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It will be interesting how many customers start flying the coop. Wordpress can be entrenching software but I have also found that a lot of the plugin heavy site

It will be interesting how many customers start flying the coop. Wordpress can be entrenching software but I have also found that a lot of the plugin heavy sites are just using plugins/customizations for trivial things you could easily eclipse. Migrating off of it is easier done than said in that case. We will be leaving WP Engine and Wordpress behind after we spend 2 months rebuilding on sensible software on a sensible host (WP engine is also terrible) this Q4. We actually had a contingency plan to just leave WP Engine and fix our wordpress up, but in light of Matt’s nonsensical actions we have scrapped that option. Congrats to these employees on fleeing what appears to be tyranny for the Automattic employees and the customers. Good riddance Wordpress.

keiferski 2y ago
Probably not too many. The average WordPress site is run by a small business that doesn’t care the slightest bit about tech industry drama, or what open source even means.
- righthand 2y ago
  That may be enough, the average Wordpress site probably is subsidized by the larger sites that may leave. I don’t see the amount of employees exiting as a small amount even though it’s not even 20%.
  - keiferski 2y ago
    Pretty unlikely. In my experience, WordPress is basically the go-to solution for people that need a cheap website and don't want to think about it too much. Especially for non-technical people running a law firm, consultancy, etc. The technical folks that care about recent events most likely left WP years ago.
    - righthand 2y ago
      I’m not sure what’s unlikely. Customers leaving? My company is a customer, we’re leaving. Or that most free sites are subsidized by paying customers? Why is that unlikely that seems pretty par for the course for free services.
      - keiferski 2y ago
        I'm saying that WordPress is incredibly widespread, far more than I think most tech industry people realize. The average WordPress site builder doesn't know or care who Matt Mullenweg is or what open source means. WordPress is just the simplest way to make a usable website – and has been for the last 20 years, almost.
        righthand 2y ago
        Okay I get that but I’m discussing people that don’t self host or need more than the basics. Those are the users affected by Matt’s action. For example, our site repos only include the site theme we deploy to WP Engine, so our stack is essentially Wordpress, not WP Engine Wordpress. All the WP Engine stuff is handled once deployed invisible to us. So when we log in we expect Wordpress features. Yes there are a lot of Wordpress installs, a lot of them perhaps never even updated. You can claim those as being loyal to Wordpress but if they just set it up and forget it then there’s probably no real loyalty to Automattic. If you have concerns about just setting up a site on a different platform outside of Automattic for whatever reason, why would you trust it any longer? Those people will move on to another just as easy to install cms. Wordpress hasn’t gotten easier to customize in the last x years since your 3.0 install or whatever. Easy to install and forget isn’t a Wordpress exclusive idea. It perhaps has a lot of mind share, but this is the 2nd time Matt has taken drastic action. It’s now at historical precedent levels.
        keiferski 2y ago
        They don't need to be loyal, they just need to be lazy, lazy enough to not want to learn a new technology and spend money + time switching to it. They won't move on to another CMS, because they don't care about WordPress tech industry drama and they don't know who Matt Mullenweg is. WordPress will continue to work just fine for them and they will continue not caring about an issue that will be forgotten about in a month. The vast, vast majority of people using WordPress think of it as an old, reliable, simple way to make a website, and nothing more.
- Topgamer7 2y ago
  I think these days, the average WordPress site runner is trying to find a cheap/free. Non-technical solution. I help out with a sports league who run a couple wordpress sites. - One, its totally the wrong CMS for how they use it. - Two, they have almost no ability to diagnose and debug issues themselves. Honestly 80% of the issues that get raised to me are even just solved by clicking "keep plugin automatically updated" They really just want a CMS that allows them to share announcements, post schedules and where to show up to play. But it gets the job done, for cheap, and there is a decent community on plugins and themes. Wordpress was originally popular because of its openness and community right? I wonder if that's still the platform it is.
  - righthand 2y ago
    No I don’t see it as an open platform with a strong community. Matt has demonstrated he will shut off features for large swaths of sites where is the openness there? The community plugins are loyal to a few popular plugins that all have pay walls if you want to do more than the basics. Any time Wordpress implements a new feature they have to do so it doesn’t completely crush the plugin community. Like site maps for example are trapped behind using a wordpress hook or using a plugin like Yoast to customize them.
  - ppseafield 2y ago
    I'll second the sibling poster here by saying anything useful you want to do with WordPress will probably have a non-negligible cost, and usually a subscription. WooCommerce for instance requires a subscription to add a minimum quantity to a product! I volunteer for a non-profit that uses it, and it's absolutely insane how many plugins will give you a little for free but charge $5/month or $50/year for just slightly more features.
