WordPress Drama Defined (and how it could impact your online website)

It’s weird to get texts like “this wordpress drama is crazy or about to sell out.”

In the 15 years of running WPBeginner, I have no idea at all that I will have to write a blog created to protect any wordpress industry drama. My point of interest with the blog has always been to provide high-quality unfastened wordpress tutorials for non-tech hobby buyers and small business families.

On the other hand, unfortunately, we have come to a point where a lot of misknowledge and concerns about wordpress are being spread through click-hungry media and influencers.

This is causing panic among some website owners, businesses and people who work in businesses. All other individuals are asking questions like whether wordpress is still safe or not and will have to look for a chosen CMS possibility for their websites.

In this post, I want to give an explanation of what this latest wordpress drama is brewing, who it will impact, and what you can do to protect your websites.

TLDR: No, this is NOT top of the line wordpress and your websites are secure.

With that said, let’s get right into what’s going on in this wordpress drama involving WP Engine vs. Automatic.

<h4 class=”wp-block-heading” id=”aioseo-what-is-this-wordpress-drama-all-about-short-summary”><span class=”ez-toc-section” id=”whats-this-wordpress-drama-all-about-temporary-summary”/>What is this wordpress drama about? (Temporary summary)

Quick summary: There is a lawsuit between two wordpress companies (WP Engine and Automattic) regarding a trademark dispute. Due to their impact, there have been escalations leading to a lot of destructive PR for the wordpress ecosystem. The vast majority of wordpress websites are NOT affected in the slightest.

This whole issue started because of two big companies in the wordpress industry who are in a prison battle over a trademark dispute.

Automattic is an organization started by wordpress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. They are the creators of WooCommerce, wordpress.com site hosting provider, Jetpack plugin, and more.

WP Engine is a subsidiary wordpress website hosting company owned by a large non-public Silver Lake stock company.

Automattic holds the original commercial rights to use the “wordpress” trademark. They asked WP Engine to negotiate a licensing agreement that would each pay for Automattic OR higher contributions for the open and open-sourced wordpress issue.

As deals failed to come back to an agreement, Matt publicized the dispute at the annual WordCamp conference in the US, where he claimed that WP Engine, without reference to being a company with over $400 million in profits, did not gives more enough to the open open provides a problem with wordpress.

As the problems grew, all the companies sent each other a fair and kind prevent and desist (C&D) letter. Due to threats of prison, Matt, as co-founder of wordpress, banned WP Engine from accessing wordpress.org servers.

This meant that any buyer with websites on WP Engine site hosting was no longer able to acquire updates from the wordpress.org servers.

The ban was lifted soon thereafter briefly to protect buyers and allow WP Engine to create its own replacement servers. Since wordpress is open supply, WP Engine staff were just able to create their own update schedule to ensure that buyers on their site’s internet hosting platform could get software updates.

The server ban officially went into effect on October 1st. Shortly thereafter, WP Engine filed a federal lawsuit against Automattic and Matt Mullenweg.

Due to the escalation, WP Engine staff were banned from accessing their wordpress.org accounts. This means that WP Engine staff are unable to release updates to their wordpress plugins from the original wordpress.org servers.

One of the most notable plugins owned by WP Engine is Difficult Custom Designed Fields (ACF), the same old among developers and used by over 2 million websites. To ensure that security updates are available to all consumers, the wordpress.org team has forked the ACF plugin, renamed it Safe Custom Designed Fields (SCF), and took over the plugin listing webpage -in original ACF without WP Engine’s consent. The reasons given for this were to take care and provide updates to buyers who were unaware of the drama.

This selection was no longer well received and garnered many destructive comments from developers, influencers, and media outlets.

As of this writing, all other WP Engine plugins are still available for download in the wordpress.org plugin list, on the other hand, WP Engine staff are still banned, so they don’t seem be able to use wordpress.org servers to release updates.

In summary, at the root of this wordpress drama is a heated prison trademark dispute between the WP Engine site’s Internet hosting company, Automattic, and Matt Mullenweg (co-founder of wordpress).

