Naming is hard. The language we use shapes the way we think about things, but also the conversation we have about it. That’s why we have so much confusion about colors, icons, UI components, features — and that’s why we struggle to name design tokens, HTML classes, and variables.

Sometimes, the names we choose are too generic, so it’s difficult to understand what exactly is meant. And sometimes they are too specific, leaving little room for flexibility and reuse. How do we choose the right names? And which naming conventions work best? Let’s take a closer look.

How To Name Things

If you’re looking for some inspiration for naming HTML classes, CSS properties, or JavaScript functions, Classnames is a wonderful resource jam-packed with ideas that get you thinking outside the box.

The site provides thematically grouped lists of words perfect for naming. You’ll find terms to describe different kinds of behavior, likeness between things, order, grouping, and association, but also themed collections of words that wouldn’t instantly come to one’s mind when it comes to code, among them words from nature, art, theater, music, architecture, fashion, and publishing.

How To Name Colors

How would you choose the right name for a given color? Fortunately, David Aerne maintains a tremendous repository of color names, currently with 30355 unique color names, sourced from various references and 1000s of user contributions.

Of course, the repository comes with a color picker and name search and plenty of other color pickers as well. Tremendous work, which is also a fantastic reference to keep nearby.

How To Name Layers and Groups

What makes a good name? Javier Cuello summarized a set of naming best practices that help you name your layers, groups, and components in a consistent and scalable way.

As Javier points out, a good name has a logical structure, is short, meaningful, known by everyone, and not related to visual properties. He shares do’s and don’ts to illustrate how to achieve that and also takes a closer look at all the fine little details you need to consider when naming sizes, colors, groups, layers, and components.

How To Name Design Tokens

How to build a flexible design token taxonomy that works across different products? That was the challenge that the team at Intuit faced. The parent company of products such as Mailchimp, QuickBooks, TurboTax, and Mint developed a flexible token system that goes beyond the brand theme to serve as the foundational system for a wide array of products.

Nate Baldwin wrote a case study in which he shares valuable insights into the making of Intuit’s design token taxonomy. It dives deeper into the pain points of the old taxonomy system, the criteria they defined for the new system, and how it was created. Lots of takeaways for building your own robust and flexible token taxonomy are guaranteed.

Frequent Names For UI Components

Looking at what other people call similar things is a great way to start when you’re struggling with naming. And what better source could there be than other design systems? Before you end up in the design system rabbit hole, Iain Bean did the research for you and created the Component Gallery.

It’s a collection that includes plenty of examples for more than 50 UI components — from accordion to visually hidden — and also lists other names that the UI components go by. A fantastic resource, and not only with regard to naming.

Bonus: Name That UI, a visual dictionary of common UI components.

How To Name New Features

Features often have low adoption due to poor discoverability. Feature adoption needs time — first the feature must be discovered, then understood, then tried, learned, and eventually built into existing workflow. Erin Gannon has written a helpful practical guide on how to make sure all of it happens.

Good names are driven by user needs and problems. They should signal the value or outcome of a feature (the job-to-be-done), and — most importantly! — tap into the user’s own language. So ask people to explain a feature in their own words and then use the words they use.

How To Name Variables (Taxonomy Map)

A wonderful example of naming guidelines for a complex multi-brand, multi-themed design system comes from the Vodafone UK Design System team. Their Variables Taxonomy Map breaks down the anatomy and categorization of a design token into a well-orchestrated system of collections.

The map illustrates four collections required to support the system and connections between tokens — from brand and primitives to semantics and pages. It builds on top of Nathan Curtis’ work on naming design tokens and enables everyone to gather insight about where a token is used and what it represents, just from its name.

If you want to explore more approaches to naming design tokens, I’ve put together a list of useful Figma kits and resources that are worth checking out.

Design Token Naming Guide + Inventory

Romina Kavcic created a helpful little tool for naming design tokens — from learning how they work and how to name them well to configuring your own naming structure with components, categories, states, and roles.

Bonus: The Design Token Names Inventory spreadsheet, with a simple structure with four levels to give you a bird’s-eye view of all your design tokens. You can easily add rows, themes, and modes without losing track, and filter your tokens.

Naming Products or Services

If you are looking for the right name for your product or service, Onym is a fantastic open-source repository that organizes tools and resources for finding names for brainstorming, vetting, guides, sprints, etymologies — all the way to cautionary tales and agencies that name things, as well as useful books to take a look at.

Useful Bookmarks for Naming Things

A quick-reference list of tools and guides for naming just about… well, anything, in one place:

Wrapping Up

The right name is the one that’s well-understood and used by the team and users. So much time is wasted speaking about the very same thing but in different dialects — the designer’s dialect, the developer’s dialect, the product manager’s dialect, and the user’s dialect. That’s what often causes frustration and confusion.

So if you see low adoption, it might be merely because of the name. And pay attention to potential naming conflicts and put them in a backlog of things to address later. It’s one of those fine little details that can reduce frustration and confusion and help teams work together better.

Meet “Design Patterns For AI Interfaces”

Meet Design Patterns For AI Interfaces, Vitaly’s new video course with practical examples from real-life products — with a live UX training happening soon. Jump to a free preview.

(yk)

The post A Practical Guide To Naming Things appeared first on The NOKIA Blog.

Last week, we announced a public preview of Amazon Bedrock Managed Agents powered by OpenAI, built on a customized version of OpenAI’s Agents API engineered to be AWS-native and integrated with AWS resources. You can now build agents optimized for OpenAI models that run entirely inside AWS with the identities, permissions, and governance controls you already use.

You can choose an execution environment: self-hosted compute to use an existing development machine, container, or compute environment or Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Runtime, for managed runtime sessions and configurable storage in your AWS account. To learn more, visit the Amazon Bedrock documentation.

In addition, we are adding new frontier models on Amazon Bedrock to expand your model choices:

• OpenAI GPT-6.1 Sol: An upgrade to GPT-6 Sol, GPT-6.1 Sol delivers exceptionally strong performance on agentic coding, computer use, and professional work. According to OpenAI, it approaches GPT-6 Astra across demanding evaluations at roughly one-fifth of the cost, giving developers more room to build and run capable agents at scale. To learn more, visit the GPT-6.1 Sol model card.
• OpenAI GPT-6 Astra UltraFast mode: Ultrafast is a premium speed tier for GPT-6 Astra, built for workloads where speed matters most. According to OpenAI, Ultrafast delivers up to 6x faster inference in the API, with up to 300 tokens per second. The Amazon Bedrock inference engine delivers the performance, security, and reliability required for production workloads. To learn more, visit the GPT-6 Astra model card.
• Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5.5: Claude Sonnet 5.5 is a smarter, more efficient Sonnet and a step up from Sonnet 5, making it a natural upgrade for teams already building on Sonnet. It’s stronger for coding, completing well-scoped tasks as part of a larger coding strategy such as building and fixing features with Claude in the same session or verifying output against requirements. To learn more, visit the Claude Sonnet 5.5 model card.
• SpaceXAI Grok 4.7: Grok 4.7 builds on Grok 4.6 with better mixed-document handling, more dependable repo-scale coding with planning and error recovery, and enhanced browser-use agents for form fills and portal navigation. To learn more, visit the Grok 4.7 model card.

Last week’s launches
Here are some launches that got my attention:

• AWS Well-Architected Agent (preview): You can use an AI-powered agent service that analyzes your AWS environment to deliver targeted, contextual recommendations for improving your applications’ cost, security, performance, and resilience. The agent analyzes your infrastructure, understands your unique business goals, and delivers contextual recommendations.
• Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL supports direct querying of Apache Iceberg and Parquet data: You can directly query operational data together with data stored in data lakes in Apache Iceberg and Parquet formats using your existing PostgreSQL applications and tools, without extract, transform, and load (ETL) pipelines or data duplication.
• Amazon S3 Tables support all Apache Iceberg V3 data types: Amazon S3 Tables add support for geometry, geography, unknown, and nanosecond timestamp data types, along with column default values, as defined in the Iceberg V3 specification. You can now store geospatial coordinates and nanosecond-precision event times natively instead of encoding them in strings or integers.

For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to keep an eye on the What’s New with AWS page.

AWS service availability updates
When the availability of an AWS service or feature changes, we provide customers guidance in AWS Product Lifecycle Changes on available alternatives and support for migration so that disruptions to your operations are minimized. The following lifecycle changes were updated on September 29, 2026.

Services moving to Maintenance (no longer accessible to new customers starting October 29, 2026):

Services entering Sunset:

Services reaching End of Support (as of September 29, 2026):

• Amazon Mechanical Turk

We understand that changes in availability can impact your operations. For specific guidance, consult the relevant service documentation or contact AWS Support.

Other AWS news
Here are some additional projects and news items you may find interesting:

• Introducing Kiro workflows: Kiro workflows enable you to carry out complex tasks from start to finish with multiple agents and less supervision. We’ve been building Kiro itself with workflows, including the new cloud configuration, cloud sessions, and most of the workflow experience.
• Introducing Strands Decider: Strands Decider is one of a new class of decision models or system one models, a type of model that has been gaining significant attention since TypeSafe AI’s launch of Jev earlier this month. Strands Decider 2B is a small, open source, decision model optimized for fast experimentation, local development, and innovation.
• New FDE pathways for AWS Partners: On June 30, AWS announced the Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) organization, backed by a $1 billion investment, and extended this hands-on delivery approach to AWS Partners through the Partner-Led FDE motion. Now, AWS Partners have a structured way to build and validate that depth with three new Partner FDE pathways and credentials that recognize the applied proficiency required to deliver production agentic AI.

For a full list of AWS blog posts, be sure to keep an eye on the AWS Blogs page.

Learn more about AWS, browse and join upcoming AWS-led in-person and virtual events, startup events, and developer-focused events, including upcoming AWS re:Invent and AWS Community Days. Join the AWS Builder Center to connect with builders, share solutions, and access content that supports your development.

That is all for this week. Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup!

— Channy

The post AWS Weekly Roundup: Amazon Bedrock Managed Agents powered by OpenAI, Q3 service availability updates, Kiro workflows, and more (October 5, 2026) appeared first on The NOKIA Blog.

If there’s one theme that defined last week, it’s choice. The frontier models keep arriving, and the interesting question is no longer just “how smart is it?” but “which model fits this step, at this cost, at this latency?” That’s exactly what landed on Amazon Bedrock over the past few days: GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna from OpenAI, giving you two new points on the intelligence-versus-efficiency curve, and Claude Opus 5.5 from Anthropic, the first of the Claude 5.5 family.

GPT-6 Sol is built for the demanding, recurring work of development and operations, while GPT-6 Luna makes focused, repeatable tasks practical at high volume, and both ship at significantly lower pricing than their GPT-5.6 predecessors. Claude Opus 5.5, meanwhile, does more with fewer tokens than Opus 5 and is tuned for agentic coding and long-running tasks. What I like about all three is that they push toward the same idea: match the model to the job instead of reaching for the biggest one every time. The other thread was observability catching up to this agentic world, including a launch I had the pleasure of writing about myself.