    - dgacmu 2y ago
      If you were to guide them today, what would you set them up that's not WP that gives functionality similar to wp+woo? (asking for someone who has a site using wp+woo. I don't plan to switch us - the switching cost is too high to be worth it - but I do want to have something in my pocket for the future.)
legitster 2y ago
Matt himself suggested the exodus: fork Wordpress, call it something else, host the plugin directory yourself. And it's not like Wordpress is known for it's phenomenal code quality or anything. This is your chance to ditch some of the bad ideas (cough Gutenberg cough) or legacy code.
- righthand 2y ago
  Yeah so WP Engine will just proxy the Wordpress plugin search results and cache the top plugins on their end. That’s a lose in this case for Automattic if that’s his suggestion then why even block WP Engine customers in the first place?
  - legitster 2y ago
    https://thenewstack.io/the-wordpress-saga-does-matt-mullenwegg-wants-a-fork-or-not/ https://thenewstack.io/the-wordpress-saga-does-matt-mullenwe... > “I think a fork would be amazing,” he told TNS. “They should fork WordPress, because what they offer is not actually WordPress. They call it WordPress, but they really screw it up.” Yeah, part of the confusion here is Matt's unreliability as a narrator of his motivations. He wants WP Engine to fork, but then he asks them to pay. He wants Wordpress to grow and be open source, but suddenly he champions branding and restricting trademarks. It's hard to know what his stated end goal in all of this is - maybe he's okay shrinking the Wordpress community so long as they control a bigger slice of it?
    - righthand 2y ago
      And WP Engine could fork and call it Wordpresss. That’s also a lose for his tirade. I bet his expensive lawyer wouldn’t tell him that though. All I’m learning is that never elect Matt as POTUS because he always wants to go nuclear to teach a lesson to a small percentage of the population.
- ValentineC 2y ago
  > This is your chance to ditch some of the bad ideas (cough Gutenberg cough) or legacy code. ClassicPress is already a thing: https://www.classicpress.net https://www.classicpress.net
stevenicr 2y ago
I run dozens of WP sites and help others create and maintain with it, I won't be leaving it any time soon - although at times it is appropriate to change hosts or even to change to a static site. Wordpress makes those things easy. I always have discussions with people about possible hosting issues, and issues with licenses changing when suggesting to use or continue to use WP (or anything else you do not control) This whole kerfuffle does not bother me, as it reminds me of the licensing issues with some of the AI models being released - if you are super big you can't use them for free.. well fine - if I get that big and my biggest worry is how to brigade online to save face while trying to save a few million - well that is .1% problems I wouldn't mind having, seriously, at that level a person/company can make all sorts of choices, and those choices don't have to be to convince people to throw salt and shade at the sandbox you are leaving.
- righthand 2y ago
  Well you can’t change hosts because Matt doesn’t like some of them when they don’t pad his bank account. Never said it wasnt easy. It’s also bloated and poorly developed. It’s a bit like asking why people don’t use bricks instead of tires.
  - stevenicr 2y ago
    Well you can change hosts to ones Matt like and doesn't like, and I'm glad you understand how easy it is. Most hosting companies have some sorts of limits and some have wordpress related limited specifically. If a web host is not able to provide the connectivity to the things you want or need, just switch. From what I understand of my limited reading about the issue, wp engine may have to change how they advertise the use of wordpress related terms and they may have the mirror the plugin and other repositories as they may not be able to pass through access to the WP servers, this is a hindrance for sure, but it's not a full stop your site can't function. Of course it's bloated for many use cases, because it is possible to do so many things with it (many things many may never need, sure) - poorly developed is not how I would characterize the development with WP - I've certainly loudly complained about some choices over the years, but the development is pretty robust compared to similar projects I have seen over the years. If wordpress wants to change how they allow access to their servers based upon whether a host is making millions promoting WP, it's fine with me - they would not be the first company to decide to limit access at different thresholds and ask for more money based on usage. It may be shocking and a big change, but the individual website owners can get the wp files and plugins and deploy in thousands of places around the world, and it takes just minutes in most cases.
bobbylarrybobby 2y ago
Curious why you say WP Engine is terrible? My org has been using them for several years without issue.
- righthand 2y ago
  They rate limit queries
chemmail 2y ago
What did you move away to? I loved wordpress back in the 2-3.0 days lol. But all the other CMS are way too complicated for me, let alone normal people. I still have old sites stuck on relatively old versions.
- righthand 2y ago
  We’re moving to ContentStack + react frontend. However if you want control I recommend hosting Payload.

