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"When AI is nice enough to send a customer your way, you need to fight like hell to actually earn a direct relationship with that person.” That was Bob Ralian’s message on day two of #DMWF. As Head of Unified Analytics at Automattic, he laid out two jobs for marketers: getting noticed by AI, and what he calls relationship intelligence, knowing what brings people back once AI sends them your way. Swipe through for six questions your reporting should be able to answer, and save them for your next analytics review.

86% of senior leaders say their organizations aren’t very prepared to adopt AI in day-to-day operations. Meanwhile, the number of companies with over 40% of their AI projects in production is expected to double within six months. Organizations are adopting AI more rapidly than their infrastructure can support, raising a key question: Can your platform scale AI and keep it governed at the same time? We share our perspective on how this plays out in practice here: https://lnkd.in/guVnDuua

Most newsrooms have tried AI. Fewer have made it stick. Before AI scales in a newsroom, three things have to be true: 1. Someone owns it. 2. The content can be put to work. 3. There's a clear case for who pays, and who gets paid. On November 17, join Tarun Gangwani of WordPress VIP and Alexandra Ungureanu of XWP as they turn what news product leaders said at the News Product Alliance Summit into practical next steps for publishers. Save your seat: https://lnkd.in/gQzPgTRY

Publishing speed is becoming a balancing act for enterprise content teams. In our Future of the Web 2026 report, 72% of enterprise leaders said publishing speed and content freshness remain important for AI-driven discovery, yet 85% believe AI content published without human review erodes brand trust. That tension is why governance, review systems, and editorial pipelines are among enterprise teams’ funded priorities for 2027. Explore the findings: https://lnkd.in/g9hC_-qQ/?utm_campaign=Boost_Post_VideoViews_Oct22,2026&utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=paid&utm_id=1239450004&hsa_acc=508361132&hsa_cam=1239450004&hsa_grp=905199134&hsa_ad=1611390724&hsa_net=linkedin&hsa_ver=3

Your sites are protected. Today, the PHP project released security updates for two critical vulnerabilities in PHP itself, tracked as CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619 and nicknamed "PHP2Shell. Both are rated 9.2 out of 10 on the CVSS scale. They can be exploited over the internet with no login, and they can give an attacker control of the server. If your site is hosted on WordPress.com, WordPress VIP, WP Cloud, Pressable, Tumblr, or any Automattic infrastructure, you’re already covered. We worked closely with the PHP Security team to protect every site on our platform as quickly as possible, so there’s nothing you need to do. Because the flaws live in the PHP runtime, updating WordPress or your plugins is not enough to protect your site. If you manage PHP yourself, update to a fixed release now. Thank you to the PHP Security team and to WIZ Research, Calif, OpenAI, and Quarkslab for finding and responsibly reporting these issues. Read the full post for more detailed information and mitigation steps: https://lnkd.in/eUc5ChFw

A website isn't just where marketing publishes content. It's where strategy, transformation, revenue, and operational priorities come together in one place. But not every executive evaluates its performance through the same lens. What matters to a CFO may look very different from what matters to a transformation leader or GTM team. Understanding those priorities is key to building a digital foundation that supports the broader business. Here's how to evaluate your website through a C-suite lens: https://lnkd.in/gqX5PZdw

A backup you've never restored is an assumption, not a recovery plan. Having backups in place doesn't necessarily mean your team can recover a website when something goes wrong. The real test is whether you can restore your site, its content, and its integrations within the timeframe your business needs. We're curious how often organizations actually put their recovery processes to the test. The results will help shape an upcoming edition of The Brief, WordPress VIP's bi-weekly newsletter on enterprise content and digital experience. Subscribe to catch it: https://lnkd.in/e7emqUPr

When New Scientist relaunched on WordPress VIP, readers saw the same site they’d always known, but the editors behind it got a very different workday. The move replaced a heavily customized, self-hosted setup carrying 15+ years of legacy, and the newsroom felt the difference from day one. A big thanks to Michael James Ilett for helping drive the project forward. Swipe to hear from Chelsea Whyte and Timothy Revell on what changed.

Most technical debt doesn't arrive as a crisis. It shows up as a slow leak: an old theme nobody wants to touch, a plugin everyone depends on, or a publishing workflow that takes twice as long as it should. Shawn Barrans, President of Trew Knowledge Inc., sees the same pattern across enterprise organizations. Performance, security, and scalability challenges often trace back to years of accumulated technical debt. Paying down that debt isn't just maintenance. It's how organizations get ownership of their platform back. Where is technical debt slowing your team down the most? Explore our partner ecosystem: https://lnkd.in/g95V9GHf

AI experiments are well underway across marketing teams, but what comes next? In our Building the Enterprise AI Stack webinar with Americaneagle.com, we explored what it takes to move from individual productivity gains and promising pilots to repeatable workflows and AI that can scale across the organization. Swipe through for five takeaways from the conversation, and watch the full webinar here: https://lnkd.in/gw_c7Zd8