12 ms·

WordPress Is in Trouble

631 points by ulrischa 2y ago

SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
> Mullenweg framed the account deactivations as giving people the push they need to get started [in forking WP] Ha. IDK buddy, be careful what you wish for.
capitanazo77 2y ago
I would love to do a one click transfer to a static site but it’s not easy. I’ve only seen Astro Wordpress kits but paid
- addedlovely 2y ago
  If you’re comfortable with php writing an importer for Kirby is simple, checkout their cli YouTube video. Nice modern api and easy to import content. Being flat file if there’s a mistake, just delete the content folder and import again!
- marc_io 2y ago
  Generate a static site from WordPress itself with the Simply Static plugin.
breaker-kind 2y ago
this article opens with "since i last wrote about wordpress", with a link to a previous article. the linked article does the same. it goes seven layers deep! what dedication!
- GavinAnderegg 2y ago
  This drama has boggled my mind since the beginning. I've been trying to write about the open web while trying get back into blogging. It's been great to have a bunch to write about, but I sure wish it wasn't happening! I've also been focusing on the rise of Bluesky and my move from extreme skepticism to tentative acceptance. That's been more fun to write about.
gjsman-1000 2y ago
Let’s just rewrite the thing in Laravel, hook all the functions using RunKit7 (or a fork) to implement a plugin compatibility layer, and send the old codebase to the dumpster fire. WP Engine and other hosting agencies, it could be a matter of survival for you.
- bdcravens 2y ago
  It's looking more and more like it's a matter of survival for the massive number of sites that run Wordpress but don't host with Wordpress.com.
ge96 2y ago
Isn't there a metric like 80% of the web is WP. Wonder who will be the new provider if WP does fold/problems affect running sites.
- andrewstuart2 2y ago
  I thought that was a statistic about PHP. Though WordPress is almost certainly a significant chunk of that. Some quick searching seems to indicate that the web is about 79% PHP, and that ~44% of websites are using WordPress.
- SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
  Hopefully… geocities.
- paxys 2y ago
  Nah, Wordpress themselves claimed 40% in 2021 (https://wordpress.org/40-percent-of-web/ https://wordpress.org/40-percent-of-web/). The big caveat of course is that wordpress being installed on a domain does not mean that entire domain is powered by wordpress. I'd bet for most of them it's just the landing/marketing pages and/or a blog section.
pryelluw 2y ago
At this point, I’m planning to move away from Wordpress due to the instability and into a regular wiki based site. Unsure of which at the moment, maybe some suggestions? Prefer static file based rather than host a DB.
- nabaraz 2y ago
  I moved to Azure free static hosting. Push a commit and automatically triggers a deployment via Github Actions. https://docs.github.com/en/actions/use-cases-and-examples/deploying/deploying-to-azure-static-web-app https://docs.github.com/en/actions/use-cases-and-examples/de...
- fullstop 2y ago
  https://ghost.org/ https://ghost.org/ perhaps?
  - withinboredom 2y ago
    ghost is worse than wp imho. Lots of sneaky affiliate links, and they only integrate stuff that does affiliate linking; the self-hosted version calls home as well.
- _fat_santa 2y ago
  If you are hosting a blog then I highly recommend Astro.
- Kiala 2y ago
  Statamic
- diggan 2y ago
  Depends on your target user. If you want something really simple for developers, https://github.com/gollum/gollum https://github.com/gollum/gollum is pretty neat (is what powers the Wiki system on GitHub), while if you want something simple for people who aren't developers, something like Mediawiki would fit better. Although Mediawiki requires a database, you can use SQLite (which is basically a file on disk as a DB) for it. Dokuwiki is also a neat old-school alternative that basically treats files on disk as articles/pages, so no (other) DB needed.
pluc 2y ago
Mullenweg is in trouble, WordPress is gonna be fine. https://gist.github.com/adrienne/aea9dd7ca19c8985157d9c42f7fc225d https://gist.github.com/adrienne/aea9dd7ca19c8985157d9c42f7f...
- softwaredoug 2y ago
  Without a canonical fork for the community (and crucially plugin authors) to rally around it’ll be a bit like Linux distros without a shared executable format, making life difficult for everyone and making it harder to keep critical mass for any vendor.
  - cm2012 2y ago
    A few folks with a lot of community rep could probably do a lot of good if they to threw support behind a new primary fork.
  - pluc 2y ago
    That's difficult to do, but time will tell. There are already established forks, there are obvious leaders, there are known mechanisms to go around wordpress.org... something at some point will pick up steam and that'll be that. Maybe it will be Mullenweg himself who will continue to dig his own grave, maybe it will be the lawsuit that will be the final nail in his coffin... who knows. But WordPress will be fine. And if it isn't, really, who cares. It's not a particularly well built or unique piece of software. Maybe it's time for something else.
    - softwaredoug 2y ago
      I think it would basically take a tech giant going all-in (ie Amazon) and rallying other companies to get this fork into the Linux foundation or something.
      - pluc 2y ago
        WP Engine could do that, and I'd happily throw my support behind it just to spite Mullenweg. They have the funds, the motive and could leverage the existing community, including picking it's leaders and contributors. I wouldn't be surprised that's what happens once the lawsuit is over.
egypturnash 2y ago
matt please get your brain worms dealt with, thank you - someone who has been happily using wordpress for her site since about 2000
- system2 2y ago
  I am not supporting either side, but wpengine is a shit company that treats their customers like they are sheeple. They remove critical functions from the original WordPress, selling $1 worth of hosting for $79. Not providing a "hosting" environment but only providing one site per account (additional sites are billed). This is a shitty hosting platform using WordPress' name and not benefiting WordPress itself. I had a comment where Matt refused to believe what I said about ACF but this doesn't make me hate him. I don't care about wpengine at all and they can go to hell instead of hurting WordPress any further. They are just using an open-source project to make money and not giving back. People are fighting with the original creator of the software and supporting 3rd party for-profit companies like wpengine. For what reason? This is clear propaganda.
  - egypturnash 2y ago
    I just use Wordpress on my own hosting. If not for this whole feud I don't think I'd ever have heard of wpengine. shrug
gorkish 2y ago
Oh no who could have possibly forseen this .... mumble mumble
karaterobot 2y ago
I've had a Wordpress blog for about 25 years. This makes me want to turn off automatic updates, since I'm worried he might just go nuclear and flip some sort of kill switch that bricks every blog, or push some ridiculous anti-Wordpress Engine banner to every installation. Of course, not keeping WP up to date is very risky as well. I'm not even insensitive to his position, even though I don't know full details. But, he's the one acting irrational in all this, so he's the one I'm most scared of.
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- internetter 2y ago
  Consider a static site. They cannot be hacked, they are cheaper to host, and once the files are generated they are immutable
  - prepend 2y ago
    They can certainly be hacked, just like any static site. Web servers have vulnerabilities. And the files can certainly be edited as they aren’t immutable. They are less resource intensive and easier to maintain, but aren’t immune. (Running mostly static sites converted from Wordpress sites, but also running 10 year old+ word press sites that haven’t been changed in forever)
    - Nectar0516 2y ago
      Or you can just pay someone to host it and maintain and support the web server for you, for a lot cheaper (often free, like Github Pages).
    - moralestapia 2y ago
huijzer 2y ago
Hopefully many sites will switch to a static site generator like Hugo or Zola. Way lower costs, lower risk of being hacked (almost impossible actually), and a reliable backup thanks to Git. I’m running multiple static sites for years already and am very happy with it. It has been very reliable.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  >switch to a static site generator like Hugo or Zola At that point just write your own HTML and never be beholden to some abstraction framework toolkit corporation cooperative ever again.
  - hu3 2y ago
    Soon enough AI will write most of blog/marketing HTML.
    - labster 2y ago
      And then we can develop systems that save user prompts, automatically and dynamically regenerating page content as the AI models are updated.
      - hu3 2y ago
        Add simple version control to keep history of changes. Slap some workflow/approval process. And you have a product!
        9dev 2y ago
        Amazing. You just ruined the internet for everyone, making us all wade through heaps of meaningless bullshit, only generated to drive the ad revenue! And do you know what’s the best part about that? You even made money off of that you can use to purchase the stuff you got ads for! Isn’t that exciting? Thank you for your service!
ezekg 2y ago
I'm still in the camp that Matt is attempting to force a fork because he's done with WP. Maybe he believes it can't live without his magic touch (lmao). Either that or he's lost his mind. :)
- pessimizer 2y ago
  I'm there with you. He's could be trying to see how far he can go to get people to fork, and finding out there's literally nothing he can do to make his critics fork on their own dime. If it weren't GPL'd, WPE could fork it, close it, and lock it down. Instead, the parasite has to volunteer to be the next host.
- ValentineC 2y ago
  > Maybe he believes it can't live without his magic touch (lmao). If 2025 Matt tried to fork b2/cafelog back in 2003, I think a good number of people in the PHP and blogging communities would have told him to, very kindly, fork off. Or, all that money and power corrupted him over the years.
noja 2y ago
https://getpublii.com/ https://getpublii.com/ Yet, anyone?
- rglover 2y ago
  Hadn't heard of this but looks like a pretty nice tool. Thanks for sharing :)
- imilk 2y ago
  While they have a Github repo, it is incredibly annoying how it's almost impossible to find any documentation around deployment/hosting. Unless I missing an obvious page
  - noja 2y ago
    Click the GitHub link. It’s a gui. You (or your parents) publish the static pages somewhere.
- Danieru 2y ago