keiferski 2y ago

Probably not too many. The average WordPress site is run by a small business that doesn’t care the slightest bit about tech industry drama, or what open source even means.

righthand 2y ago
That may be enough, the average Wordpress site probably is subsidized by the larger sites that may leave. I don’t see the amount of employees exiting as a small amount even though it’s not even 20%.
- keiferski 2y ago
  Pretty unlikely. In my experience, WordPress is basically the go-to solution for people that need a cheap website and don't want to think about it too much. Especially for non-technical people running a law firm, consultancy, etc. The technical folks that care about recent events most likely left WP years ago.
  - righthand 2y ago
    I’m not sure what’s unlikely. Customers leaving? My company is a customer, we’re leaving. Or that most free sites are subsidized by paying customers? Why is that unlikely that seems pretty par for the course for free services.
    - keiferski 2y ago
      I'm saying that WordPress is incredibly widespread, far more than I think most tech industry people realize. The average WordPress site builder doesn't know or care who Matt Mullenweg is or what open source means. WordPress is just the simplest way to make a usable website – and has been for the last 20 years, almost.
      - righthand 2y ago
        Okay I get that but I’m discussing people that don’t self host or need more than the basics. Those are the users affected by Matt’s action. For example, our site repos only include the site theme we deploy to WP Engine, so our stack is essentially Wordpress, not WP Engine Wordpress. All the WP Engine stuff is handled once deployed invisible to us. So when we log in we expect Wordpress features. Yes there are a lot of Wordpress installs, a lot of them perhaps never even updated. You can claim those as being loyal to Wordpress but if they just set it up and forget it then there’s probably no real loyalty to Automattic. If you have concerns about just setting up a site on a different platform outside of Automattic for whatever reason, why would you trust it any longer? Those people will move on to another just as easy to install cms. Wordpress hasn’t gotten easier to customize in the last x years since your 3.0 install or whatever. Easy to install and forget isn’t a Wordpress exclusive idea. It perhaps has a lot of mind share, but this is the 2nd time Matt has taken drastic action. It’s now at historical precedent levels.
        keiferski 2y ago
        They don't need to be loyal, they just need to be lazy, lazy enough to not want to learn a new technology and spend money + time switching to it. They won't move on to another CMS, because they don't care about WordPress tech industry drama and they don't know who Matt Mullenweg is. WordPress will continue to work just fine for them and they will continue not caring about an issue that will be forgotten about in a month. The vast, vast majority of people using WordPress think of it as an old, reliable, simple way to make a website, and nothing more.
Topgamer7 2y ago
I think these days, the average WordPress site runner is trying to find a cheap/free. Non-technical solution. I help out with a sports league who run a couple wordpress sites. - One, its totally the wrong CMS for how they use it. - Two, they have almost no ability to diagnose and debug issues themselves. Honestly 80% of the issues that get raised to me are even just solved by clicking "keep plugin automatically updated" They really just want a CMS that allows them to share announcements, post schedules and where to show up to play. But it gets the job done, for cheap, and there is a decent community on plugins and themes. Wordpress was originally popular because of its openness and community right? I wonder if that's still the platform it is.
- righthand 2y ago
  No I don’t see it as an open platform with a strong community. Matt has demonstrated he will shut off features for large swaths of sites where is the openness there? The community plugins are loyal to a few popular plugins that all have pay walls if you want to do more than the basics. Any time Wordpress implements a new feature they have to do so it doesn’t completely crush the plugin community. Like site maps for example are trapped behind using a wordpress hook or using a plugin like Yoast to customize them.
- ppseafield 2y ago
  I'll second the sibling poster here by saying anything useful you want to do with WordPress will probably have a non-negligible cost, and usually a subscription. WooCommerce for instance requires a subscription to add a minimum quantity to a product! I volunteer for a non-profit that uses it, and it's absolutely insane how many plugins will give you a little for free but charge $5/month or $50/year for just slightly more features.
  - dgacmu 2y ago
    If you were to guide them today, what would you set them up that's not WP that gives functionality similar to wp+woo? (asking for someone who has a site using wp+woo. I don't plan to switch us - the switching cost is too high to be worth it - but I do want to have something in my pocket for the future.)