Now, let’s get into this week’s AWS news…

Last week’s launches
Here are some launches and updates from this past week that caught my attention:

• Introducing Amazon CloudWatch Omni – You can now observe your applications and AI agents together in a single, collaborative experience. Amazon CloudWatch Omni is built on OpenTelemetry, so your existing telemetry shows up with nothing to reconfigure, and your whole team reaches it through one URL with enterprise SSO — no console access required. It auto-discovers your services, maps dependencies, and brings AWS DevOps Agent into investigation sessions to correlate signals and trace root causes. There’s a companion post on the agent-observability side, a deeper dive on the AWS Cloud Operations blog on what observability for the AI era looks like, and the announcement on What’s New with the specifics. If you want the bigger picture, Matt Wood’s Wrong, not broken is a great read on why correctness now has to be measured at the level of the run.

• Enhanced custom event buses in Amazon EventBridge – Amazon EventBridge now offers an enhanced custom event bus purpose-built for organizations scaling event-driven applications across teams and accounts. You can now deploy a single centralized bus shared across every account in your organization through AWS RAM, with optional event ordering, a simplified Subscriber resource that bundles filtering, targets, and retries, content-based deduplication, and synchronous invocation for targets like AWS Lambda. A new ingress/egress pricing model replaces the compounding cross-account routing charges of multi-bus setups, and your existing buses keep working unchanged as “classic.”

• Amazon SageMaker HyperPod Inference Gateway – You can now front your LLM inference on Amazon SageMaker HyperPod with a Kubernetes-native, GPU-aware routing layer that deploys as a single Amazon EKS managed add-on with zero application changes. Instead of round-robin load balancing, it routes on real-time inference signals — KV cache utilization, queue depth, prefix cache hits, predicted latency, and more — cutting first-token latency by up to 82% in mixed-hardware and bursty scenarios. It works with any OpenAI-compatible model server, including vLLM and SGLang.

• AI agent skills for AWS End User Messaging and Amazon SES – You can now build and send messages by asking your AI coding agent in plain language. Amazon SES and AWS End User Messaging publish AI agent skills for the AWS MCP Server, giving your agent step-by-step, validated guidance for tasks like verifying a sending identity, sending a production email, or building a branded RCS agent with cards and buttons. The skills work with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and Kiro, so you can complete messaging workflows without hopping between docs and console screens.

For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to keep an eye on the What’s New with AWS page.

Other AWS news
Here are some additional posts and resources that you might find interesting:

• Introducing Strands harness – The Strands Agents team released Strands harness, a fully assembled, general-purpose agent harness you can run locally or deploy anywhere, under Apache 2.0. It takes one line of Python or TypeScript to wire up your model of choice across Amazon Bedrock, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, or a local Ollama model, and it ships with sensible defaults for prompt caching and context management (truncating bulky tool results, compacting when the context window fills up, and keeping memory across runs). The team reports it costs about 28% less than comparable harnesses on the same models while holding accuracy steady.

• Announcing the new AWS Reimagine report on AI – The AWS Executive in Residence team spent nine months interviewing 154 leaders across 27 countries about what separates organizations that turn AI into value from those that don’t. The report is candid (including where AI hasn’t worked at Amazon), and the recurring insight is that once building gets fast, the bottleneck moves to deciding, funding, and governing the work. Well worth a read if you’re thinking about how your teams adopt AI in practice.

For a full list of AWS blog posts, be sure to keep an eye on the AWS Blogs page.

Upcoming AWS events
Check your calendar and sign up for upcoming AWS events:

• AWS re:Invent – AWS re:Invent returns to Las Vegas from November 30 to December 4, and session times, locations, and speakers are live. Reserved seating opens October 6, so register now and be ready to claim your spot in chalk talks, workshops, and builders’ sessions.

• AWS Summits – With re:Invent on the horizon, the Summits are wrapping up for the year. The last stop is Dubai (September 30) at the Dubai World Trade Center, with 60+ sessions, an AWS Village, and hands-on workshops.

Join the AWS Builder Center to connect with builders, share solutions, and access content that supports your development. Browse here for upcoming AWS-led in-person and virtual events and developer-focused events. That’s all for this week. Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup!

— Daniel Abib

The post AWS Weekly Roundup: GPT-6 Sol and Luna, Claude Opus 5.5 on Amazon Bedrock, Strands harness, and more (September 28, 2026) appeared first on The NOKIA Blog.

Today, Amazon CloudWatch introduces CloudWatch Omni, a unified observability experience for application and AI workloads that is app-centric, AI-powered, built on open standards, and delivered off-console. CloudWatch Omni is a purpose-built observability, evaluation, and experimentation solution for AI agents. It helps teams design, evaluate, and operate AI agents across any model provider, framework, or runtime, with an eval-driven workflow, support for the tools you already use, and observability delivered where you work: directly in your IDE and through a standalone web experience, separate from the AWS Management Console.

Organizations deploying agentic AI systems face observability challenges that traditional monitoring can’t address. Agent behavior is non-deterministic: a prompt change can degrade response quality even when standard metrics show no errors. Teams spend hours manually reviewing logs across multiple systems, unable to pinpoint what changed or why. Existing tools force teams to choose between siloed generative AI monitoring or fragmented solutions requiring constant context-switching between their coding environment and browser-based dashboards.

CloudWatch Omni captures every trace and includes built-in evaluators for correctness, coherence, retrieval quality, and tool selection, among others. You can compare prompt versions side by side in the playground, build test datasets from production traffic, run experiments across different configurations, and detect regressions automatically.

Two surfaces for development and operations
CloudWatch Omni delivers observability through two complementary surfaces. Developers get a native extension inside VS Code and Kiro (the currently supported IDEs), where traces appear as you run your agent with a playground and evaluators a click away. Operators get a standalone web experience, separate from the AWS Management Console to monitor the fleet, accessible through SSO with no AWS console needed. Both share the same data: the trace a developer debugs is the trace an operator investigates.

The Cloud Login feature connects your local IDE environment to your AWS account, enabling you to send telemetry data to Amazon CloudWatch for persistent storage, share traces with your team, and access production dashboards. This connection is optional. You can use CloudWatch Omni entirely locally during development, then connect to the cloud when you are ready to monitor agents in production.

Getting started
CloudWatch Omni offers two ways to get started: through the IDE extension (for VS Code and Kiro) or directly through the cloud experience, where you can start sending telemetry data to CloudWatch without installing any IDE extension. In this walkthrough, I install the extension, create an agent, run it, and explore the traces and evaluation tools from my IDE.

After installing the CloudWatch Omni extension from the VS Code Marketplace, the CloudWatch Omni icon appears in the Activity Bar. From the welcome screen, I selected Get started with Sample Project to load a pre-configured agent with sample trace data or use shortcut to Command Palette using Command + Shift + P (on macOS) or Ctrl + Shift + P (on Windows/Linux) and select Omni: Create a new Project

Figure 1. CloudWatch Omni welcome screen & create new project in VS Code

The sample project comes with an agent implementation and example datasets. Part of the getting-started experience is adding OpenTelemetry instrumentation, and CloudWatch Omni guides you through each step. You can also create a new agent from scratch. CloudWatch Omni walks you through the process using an interactive chat where you define the agent’s purpose, select a model provider, and configure tools. All data is stored locally by default. You can optionally connect to AWS to send data to Amazon CloudWatch.

After verifying the configuration, I started the local dev server and sent a question to the agent. What makes this different from a typical chatbot interface is what happens next: selecting View Trace shows exactly how the agent processed the request.

Figure 2. CloudWatch Omni guides your AI code assistant to configure the local development environment for testing

CloudWatch Omni integrates with AI code assistants such as Kiro, Claude Code, and Codex to streamline the setup process. These assistants can configure the Dev Server, install dependencies, and set up instrumentation on your behalf, so you can go from installation to running your first traced agent session in minutes without manual configuration.

Figure 3. Interacting with the agent and viewing traces

Traces are essential for understanding AI agent behavior. Unlike traditional request-response systems, agents make multiple decisions per invocation: choosing tools, composing prompts, and chaining sub-calls. Without full trace visibility, diagnosing why an agent produced an incorrect answer or took an unexpected path becomes guesswork. CloudWatch Omni records every step in a structured timeline so you can pinpoint exactly where behavior diverged.

The Trace Explorer shows a detailed breakdown of every step the agent took (LLM calls, tool invocations, and reasoning steps) in a structured, hierarchical timeline. I could drill into any span to inspect inputs, outputs, token usage, and latency.

Figure 4. Trace Explorer showing the agent’s execution timeline

The Trace Explorer also supports Compare mode, which places two traces side by side to see how different prompts or configurations affect behavior. Compare mode is especially helpful when debugging regressions. And with Ask Assistant, an AI agent analyzes your traces to surface patterns and anomalies, answering questions like “Why did the agent call this tool twice?”

Figure 5. Comparing two traces side by side

Evaluation is what turns observability into actionable quality improvement for generative AI. Traditional metrics like latency and error rate cannot tell you whether an agent’s response was helpful, coherent, or factually correct. Evaluators score each response against quality dimensions, letting you measure what users actually experience and catch regressions that standard monitoring misses entirely.

CloudWatch Omni includes 17 built-in evaluators for metrics like coherence, helpfulness, faithfulness, and routing correctness. I selected traces from the Trace Explorer, chose evaluators, and ran an evaluation, getting per-example scores and aggregate metrics without building any custom evaluation framework.

Figure 6. Running evaluations on traces

From there, I used the Playground to test different system prompts side by side, comparing multiple model and prompt configurations in real time to see how each variation affects output quality before committing changes. With the Experiments view, I could run the same dataset against two agent variants and compare their evaluation scores, latency, and token usage side by side to pick the best-performing configuration.

Figure 7. Comparing evaluations across agent variants in the Omni Experiments console

With Prompt Management, you can version and track prompt configurations over time, making it easy to roll back when a new version underperforms.

CloudWatch Omni also provides a Session Explorer to review full conversation histories and understand how agents handle multi-turn interactions, along with an Agent Topology view that visualizes the architecture of your agent system, including sub-agents, tools, and their interconnections. You can drill into any node to inspect performance and identify bottlenecks.

CloudWatch Omni also offers a dedicated web experience accessible from any browser without an IDE. Teams can access all capabilities collaboratively, including application monitoring, analytics, agent observability, and AI-powered investigations.

Figure 8. CloudWatch Omni web experience with application monitoring, analytics, and agent observability

I curated traces into golden datasets for structured experimentation. The Experiment function runs the agent against a dataset and automatically scores results, creating benchmarks for regression testing whenever prompts or agent logic change.

If you already have an agent built with a supported framework, CloudWatch Omni provides two paths to add instrumentation: Auto-instrument with Kiro, which detects your framework and configures tracing automatically, or manual instrumentation with ready-to-use code snippets for Python and TypeScript. For detailed instrumentation guides, see the CloudWatch Omni documentation.