Since there is a federal lawsuit filed through WP Engine against Automattic, I believe it is best that the courts can decide the outcome until the occasions come to an amicable resolution outside of the courts. The original wordpress Twitter account tweeted that the situation could be resolved based on the following requirements:

<h4 class=”wp-block-heading” id=”aioseo-is-this-the-end-of-wordpress“><span class=”ez-toc-section” id=”is-this-the-end-of-wordpress“/>Is this the end of wordpress?

The answer is NO. Absolutely not anymore.

Powers of wordpress over 43% of websites online, and it’s better than any explicit person or company. The vast majority of small business owners and wordpress buyers don’t even know about this ongoing drama because it simply doesn’t affect them.

I spoke to a small business owner in the area who is my personal trainer, and he wasn’t even aware of wordpress‘ destructive spherical print. After I briefly suggested it to him, here’s what he talked about:

“I won’t switch from wordpress because some big companies are having a trademark dispute. My problem is that my website is working and my business is emerging.” – Sean Nelson, founder of Hustle Coaching 360.

In reality, the wordpress software with which you created your website has not changed.

For people using the same old plugins like Elementor, WPForms, WooCommerce, AIOSEO, Duplicator, and actually over 60,000 others, they are still equivalent.

Something as big as wordpress simply doesn’t end because two companies have a trademark dispute.

On the whole of things, there is a small portion of buyers who are interested and I will be able to percentage rate how you will be able to find out if your website is interested and what you will be able to do about it .

<h4 class=”wp-block-heading” id=”aioseo-is-my-website-affected-by-all-of-this”>Is my website affected by this?

The vast majority of buyers and websites that use wordpress are NOT influenced by this prison dispute between Automattic and WP Engine.

In case you are using an uninstalled plugin that was just advanced via WP Engine and you may even NOT be on their internet hosting platform, your websites will be affected because you will no longer be able to download updates for the plugins not set by wordpress.org.

Below are the most popular unblocked plugins created through WP Engine that may be blocked from sending updates from wordpress.org servers:

• Custom designed difficult courses
• Nitropack
• Edit top search
• WP Migrate Lite
• WP Download SES Lite
• Frost
• Genesis Blocks
• Genesis custom designed blocks
• For the total list, see plugins built through WP Engine.

<h4 class=”wp-block-heading” id=”aioseo-what-can-you-do-to-protect-your-wordpress-site”><span class=”ez-toc-section” id=”what-can-you-do-to-protect-your-wordpress–website-online”/>What can you do to protect your wordpress site online?

As I said previously, if you no longer use plugins made through WP Engine, you definitely won’t want to do the rest.

Your wordpress internet site is secure and very ready.

However, I always recommend having regular backups of wordpress and using a firewall like Cloudflare (see further wordpress security guidelines).

Now, if you are using plugins created through WP Engine, you will need to organize the WP Engine Update Plugin to continue receiving updates or find more, depending on your personal selection.

<h4 class=”wp-block-heading” id=”aioseo-what-should-i-do-as-a-wordpress-agency-with-concerned-clients”><span class=”ez-toc-section” id=”what-should-i-do-as-a-wordpress-corporate-with-concerned-clients”/>What should I do as a wordpress company with interested customers?

You will send them a link to this published blog and reassure them that wordpress is still safe and by means of ways in which the most productive open provides the possibility of CMS available on the market.

A prison dispute over trademarks between two companies It does NOT business is the fact that wordpress powers 43% of all websites (and emerging). There are over 60,000 unfastened wordpress plugins and thousands of unfastened wordpress subjects available on the market that make it easy to create any type of website you would really like.

Construction of the wordpress core continues and wordpress 6.7 is arriving quickly.

Listed below are some additional insights into the proportions and developments of the wordpress market.

My final concepts

Despite everything that is happening right now, I still love wordpress and count it in our excellent wordpress community.

I have spent more than a portion of my life in the wordpress community and will continue to do everything in my power to strengthen the community and our consumers. Check out my recent post about contributing to the wordpress ecosystem.

Despite everything, I really hope that the two respectable companies involved in the lawsuit can reach an agreement briefly, so that we can all focus on the emerging wordpress and help democratize publishing and business around the world.

As always, I must thank you for your continued strengthening of WPBeginner and I look forward to continuing to serve you for years to come.

Best regards,

Syed Balkhi
Founder of WPBeginner

References:

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