legitster 2y ago

Matt himself suggested the exodus: fork Wordpress, call it something else, host the plugin directory yourself. And it's not like Wordpress is known for it's phenomenal code quality or anything. This is your chance to ditch some of the bad ideas (cough Gutenberg cough) or legacy code.

righthand 2y ago
Yeah so WP Engine will just proxy the Wordpress plugin search results and cache the top plugins on their end. That’s a lose in this case for Automattic if that’s his suggestion then why even block WP Engine customers in the first place?
- legitster 2y ago
  https://thenewstack.io/the-wordpress-saga-does-matt-mullenwegg-wants-a-fork-or-not/ https://thenewstack.io/the-wordpress-saga-does-matt-mullenwe... > “I think a fork would be amazing,” he told TNS. “They should fork WordPress, because what they offer is not actually WordPress. They call it WordPress, but they really screw it up.” Yeah, part of the confusion here is Matt's unreliability as a narrator of his motivations. He wants WP Engine to fork, but then he asks them to pay. He wants Wordpress to grow and be open source, but suddenly he champions branding and restricting trademarks. It's hard to know what his stated end goal in all of this is - maybe he's okay shrinking the Wordpress community so long as they control a bigger slice of it?
  - righthand 2y ago
    And WP Engine could fork and call it Wordpresss. That’s also a lose for his tirade. I bet his expensive lawyer wouldn’t tell him that though. All I’m learning is that never elect Matt as POTUS because he always wants to go nuclear to teach a lesson to a small percentage of the population.
ValentineC 2y ago
> This is your chance to ditch some of the bad ideas (cough Gutenberg cough) or legacy code. ClassicPress is already a thing: https://www.classicpress.net https://www.classicpress.net

stevenicr 2y ago

I run dozens of WP sites and help others create and maintain with it, I won't be leaving it any time soon - although at times it is appropriate to change hosts or even to change to a static site. Wordpress makes those things easy. I always have discussions with people about possible hosting issues, and issues with licenses changing when suggesting to use or continue to use WP (or anything else you do not control) This whole kerfuffle does not bother me, as it reminds me of the licensing issues with some of the AI models being released - if you are super big you can't use them for free.. well fine - if I get that big and my biggest worry is how to brigade online to save face while trying to save a few million - well that is .1% problems I wouldn't mind having, seriously, at that level a person/company can make all sorts of choices, and those choices don't have to be to convince people to throw salt and shade at the sandbox you are leaving.

righthand 2y ago
Well you can’t change hosts because Matt doesn’t like some of them when they don’t pad his bank account. Never said it wasnt easy. It’s also bloated and poorly developed. It’s a bit like asking why people don’t use bricks instead of tires.
- stevenicr 2y ago
  Well you can change hosts to ones Matt like and doesn't like, and I'm glad you understand how easy it is. Most hosting companies have some sorts of limits and some have wordpress related limited specifically. If a web host is not able to provide the connectivity to the things you want or need, just switch. From what I understand of my limited reading about the issue, wp engine may have to change how they advertise the use of wordpress related terms and they may have the mirror the plugin and other repositories as they may not be able to pass through access to the WP servers, this is a hindrance for sure, but it's not a full stop your site can't function. Of course it's bloated for many use cases, because it is possible to do so many things with it (many things many may never need, sure) - poorly developed is not how I would characterize the development with WP - I've certainly loudly complained about some choices over the years, but the development is pretty robust compared to similar projects I have seen over the years. If wordpress wants to change how they allow access to their servers based upon whether a host is making millions promoting WP, it's fine with me - they would not be the first company to decide to limit access at different thresholds and ask for more money based on usage. It may be shocking and a big change, but the individual website owners can get the wp files and plugins and deploy in thousands of places around the world, and it takes just minutes in most cases.

bobbylarrybobby 2y ago

Curious why you say WP Engine is terrible? My org has been using them for several years without issue.

righthand 2y ago
They rate limit queries

chemmail 2y ago

What did you move away to? I loved wordpress back in the 2-3.0 days lol. But all the other CMS are way too complicated for me, let alone normal people. I still have old sites stuck on relatively old versions.

righthand 2y ago
We’re moving to ContentStack + react frontend. However if you want control I recommend hosting Payload.