Supported frameworks and open standards
The walkthrough above uses the sample project, but CloudWatch Omni works with the agent frameworks teams are already using: LangChain, LangGraph, CrewAI, OpenAI SDK, Strands, Vercel AI SDK, and more, in both Python and TypeScript. It also provides native observability for agents built with Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, and uses AgentCore’s evaluation capabilities to assess agent quality directly within the Omni workflow.

Instrumentation uses open standards (OpenInference and ADOT), whether your agents run on Lambda, ECS, EKS, or other clouds. For evaluation, Omni integrates with third-party evaluators including AutoEval and DeepEval alongside built-in datasets, a playground, and batch experiments. No re-platforming required.

CloudWatch Omni brings agent observability and application observability together in a single experience. For the application observability experience, read the companion post Introducing Amazon CloudWatch Omni: collaborative AI-powered observability for your applications.

Pricing and availability
Amazon CloudWatch Omni is now generally available. The IDE extension is free to use. You don’t need an AWS account to get started. You only need AWS credentials for Amazon Bedrock models, or API keys for other providers like OpenAI or Anthropic. Get started today by installing the extension from the VS Code Marketplace.

To explore all capabilities and get started quickly, visit CloudWatch on AWS Builder Center.

If you want to call APIs, search documentation, find regional availability, and check troubleshooting about this feature, try using the AWS MCP Server and plugins with your preferred AI tool. Share your feedback on AWS re:Post or reach out through your usual AWS Support contacts.

Happy building!

— Daniel Abib

The post Introducing Amazon CloudWatch Omni: AI-powered observability for generative AI and agentic workloads appeared first on The NOKIA Blog.

There’s a particular energy to mid-September in New York. Pumpkin spice lattes are flowing, temperatures are dropping, and it’s nearly sweater weather. The city is back at full speed, and so is the AWS launch calendar. This week that energy showed up in a new frontier model on Amazon Bedrock, a desktop app for Amazon Quick, and a reminder that the developers seeing the biggest gains from AI agents aren’t just using better tools — they’re working differently.

Let’s dive in.

Headlines
OpenAI GPT-6 Astra is now generally available on Amazon Bedrock – GPT-6 Astra is OpenAI’s latest and most capable model to date, and you can now run it on Amazon Bedrock. It brings deeper reasoning and judgment, professional-quality writing and design, and advanced computer and browser use to demanding business workflows. The model supports a context window of up to 1 million input tokens, so you can send it large codebases, long contracts, or extensive document collections and ask it to reconcile competing inputs.

You can call GPT-6 Astra through supported Amazon Bedrock APIs, or configure ChatGPT Work and Codex to use the model on Amazon Bedrock. Alongside the launch, OpenAI is introducing new enterprise plugins for ChatGPT Work that extend Astra’s browser-use capabilities across common business applications. Established AWS controls help you secure workloads, govern access, and audit model invocation activity, and your inference data isn’t used for model training. Read more

Last week’s launches
Here are some launches and updates from this past week that caught my attention:

• Amazon Quick desktop app is now generally available on macOS and Windows – The Amazon Quick desktop app brings Amazon Quick to your computer, where it can work with local files and stay connected to your calendar, email, and business apps in the background. Conversations, context, and agents stay synchronized across desktop and mobile, so work you start on one surface carries over to the other. With this release, Quick agents also keep running after you close your computer, which means you can start a long-running task before you leave the office, add input from the mobile app on the way home, and review the result when you get there. Existing Quick users can download the desktop app, and the mobile app is available from the Apple App Store and Google Play. Read more
• AWS Lambda now supports a 90-minute function timeout on Lambda Managed Instances – You can now configure a function timeout of up to 90 minutes for asynchronous and event source mapping (ESM) invocations on Lambda Managed Instances, a 6x increase from the previous 15-minute limit. That opens the door to data processing, media transcoding, financial calculations, AI inference, and batch jobs that need longer continuous execution, without splitting the work across multiple functions. Synchronous invocations keep the existing 15-minute maximum. The longer timeout also applies to steps inside Lambda durable functions, which can still run for up to a year when invoked asynchronously. Read more
• Amazon EBS Volume Clones now copies volumes across accounts – Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) Volume Clones can now copy a volume into another AWS account and re-encrypt it with an AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) key in the target account. If you keep production and development in separate accounts, you can share a volume with AWS Resource Access Manager (AWS RAM) and let the target account create a fresh copy in the same Availability Zone, for example, cloning a production database volume into an isolated development account. Cross-account copy works for all volume types, including unencrypted volumes and volumes encrypted with customer managed keys. Read more
• Second-generation single-rack AWS Outposts is now generally available – The new single-rack AWS Outposts is a self-contained 42U rack that puts compute, storage, and networking into one compact unit for locations that need low latency, local data processing, or data residency, and don’t have room for a larger footprint. A single rack delivers up to 2,688 vCPU and 100 TB of Amazon EBS storage, and supports the latest x86-powered Amazon EC2 instances, including general purpose (M7i, M8i), compute-optimized (C7i, C8i), memory-optimized (R7i, R8i), and Outposts accelerated networking instances. You get the same APIs, console, automation, governance, and security controls as multi-rack Outposts and AWS Regions. Read more
• Amazon OpenSearch Serverless is now available on v0 by Vercel – You can now describe a search or AI application in natural language inside v0 by Vercel and get a full-stack app backed by Amazon OpenSearch Serverless. v0 provisions a collection, indexes your data, and uses the OpenSearch Serverless endpoint for full-text search and vector search for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) workloads, without leaving the v0 interface. OpenSearch Serverless scales capacity up and down for you, so you can focus on the application instead of cluster management. You can provision under a new AWS account or link an existing one. Read more
• AWS Transform for .NET modernization is now generally available via CLI – You can trigger an AWS-managed .NET modernization in AWS Transform custom with a single CLI command, then run it interactively or script it into an existing pipeline. The CLI sits alongside the existing AWS Transform for .NET experiences in the web application, Visual Studio IDE, Kiro Power, and MCP agents. Use it to upgrade language versions, migrate frameworks, optimize performance, and analyze codebases with transformations you can run as-is or customize. The .NET modernization transformation includes 50,000 free agent minutes per month. Read more

For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to keep an eye on the What’s New with AWS page.

Other AWS news
Here are some additional posts and resources that you might find interesting:

• Clare Liguori on frontier engineering – If you already use an AI coding assistant but don’t feel like you’re shipping much faster, start here. Clare Liguori, Senior Principal Engineer at AWS, published a practitioner’s manifesto on frontier engineering: ten principles, drawn from teams across Amazon, for changing how you build software with AI agents. The argument is direct. Software development has split in two, people who changed how they work with agents, and people who only changed their coding tools. Frontier engineering is not vibe coding. You spend the first weeks writing steering files, refactoring the codebase, and learning to decompose work for agents. Those weeks feel slower. The weeks after feel dramatically faster, because you’re no longer building the software directly — you’re building the agent setup that builds the software.
• A free year of Kiro for students around the world – The Kiro Students program is expanding from 11 universities to 121 new schools across 16 countries. Eligible students get one year of Kiro with 1,000 credits per month and full access to paid features such as premium models and Kiro Web, no credit card and no trial timer. You can work in the IDE, the CLI, Kiro Web in a browser, or Kiro Crew. If you’re a student, sign up with your university email.
• The state of AI for security: measuring what matters for trust – Security teams are using AI for triage, threat modeling, incident response, and code review, but a tool that flags everything doesn’t save time. In The state of AI for security, Anshumali Shrivastava and Neha Rungta introduce Deception Benchmark, a new evaluation that tests whether a model can tell a real vulnerability from code that looks risky but is actually safe. The benchmark includes 14,822 samples across 16 languages and more than 70 Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) categories. Under standard prompting, precision landed in the mid-50s, about as likely to be inaccurate as accurate, and none of the 12 models tested kept both false positives and false negatives below 10 percent. The post links to the dataset, whitepaper, and submission workflow for verified scoring.
• Build full-stack AWS applications in minutes with AI-powered scaffolding – Version 1.0 of the Nx Plugin for AWS is an open source toolkit of deterministic generators for APIs, websites, databases, and AI agents, plus the AWS infrastructure to run them. Each generator writes working, deployable code with security, observability, and type-safety already in place, so an AI assistant can assemble the foundation and spend its effort on your application logic. Bingo Industries used it to take a multi-agent operations chatbot from idea to production in less than 3 weeks. The plugin is open source on GitHub. Create a workspace with pnpm create @aws/nx-workspace and point your coding agent at the included MCP server.
• The oldest architecture in computing – On All Things Distributed, Werner Vogels starts from a question customers always ask “Will AI take my job?”, and lands on memory. After spending time with Kiro Crew, he traces a line from Jeff Hawkins’ A Thousand Brains to how Crew stores, consolidates, and forgets across markdown files, a vector database, and a key-value index. His conclusion: the brain is the oldest architecture in computing, and the people who think hardest about how it works will build the next tools. Now, go build.

For a full list of AWS blog posts, be sure to keep an eye on the AWS Blogs page.

Upcoming AWS events
Check your calendar and sign up for upcoming AWS events:

Join the AWS Builder Center to connect with builders, share solutions, and access content that supports your development. Browse here for upcoming AWS-led in-person and virtual events and developer-focused events.

That’s all for this week. Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup!

— Micah

This post is part of our Weekly Roundup series. Check back each week for a quick roundup of interesting news and announcements from AWS!

The post AWS Weekly Roundup: OpenAI GPT-6 Astra on Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Quick desktop GA, Kiro for students, and more (September 14, 2026) appeared first on The NOKIA Blog.

Last week, Claude Fable 5.1 became available on AWS. According to Anthropic, Claude Fable 5.1 delivers frontier intelligence for ambitious tasks across coding, scientific research, and enterprise workflows. Claude Fable 5.1 is built for long-running, high-stakes work that runs for hours and spans many applications. It can own more of a software project on its own, handling features across an entire codebase, code review, and performance work over extended sessions.

Anthropic has designated Fable 5.1 a Covered Model, a category of Claude models that carry additional data retention, safety review, and access policies wherever they’re offered. Claude Fable 5.1 is subject to data retention for up to 30 days and human review by Amazon personnel, with a new aws_review data retention mode. In this mode, AWS retains your prompts and outputs for human safety review within the AWS boundary. The provider_data_share mode is legacy, and Amazon Bedrock does not share your data with the model provider. In addition, Enterprise Frontier Safeguards (EFS), built in partnership between AWS and Anthropic, will let eligible customers use Covered Models while keeping their data in a cloud environment they control.

You have two ways to access Claude Fable 5.1: Amazon Bedrock and Claude Platform on AWS. To learn more, see the Claude Fable 5.1 model card on Amazon Bedrock and Claude Platform on AWS.