  Oh that looks nice. I've used Hugo before but for the lite stuff I need it abstracts the content too much. This looks exactly what I want.
Spunkie 2y ago
Crazy how hosting wordpress, between 2003-2024, your main concern was Chinese/Russian hackers. And in 2025 you main concern should be if Mullenweg will hijack your website for his pissing match. Also he didn't shut down the sustainability team because he "didn't know about it". He shut it down because their stated goals are a threat to Mullenwegs dictatorship hold over wordpress.
- pwillia7 2y ago
  Almost to the letter -- https://www.dalmomendonca.com/rules-for-rulers https://www.dalmomendonca.com/rules-for-rulers
  - bsimpson 2y ago
    I wonder if he knows that his personal blog seems to be hosted in the template for a yoga studio in South Lake.
    - pwillia7 2y ago
      haha
- justinator 2y ago
  As a content creator, it's mostly dealing with Gutenberg and the new theme editor. I couldn't care less what these people are up to.
- DonHopkins 2y ago
  Mullenweg Before: https://www.youtube.com/live/Qq1SBFzByDw?t=28744s https://www.youtube.com/live/Qq1SBFzByDw?t=28744s Mullenweg After: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HblPucwN-m0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HblPucwN-m0
- legitster 2y ago
  It's crazy how almost overnight Wordpress went from a quiet and unassuming piece of the internet infrastructure to crazy techbro's personal fiefdom. Suddenly Wordpress's weird technical quirks and idiosyncrasies make sense.
lenova 2y ago
I've only been passively following the Wordpress drama. Almost a year ago, Mullenweg blogged about taking a 3 month sabbatical that I found interesting, and I assumed this would have been a period of recharging... but things have seemed to gone off the rails since. Was there any correlational between the sabbatical and current drama, or was that just coincidence?
- mrtksn 2y ago
  Did he drink that psychoactive wine?
  - ben_w 2y ago
    Surely non-psychoactive wine is just grape juice?
    - mrtksn 2y ago
      right, let’s try again: Did he drink THAT psychoactive wine?
      - throwup238 2y ago
        It’s more like a two stage tea made of an MAOI (the first type of antidepressant developed) and psychoactive tryptamines. Eight ball yoda says… bad trip sitter he did seek, hmm?
        mrtksn 2y ago
        interesting. So what does that tea do to people? I’ve read some things and claims and that it’s popular among tech C suit.
        throwup238 2y ago
        The best primary source is the Erowid trip reports vault: https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Ayahuasca.shtml https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Ayahuasca.shtml First it makes people purge (vomit profusely) because the MAO enzymes normally break down the psychoactives in the stomach, and it reacts violently when the enzymes are inhibited with MAOIs. It's likely a reaction to something else in the plant because the psychoactives absorb into the stomach before they throw up. The technical name for what happens next is "full disassociation" which can best be described as the brain disconnecting from the sensor organs and then hallucinating whatever it wants in their place. The actual experience people have varies all over the place. Lots of trip reports of people seeing god, or aliens, or seeing their life flash before their eyes. It's popular among the Silicon Valley crowd in general from my experience, but specifically the ritualistic experience in the Amazon. Freebasing DMT isn't as popular.
amazingamazing 2y ago
I bet Wordpress will be fine. Too bad Automattic isn’t a public company, bet it would be volatile right now.
causality0 2y ago
Anybody know if Mullenweg has recently purchased property in Belize? I'm curious how far along the McAfee curve he's gotten.
- askonomm 2y ago
  Haha this is a brilliant comment. McAfee lived one hell of a life.
electriclove 2y ago
From his perspective, after everything he has done, others are getting the financial gains and many in the community turned on him and his company. It must be a horrible feeling.
- frereubu 2y ago
  I sort of get what you're trying to do here - an exercise in empathy - but the flip side of this is that he has been made enormously wealthy off the back of thousands and thousands of unpaid volunteer hours on an open source project. It's not only "others" who are getting the financial gains.
  - electriclove 2y ago
    Good point and agreed. Do you think for him it is more an issue about how much money WP Engine is making compared to him or the relative influence they have?
    - frereubu 2y ago
      I'm not really sure to be honest! He could well be thinking exactly what you said, I was just pointing out the flip side of that argument if that is what he believes, because it would be doing a real disservice to the open source community around WordPress without which he would be nothing.
- addisonj 2y ago
  But... isn't that a core ethos of open-source? That you won't ever come even close to capturing the full value provided by a piece of software... but the nature of the problem is such that the value could never be created unless it was open. I like to think of this as a "reverse" faustian bargain. By sticking to some agreed upon "moral" agreement of this open contribution and communal governance, you create a huge market that you get to try and least capture a piece of. If you break that bargin, you risk the project. And it isn't like this is some theoretical bit... it has been shown again and again in different communities. I fundamentally don't understand how you can spend so long in open-source and think that this agreement doesn't apply to you. That may seem "cruel" in that someone else can profit from you... but that was always part of the bargain that made your business exist in the first place.
treyd 2y ago
WordPress is a very mature project with a long legacy but I'm surprised that there hasn't been a larger profile attempt to make a spiritual successor to it that can shake the baggage of being PHP and the long history of vulns that have come along with it. I'm imagining some very pluggable and template driven runtime that you can ship very declarative packages for. The spicy take would be to use a Scheme for the templating around some robust Rust core, but that's probably not the widest appeal. Maybe there would be some clever way to bootstrap it out of PHP so that you can keep using shared PHP hosts and they wouldn't have to bring along a new software distribution.
- hombre_fatal 2y ago
  It's just a reminder how much "right place at the right time" plays into the phenomenon of ubiquity, from Wordpress to Harry Potter to Zoom to Javascript. There are countless efforts to make the next Wordpress out there, yet no combination of Scheme and Rust is going to make up for the critical missing ingredient of "right place at the right time".
  - andrewmcwatters 2y ago
    This is the right time. Strike while the iron is hot. People are angry and concerned. Someone just needs to come forward with an attractive way to capitalize on the situation.
    - hombre_fatal 2y ago
      But the problem is that if Wordpress disappears overnight, you're left with a sea of alternatives that's 100x larger than when Wordpress rose to popularity. Ex-Wordpress users are just going to diffuse into all the other decent options that already exist. Or stick with a Wordpress fork that caters to them. Though note that Wordpress isn't going away. How many Wordpress users even know who Mullenweg is? The idea of cobbling together yet another blog platform that will somehow capture these users better than Wordpress plus all the decent incumbents is some good ol fashioned developer hubris. :P
blueaquilae 2y ago
Is this just an add for another paid CMS?
- frereubu 2y ago
  Might be an ad - I'm not aware of the author's associations - but Craft CMS, which is linked to, has a free version like wordpress.org
- GavinAnderegg 2y ago
  Nope. I just prefer Craft, and I think it's a much more stable platform in terms of leadership these days. I also think it provides for a much better developer experience. Just opinions, though. I currently don't monetize my blog in any way — though I should probably change that at some point :)
voytec 2y ago
Narcissistic personality disorder[0] is unnoticeable for a person having it, but makes lives of all around them a living hell. Such person is always right, and the 99.99% people around with an opposite opinion/viewpoint are idiots. If some "idiot" is standing up, there comes the retaliation part. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disor...
renewiltord 2y ago
Hard to care about this drama until it starts to affect functionality. Terraform is still around. Elastic is still around. Reddit and Twitter have no third party apps. I used to have a WordPress blog which I stopped updating for reasons of laziness. I will try to restore the backup and see what happens.
- mfashby 2y ago
  You can actually still use infinity for Reddit it's just a pain to get it.
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
Earlier discussion: Aligning Automattic's Sponsored Contributions to WordPress https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42650138 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42650138 WordPress: Joost/Karim Fork https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42662801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42662801 Matt Mullenweg deactivates WordPress accounts of contributors planning a fork https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42667766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42667766
asdfman123 2y ago
It seems that this is definitely a pressing issue for the web
beshrkayali 2y ago
I really think Matt is suffering from some sort of a mental breakdown. It’s a sad situation and there’s a lot to learn about open source projects with a huge user base and where the bottle necks exist. But I think people who know or are close to him should seriously consider an intervention. I can’t believe after two decades he’d just decide to throw it all out in a blazing fire and tarnish his reputation (and Wordpress) because of some valuation drop or being short on money. I think the dude needs help, and people close to him should try and talk sense into him.
- dangrossman 2y ago
  I don't think it's a mental breakdown, I think this is a (poorly executed) long pivot into Matt's companies having tighter control over the ecosystem and keeping more of the profits from hosting, plugin and theme sales. He's burning down "the community" on purpose. In a couple years, it'll be run more like Shopify, where the theme store and app store only list products that run their billing through Shopify and give Shopify a 15%+ share of all associated revenue.
  - add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
