Cloudflare launches EmDash the 'spiritual successor' that wants to take on WordPress

Date:
Thu, 02 Apr 2026 08:55:36 +0000

Description:
Cloudflare says WordPress's plugin problem is out of hand EmDash plugins
take a different, more secure route.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Tech Radar Pro Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! Become a Member in Seconds Unlock instant access to exclusive member features. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are
now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Join the club Get full access to premium articles, exclusive features and a growing list of member rewards. Explore An account already exists for this email address, please log in. Subscribe to our newsletter Cloudflare has launched its very own CMS EmDash EmDash plugins are secure by design, WordPress has a queue of 800 to test WordPress users can easily migrate to the "AI native CMS" that is EmDash Cloudflare has lifted the wraps off EmDash, a new open source CMS that it deems to be the "spiritual successor" to WordPress.

The company explained an overwhelming majority (96%) of WordPress vulnerabilities come from plugins, which have full access to the database and filesystem, and run in the same environment as the core code without any isolation. To tackle this, Cloudflare is putting each EmDash plugin in an isolated sandbox, called Dynamic Workers, with plugins having to declare exactly which permission it needs upfront. Article continues below You may like WordPress has a new AI assistant to help you build your dream website Hackers hijack WordPress sites to spread malware using fake CAPTCHA 'Its a WordPress that stays with you': WordPress can now run within your browser, letting you build private websites not on the public web Cloudflare says EmDash is more secure than WordPress In its announcement, Cloudflare criticized the fact that existing WordPress plugins must be trusted, and that their availability on centralized plugin marketplaces serves to give them a good reputation. WordPress.org currently manually reviews and approves every plugin for the platform, and there's a queue of around 800 plugins right now that need to be verified.

Instead of this trust, EmDash plugins must be secure by design. And because developers can ship plugins with any license running independently of EmDash that run in secure sandboxes, Cloudflare is able to do away with the marketplace lock-in it criticizes.

Better still, EmDash is built to the scale-to-zero principle, meaning that it only bills for CPU time when it's actually operating "it scales back down to zero if there are no requests," the company wrote.

"Weve bet on this architecture at Cloudflare in part because we believe in having low cost and free tiers, and that everyone should be able to build websites that scale," Senior Product Manager Matt Taylor and Senior Principal Systems Engineer Matt Kane added. Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! Contact me with news
and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.

For the front end, EmDash is powered by Astro which allows users to build themes of pages, layouts, components, styles and and more.

Finally, Cloudflare describes EmDash as an "AI native CMS" that includes
Agent Skills, CLI and a built-in MCP server.

Users wishing to migrate from WordPress can either import their WXR file or
do so by, funnily enough, installing a plugin (EmDash Exporter). Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button!

And of course you can also follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp too.



======================================================================
Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/pro/cloudflare-launches-emdash-the-spiritual-success or-that-wants-to-take-on-wordpress


--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 (Linux/64)
* Origin: tqwNet Technology News (1337:1/100)