Last week’s launches
Here are some launches that got my attention:

• Amazon Linux 2027 (AL2027) in public preview: AL2027 is the next version of the Amazon Linux operating system. It runs on kernel 7.1+, purpose-built for cloud-native workloads on AWS with performance, scale, and security in mind. Built on AL2023’s baseline, AL2027 is designed for customers who need a secure, stable, and AWS-native operating system running web applications, databases, containerized microservices, AI/ML workloads, and large-scale infrastructure.
• Amazon EC2 R9g and R9gd memory-optimized instances: These instances are powered by AWS Graviton5 processors, delivering the best price performance for memory-intensive workloads running on Amazon EC2. R9g and R9gd instances deliver up to 25% better compute performance compared to AWS Graviton4-based R8g and R8gd instances. They are up to 30% faster for databases, up to 35% faster for web applications, and up to 35% faster for machine learning. To learn more, read Daniel’s blog post.
• AWS Lambda SnapStart for container image functions: Lambda SnapStart is an opt-in capability that makes it easier for you to build highly responsive and scalable applications without provisioning resources or implementing complex performance optimizations. Previously, SnapStart was only supported for managed runtimes (Python, .NET, and Java). You can now use SnapStart for container images to reduce startup times from several seconds to as low as sub-second for latency-sensitive workloads such as ML inference and interactive APIs.
• AWS Agent Registry now generally available: AWS Agent Registry provides a private, governed catalog and discovery layer for agents, tools, skills, MCP servers, and custom resources within your organization. In addition to the capabilities launched in preview (manual and URL-based record creation, approval workflows, semantic and keyword search, and AWS CloudTrail audit trails), Registry now adds new enterprise features. To learn more, visit the AI Blog post.
• Amazon Redshift now supports Apache Iceberg v3 tables: You can read from and write to Apache Iceberg v3 tables in your data lake of Amazon Redshift. With this launch, Amazon Redshift introduces support for default column values, row lineage, and deletion vectors. Amazon Redshift’s Graviton based provisioned and serverless clusters support the new v3 format. To learn more, visit Apache Iceberg v3 features in Redshift.

For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to keep an eye on the What’s New with AWS page.

Other AWS news
Here are some additional projects and news items you may find interesting:

• AWS named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Strategic Cloud Platform Services: For the 16th consecutive year, Gartner has recognized AWS as a Leader in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Strategic Cloud Platform Services, and once again placed AWS highest on the Ability to Execute axis. We believe this recognition reflects our commitment to delivering the broadest and deepest set of cloud capabilities from infrastructure and AI to security and operations, so you can build, innovate, and scale with confidence.
• AWS Certified AI Business Strategist: This new certification targets professionals who evaluate, champion, and scale AI initiatives in their organizations: line-of-business leaders driving adoption across their teams, sales professionals articulating AI value to customers, consultants guiding client strategy from experimentation through production, program managers aligning AI investments to business outcomes. Beta exam registration opened September 1, 2026, with exam delivery beginning September 29.
• Agentic Security: Detection and Response at Machine Speed: We believe security should evolve ahead of AI adoption, not behind it. That belief drove our team to collaborate with the SANS Institute on a new chapter in the 2026 Cloud Security Exchange eBook, where we lay out a practical framework for securing agentic workloads at enterprise scale. Our chapter goes deeper on securing agentic workloads, with specific architectural patterns, implementation guidance, and frameworks for security teams at every stage of agentic AI maturity, whether you’re evaluating, piloting, or operating at scale.

For a full list of AWS blog posts, be sure to keep an eye on the AWS Blogs page.

Learn more about AWS, browse and join upcoming AWS-led in-person and virtual events, startup events, and developer-focused events including AWS re:Invent, AWS Summits, and AWS Community Days. Join the AWS Builder Center to connect with builders, share solutions, and access content that supports your development.

That is all for this week. Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup!

— Channy

The post AWS Weekly Roundup: Claude Fable 5.1 on AWS, Amazon Linux 2027 preview, AWS Certified AI Business Strategist, and more (September 7, 2026) appeared first on The NOKIA Blog.

That has led some seasoned (and not-so-seasoned) developers to go for the ultimate prize: replicating their favorite SaaS product. I admit to falling under the spell of such temptation.

It’s easy to see the potential benefits. SaaS subscriptions can be expensive, and the products may be more than what we need. Plus, there are always niche features that seem to be missing. Oh, and many are proprietary, raising data ownership concerns. Why not use AI to vibe code your own spinoff?

Can it really be that simple? Type a few prompts, and get a high-level tool to replace an enterprise app? As usual, it’s complicated.

Let’s take a hard look at the good, the bad, and the ugly of using AI to build a SaaS replica.

Taking Software Into Your Own Hands

My journey building a SaaS replica with AI began as I stood at a crossroads of sorts. I’m a longtime user of QuickBooks Desktop, which has served my accounting needs well over the years. However, the product I use was discontinued and moved online. Moving meant going from buying a license every few years to a monthly fee. I’m not keen on yet another subscription.

The desktop app is also starting to show its age. Some features are broken, and the interface is behind the times. Not to mention it’s a memory hog on my PC. This all coincides with some upcoming changes to my business that require a different approach.

So, I decided to take the plunge and build my own billing/customer relationship management (CRM) app as a WordPress plugin. I wanted something portable that would allow me (or others) to add features as needed. WordPress was the perfect fit.

The decision seemed like a no-brainer. I could use my existing skills to guide AI in the right direction. And I could leave out the things that weren’t necessary. I hoped to build a lean, functional plugin that streamlined my billing process.

This would also free me from the proprietary trap so many SaaS providers lock us into. I wouldn’t have to worry about higher rates, product limitations, or waiting for support tickets to be answered. Yes, this was exactly what I needed!

The only question was: Can I really build a suitable replacement?

The Challenge Is in the Details

The project started with a bang, as I used Claude to build a working prototype within an hour. Sure, there were some rough edges to be smoothed over. But the basic concept was coming together. Then, a bit of reality set in.

One of my goals was to create a tool that was close enough to what I’m accustomed to. The idea wasn’t to rebuild QuickBooks line by line, feature by feature. But I wanted something that provided a seamless transition.

My prototype allowed me to add customers, services, and invoices. I even built some import tools to bring my real-world data into the system. But I didn’t realize how many little details were missing until I used the plugin.

For example, I needed a way to share invoices with my clients. I also needed to distinguish between hourly-based and project-based services. Other needs seemed to pop up every few minutes:

• Custom reports for my business and individual customers.
• A way to email invoices to multiple contacts at the same company.
• A log to remind me whom I sent invoices to and when.
• Navigation to and from different areas of the plugin.
• User permissions for scenarios where you want to provide CRM access to a non-administrator.
• A front-end version of each relevant screen.

This was a different experience for someone who hadn’t taken a product from start to finish before. It felt more like being a product designer than a developer. That requires a different type of thinking.

AI proved capable of writing the code. However, I found myself having to provide extra context along the way. There was a lot of trial and error, and each new feature opened another set of decisions and potential.

There’s also danger in adding too many features. I didn’t want a bloated plugin that was difficult to use. As such, I had to practice restraint when considering my options.

It was a positive learning experience, for sure. But it also made me realize how much is involved in building a plugin that does more than merely function. Good things do indeed take time.

Questions To Ask Before You Build

The temptation to dive right in and generate code for the next HubSpot or Asana is understandable. AI makes relatively short work of complex coding tasks. These models can also advise you on how to replicate specific features.

It’s worth taking a step back and asking yourself a few key questions first, though. The answers will help you navigate the project or save you from making a massive mistake.

Are You Serious or Curious?

First, determine why you want to build this amazing new thing that’s based on an existing thing. Experimental side projects can be fun and a great way to learn. However, it’s different than a serious bid to create software that your entire company will use.

The former encourages you to be patient and test your ideas. The latter is often a mandate to increase efficiency while saving money. There’s an entirely different level of pressure in that scenario. You’ll also need to dedicate more resources toward the project.

It’s not necessarily a deal breaker either way, but a consideration nonetheless.

Do You Need Third-Party Integrations?

Integrating with other tools and services is a SaaS superpower. For example, adding Stripe to your CRM enables online payments, while Mailchimp adds email capabilities. AI tools can help you connect the various APIs out there.

The downside is the responsibility that comes with these integrations. APIs frequently change, and you need to stay ahead of them. Failing to keep up could lead to software that doesn’t work. Plus, there are security and privacy risks.

Remember: Once you build it, you’re responsible for it.

Do You Need Your App To Scale?

SaaS applications often require a robust infrastructure. That’s why AI companies are building data centers everywhere. This could be a concern if you’re expecting a stampede of users and use cases.

Smaller, more focused apps like my CRM plugin aren’t as big of a problem. A few users on a WordPress site won’t require a ton of memory or CPU cycles. But the calculus changes as your needs grow.

This is where a fun little project can turn into something more complex. That app you just vibe coded could turn you into a systems engineer. There’s also a cost to server space and other necessities. Are you prepared to go that far?

You Can Replicate a SaaS With AI, but Should You?

Using AI to generate code opens up a world of possibilities – and it’s only getting more powerful. New models continue to evolve to help us get things done faster. That leads to bigger and bolder ideas on our part.

Even so, it’s a good idea to think about the long-term consequences of what you build. It may be fun to try and replicate Gmail, but do you really want the responsibilities that go with it?

That may be an extreme example, but the theory also applies to smaller projects. The reality is that the best SaaS products are popular for a reason. They scale, have dedicated security teams, and professional product designers working to improve every aspect. Even the best AI models can’t match that quite yet.

So, have fun and experiment! Just know what you’re getting into before you begin.

here. He recently started a writing service for WordPress products: WP Product Writeup. He also has an opinion on just about every subject. You can follow his rants on Bluesky @karks.com.

Read more articles by Eric Karkovack

The post Can You Really Replicate Your Favorite SaaS With AI? appeared first on The NOKIA Blog.

The news that interested me the most last week was the DuckLabs acquisition. AWS has signed a definitive agreement to acquire DuckLabs, the Amsterdam-based company behind DuckDB, the popular open source analytical database that runs in-process and executes SQL directly against files like Parquet, CSV, and JSON. DuckDB stays open source under its independent foundation and the MIT license, and over time AWS plans to combine its speed at everyday queries with the enterprise scale of services like Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, and Amazon Athena.

Co-founded by Hannes Mühleisen and Mark Raasveldt, DuckDB runs locally or on Amazon S3, which makes it remarkably fast for the everyday queries (a terabyte or less) that make up the bulk of real-world analytics. It also happens to pair beautifully with AI agents, which “poke” and experiment their way through data much like humans do. The co-founders will continue leading its technical direction while AWS combines DuckDB’s speed with analytics services like Amazon EMR, AWS Glue, and Amazon SageMaker. For the bigger picture on why this matters, Andy Warfield, Vice President and Distinguished Engineer shared his thoughts on the post DuckDB and the changing physics of analytics on All Things Distributed.