    One reason that Reddit's API changes killing the best clients was so poisonous is that the resulting non-exodus showed other companies that they can take user-hostile actions with impunity. A big enough mass of passive and undiscerning users will stay no matter what. Hence there being more freedom to take a strategy like this.
    - llm_trw 2y ago
      Reddit has been user hostile since 2014. It's just that as long as you hurt one part of the community the other parts hate you're fine. The mods are universally hated on reddit and they were the ones most impacted by the changes. The average user either didn't notice or stopped getting automatically banned for joining the wrong subreddits.
      - 2y ago
lolinder 2y ago
> Now it seems like the community needs to take over, but Mullenweg still holds all the keys. This move by Matt to pull out of development all but guarantees a fork. The biggest argument against was the work that Automattic was putting into WordPress would be very hard to replicate in a new project. But if the community is going to be expected to do ~all of the work anyway, there's no reason to do that work inside Matt's personal fiefdom.
- frereubu 2y ago
  Has he said he was going to pull out of development? I hadn't read that anywhere in all of this.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    https://automattic.com/2025/01/09/aligning-automattics-sponsored-contributions-to-wordpress/ https://automattic.com/2025/01/09/aligning-automattics-spons... > Automatticians who contributed to core will instead focus on for-profit projects within Automattic, such as WordPress.com, Pressable, WPVIP, Jetpack, and WooCommerce. Members of the “community” have said that working on these sorts of things should count as a contribution to WordPress. > As part of this reset, Automattic will match its volunteering pledge with those made by WP Engine and other players in the ecosystem, or about 45 hours a week that qualify under the Five For the Future program as benefitting the entire community and not just a single company. These hours will likely go towards security and critical updates. 5 of those 45 hours are apparently the Executive Director of WordPress.org, so this is actually one full time developer working on WP. That is effectively pulling out, and the remaining time supposedly allocated should be very easy for a fork to replace. Gotta love the scare quotes around "community".
  - hn8726 2y ago
    From the article: > Automattic announced that it would restrict its contributions to the open source version of WordPress. The company would now only put in about 45 hours a week total — down from nearly 4,000 a week — so as to match the estimated hourly contributions of WP Engine. source: https://automattic.com/2025/01/09/aligning-automattics-sponsored-contributions-to-wordpress/ https://automattic.com/2025/01/09/aligning-automattics-spons...
65 2y ago
Hmm, crazy narcissist Matt Mullenweg does something for attention at the detriment of everyone else, again? The problem is that there's a bit of a black hole in CMSs right now where you need developers who want to work on the CMS and ordinary users who can host/create content on the CMS. Strapi was almost there, but alas, headless is not going to cut it for your average business trying to make a website. Static site generators can be too limited and simple, Drupal is not particularly user friendly, and tons of other CMSs don't have enough plugins for marketers to cram into their sites. Anyone considering e-commerce now will probably use Shopify instead of WooCommerce. Site builders like Squarespace and Wix are good for simpler sites but not for multi-author news type sites. I feel like the only option is a fork at this point.
- vcoisne 2y ago
  (Disclaimer—I work for Strapi). I would love to know why you think Headless will not cut it or what Strapi could improve. We're seeing many SMBs succeed with it.
  - 65 2y ago
    I really like Strapi, it's very intuitive, etc. But headless is a headache to set up for a tech illiterate person/org who wants to start some kind of blog or small news site. I'll give you an example: https://newyorkyimby.com/ https://newyorkyimby.com/ This is a relatively simple site that posts housing development news for New York. Ultimately they're not going to need a super complicated front end. Most sites just want a theme and deployment. If Strapi had a non-headless mode and had themes I'm sure it could be used for the many millions of these small sites that run Wordpress. Additionally Strapi isn't a great choice for blogs or portfolio sites, it's simply too much to set up for most people. I think the barrier to entry is what prevents it from becoming great. If a random person can start a blog, then more developers are going to want to work on it, meaning more plugins, meaning more of a reason to use Strapi. A feedback loop that got Wordpress to where it is. Shopify is so big because they make setting up a site extremely easy, and now there are tons of plugins and themes to use on your Shopify store, which only gives people more of a reason to use Shopify.
hoofhearted 2y ago
I’ve been working on a side hobby project for a year in an attempt to solve these problems. It keeps growing in interest, and the demand has become more than I can handle currently. If anyone is interested in helping to build an open and secure platform that is an alternative to WordPress, please reach out or comment.
- TheRealPomax 2y ago
  Blog about it and get it on HN?
  - hoofhearted 2y ago
    Yes, this is a really great start. One of my current clients recently had his WP install taken over, and SiteGround took it down for offensive content. It’s just a basic informational website for his consulting business, and he never logs into it or makes changes to it. He has no idea how anyone hacked it. It really baffles me that this is still a thing in 2025, and that people can’t get a basic Shopify type of experience for creating informational websites and blogs where they can set it and forget, and focus on running their business. They should be concerned about how their content website is growing their business and overall bottomline; not if they have been taken over with offensive content or not based off of basic security best practices.
mg 2y ago
I find it an interesting question to what degree the design decisions of WordPress are still the right ones in 2025. A PHP backend and frontend running on the same machine, serving dynamically rendered content from a MySql database. Personally, I prefer to have my content in text files, which are using a DSL similar to Yaml but optimized for use in a CMS. And render it to static html files via Python. A process that happens on a different machine. The html files are then pushed to the server that serves the frontend.
tqwhite 2y ago
I have never liked Wordpress. If it dies, that's ok with me. I just don't like it.
einpoklum 2y ago
Could someone link to a higher-level history of the WordPress situation, going further back? For the benefit of those of us that don't know much beyond the fact that it's an established blogging and website-building platform?
- glenstein 2y ago
  As a fellow newbie, I found this article from Josh Collinsworth to be a very thoughtful and clear overview. It's a bit long but it covers the history prior to the lawsuit. https://joshcollinsworth.com/blog/fire-matt https://joshcollinsworth.com/blog/fire-matt
- pluc 2y ago
  https://gist.github.com/adrienne/aea9dd7ca19c8985157d9c42f7fc225d https://gist.github.com/adrienne/aea9dd7ca19c8985157d9c42f7f...
tannhaeuser 2y ago
The blogosphere is keeping us entertained - with meta drama about blogging itself as growth turns negative.
runxel 2y ago
If you haven't yet: Now's the best time to migrate away. You should try out Kirby[0]. No affiliation, but this thing sparked my interest in web development again when I first heard about it. [0]https://getkirby.com/ https://getkirby.com/
- addedlovely 2y ago
  I too have switched to Kirby, should have done so years ago, it’s great to work with and fast out the box.
- eltondegeneres 2y ago
  Kirby is only source-available, not open source, and requires a paid license for usage. I think that's a deal breaker for a lot of Wordpress users.
macspoofing 2y ago
Is the entire drama that WordPress is asserting a trademark over 'WPEngine' (i.e. 'WP'), and WPEngine disagrees?
- throw16180339 2y ago
  Matt tried to extort money from WP Engine, then blocked their users from receiving updates, stole their plugins, and banned their developers. The filing in WP Engine vs. Automattic gives the details.
- csa 2y ago
  > Is the entire drama that WordPress is asserting a trademark over 'WPEngine' (i.e. 'WP'), and WPEngine disagrees? That is a minor issue in the disagreement. The bigger issue is that WPEngine had its access to Wordpress cut off on very short notice for questionable reasons. This obviously had a negative impact on WPEngine’s business, but also on all of the business that WPEngine served. I think the latter part is what has a lot of folks up in arms — the collateral damage was really tone deaf (imho).
KolmogorovComp 2y ago
> The problem is that Mullenweg has final say over some very important parts of the WordPress community > THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND (…) I think the real issue is people being fooled with the false concept of ‘community’, times and times again. Communities do not exist in practice. What you have is a vast pool of users (in this case I also include plugin and theme devs), and a minority of core contributors, which are either individuals or companies, usually both. Those are driving the project forward and making decisions. This distribution can be applied to many open-source softwares, but also projects like mozilla, wikipedia, etc. People do not understand to what extend the no-guarantee of FOSS software is applicable. All your projects can be broken from a day to the next and you cannot expect any compensation. But that’s ok because you got the software for free, right?
daitangio 2y ago
Sorry I switched to hugo my https://gioorgi.com https://gioorgi.com and it was easier than expected. Initially, I only followed the ‘drama’ tangentially, also because I have always considered myself a mere "end user" of Wordpress, even if long-time one (I used it for about 20 years). For me, the fact that Wordpress.com sold a service based on an "extended" version of Wordpress.org was never a particular problem, but I never thought it was illegal to compete directly with it by taking the open source software and offering a simple hosting service. Anyway I started to consider to switch from Wordpress to a static site hosted with hugo, retaining the comment system and all the URLs in the original form, more or less. I was surprised because it took very little time (less 1 week of total work) to migrate my articles (1000+) and the comments. I used open source tools, and I am a "hugo" newbie, so I make some trade off too. Never less, I suggest all of you to give a try to hugo+isso (isso is a comment system very light).
