I’m back with another issue. This one covers a trip to Bengaluru, WordPress security updates and more. Let me start with my trip to Bengaluru for attending IndiaFoss.
Notes from IndiaFOSS
At the end of September I travelled to Bengaluru for IndiaFOSS 2026, FOSS United’s annual festival, held on 26–27 September at the NIMHANS Convention Centre.
The booth I enjoyed most was Bharat Digital, a non-profit that wants to use technology to build state capacity in India. They have a fellowship program, which is quote “A six-month paid fellowship inside a government department, working alongside government partners, solving tasks for real-world impact.”
Overall, it was a good look at how India’s open-source community is changing and growing. I spent a lot of time with open hardware enthusiasts. LLMs, unsurprisingly, came up in a lot every conversation. They even had a small makeshift bookstore in the middle of the networking area, stocked with a lot of technology books.
I wish WordCamp events in India took a leaf out of IndiaFOSS’s playbook and made the events more interactive. I really should write a full different post on later!
Keep your WordPress updated!
If you maintain WordPress sites for clients, you would have noticed a lot of core releases recently. Three security releases since mid September.
- WordPress 7.1.1 (17 September): 11 security fixes.
- WordPress 7.1.2 (22 September): one critical fix. An unauthenticated local file inclusion that could lead to remote code execution.
- WordPress 7.1.3 (6 October): seven security fixes.
The Repository reports that over 2000 reports have come in the past 90 days, a lot higher than ever in the history of the project.
More reports mean more patches and a lot of triage.
The Linux kernel went through the same thing in May. Linus Torvalds said AI-powered bug hunters had made the kernel’s security mailing list almost entirely unmanageable.
WordPress is heading the same way, and the project is asking for help.
What should you do?
Keep your WordPress updated. There’s no way around it.
- Update to the latest release now
- You might want to leave automatic background updates switched on
- Very important – that you keep plugins and themes up to date as well
- Build update time into your client maintenance plans. This pace will continue for a while
Urgent Update if you use Updraft
As I write this newsletter – there has been a breach with Updraft plugin. Please update read more about Updrafts statement here.
WordCamps in India
WordCamp Rajasthan wrapped up recently. I couldn’t make it, but I heard good things about it.
Next up:
- WordCamp Bengaluru: 21–22 November 2026, at SJBHS on Museum Road. Tickets are ₹800.
- WordCamp Delhi: 12–13 December 2026, at the Dr Ambedkar International Centre on Janpath. Contributor Day on the first, conference on the second.
- WordCamp Mumbai: 13 February 2027, at ATLAS SkillTech University, Mumbai. The tickets for this one are out too!
- WordCamp Pune is scheduled for 06-07 February but the tickets are not released as yet.
I will be at WordCamp Bengaluru! I love visiting Bengaluru, the city and their WordPress people even more!
Back to WooCommerce
I hadn’t set up a WooCommerce store in over a year or two. I recently setup one up for a friend, and the experience was much cleaner and put together than I remembered.
Onboarding still has a long way to go, though, especially for people setting up a store on their own.
New things with WooCommerce
Purple, Woo’s first official block theme, is released on the WordPress.org theme directory. It has 10 colour palettes, 10 font pairings, and templates for the whole storefront.
Security Security!
Back speaking about security update – WooCommerce 11.1.1 and 11.1.2 were both security updates, and 11.2 has shipped since. Get your stores onto the latest!
A Trac MCP server
There’s now an MCP server for WordPress.org Trac. It’s free and needs no account. Point your AI assistant at it and you can ask about any ticket across Core, meta, themes, plugins, bbPress, BuddyPress, GlotPress and GSoC.
More than 60,000 tickets. It is a great tool for anyone who contributes to core.
Links in this newsletter
WordPress 7.1.1 | 7.1.2 | 7.1.3