Now, let’s get into this week’s AWS news…

Last week’s launches
Here are some launches and updates from this past week that caught my attention:

• Amazon ECS now automatically detects and recovers container instances that lose agent connectivity – Amazon ECS now continuously monitors agent connectivity to the control plane and surfaces a new AGENT_CONNECTIVITY health event across AWS Fargate, Amazon ECS Managed Instances, and Amazon ECS on EC2. On Fargate and Managed Instances, ECS handles recovery automatically, draining tasks, launching replacements, and deregistering the impaired instance. On EC2, you can wire the event into your own workflow. Available at no additional cost in all AWS Commercial and AWS GovCloud (US) Regions.
• AWS Lambda introduces public preview runtimes, starting with Node.js 26 and Python 3.15 – You can now test upcoming Lambda runtimes before they reach general availability. Preview runtimes use the same identifier as the eventual GA version, so your functions graduate automatically with no action required. Third-party tools and deployment frameworks can also validate compatibility ahead of GA. Not meant for production yet (breaking changes are possible), but a great way to get ahead of your next upgrade. Available in all AWS commercial, AWS GovCloud (US), and China Regions.
• AWS IoT Core adds a native InfluxDB rule action – You can now route time-series data from your IoT devices straight into InfluxDB (Amazon Timestream-managed or self-hosted) without writing custom code or standing up an intermediate service. IoT Core formats data into InfluxDB’s line protocol and supports device-side and server-side batching. Available in all AWS Regions where Amazon Timestream for InfluxDB is offered.
• Amazon GameLift Servers now includes enhanced DDoS protection – Your game servers now get automatic protection against network and transport layer (layers 3 and 4) DDoS attacks – UDP reflection, SYN floods, and similar vectors – with nothing to enable or opt into. Built on top of AWS Shield Standard with gaming-optimized traffic shaping, it turns on the moment your servers start running (Server SDK 5) at no extra cost. It’s available in all supported GameLift Servers Regions except China (Beijing) and China (Ningxia).
• Amazon SageMaker HyperPod expands support for Ray – You can now run Ray workloads on SageMaker HyperPod with built-in observability, resilient training, and accelerated inference. Create and manage Ray clusters from Amazon SageMaker Studio, attach JupyterLab or your local IDE so a multi-node cluster behaves like a local dev environment, and get auto-provisioned Grafana dashboards. Node auto recovery, hung job detection, and tiered checkpointing keep large training runs healthy, while Ray Serve adds a tiered KV cache for inference. Your existing open source Ray code runs unchanged. Available for HyperPod clusters orchestrated by Amazon EKS.

For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to keep an eye on the What’s New with AWS page.

Other AWS news
Here are some additional posts and resources that you might find interesting:

• Happy 20th birthday, Amazon EC2! – Amazon EC2 turns 20. Channy Yun looks back at how EC2 grew from a single m1.small instance type in one Region to more than 1,200 instance types across 39 Regions, along with the custom silicon journey from the first Graviton to Graviton5 and Trainium3. A fun and worthwhile read on the service that still underpins so much of AWS – including Amazon ECS, Amazon EKS, AWS Lambda, Amazon SageMaker, and Amazon Bedrock.
• Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD): an open specification for agent discovery – As organizations scale up agents, tools, and MCP servers, those resources end up scattered across clouds, on-premises infrastructure, and SaaS platforms – each with its own registry and metadata. ARD is a new open specification (Apache 2.0) that defines a common way to describe and discover agentic resources, so publishers “describe once” and consumers “discover everywhere” – think DNS, but for agents. AWS contributed feedback but doesn’t own the spec, and it complements the AWS Agent Registry by letting you federate across catalogs without migrating.
• Get started with the Agent Toolkit for AWS in the AWS CLI – A single AWS CLI command (aws configure agent-toolkit) now equips AI coding agents like Kiro, Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor with curated, up-to-date AWS knowledge and a secure connection to thousands of AWS APIs through the AWS MCP Server. If you build with an AI coding assistant, this helps it choose the right services, use modern APIs, and follow security best practices – so it gets AWS code right more often the first time.

Upcoming AWS events
Check your calendar and sign up for upcoming AWS events:

• AWS Summits – Free in-person events where builders come together to learn, connect, and explore the latest in cloud and AI. Upcoming stops include Zurich (September 2), São Paulo (September 3), Tel Aviv (September 10), and Dubai (September 30). Can’t attend in person? You can stream sessions through the Global Livestream and On-Demand Hub. I’ll be presenting two sessions on generative AI and Amazon Bedrock at the São Paulo Summit – if you’re there, come say hello.
• AWS Community Days – Community-led conferences where content is planned, sourced, and delivered by community leaders. Upcoming events include JAWS SONIC 2026 in Tokyo (September 5) and Warsaw, Poland (September 8).

Join the AWS Builder Center to connect with builders, share solutions, and access content that supports your development. Browse here for upcoming AWS-led in-person and virtual events and developer-focused events.

That’s all for this week. Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup!

— Daniel Abib

This post is part of our Weekly Roundup series. Check back each week for a quick roundup of interesting news and announcements from AWS!

The post AWS Weekly Roundup: Welcome DuckLabs to the team, Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD), and more (August 31, 2026) appeared first on The NOKIA Blog.

There are also big differences between hosting providers. Some focus on low-cost shared hosting, while others offer managed WordPress hosting, cloud hosting, or plans built for businesses and agencies. The tools included with each plan can vary just as much. Backups, staging sites, caching, security, migrations, CDN access, and developer tools may be included, limited, or cost extra.

This comparison looks at six popular WordPress hosts: WordPress.com, Bluehost, Pressable, Cloudways, Kinsta, and SiteGround. Each provider has been tested and compared across the areas that matter when running a WordPress website.

The goal isn’t to name one host that works for everyone. A personal blog, WooCommerce store, client website, and busy online publication have very different hosting needs. Instead, the results should make it easier to see where each provider works well, where it falls short, and which type of WordPress website it suits best.

Best WordPress Hosting: Quick Recommendations

Not everyone needs to compare every plan and technical detail. These recommendations offer a quick starting point based on common WordPress projects. Each host has been selected for a different type of user, with performance, management tools, support, pricing, and the overall hosting experience taken into account.

Best Overall WordPress Host: WordPress.com

WordPress.com is our best overall host because it combines managed WordPress hosting with the flexibility and ease of use many websites need. It works well for blogs and business sites, with plans suitable for larger publications and WooCommerce stores.

Much of the technical work is handled for you, including caching, security, updates, SSL, and CDN access. All paid plans now support third-party plugins and custom theme uploads. Business adds daily backups, staging, SFTP, SSH, database access, WP-CLI, and other developer tools.

WordPress.com is run by Automattic, a company with deep ties to the WordPress open-source project and WordPress.org. That experience carries through to its managed hosting and support, which is useful when a problem involves both WordPress and the hosting platform.

There is less server maintenance to handle, while developers can choose Business when they need more advanced access. Those needing full server control may prefer cloud or VPS hosting.

Pricing varies between plans, so always compare promotional rates with the normal renewal price.

Further Information:

WordPress.com Plans & Pricing

• Personal: Supports third-party plugins and themes, custom CSS and code, along with security, support, and migration tools.
• Premium: Includes everything in Personal, with additional design, analytics, SEO, advertising, and monetization tools.
• Business: Adds daily backups, staging, SFTP, SSH, WP-CLI, database access, GitHub deployments, and other developer tools.
• Commerce: Includes the tools available with Business and adds WooCommerce and online selling tools.

All data correct as of August, 2026.

Best WordPress Managed Host: Kinsta

Kinsta is our choice for the best managed WordPress host. It is built for WordPress sites that need strong performance, reliable hosting, and useful management tools without the site owner having to manage the server.

Every WordPress site runs in its own isolated container, with access to Kinsta’s cloud infrastructure and a choice of 30 data center locations. Server caching, edge caching, a Cloudflare-powered CDN, security, daily backups, and performance monitoring are included.

Kinsta also provides a strong set of developer tools, including DevKinsta. SSH and SFTP are included with all WordPress hosting plans, WP-CLI is installed by default, and staging gives developers a separate platform to test changes. MyKinsta also offers database management, logs, analytics, and Kinsta’s APM performance tool.

The main drawback is price. Kinsta costs more than budget WordPress hosting, so it is harder to justify for a small personal site. But for businesses, busy publications, stores, and other sites where performance and support matter, the extra cost makes sense.

Further Information:

Kinsta Plans & Pricing

• Single Site Plans: Built for one WordPress website, with several levels based on traffic or bandwidth. All include CDN, edge caching, daily backups, staging, security, migrations, SSH, SFTP, and WP-CLI.
• Multiple Site Plans: Designed for users who manage several WordPress installations. These plans increase the number of sites and available resources while keeping them under one Kinsta account.
• Agency Plans: Made for agencies that manage larger collections of client sites. They provide higher limits and more capacity while retaining the same managed WordPress platform and development tools.
• Custom Plans: Available for WordPress projects that need more resources than the standard plans provide. These are better suited to very busy sites and projects with unusual hosting requirements.

All data correct as of August, 2026.

Best WordPress Blogger Host: Cloudways

Cloudways is our choice for the best WordPress blogger host, particularly for established blogs and publications that have grown beyond basic shared hosting. It provides managed cloud hosting while still giving site owners more control over server resources than most managed WordPress platforms.

With Cloudways Flexible, WordPress can run on cloud infrastructure from DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS, or Google Cloud. You choose the provider, server size, and location, while Cloudways handles much of the server setup and management. Resources can also be increased as traffic grows.

WordPress tools include server caching, staging, cloning, automated backups, SSL, migrations, security tools, SSH, SFTP, Git, and WP-CLI. Multiple WordPress sites can also run on the same server, provided it has enough resources.

This flexibility is why Cloudways works well for established bloggers. A growing publication can increase its hosting resources without moving to another platform. The tradeoff is complexity. There are more server settings to understand than with WordPress.com or Kinsta. But for bloggers comfortable managing WordPress, that extra control can be useful.

Further Information:

Cloudways Plans & Pricing

• DigitalOcean: The most practical starting point for many WordPress blogs. Plans provide dedicated cloud resources, SSD or NVMe storage, vertical scaling, and a choice of server locations.
• Vultr: Offers a broad choice of data center locations and server configurations. It is useful when the main audience is closer to a Vultr location or a different server setup is required.
• Linode: Another option for blogs that want predictable cloud resources and a choice of server locations while keeping Cloudways responsible for much of the server management.
• AWS: Uses Amazon Web Services infrastructure and provides more server configuration choices. It is generally more expensive and is better suited to sites with requirements that justify the added cost.
• Google Cloud: Runs WordPress on Google Compute Engine through the Cloudways dashboard. Like AWS, it provides flexible server resources but usually costs more than the simpler cloud options.

All data correct as of August, 2026.

Best WordPress Developer Host: Pressable

Pressable is our choice for the best WordPress developer host. It is a fully managed WordPress platform from Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com and WooCommerce, and runs on its WP Cloud infrastructure. That WordPress focus is one of the main reasons it works so well for development work.