- CrimsonRain 2y ago
  What did you use to migrate posts? I'm going to move three WordPress sites (15yr+ running) off soon.
  - joshstrange 2y ago
    Also very interested in this. I ended up paying for 2-3 years of WordPress.com to host my tiny-traffic blog and I had to pay for a higher tier to handle video (sidenote: fuck wordpress for offering a shitty watered-down WP version on WP.com, you know, literally the thing they complain about WPEngine doing). I'd love nothing more than to migrate away but I've already done a mess WP -> Hugo (or was it Jekyll? not sure) -> Ghost -> WP and I'd like to automate the migration as much as possible. Every other time I spent a while copy/pasting and hand-fixing posts. I know I won't get away from doing that completely but I'd like it be easier.
  - jzb 2y ago
    Not the OP but I have migrated to Hugo as well. There's a number of tools to convert to Hugo from a WordPress XML export. I used wp2hugo, IIRC: https://github.com/ashishb/wp2hugo https://github.com/ashishb/wp2hugo Dead easy. Took an afternoon to do everything, including fiddling with DNS and trying different themes, etc.
zo1 2y ago
I think Matt should reach out to Elon Musk to assist him. And I don't mean that in a weird or snarky or "jabbing at Elon/Matt" kind of way. Clearly he is struggling to deal with a competitor and community wanting to impose their will on him, and make him behave like a "good boy" for their benefit (whatever that may be). Unfortunately he doesn't have the kind of "Fuck You" money that Elon has to deal with said interlopers.
Destiner 2y ago
all this WP drama makes me really grateful about deciding to go with a static site generator. Astro FTW!
pupppet 2y ago
Just love the way Matt keeps responding to everything in a passive-aggressive tone with a smarmy smile.
NKosmatos 2y ago
I feel sorry for Matt, someone close to him (family, friend, partner) should help him. It’s not good for him, not good for his company and for Wordpress. I’ve never used Wordpress and I prefer static sites where I have full control, but this doesn’t mean that I don’t recognize the usefulness end ease of it. Like many situation, this whole issue would be solved if a couple of the people involved sat down for a coffee, left their ego’s outside, had open minds, and having the willingness to compromise and being sincere ;-)
- tootie 2y ago
  I'm reminded of Tony Hsieh whose "eccentricity" lead directly to his early death.
tylershuster 2y ago
I don't understand how (if?) WordPress has popularity among serious professionals. Extending it without plugins, many of which are paid, is a nightmare. Adding custom fields is laborious, configuring post type display modes is a slog as well. HN seems to grumble about Drupal but even if your only requirement is a PHP server with a MySQL database connect, Drupal (8+) is just as simple to set up as WordPress and infinitely easier to configure. Older versions may have been less user-friendly but really, just click "Content->Add New->Page" and you're already running at the speed of WordPress.
- akadruid1 2y ago
  Wordpress is clunky but it never broke backwards compatibility. HN grumbles about Drupal because many got burnt by picking the wrong horse. Drupal was the biggest CMS in the world and like a safe bet until they told their users they would have to rewrite their 7 code to go to 8 and their users decided they would rewrite to WordPress[1]. Drupal never regained the trust they lost. They extended the life of d7 over and over but never made a compelling replacement. To this day, 7 is still more widely deployed than 8,9 or 10 ever were[2]. I think it's interesting to observe the fate that Python 3 narrowly avoided. Python 3 wasn't a compelling replacement until at least 3.5. In a nearly parallel universe they're all using torch.rb instead of pytorch. [1]https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/did-breaking-backwards-compatibility-kill-drupal https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/did-breaking-backward... [2]https://www.drupal.org/project/usage/drupal https://www.drupal.org/project/usage/drupal
  - tylershuster 2y ago
    That's a fair argument. Maybe I'm just biased because I started with Drupal 8.
  - Nectar0516 2y ago
    Honestly, py3 wasn't a compelling replacement until distros started setting dates to remove py2.
- tootie 2y ago
  It's the same way products like salesforce become popular. Network effects. As much it's an architectural nightmare, it is a thing that everyone is familiar with. When you are looking at ecommerce tools, email marketing, analytics, etc they all have some kind of one-click integration with wordpress. If you need developers, wordpress freelancers are a dime a dozen. It's just the thing everybody knows.
gigatexal 2y ago
Good. As I’ve said in other threads. There are other projects, other CMSes that are perfectly capable of taking over. Let the Wordpress monopoly die and with it this crazy man’s tirades.
gjvc 2y ago
some good news for a change
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
kmeisthax 2y ago
> Then yesterday happened. Automattic announced that it would restrict its contributions to the open source version of WordPress. The company would now only put in about 45 hours a week total — down from nearly 4,000 a week — so as to match the estimated hourly contributions of WP Engine. This action is blamed on the “the legal attacks started by WP Engine and funded by Silver Lake”, which I think is a gross mischaracterization. WP Engine definitely did not start this. WP Engine owns several WordPress plugin developers. Does plugin development not count now?
- burnte 2y ago
  > WP Engine owns several WordPress plugin developers. Does plugin development not count now? Mullenweg stole the Custom fields plugin from WPEngine. So no, plugin development doesn't could when he can steal the plugin away from you.
  - pacifika 2y ago
    You can install all plugins via GitHub if you want.
Tokkemon 2y ago
Just this week I needed to completely revamp my personal website. I went with Squarespace because it's quick to spin up and I don't have to fiddle with tons of plugins and a complicated theme ecosystem. I just need a website that works. I used to use Wordpress for all my previous iterations, but now, it's done. Sad to see it become obsolete by not fixing them broader business and user-friendliness problems.
- system2 2y ago
  Good luck migrating to another platform when they jack up the prices. You can pick any host for wp and migrate within minutes. With closed systems like wix and Squarespace you are locked in forever.
_zagj 2y ago
A silver lining is that if fewer sites use WordPress, the web won't look nearly as homogeneous as it does now.
mrkramer 2y ago
Automattic vs. WP Engine will be ultimately decided in court but this sort of reminds me of Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc.[0] when Oracle got mad because of Google cashing out hard with Android. It's all about money for Matt....not about WordPress or open source community. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_....
lakomen 2y ago
TL;DR? I don't like drama. Why is it in trouble just now and it has not been an ongoing process?
tommek4077 2y ago
No it is not. Outside this strange bubble on hacker news, no ine really cares or has ever heard of the creator. They just use wordpress.
joshchernoff 2y ago
Good many then these stupid bot will leave my server alone always looking for wp-config FML.
tchbnl 2y ago
Please take your meds or seek immediate professional help, Matt.
wwarner 2y ago
I’m not a WP user, and I don’t want to ruffle feathers, but I can read and I think WP .com might not be getting the credit it deserves for contributing 4000+ hrs/year to WP development. Some of the contributors to WP are the very best open source developers out there; they look at kernel performance, image encoding corner cases and php, and land fixes. Not sure if Mullenweg is communicating that as clearly as he could, but it’s true. Without contributions like that, I doubt WP would be as well known as it is.
- elendee 2y ago
  yep I think it's nuts. I have a plugin in the WP directory, and when I first uploaded it kind of blew my mind the service they provide for free. An SVN repo that gives you instant visibility to tens of millions of site owners. Imho Matt has set expectations too high over the decades and now everyone thinks Wordpress grows on trees.
MiddleEndian 2y ago
Sometimes my friends ask me why I don't use a CMS for my personal site instead of just writing articles as pages on a Ruby on Rails site. Aside from finding CMSes to be overly heavy and restrictive, this is why. You never know when they're gonna go off the rails (pun intended). If I can't just do everything in vim/notepad++ and a terminal I'm not super interested. Same reason why I'm skeptical of game toolkits like Unity.
- gtsop 2y ago
  This argument can't hold, how do you know rails isn't going to flip, how do you know linux won't flip. How do you know vim won't flip? I'm sure you have tens if nit hundreds of technologies in your stack that are open source and you never imagined they were going to flip. I have rearly used wp for clients, but i was never under the impression it could go sideways just like most stable software i use.
  - MiddleEndian 2y ago
    That's a fair counterargument. The biggest thing in that category was Mysql "flipping" with the Oracle purchase. But people quickly migrated to postgres (which more-or-less is the same for smallish projects) and MariaDB as a Mysql fork exists as well. And I'm sure some people just kept using Mysql as well without having to do anything. For all the tech I listed here, I think Rails is the one that would be hardest to a drop-in replacement for. Everything else is "generic." Text editors (not that I particularly care if a text editor is updated frequently (or at all most of the time)) and nix-like environments are basically hot swappable. But IME when something has some sort of custom environment and that's the only way to deal with it (dashboard, special IDE, etc.) that's when you have the biggest risk of having a bad time.
system2 2y ago
People keep saying "FORK FORK FORK". You have to remember, that all hosts that are deploying WordPress rely on the main provider. Thousands of hosting companies use WordPress deploying after registration and auto-updating the installations. How are you planning to make this kind of a major change? All the plugins that are in wordpress.org. How will you inform every WordPress site owner to go through this type of transition? I think this "fork" idea comes from a bizarre cancel/woke culture influence.
mildweed 2y ago
All the small/medium branding agencies surviving on Wordpress should devote 10% of their devs’ time to core. Community: rebuilt.
silexia 2y ago
WordPress is amazing and we should all support open source Matt over dark finance backed companies.

