to remove it.

Has anyone run into this pattern before? Particularly interested in:

Where this kind of thing usually re-enters from if the obvious dropper file is already removed
Whether this sounds like a known campaign or family of malware
Any tools people trust for finding every infected touchpoint on a WordPress site, not just the obvious one

Really appreciate in Advance

Anyone joining us at WordCamp JHB?

I use a 4K monitor, so screenshots for my WordPress posts are often much larger than I need.

My usual workflow was:

- Resize the screenshot

- Convert it to WebP

- Upload it to WordPress

- Add alt text and insert it into the post

Some screenshot tools can handle the resizing and conversion, but uploading and inserting the image is still another step.

That’s why I built **KXNotes Image Paste Optimizer**.

Now I can copy a screenshot, press **Ctrl+V** in Gutenberg, and the plugin automatically:

- Resizes and converts it to WebP

- Generates a readable filename and alt text

- Uploads and inserts it at the cursor

Everything runs on your own WordPress server—no cloud service, external AI API, or telemetry.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/kxnotes-image-paste-optimizer/

Would this fit your content workflow? What should I improve next?

I have been trying to build a website using Wordpress since May. I am not a coder and I not especially technical but I think I am reasonably adept at working most things out. I spent many years on Squarespace (before they borked it) and never had problems.

I started using the Wordpress Management in my CPanel (see pic 1) but after a while of building it all felt clunky. So I deleted everything and went back to scratch, downloading the Wordpress App through the Applications (see pic 2).

This was going well until early this week when, after an auto update, I was suddenly having problems getting a JSON response. I went through all the fixes and couldn't get it sorted. It also deleted a bunch of template and patterns I had created.

So I again deleted EVERYTHING (I saved all my written content into a Word doc) - uninstalling everything, detatching, you name it. Essentially created a new admin, the works. Started with the basics of Twenty-Twenty Five and it seemed to be OK, but I am nervous about uploading any new themes or plugins (which I will need to do).

I have a new theme with associated plugins (paid for by my bro who uses Wordpress - lucky sis!) but I don't know whether to start over using the first method or the second method.

What I really want is to be able to design some graphics and use them on blank templates, so that each page of my site is similar but not the same - main content layout the same or similar, dropdown menu the same, footer the same, but with some graphic variations. I truly did not think it would be this difficult. I have even used blocks wherever possible.

My future business has no shop, no major photograph stuff (so not gallery type or image heavy), no blogs with comments. Just a bunch of pages with different services and explanations for my freelance future.

I'm also worried I'll find myself back with the JSON response issue which I never figured out how to fix.

If anyone has advice or is willing to work through this with me, I'll be grateful. I don't want to go to Wix Studio or similar - the cost is prohibitive considering my pages will all be mostly static and without online store features or sales. I knew Wordpress was a steep learning curve but after four months, it is starting to feel harder than it needs to be.

Thanks in advance, Redditors.

I've been building WordPress plugins since 2014 and I've used WooCommerce a lot.

I got really tired of paying $279 per year for the WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin, so I built my own plugin. I also really didn't like how buggy WooCommerce's PayPal & Stripe plugins where, so I built those into the plugin as well.

I decided to build this plugin to give back to the open-source community, so it's 100% free. No paid version, no upselling, no collecting emails or anything like that. Support is also free.

It's on the WordPress Repository: Accept PayPal & Stripe with Subscriptions for WooCommerce

(I added Promo to my post title, but I am not actually promoting anything paid, it's all free)