Developers get staging and sandbox environments for every site, along with SSH, SFTP, WP-CLI, Git, database access, and other tools needed for building and maintaining WordPress sites. DupliKits can also be used to create reusable site templates, which can save time when several projects start with a similar setup.

Pressable handles much of the hosting work in the background. Hourly and daily backups, caching, security monitoring, automatic scaling, a global CDN, and site migrations are included. There is also 24/7 support from a team that works with WordPress every day.

Pricing is higher than budget hosting, but that is not really what Pressable is competing with. The value comes from reducing server maintenance while keeping the development tools needed for regular WordPress work. For freelance developers and teams managing several sites, that balance makes Pressable a strong choice.

Further Information:

Pressable Plans & Pricing

• Signature 1: Supports one WordPress site, 30,000 monthly visits, and 20GB of storage. Suitable for developers managing a single business or client site.
• Signature 2: Supports three WordPress sites, 50,000 monthly visits, and 30GB of storage. Useful for developers who manage a small collection of client sites.
• Signature 3: Supports five WordPress sites, 75,000 monthly visits, and 35GB of storage. Offers more room for freelancers maintaining several active WordPress projects.
• Signature 4: Supports ten WordPress sites, 150,000 monthly visits, and 50GB of storage. Excellent for developers and small teams that manage a larger group of websites.
• Signature 5 and Above: Plans increase from 20 to 100 WordPress installations, with higher traffic and storage limits. They are aimed at larger development teams and agencies with many sites.

All data correct as of August, 2026.

Best WordPress Agency Host: SiteGround

SiteGround is our choice for the best WordPress agency host. It combines managed WordPress hosting with tools for building, testing, managing, and handing client websites once a project is complete and launched. GrowBig and GoGeek also allow multiple websites under one account, which makes them better suited to agency work than the single site StartUp plan.

SiteGround handles many routine hosting jobs, including WordPress updates, daily backups, caching, CDN access, SSL, security, and server maintenance. GrowBig and GoGeek also include WordPress staging, while developers have access to SSH, SFTP, WP-CLI, databases, and other common development tools.

The agency tools are the main reason for choosing SiteGround here. Team members can be added as collaborators without sharing the main account login. Finished websites can also be transferred to clients while the agency remains attached as a collaborator. GoGeek adds white label client access, so clients using Site Tools do not see SiteGround branding.

The main drawback is renewal pricing. SiteGround offers large discounts for the first year, but regular rates are much higher. Agencies should use those renewal prices when calculating the long-term cost of hosting client websites.

Further Information:

SiteGround Plans & Pricing

• StartUp: Supports one website, around 10,000 monthly visits, and 10GB of storage. It includes managed WordPress tools, daily backups, caching, CDN access, SSL, and email. The single site limit makes it less useful for agency hosting.
• GrowBig: Supports unlimited websites within its resource limits, around 100,000 monthly visits, and 50GB of storage. It adds more server resources, WordPress staging, on-demand backups, and collaboration tools. This is a good starting point for smaller agencies.
• GoGeek: Supports unlimited websites within its resource limits, around 400,000 monthly visits, and 100GB of storage. It provides more server resources and adds white-label client access, making it the strongest shared hosting plan for agencies managing client websites.

All data correct as of August, 2026.

WordPress.com is our choice for the best WooCommerce host. WooCommerce can now be installed on any paid WordPress.com plan, giving store owners more choice over how much hosting and how many store tools they actually need.

The close connection with WooCommerce is a major advantage. WordPress.com and WooCommerce are both part of Automattic, so the hosting platform is built and supported by people with a deep understanding of WordPress and WooCommerce. This becomes useful when a problem involves the store, WordPress, and the hosting environment.

For larger stores, the Commerce plan includes everything in Business, along with WooCommerce and additional selling tools. This includes real-time backups, staging, SFTP, SSH, database access, payment tools, shipping integrations, automated taxes, product recommendations, and other WooCommerce extensions.

WordPress.com also handles much of the hosting work, including caching, security, updates, SSL, and server management. Store owners can concentrate on products, orders, customers, and sales rather than maintaining the server. It may cost more than basic WooCommerce hosting, but the managed setup makes more sense as a store becomes busier.

Further Information:

WordPress.com Commerce Plans & Pricing

• Personal: WooCommerce can be installed alongside third-party plugins and themes. It provides a low-cost starting point for a very small store, but it does not include the advanced backups, staging, and developer tools available on higher plans.
• Premium: Includes everything in Personal, along with additional design, analytics, SEO, advertising, and monetization tools. WooCommerce can be installed, although growing stores may benefit from the stronger hosting tools available with Business.
• Business: Adds real-time backups, staging, SFTP, SSH, database access, WP-CLI, and other developer tools. WooCommerce can be installed normally, making Business a good choice for store owners who want to build their own WooCommerce setup.
• Commerce: Includes everything in Business and adds WooCommerce with a collection of store tools and extensions. It supports unlimited products and orders, payments, shipping integrations, automated taxes, product recommendations, abandoned cart emails, and other selling tools.

All data correct as of August, 2026.

Best Budget WordPress Host: Bluehost

Bluehost is our choice for the best budget WordPress host. Its lower-priced plans provide the tools needed to run a blog, portfolio, small business site, or other WordPress project without paying the higher monthly cost of premium managed hosting.

WordPress hosting includes managed updates, SSL, CDN access, malware scanning, backups, migration tools, and a domain for the first year. Bluehost also provides a 99.99% uptime SLA and several server locations. WordPress setup and site management are handled through a dashboard aimed at users who may not have much hosting experience.

Starter is the obvious choice for smaller sites, while Business provides more storage, supports more websites, and adds further security and backup tools. Higher performance plans are available when a site needs more resources, so there is room to move beyond the entry-level packages.

The main issue is renewal pricing. Bluehost offers large discounts for the initial term, but the regular price is considerably higher. That needs to be included when comparing it with other budget hosts. For a smaller WordPress site where keeping the initial cost low matters, Bluehost still provides a strong set of hosting tools for the money.

Further Information:

Bluehost Plans & Pricing

• Starter: Supports up to ten websites with 10GB of NVMe storage. It includes managed WordPress updates, CDN access, SSL, malware scanning, weekly backups, migration tools, and a domain for the first year. It is the best fit for blogs and smaller WordPress sites.
• Business: Supports up to 50 websites with 50GB of NVMe storage. It provides more room for growing sites and is better suited to users managing several WordPress installations or a busier business website.

All data correct as of August, 2026.

Most WordPress hosts include more than just server space. Backups, staging sites, caching, CDN access, SSL, security, and migration tools reduce the amount of work needed to maintain a site. A host may advertise backups but run them only weekly, or offer staging only on its more expensive plans.

There is also a difference between a tool being included and it being well connected to the hosting platform. The right setup depends on whether the project needs simple management or greater control.

Developer requirements can be very different from those of someone running a single blog. Staging sites, SSH, SFTP, WP-CLI, Git, database access, logs, and local development tools will save a lot of time. They are also useful when testing updates or tracking down a problem without making changes directly on a live site.

Cloudways provides the greatest server control of the hosts compared here, while Kinsta and Pressable combine strong development tools with a more managed setup. WordPress.com also provides many common development tools on suitable plans. SiteGround covers most everyday development needs, while Bluehost provides enough access for many smaller projects.

The main question is how much control is actually required. More server access is useful for some developers, but it also means taking responsibility for more of the hosting setup.

AI tools are starting to appear in WordPress hosting platforms. Many providers now use it to help monitor websites, detect security threats, improve performance, and simplify routine management tasks. Some platforms also include AI assistants that can answer questions, troubleshoot common issues, or help configure hosting settings.

While these tools can save time, they shouldn’t be the main reason for choosing a host. Performance, reliability, support, and security still matter more. AI is best viewed as a useful addition rather than a replacement for a well-managed hosting platform.

The table below shows how the six hosts in this comparison currently approach AI.

All data correct as of August, 2026.

WordPress.com currently has the most complete AI setup of the hosts compared here. Its AI website builder can create a new WordPress site, while WordPress Agent continues working inside the site after it has been built. It can help with content, layouts, images, pages, and other editing jobs.

The more interesting addition for developers is MCP support. WordPress.com can connect with outside AI agents such as ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, and other compatible tools. These agents can read site information and, with permission, carry out tasks such as creating posts, managing content, working with media, and changing site settings. MCP is available across paid WordPress.com plans.

Other hosts are using AI in narrower ways, often concentrating on initial site creation, content generation, or hosting support. Those tools can still be useful, but they should not be a major reason to choose a host on their own. Hosting performance, support, backups, security, development tools, and long-term cost still matter much more.

How to Choose a WordPress Host

Choosing a WordPress host is one of the biggest decisions you’ll make for your website. Your hosting provider affects performance, reliability, security, and how easy your site is to manage. The right host will keep your website running smoothly and give you access to support when you need it.

No hosting plan suits every website. A personal blog has different needs than an online store or an agency managing client sites. Knowing what your website requires before comparing providers will help you narrow your options and avoid paying for services you won’t use.

When comparing hosts, look at uptime, page speed, server locations, backups, staging sites, security, support, and renewal pricing. These factors often matter just as much as the monthly cost.

The articles below cover the main topics involved in choosing a WordPress host. Whether you’re building your first website or moving to a new provider, they’ll help you compare your options and make a confident choice.

WordPress Hosting for Different Needs

Choosing a hosting plan that matches your needs can improve performance, make your website easier to manage, and help you avoid paying for resources you won’t use. As your website grows, you can move to a plan with more storage, power, and management tools.

Whether you’re building your first WordPress website, running an online store, or managing client sites, understanding the strengths of each hosting option will make it easier to choose the right provider.

WordPress Performance & Security

A good hosting provider gives your WordPress website a solid foundation, but hosting is only part of the picture. Your website’s setup, the tools you use, and your security practices all affect performance, reliability, and keeping your visitors safe.

Many WordPress hosts include caching, content delivery networks (CDNs), backups, malware scanning, and SSL certificates. Knowing how these features work will help you get more from your hosting plan. Regular maintenance also helps keep your website running well. Updating WordPress, plugins, and themes, monitoring performance, and following good security practices can prevent many common problems.

The articles below cover the tools and techniques that can improve website speed, strengthen security, and simplify day-to-day management.

Managing Your WordPress Hosting

Launching a WordPress website is only the start. Regular maintenance helps keep your website secure, reliable, and running smoothly. Many hosting providers include tools that simplify routine tasks, but it still helps to understand how they work.

Common tasks include migrating websites, installing SSL certificates, updating PHP, managing domains, restoring backups, and monitoring uptime. Learning these skills will help you solve problems more quickly and get more from your hosting provider.

Whether you’re looking after one website or several client projects, a regular maintenance routine can reduce downtime and keep your websites in good shape.

The articles below cover the most common hosting management tasks and show you how to handle them with confidence.