631 points by ulrischa 2y ago

> Mullenweg framed the account deactivations as giving people the push they need to get started [in forking WP] Ha. IDK buddy, be careful what you wish for.

capitanazo77 2y ago

I would love to do a one click transfer to a static site but it’s not easy. I’ve only seen Astro Wordpress kits but paid

addedlovely 2y ago
If you’re comfortable with php writing an importer for Kirby is simple, checkout their cli YouTube video. Nice modern api and easy to import content. Being flat file if there’s a mistake, just delete the content folder and import again!
marc_io 2y ago
Generate a static site from WordPress itself with the Simply Static plugin.

breaker-kind 2y ago

this article opens with "since i last wrote about wordpress", with a link to a previous article. the linked article does the same. it goes seven layers deep! what dedication!

GavinAnderegg 2y ago
This drama has boggled my mind since the beginning. I've been trying to write about the open web while trying get back into blogging. It's been great to have a bunch to write about, but I sure wish it wasn't happening! I've also been focusing on the rise of Bluesky and my move from extreme skepticism to tentative acceptance. That's been more fun to write about.

gjsman-1000 2y ago

Let’s just rewrite the thing in Laravel, hook all the functions using RunKit7 (or a fork) to implement a plugin compatibility layer, and send the old codebase to the dumpster fire. WP Engine and other hosting agencies, it could be a matter of survival for you.

bdcravens 2y ago
It's looking more and more like it's a matter of survival for the massive number of sites that run Wordpress but don't host with Wordpress.com.

ge96 2y ago

Isn't there a metric like 80% of the web is WP. Wonder who will be the new provider if WP does fold/problems affect running sites.

andrewstuart2 2y ago
I thought that was a statistic about PHP. Though WordPress is almost certainly a significant chunk of that. Some quick searching seems to indicate that the web is about 79% PHP, and that ~44% of websites are using WordPress.
SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
Hopefully… geocities.
paxys 2y ago
Nah, Wordpress themselves claimed 40% in 2021 (https://wordpress.org/40-percent-of-web/ https://wordpress.org/40-percent-of-web/). The big caveat of course is that wordpress being installed on a domain does not mean that entire domain is powered by wordpress. I'd bet for most of them it's just the landing/marketing pages and/or a blog section.

pryelluw 2y ago

At this point, I’m planning to move away from Wordpress due to the instability and into a regular wiki based site. Unsure of which at the moment, maybe some suggestions? Prefer static file based rather than host a DB.

nabaraz 2y ago
I moved to Azure free static hosting. Push a commit and automatically triggers a deployment via Github Actions. https://docs.github.com/en/actions/use-cases-and-examples/deploying/deploying-to-azure-static-web-app https://docs.github.com/en/actions/use-cases-and-examples/de...
fullstop 2y ago
https://ghost.org/ https://ghost.org/ perhaps?
- withinboredom 2y ago
  ghost is worse than wp imho. Lots of sneaky affiliate links, and they only integrate stuff that does affiliate linking; the self-hosted version calls home as well.
_fat_santa 2y ago
If you are hosting a blog then I highly recommend Astro.
Kiala 2y ago
Statamic
diggan 2y ago
Depends on your target user. If you want something really simple for developers, https://github.com/gollum/gollum https://github.com/gollum/gollum is pretty neat (is what powers the Wiki system on GitHub), while if you want something simple for people who aren't developers, something like Mediawiki would fit better. Although Mediawiki requires a database, you can use SQLite (which is basically a file on disk as a DB) for it. Dokuwiki is also a neat old-school alternative that basically treats files on disk as articles/pages, so no (other) DB needed.

