JOHNSTON: God save the children of war – Kingston Whig

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Open Channels FM: Invisible Unicode Attacks, CrowdSec Source Leak, and the AI Coding Boom Explored
by Bob Dunn on 21st September 2026 at 15:30
Invisible characters challenge spam filters, CrowdSec deals with a code leak, and AI is shifting what matters in software development.
bbPress: bbPress 2.6.18 is out!
by John James Jacoby on 21st September 2026 at 14:53
bbPress 2.6.18 is a maintenance release focused on forum imports and first-login password upgrades. Imported users can now upgrade their passwords on first login for more legacy forum formats, including cases where the original forum database is no longer available. This release also corrects PHPWind topic statuses, reply counts, and forum dates during import, and restores Super Moderator edit links on front-end bbPress user screens. bbPress 2.6.18 requires PHP 7.2 or newer and WordPress 6.0 or newer. Sites running an older PHP version should update PHP before upgrading bbPress. Read the 2.6.18 upgrade notes for importer compatibility details. These changes are also in the 2.7 development branch. The Plugin Directory’s development trunk remains at 2.7.0-alpha-3. Download bbPress 2.6.18 from WordPress.org, or update from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress.org blog: WordPress Takes Its Turn Leading the Open Website Alliance
by Mary Hubbard on 21st September 2026 at 14:28
I’m happy to announce that I am now serving as president of the Open Website Alliance (OWA), representing the WordPress Foundation. The Alliance brings together the community organizations behind Drupal, Joomla!, TYPO3, and WordPress to advocate for open source and share practices that benefit their projects. I represent the WordPress Foundation in this role, which rotates among the Alliance’s members. WordPress announced its participation in the Alliance in 2024, building on our work with Drupal, Joomla!, and TYPO3 to respond to the European Union’s Cyber Resilience Act. While many open source projects focus on underlying digital infrastructure, our content management systems power the websites where businesses reach customers and sell products and services. We asked policymakers to account for that economic role when setting security requirements, while respecting how communities of developers, translators, educators, and other contributors build and maintain the software. We share a belief that everyone should have the freedom to use, change, and share the tools they rely on. This commitment to openness builds on efforts such WordPress’s recent signing of the Open Weights and American AI Leadership letter. Our mission to democratize publishing means giving anyone a voice and welcoming everyone to contribute. Working with other communities puts those values into practice beyond WordPress, supporting the freedoms that make participation possible. I invite you to read the Open Website Alliance charter to learn more about the commitments its members share and how the Alliance works.
OpenStation Blog: Drag, Drop, Preview: How a Post Gets Written in OpenStation
by Daniel López on 21st September 2026 at 13:39
I started writing a post (this post!). Then, as usually happens, I needed a picture, so I dragged one straight from my desktop into OpenStation. No downloading, no extra tabs needed, no extra spaces in the editor, no more “in which tab was the image!?”… I just dragged it from my desktop… Done! And then I thought the post was already descriptive enough to tell how much we enjoy creating content in OpenStation… But I missed the preview. I wanted to see what the post would look like and edit it in real time. And it happened, I just had to click on the eye icon in the title bar of this editor. This is probably my favourite kind of productivity, the boring stuff becoming pleasantly simple… And yes, this whole post was written while recording the video But I thought that a quick sanity review from one of my bots would make the post nicer for SEO. So I just saved the draft, and gave it to my agent And the best part, is that EVERYTHING that my Agent did, is traceable. Switch to OpenStation
Stripe Payment Links vs Embedded WordPress Forms: Which Should You Use?
by Themeisle Editorial on 21st September 2026 at 13:37
Should you share a Stripe Payment Link or embed a payment form on your WordPress site? Compare setup, branding, features, and real costs. The post Stripe Payment Links vs Embedded WordPress Forms: Which Should You Use? appeared first on Themeisle Blog.