• When Your WordPress Website Has Outgrown its Hosting

  How do you know when a hosting change is needed? Here are a few things to consider.

• Hosting Your Client’s WordPress Website

  Learn how to avoid common hosting mistakes when hosting WordPress sites for clients.

• Understanding Your Web Host

  Your host may not cover all your needs. Take these steps to ensure your website runs smoothly.

• Building a Performant WordPress Website

  Learn how to boost performance with better hosting, lighter themes, and smart optimzation strategies.

• What To Know About Your Client’s WordPress Website

  We cover what to check first, including themes, plugins, custom code, hosting, and unused tools.

• Add an SSL Certificate to Your WordPress Website

  A quick SSL certificate setup can mean big benefits for your site and visitors.

• WordPress Website Email Issues

  Learn how to test sending, check logs, change the from address, set up SMTP, or use a mail delivery service.

Final Verdict: Which WordPress Host Should You Choose?

WordPress.com is our best overall choice because it works for a broad range of WordPress projects while handling much of the hosting management. It is suitable for blogs, business websites, larger publications, and WooCommerce stores, with access to plugins, themes, staging, backups, security, caching, and development tools on suitable plans.

Kinsta is the better choice for users who want premium managed WordPress hosting and are willing to pay more for it. Cloudways suits established bloggers and publications that want greater control over server resources. Pressable is our choice for developers because its managed platform includes a strong set of WordPress development tools.

SiteGround makes sense for agencies managing several client websites, particularly when collaboration and site management tools are needed. And Bluehost remains the budget choice for smaller WordPress sites where keeping the hosting bill low matters more than having advanced management tools.

No host wins every category because WordPress websites have different requirements. The best option is the provider that has enough performance and resources for the site, includes the tools that will actually be used, and remains affordable after introductory pricing ends. For most WordPress users looking for a balance across those areas, WordPress.com gets our overall recommendation.

WordPress Hosting FAQs

WordPress hosting can look more complicated than it needs to be. Hosting companies use different plan names, prices, limits, and technical terms, even when the services are similar. These answers cover some of the most common questions about choosing and using WordPress hosting.

• What is the best hosting for WordPress?
  WordPress.com is our best overall WordPress host because it combines managed hosting with good performance, security, backups, CDN access, and WordPress support. Kinsta is our choice for managed hosting, Cloudways for bloggers, Pressable for developers, SiteGround for agencies, and Bluehost for smaller budgets.
• How much should WordPress hosting cost?
  Basic WordPress hosting can cost only a few dollars per month, while managed hosting may cost $20 to $50 per month or more. Larger sites and stores can cost considerably more. Always check the regular renewal price because introductory rates can make the first term look much cheaper.
• Do I need managed WordPress hosting?
  No. Smaller blogs, portfolios, and business sites can run well on lower-cost hosting. Managed WordPress hosting becomes more useful for busy sites, stores, and businesses that benefit from automatic backups, security, caching, staging, and WordPress-focused support.
• Can I change WordPress hosts later?
  Yes. WordPress sites can be moved between hosting providers. Many hosts provide migration tools or will move the site for you. Keep the old hosting active until the new site has been checked and the domain is pointing to the new server.
• Does better hosting make WordPress faster?
  Better hosting can improve WordPress performance by providing faster servers, more resources, caching, and CDN access. But hosting cannot fix every problem. Large images, heavy themes, slow plugins, external scripts, and database problems can still make a site slow.
• Is WordPress hosting different from regular web hosting?
  WordPress hosting is web hosting set up with WordPress in mind. It may include WordPress updates, caching, backups, security, staging, WP-CLI, and specialist support. WordPress can also run on regular hosting as long as the server meets its requirements.
• Do I need separate hosting for WooCommerce?
  No. WooCommerce runs on WordPress and does not require a separate type of hosting. But stores can need more server resources because carts, checkout pages, customer accounts, orders, and stock changes create more database activity than a typical WordPress site.
• How much traffic can WordPress hosting handle?
  There is no single number. A cached blog and a busy WooCommerce store can use very different resources even with the same number of visitors. Check the host’s traffic, bandwidth, storage, CPU, memory, and other resource limits before choosing a plan.

Read more articles by Paul Andrew

The post The Best WordPress Hosting in 2026 appeared first on The NOKIA Blog.

I’ve experienced both scenarios. Sometimes, there’s no rhyme or reason why clients come and go. You can do everything right, and still a client looks elsewhere when it’s time for a redesign or new project. Perhaps they were swayed by a sales pitch. Or, a new person comes in and wants to shake things up. It’s an unfortunate part of this business.

Regardless, there’s still work to be done. Their website may need to be migrated to a different host. Credentials need to be created for the new freelancer. There are project assets and notes to share.

It’s an awkward situation at best. But never fear, I have some tips for making the transition as smooth as possible. Keep reading to learn the do’s and don’ts of working with that new (or old) developer!

Keep It Professional

Maybe it sounds obvious. However, it’s easy to become emotional when letting go of a project (and its revenue). The same thing applies when you’re the new developer. Some clients will paint an unfortunate picture of their previous agency. Don’t get caught up in it.

Odds are, neither you nor the other party is evil or inept. There are always two sides to a story, and you’ll probably only hear one of them.

As such, there’s no reason to be rude or unhelpful. Answer questions, document processes, and respond within a reasonable period of time. These are common courtesies that will speed up the transition. After all, no one wants this thing to drag on for too long.

The funny part is that you may encounter the same developer again. For example, I’ve gained and lost clients to the same local agency. It’s a reminder to keep it professional and avoid burning bridges.

We may be competitors, but we’re all in the same boat.

Get Paid Before Doing the Work

These transitions can be especially frustrating if a client owes you money. They may expect you to work with their new developer with a promise to pay later. Avoid this scenario at all costs!

A client who is always late with payment is unlikely to make good on their debt after you’re gone. As such, getting paid should be a condition for transferring the site to someone else.

Create an agreement (in writing) that outlines what you need from them before you can do the work. Don’t provide a single file or login until that condition has been met. This places the ball firmly in their court. If they want to move on, they’ll need to settle their outstanding debt. It’s a perfectly reasonable request.

If the client balks at the idea, you may need to bring a lawyer into the fold. It’s not ideal, but it may be the only way you’ll get your money.

Think Before You Share Sensitive Information

Sharing credentials is part of any website transition. There are logins for hosting, content management systems (CMS) like WordPress, and third-party SaaS applications. Not to mention API keys and software licensing details.

You may be tempted to send a laundry list of logins to the new developer. However, it’s worth taking a step back and ensuring you aren’t exposing yourself to risk.

If you manage a client’s hosting or domain name, for example, be sure that anything you share is specific to their website. You wouldn’t want someone to have access to other client data. If possible, create delegate accounts that provide only the necessary permissions.

Also, create a new administrator account for their CMS, rather than sharing your login. This takes you off the hook for any user activity or, worse yet, a hacked password. And make sure your account is deleted when you’re out of the picture.

Software licensing can be tricky, especially if they aren’t under your client’s name. If you have a developer license for a WordPress plugin, consider your comfort level with allowing a client to continue using it. It might be worth recommending they purchase a separate license.

If you’re inheriting the site from another developer, think about what you’ll need. Ask about all of the above and find out as much as you can. The goal is to avoid any surprises once you take over.

Transitions Are a Part of the Job

It’s safe to say that no one enjoys transitioning a website from one developer to another. It’s often a messy process and can raise your anxiety levels, regardless of which side you’re on. But there’s an opportunity to make the best of a difficult situation.

Maintaining a professional attitude is a must. Treat it as just another business transaction and do your best to leave personal feelings out of it. Work with integrity and aim to produce the best possible outcome.

It’s also important to protect your interests. A client who’s leaving must live up to their end of the bargain. Don’t allow them to walk away without paying their outstanding balance. Also, be careful about the information you share with a new developer.

The most positive aspect is the experience you’ll gain. Learning to manage clients coming and going will serve you well. Doing so will allow you to focus on the task at hand while avoiding all the negatives. That’s great, because you’re likely to need those skills again and again.

here. He recently started a writing service for WordPress products: WP Product Writeup. He also has an opinion on just about every subject. You can follow his rants on Bluesky @karks.com.

Read more articles by Eric Karkovack

The post How to Work With Your Client’s Next (Or Previous) Developer appeared first on The NOKIA Blog.

Every website is at its best the day it ships. The final branch merges, the site goes live exactly as designed, and it is briefly perfect. It will never be this good again.

Not because anything breaks. The site keeps working. But the market moves, the messaging shifts, a competitor launches something, and the careful thing you built slowly stops matching the company it represents. A year later, it is a period piece. Not broken, just behind. Every team knows this decay, and almost everyone treats it as a law of nature.

It doesn’t have to be that way. A website could keep improving after launch instead of drifting away from its best day, quietly optimizing itself while the team that built it works on something else.

Picture it working: while you sleep, an agent catches that last week’s design-system change never propagated to the pricing page, and fixes it. Another finds a set of images shipped uncompressed in a rushed release and optimizes them. A third flags an accessibility regression a new component introduced, and either fixes it or leaves it for you to check. You wake up to a site that is measurably better than the one you left, and a short list of the few decisions the agents wanted your eyes on. That is the version worth wanting.

And the moment you take that promise seriously, you run into a problem that has nothing to do with the technology:

Almost nobody actually wants a website that changes entirely on its own.

Why “Just Make It Autonomous” Is The Wrong Goal

The obvious move, once you have capable agents, is to hand them the whole site. Let them write, edit, optimize, and publish, and get out of the way. It sounds like the natural endpoint, and it is the first thing most people picture when they hear “autonomous website.”

It is also the thing almost nobody wants once it is real in front of them.

We learned this the way you learn most things worth knowing: by building the opposite first. Building Fimo, an autonomous website platform, we set out to make websites fully autonomous, assumed that was the goal, and then watched what people actually did with it. What they did was hesitate. Not because they distrusted the agents, but because a website has no single owner. Different parts belong to different people, and each one wants a different amount of autonomy. So the question was never whether to trust the agents. It was where to draw the line, and for whom.

Once you ask it that way, the work splits cleanly into three kinds.

Most Of It Is A No-brainer

Start with the largest pile, because it is bigger than people expect. Most of what keeps a website healthy is rule-bound, repetitive, and completely joyless. Keeping accessibility compliant as pages change. Propagating a design-system update once a token moves. Catching a broken meta tag, an unoptimized image, a link that rotted when a URL changed three sprints ago.

None of this is where anyone’s talent lives. Nobody was hired because of their gift for spotting a missing alt attribute. This is the work you are actively relieved to hand off, and it is the work agents are best at, because it is defined by rules rather than taste. An agent that quietly keeps this layer correct across a whole site, unattended, is not a threat to anyone’s job. It is the tedious eighty percent finally taken care of.

Naming how much of the maintenance load actually lives in this pile is what makes the whole idea of an autonomous site feel less like a leap. You are not handing over judgment. You are handing over chores.