pluc 2y ago

Mullenweg is in trouble, WordPress is gonna be fine. https://gist.github.com/adrienne/aea9dd7ca19c8985157d9c42f7fc225d https://gist.github.com/adrienne/aea9dd7ca19c8985157d9c42f7f...

softwaredoug 2y ago
Without a canonical fork for the community (and crucially plugin authors) to rally around it’ll be a bit like Linux distros without a shared executable format, making life difficult for everyone and making it harder to keep critical mass for any vendor.
- cm2012 2y ago
  A few folks with a lot of community rep could probably do a lot of good if they to threw support behind a new primary fork.
- pluc 2y ago
  That's difficult to do, but time will tell. There are already established forks, there are obvious leaders, there are known mechanisms to go around wordpress.org... something at some point will pick up steam and that'll be that. Maybe it will be Mullenweg himself who will continue to dig his own grave, maybe it will be the lawsuit that will be the final nail in his coffin... who knows. But WordPress will be fine. And if it isn't, really, who cares. It's not a particularly well built or unique piece of software. Maybe it's time for something else.
  - softwaredoug 2y ago
    I think it would basically take a tech giant going all-in (ie Amazon) and rallying other companies to get this fork into the Linux foundation or something.
    - pluc 2y ago
      WP Engine could do that, and I'd happily throw my support behind it just to spite Mullenweg. They have the funds, the motive and could leverage the existing community, including picking it's leaders and contributors. I wouldn't be surprised that's what happens once the lawsuit is over.

egypturnash 2y ago

matt please get your brain worms dealt with, thank you - someone who has been happily using wordpress for her site since about 2000

system2 2y ago
I am not supporting either side, but wpengine is a shit company that treats their customers like they are sheeple. They remove critical functions from the original WordPress, selling $1 worth of hosting for $79. Not providing a "hosting" environment but only providing one site per account (additional sites are billed). This is a shitty hosting platform using WordPress' name and not benefiting WordPress itself. I had a comment where Matt refused to believe what I said about ACF but this doesn't make me hate him. I don't care about wpengine at all and they can go to hell instead of hurting WordPress any further. They are just using an open-source project to make money and not giving back. People are fighting with the original creator of the software and supporting 3rd party for-profit companies like wpengine. For what reason? This is clear propaganda.
- egypturnash 2y ago
  I just use Wordpress on my own hosting. If not for this whole feud I don't think I'd ever have heard of wpengine. shrug

gorkish 2y ago

Oh no who could have possibly forseen this .... mumble mumble

karaterobot 2y ago

I've had a Wordpress blog for about 25 years. This makes me want to turn off automatic updates, since I'm worried he might just go nuclear and flip some sort of kill switch that bricks every blog, or push some ridiculous anti-Wordpress Engine banner to every installation. Of course, not keeping WP up to date is very risky as well. I'm not even insensitive to his position, even though I don't know full details. But, he's the one acting irrational in all this, so he's the one I'm most scared of.

carlosjobim 2y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
internetter 2y ago
Consider a static site. They cannot be hacked, they are cheaper to host, and once the files are generated they are immutable
- prepend 2y ago
  They can certainly be hacked, just like any static site. Web servers have vulnerabilities. And the files can certainly be edited as they aren’t immutable. They are less resource intensive and easier to maintain, but aren’t immune. (Running mostly static sites converted from Wordpress sites, but also running 10 year old+ word press sites that haven’t been changed in forever)
  - Nectar0516 2y ago
    Or you can just pay someone to host it and maintain and support the web server for you, for a lot cheaper (often free, like Github Pages).
  - moralestapia 2y ago

huijzer 2y ago

Hopefully many sites will switch to a static site generator like Hugo or Zola. Way lower costs, lower risk of being hacked (almost impossible actually), and a reliable backup thanks to Git. I’m running multiple static sites for years already and am very happy with it. It has been very reliable.

Dalewyn 2y ago
>switch to a static site generator like Hugo or Zola At that point just write your own HTML and never be beholden to some abstraction framework toolkit corporation cooperative ever again.
- hu3 2y ago
  Soon enough AI will write most of blog/marketing HTML.
  - labster 2y ago
    And then we can develop systems that save user prompts, automatically and dynamically regenerating page content as the AI models are updated.
    - hu3 2y ago
      Add simple version control to keep history of changes. Slap some workflow/approval process. And you have a product!
      - 9dev 2y ago
        Amazing. You just ruined the internet for everyone, making us all wade through heaps of meaningless bullshit, only generated to drive the ad revenue! And do you know what’s the best part about that? You even made money off of that you can use to purchase the stuff you got ads for! Isn’t that exciting? Thank you for your service!

ezekg 2y ago

I'm still in the camp that Matt is attempting to force a fork because he's done with WP. Maybe he believes it can't live without his magic touch (lmao). Either that or he's lost his mind. :)

pessimizer 2y ago
I'm there with you. He's could be trying to see how far he can go to get people to fork, and finding out there's literally nothing he can do to make his critics fork on their own dime. If it weren't GPL'd, WPE could fork it, close it, and lock it down. Instead, the parasite has to volunteer to be the next host.
ValentineC 2y ago
> Maybe he believes it can't live without his magic touch (lmao). If 2025 Matt tried to fork b2/cafelog back in 2003, I think a good number of people in the PHP and blogging communities would have told him to, very kindly, fork off. Or, all that money and power corrupted him over the years.

noja 2y ago

https://getpublii.com/ https://getpublii.com/ Yet, anyone?

rglover 2y ago
Hadn't heard of this but looks like a pretty nice tool. Thanks for sharing :)
imilk 2y ago
While they have a Github repo, it is incredibly annoying how it's almost impossible to find any documentation around deployment/hosting. Unless I missing an obvious page
- noja 2y ago
  Click the GitHub link. It’s a gui. You (or your parents) publish the static pages somewhere.
Danieru 2y ago
Oh that looks nice. I've used Hugo before but for the lite stuff I need it abstracts the content too much. This looks exactly what I want.

Spunkie 2y ago

Crazy how hosting wordpress, between 2003-2024, your main concern was Chinese/Russian hackers. And in 2025 you main concern should be if Mullenweg will hijack your website for his pissing match. Also he didn't shut down the sustainability team because he "didn't know about it". He shut it down because their stated goals are a threat to Mullenwegs dictatorship hold over wordpress.

pwillia7 2y ago
Almost to the letter -- https://www.dalmomendonca.com/rules-for-rulers https://www.dalmomendonca.com/rules-for-rulers
- bsimpson 2y ago
  I wonder if he knows that his personal blog seems to be hosted in the template for a yoga studio in South Lake.
  - pwillia7 2y ago
    haha
justinator 2y ago
As a content creator, it's mostly dealing with Gutenberg and the new theme editor. I couldn't care less what these people are up to.
DonHopkins 2y ago
Mullenweg Before: https://www.youtube.com/live/Qq1SBFzByDw?t=28744s https://www.youtube.com/live/Qq1SBFzByDw?t=28744s Mullenweg After: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HblPucwN-m0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HblPucwN-m0
legitster 2y ago
It's crazy how almost overnight Wordpress went from a quiet and unassuming piece of the internet infrastructure to crazy techbro's personal fiefdom. Suddenly Wordpress's weird technical quirks and idiosyncrasies make sense.

lenova 2y ago

I've only been passively following the Wordpress drama. Almost a year ago, Mullenweg blogged about taking a 3 month sabbatical that I found interesting, and I assumed this would have been a period of recharging... but things have seemed to gone off the rails since. Was there any correlational between the sabbatical and current drama, or was that just coincidence?

mrtksn 2y ago
Did he drink that psychoactive wine?
- ben_w 2y ago
  Surely non-psychoactive wine is just grape juice?
  - mrtksn 2y ago
    right, let’s try again: Did he drink THAT psychoactive wine?
    - throwup238 2y ago
      It’s more like a two stage tea made of an MAOI (the first type of antidepressant developed) and psychoactive tryptamines. Eight ball yoda says… bad trip sitter he did seek, hmm?
      - mrtksn 2y ago
        interesting. So what does that tea do to people? I’ve read some things and claims and that it’s popular among tech C suit.
        throwup238 2y ago
        The best primary source is the Erowid trip reports vault: https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Ayahuasca.shtml https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Ayahuasca.shtml First it makes people purge (vomit profusely) because the MAO enzymes normally break down the psychoactives in the stomach, and it reacts violently when the enzymes are inhibited with MAOIs. It's likely a reaction to something else in the plant because the psychoactives absorb into the stomach before they throw up. The technical name for what happens next is "full disassociation" which can best be described as the brain disconnecting from the sensor organs and then hallucinating whatever it wants in their place. The actual experience people have varies all over the place. Lots of trip reports of people seeing god, or aliens, or seeing their life flash before their eyes. It's popular among the Silicon Valley crowd in general from my experience, but specifically the ritualistic experience in the Amazon. Freebasing DMT isn't as popular.

amazingamazing 2y ago

I bet Wordpress will be fine. Too bad Automattic isn’t a public company, bet it would be volatile right now.

causality0 2y ago

Anybody know if Mullenweg has recently purchased property in Belize? I'm curious how far along the McAfee curve he's gotten.

askonomm 2y ago
Haha this is a brilliant comment. McAfee lived one hell of a life.

electriclove 2y ago

From his perspective, after everything he has done, others are getting the financial gains and many in the community turned on him and his company. It must be a horrible feeling.

frereubu 2y ago
I sort of get what you're trying to do here - an exercise in empathy - but the flip side of this is that he has been made enormously wealthy off the back of thousands and thousands of unpaid volunteer hours on an open source project. It's not only "others" who are getting the financial gains.
- electriclove 2y ago
  Good point and agreed. Do you think for him it is more an issue about how much money WP Engine is making compared to him or the relative influence they have?
  - frereubu 2y ago
    I'm not really sure to be honest! He could well be thinking exactly what you said, I was just pointing out the flip side of that argument if that is what he believes, because it would be doing a real disservice to the open source community around WordPress without which he would be nothing.
addisonj 2y ago
But... isn't that a core ethos of open-source? That you won't ever come even close to capturing the full value provided by a piece of software... but the nature of the problem is such that the value could never be created unless it was open. I like to think of this as a "reverse" faustian bargain. By sticking to some agreed upon "moral" agreement of this open contribution and communal governance, you create a huge market that you get to try and least capture a piece of. If you break that bargin, you risk the project. And it isn't like this is some theoretical bit... it has been shown again and again in different communities. I fundamentally don't understand how you can spend so long in open-source and think that this agreement doesn't apply to you. That may seem "cruel" in that someone else can profit from you... but that was always part of the bargain that made your business exist in the first place.

treyd 2y ago

WordPress is a very mature project with a long legacy but I'm surprised that there hasn't been a larger profile attempt to make a spiritual successor to it that can shake the baggage of being PHP and the long history of vulns that have come along with it. I'm imagining some very pluggable and template driven runtime that you can ship very declarative packages for. The spicy take would be to use a Scheme for the templating around some robust Rust core, but that's probably not the widest appeal. Maybe there would be some clever way to bootstrap it out of PHP so that you can keep using shared PHP hosts and they wouldn't have to bring along a new software distribution.

hombre_fatal 2y ago
It's just a reminder how much "right place at the right time" plays into the phenomenon of ubiquity, from Wordpress to Harry Potter to Zoom to Javascript. There are countless efforts to make the next Wordpress out there, yet no combination of Scheme and Rust is going to make up for the critical missing ingredient of "right place at the right time".
- andrewmcwatters 2y ago
  This is the right time. Strike while the iron is hot. People are angry and concerned. Someone just needs to come forward with an attractive way to capitalize on the situation.
  - hombre_fatal 2y ago
    But the problem is that if Wordpress disappears overnight, you're left with a sea of alternatives that's 100x larger than when Wordpress rose to popularity. Ex-Wordpress users are just going to diffuse into all the other decent options that already exist. Or stick with a Wordpress fork that caters to them. Though note that Wordpress isn't going away. How many Wordpress users even know who Mullenweg is? The idea of cobbling together yet another blog platform that will somehow capture these users better than Wordpress plus all the decent incumbents is some good ol fashioned developer hubris. :P

blueaquilae 2y ago

Is this just an add for another paid CMS?

frereubu 2y ago
Might be an ad - I'm not aware of the author's associations - but Craft CMS, which is linked to, has a free version like wordpress.org
GavinAnderegg 2y ago
Nope. I just prefer Craft, and I think it's a much more stable platform in terms of leadership these days. I also think it provides for a much better developer experience. Just opinions, though. I currently don't monetize my blog in any way — though I should probably change that at some point :)

voytec 2y ago

Narcissistic personality disorder[0] is unnoticeable for a person having it, but makes lives of all around them a living hell. Such person is always right, and the 99.99% people around with an opposite opinion/viewpoint are idiots. If some "idiot" is standing up, there comes the retaliation part. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disor...

renewiltord 2y ago

Hard to care about this drama until it starts to affect functionality. Terraform is still around. Elastic is still around. Reddit and Twitter have no third party apps. I used to have a WordPress blog which I stopped updating for reasons of laziness. I will try to restore the backup and see what happens.

mfashby 2y ago
You can actually still use infinity for Reddit it's just a pain to get it.

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

Earlier discussion: Aligning Automattic's Sponsored Contributions to WordPress https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42650138 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42650138 WordPress: Joost/Karim Fork https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42662801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42662801 Matt Mullenweg deactivates WordPress accounts of contributors planning a fork https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42667766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42667766

asdfman123 2y ago

It seems that this is definitely a pressing issue for the web

beshrkayali 2y ago

I really think Matt is suffering from some sort of a mental breakdown. It’s a sad situation and there’s a lot to learn about open source projects with a huge user base and where the bottle necks exist. But I think people who know or are close to him should seriously consider an intervention. I can’t believe after two decades he’d just decide to throw it all out in a blazing fire and tarnish his reputation (and Wordpress) because of some valuation drop or being short on money. I think the dude needs help, and people close to him should try and talk sense into him.

dangrossman 2y ago
I don't think it's a mental breakdown, I think this is a (poorly executed) long pivot into Matt's companies having tighter control over the ecosystem and keeping more of the profits from hosting, plugin and theme sales. He's burning down "the community" on purpose. In a couple years, it'll be run more like Shopify, where the theme store and app store only list products that run their billing through Shopify and give Shopify a 15%+ share of all associated revenue.
- add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
  One reason that Reddit's API changes killing the best clients was so poisonous is that the resulting non-exodus showed other companies that they can take user-hostile actions with impunity. A big enough mass of passive and undiscerning users will stay no matter what. Hence there being more freedom to take a strategy like this.
  - llm_trw 2y ago
    Reddit has been user hostile since 2014. It's just that as long as you hurt one part of the community the other parts hate you're fine. The mods are universally hated on reddit and they were the ones most impacted by the changes. The average user either didn't notice or stopped getting automatically banned for joining the wrong subreddits.
    - 2y ago

lolinder 2y ago

> Now it seems like the community needs to take over, but Mullenweg still holds all the keys. This move by Matt to pull out of development all but guarantees a fork. The biggest argument against was the work that Automattic was putting into WordPress would be very hard to replicate in a new project. But if the community is going to be expected to do ~all of the work anyway, there's no reason to do that work inside Matt's personal fiefdom.

frereubu 2y ago
Has he said he was going to pull out of development? I hadn't read that anywhere in all of this.
- lolinder 2y ago
  https://automattic.com/2025/01/09/aligning-automattics-sponsored-contributions-to-wordpress/ https://automattic.com/2025/01/09/aligning-automattics-spons... > Automatticians who contributed to core will instead focus on for-profit projects within Automattic, such as WordPress.com, Pressable, WPVIP, Jetpack, and WooCommerce. Members of the “community” have said that working on these sorts of things should count as a contribution to WordPress. > As part of this reset, Automattic will match its volunteering pledge with those made by WP Engine and other players in the ecosystem, or about 45 hours a week that qualify under the Five For the Future program as benefitting the entire community and not just a single company. These hours will likely go towards security and critical updates. 5 of those 45 hours are apparently the Executive Director of WordPress.org, so this is actually one full time developer working on WP. That is effectively pulling out, and the remaining time supposedly allocated should be very easy for a fork to replace. Gotta love the scare quotes around "community".
- hn8726 2y ago
  From the article: > Automattic announced that it would restrict its contributions to the open source version of WordPress. The company would now only put in about 45 hours a week total — down from nearly 4,000 a week — so as to match the estimated hourly contributions of WP Engine. source: https://automattic.com/2025/01/09/aligning-automattics-sponsored-contributions-to-wordpress/ https://automattic.com/2025/01/09/aligning-automattics-spons...