Some Of It You’d Never Hand Over

At the other end sits the work you would not delegate at any price. It is a small pile, but it is the reason you exist.

An agent can check a new page against every rule you have given it. It can confirm the contrast passes, the heading order is right, the tokens are correct, the copy matches the style guide. What it cannot do is decide what the page should feel like, or whether the thing you are shipping is, in the taste sense, good. That judgment is exactly what you were hired for, and no amount of capability moves it off your desk.

This is the part people reach for first when they resist autonomy, and they are right to protect it. The mistake is thinking the whole site is made of this kind of work. Almost none of it is. But that small part matters more than all the rest, which is why automating everything feels so wrong.

And A Lot Of It Depends On Who You Are

Between the chores and the untouchable sits the part no product can settle for you, because the line runs through different places for different people.

Take one real change: making dark mode the default theme when someone lands on the site. An agent can do it in seconds. The question is who gets to decide it should happen at all. For the designer who owns the site’s identity, the default theme is not a setting; it is a statement about how the brand wants to be seen first, and they want that call. For the developer shipping the change, it is a one-line default with a clear rationale, the kind of thing they would happily let an agent apply and move on. Same change, same site, and the two of them draw the line in opposite places.

Notice what is happening there. It isn’t that one of them is cautious and the other reckless. It is that the same task carries different amounts of judgment for each of them. For one person it is a decision; for the other it is a chore. There is no default a product could ship that would be right for both, because “right” is a function of where your value sits, not of the task itself.

This is why the control has to be per-task and per-person, and why we stopped trying to find the setting that would work for everyone. There isn’t one. There is only the line each person draws, and the tools to draw it precisely.

You Don’t Just Set The Autonomy: You Build The Agent

Once you accept that the line is personal, a toggle between “approve” and “delegate” stops being enough. Where the line sits depends on what the agent is actually doing, so the real unit of control is the agent itself.

This is where it stopped being a settings problem, and it is the shape Fimo took. You don’t pick from a fixed menu of behaviors. You compose the agents, deciding what each one is even allowed to touch. You can build one from scratch, or take one close to your needs and shape it to your own line: an accessibility agent you trust to run unattended, a content agent you keep close to anything brand-facing.

And they don’t stay fixed. They learn from their tasks and from what you teach them, so the boundary you set last month isn’t the one you’re stuck with. What you had to approve then, you can delegate now, not because you lowered your guard but because the agent earned it. The line is not a setting you configure once. It moves as trust is earned, in the direction of less work for you.

Start Narrow, and Widen As You Trust It

None of this means flipping a site to autonomous on day one. In practice it goes the other way. You delegate a little, watch how it does, and loosen.

And you can actually watch. Every agent’s runs, its history, its logs, and a before-and-after of what it changed are there to inspect. Trust doesn’t grow because you got used to the idea; it grows because you can see what happened and compare. The first time an agent quietly fixes something you would have missed, and you can see exactly what it did, the next delegation gets easier.

Deadlines keep you from becoming the bottleneck on what you have already handed over. If you don’t weigh in, the agent proceeds. You set the terms once, and you stop being the thing the whole site waits on.

The Frozen Site Is The Real Risk

The worry people voice first is that an agent will change something on their site without them. Turn it around: the real risk is a site that never changes at all. A frozen site doesn’t stay safe. It just falls behind, slowly, in a way nobody notices until it represents a company that no longer exists.

The point of autonomy was never to remove you from your website. It was to remove the decay.

The point of autonomy is to keep the launch-day version from being the best version, and to let you spend your judgment on the handful of things that actually deserve it, while the rest takes care of itself. Draw the line where your value is. Let the agents hold everything on the other side of it. And let the line move as they prove they can.

(yk)

The post Why Your Website Should Never Stop Changing appeared first on The NOKIA Blog.

During my time at AWS, I have always looked for opportunities to work with students. I have delivered over 50 talks at universities across the region, and watching the potential in the room is always a strong motivator. It reminds me of why I do this work, and that the students I meet today may well become our customers and collaborators tomorrow. That is why I am happy to open this week with Student Rewards on AWS Builder Center.

Rick Suttles published Introducing Student Rewards on AWS Builder Center, a new benefit for verified higher education students. When you verify your enrollment through SheerID and complete your Builder Center profile, you unlock 12 months of premium AWS Skill Builder access (900+ courses, hands-on labs, certification exam prep, and game-based learning). From there, you earn badges through actions on Builder Center: publishing articles, commenting, and maintaining engagement. At 7 badges, you unlock $10 in AWS Credits. At 14 badges, another $20 in credits. At 21 badges, you earn an AWS Foundational Certification exam voucher ($100 value).

This represents a commitment of over $500 million in resources during this back-to-school season, providing students with the training, tools, and certification needed to start building their careers in cloud and AI. Student Rewards is available to students 18 years or older and enrolled at accredited higher education institutions worldwide, subject to verification and applicable terms.

Verify your student status and start learning, earning badges, and unlocking rewards!

Last week’s launches
Here’s what else happened this week.

• A new AWS Local Zone in Las Vegas, Nevada – This new Local Zone supports Amazon EC2 C7i, M7i, R7i, and C8gn instances, Amazon EBS, Amazon ECS, Amazon EKS, Application Load Balancer, and AWS Direct Connect. AWS Local Zones are now available in more than 30 metropolitan areas worldwide. In addition, AWS added a fourth Availability Zone to the Europe (London) Region, delivering next-generation AI and ML capacity with Trn3 and P6 accelerated instances alongside general-purpose compute.
• Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling now supports batch instance termination – You can now pass up to 100 instance IDs to the TerminateInstanceInAutoScalingGroup API to terminate them as a batch, reducing the number of API calls needed to scale down your Auto Scaling groups. Batch termination is designed for workloads that need to rapidly scale down, such as AI/ML training jobs, container orchestrators, or event-driven architectures that spin up large fleets temporarily.
• AWS CloudShell now includes a built-in visual file editor – CloudShell now includes a visual file editor that you can launch directly from your shell session using a single edit command. The editor supports syntax highlighting, find-and-replace, multi-line selection, copy-paste, and undo-redo in a single browser session. Whether you are updating a deployment script, modifying an agent steering file, editing a CloudFormation template, or fixing a Lambda function, the editor provides a seamless edit-and-run experience without leaving CloudShell.
• Amazon Bedrock now supports SpaceXAI Grok 4.6 with cross-Region inference – Grok 4.6, a frontier model built for coding, agentic tasks, and knowledge work, is now available on Amazon Bedrock. The model runs on the bedrock-runtime endpoint with support for the Responses, Chat Completions, and Converse APIs, and works with existing account-level controls including model invocation logging, Amazon CloudWatch metrics, and cost itemization in AWS Cost Explorer.
• Amazon Bedrock expands API support and introduces cross-Region inference for OpenAI models – Amazon Bedrock now supports OpenAI GPT-5.6 models (Sol, Terra, and Luna) with the Responses, Converse, and Chat Completions APIs, and adds cross-Region inference. Geo cross-Region inference routes requests within a predefined geography (including new US Geo support with this launch), while Global cross-Region inference serves requests from any commercial AWS Region at a lower per-token cost.
• AgentCore payments is now generally available in Amazon Bedrock AgentCore – At general availability, AgentCore payments includes Quick Create for Coinbase credential provisioning directly within the AgentCore console, a curated Coinbase Bazar MCP server of pay-per-use x402 endpoints via AgentCore gateway, support for the Machine Payment Protocol (MPP), and the “upto” scheme in the x402 protocol for pay-per-inference and dynamic pricing use cases. To learn more, visit the AI Blog post.
• AWS Glue 6.0 delivers 30% price reduction and Iceberg v3 support – AWS Glue 6.0 is built on a fully modernized runtime, Apache Spark 4.1, Python 3.13, and Scala 2.13, delivering 30% lower pricing than previous AWS Glue versions. With Iceberg v3, Glue 6.0 adds the VARIANT data type with automatic shredding for faster reads on semi-structured data, deletion vectors for high-performance row-level updates, geometry and geography data types for spatial processing, and flexible schema evolution.

For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to keep an eye on the What’s New with AWS page.

Other AWS news
Here are some additional posts you may find useful:

• Updates to your AWS Sign-In experience – AWS is gradually introducing updates to the sign-in and sign-up experience. The redesigned sign-in page introduces a unified email entry point for root users and customers using the new email-based sign-in method, while IAM users continue signing in with their account ID, username, and password. The page also includes sign-in options for customers whose AWS account was created using a supported identity provider (Google, GitHub, Apple, or Amazon.com). A redesigned session selection page simplifies viewing and managing multiple active account and role sessions. If your organization relies on browser automation or scripted workflows that interact with the sign-in page, review the post to understand how these changes might affect your configuration.
• In the works: AWS Builder Lofts in Berlin, Hyderabad, and São Paulo – My colleague Channy announced plans to open new Builder Lofts in three cities. Since the first Builder Loft opened in San Francisco in July 2025, it has welcomed more than 22,500 developers through its doors. Each new location will be a permanent community space offering free workshops, networking events, pitch nights, content creation spaces, and co-working areas. Berlin will focus on digital sovereignty and security-readiness, Hyderabad on AI and cloud-native architecture, and São Paulo on supporting Latin America’s developer ecosystem.
• AWS and Amazon WorkSpaces recognized as a Leader in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Desktop as a Service – AWS has been named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Desktop as a Service (DaaS) for the third consecutive year, evaluated on Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute. Gartner noted strengths in operations, geographic strategy, and overall viability. This is also the first year the evaluation includes Amazon WorkSpaces for AI agents, a capability that runs AI agents within the same desktop environment, security perimeter, and audit trail as human users.

For a full list of AWS blog posts, be sure to keep an eye on the AWS Blogs page.

Upcoming AWS events
Check your calendar and sign up for upcoming AWS events:

• AWS Summits – Free in-person events for builders and innovators to learn, connect, and explore the latest in cloud. Coming up: Zurich (September 2), São Paulo (September 3), Tel Aviv (September 10), and Dubai (September 30). You can also watch keynotes and sessions on the AWS Summits Global Livestream + On-Demand Hub. To access live and on-demand content for a particular Summit, you need to be registered for that event.
• AWS Community Days – Community-led conferences planned and delivered by community leaders. Upcoming events include Bolivia, Santa Cruz (August 29), Toronto, Canada (August 29), JAWS SONIC, Tokyo (September 5), Warsaw, Poland (September 8).

Visit the AWS Builder Center to meet other builders, contribute solutions, and find resources that help you keep building.

Summer is slowly coming to an end, and I am already planning a few days off in the coming months to keep me motivated through the rainy autumn ahead. I hope you are doing the same. Come back next week for more!

— Esra

The post AWS Weekly Roundup: Student Rewards on AWS Builder Center, Local Zone in Las Vegas, and more (August 24, 2026) appeared first on The NOKIA Blog.