65 2y ago

Hmm, crazy narcissist Matt Mullenweg does something for attention at the detriment of everyone else, again? The problem is that there's a bit of a black hole in CMSs right now where you need developers who want to work on the CMS and ordinary users who can host/create content on the CMS. Strapi was almost there, but alas, headless is not going to cut it for your average business trying to make a website. Static site generators can be too limited and simple, Drupal is not particularly user friendly, and tons of other CMSs don't have enough plugins for marketers to cram into their sites. Anyone considering e-commerce now will probably use Shopify instead of WooCommerce. Site builders like Squarespace and Wix are good for simpler sites but not for multi-author news type sites. I feel like the only option is a fork at this point.

vcoisne 2y ago
(Disclaimer—I work for Strapi). I would love to know why you think Headless will not cut it or what Strapi could improve. We're seeing many SMBs succeed with it.
- 65 2y ago
  I really like Strapi, it's very intuitive, etc. But headless is a headache to set up for a tech illiterate person/org who wants to start some kind of blog or small news site. I'll give you an example: https://newyorkyimby.com/ https://newyorkyimby.com/ This is a relatively simple site that posts housing development news for New York. Ultimately they're not going to need a super complicated front end. Most sites just want a theme and deployment. If Strapi had a non-headless mode and had themes I'm sure it could be used for the many millions of these small sites that run Wordpress. Additionally Strapi isn't a great choice for blogs or portfolio sites, it's simply too much to set up for most people. I think the barrier to entry is what prevents it from becoming great. If a random person can start a blog, then more developers are going to want to work on it, meaning more plugins, meaning more of a reason to use Strapi. A feedback loop that got Wordpress to where it is. Shopify is so big because they make setting up a site extremely easy, and now there are tons of plugins and themes to use on your Shopify store, which only gives people more of a reason to use Shopify.

hoofhearted 2y ago

I’ve been working on a side hobby project for a year in an attempt to solve these problems. It keeps growing in interest, and the demand has become more than I can handle currently. If anyone is interested in helping to build an open and secure platform that is an alternative to WordPress, please reach out or comment.

TheRealPomax 2y ago
Blog about it and get it on HN?
- hoofhearted 2y ago
  Yes, this is a really great start. One of my current clients recently had his WP install taken over, and SiteGround took it down for offensive content. It’s just a basic informational website for his consulting business, and he never logs into it or makes changes to it. He has no idea how anyone hacked it. It really baffles me that this is still a thing in 2025, and that people can’t get a basic Shopify type of experience for creating informational websites and blogs where they can set it and forget, and focus on running their business. They should be concerned about how their content website is growing their business and overall bottomline; not if they have been taken over with offensive content or not based off of basic security best practices.

mg 2y ago

I find it an interesting question to what degree the design decisions of WordPress are still the right ones in 2025. A PHP backend and frontend running on the same machine, serving dynamically rendered content from a MySql database. Personally, I prefer to have my content in text files, which are using a DSL similar to Yaml but optimized for use in a CMS. And render it to static html files via Python. A process that happens on a different machine. The html files are then pushed to the server that serves the frontend.

tqwhite 2y ago

I have never liked Wordpress. If it dies, that's ok with me. I just don't like it.

einpoklum 2y ago

Could someone link to a higher-level history of the WordPress situation, going further back? For the benefit of those of us that don't know much beyond the fact that it's an established blogging and website-building platform?

glenstein 2y ago
As a fellow newbie, I found this article from Josh Collinsworth to be a very thoughtful and clear overview. It's a bit long but it covers the history prior to the lawsuit. https://joshcollinsworth.com/blog/fire-matt https://joshcollinsworth.com/blog/fire-matt
pluc 2y ago
https://gist.github.com/adrienne/aea9dd7ca19c8985157d9c42f7fc225d https://gist.github.com/adrienne/aea9dd7ca19c8985157d9c42f7f...

tannhaeuser 2y ago

The blogosphere is keeping us entertained - with meta drama about blogging itself as growth turns negative.

runxel 2y ago

If you haven't yet: Now's the best time to migrate away. You should try out Kirby[0]. No affiliation, but this thing sparked my interest in web development again when I first heard about it. [0]https://getkirby.com/ https://getkirby.com/

addedlovely 2y ago
I too have switched to Kirby, should have done so years ago, it’s great to work with and fast out the box.
eltondegeneres 2y ago
Kirby is only source-available, not open source, and requires a paid license for usage. I think that's a deal breaker for a lot of Wordpress users.

macspoofing 2y ago

Is the entire drama that WordPress is asserting a trademark over 'WPEngine' (i.e. 'WP'), and WPEngine disagrees?

throw16180339 2y ago
Matt tried to extort money from WP Engine, then blocked their users from receiving updates, stole their plugins, and banned their developers. The filing in WP Engine vs. Automattic gives the details.
csa 2y ago
> Is the entire drama that WordPress is asserting a trademark over 'WPEngine' (i.e. 'WP'), and WPEngine disagrees? That is a minor issue in the disagreement. The bigger issue is that WPEngine had its access to Wordpress cut off on very short notice for questionable reasons. This obviously had a negative impact on WPEngine’s business, but also on all of the business that WPEngine served. I think the latter part is what has a lot of folks up in arms — the collateral damage was really tone deaf (imho).

KolmogorovComp 2y ago

> The problem is that Mullenweg has final say over some very important parts of the WordPress community > THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND (…) I think the real issue is people being fooled with the false concept of ‘community’, times and times again. Communities do not exist in practice. What you have is a vast pool of users (in this case I also include plugin and theme devs), and a minority of core contributors, which are either individuals or companies, usually both. Those are driving the project forward and making decisions. This distribution can be applied to many open-source softwares, but also projects like mozilla, wikipedia, etc. People do not understand to what extend the no-guarantee of FOSS software is applicable. All your projects can be broken from a day to the next and you cannot expect any compensation. But that’s ok because you got the software for free, right?

daitangio 2y ago

Sorry I switched to hugo my https://gioorgi.com https://gioorgi.com and it was easier than expected. Initially, I only followed the ‘drama’ tangentially, also because I have always considered myself a mere "end user" of Wordpress, even if long-time one (I used it for about 20 years). For me, the fact that Wordpress.com sold a service based on an "extended" version of Wordpress.org was never a particular problem, but I never thought it was illegal to compete directly with it by taking the open source software and offering a simple hosting service. Anyway I started to consider to switch from Wordpress to a static site hosted with hugo, retaining the comment system and all the URLs in the original form, more or less. I was surprised because it took very little time (less 1 week of total work) to migrate my articles (1000+) and the comments. I used open source tools, and I am a "hugo" newbie, so I make some trade off too. Never less, I suggest all of you to give a try to hugo+isso (isso is a comment system very light).

CrimsonRain 2y ago
What did you use to migrate posts? I'm going to move three WordPress sites (15yr+ running) off soon.
- joshstrange 2y ago
  Also very interested in this. I ended up paying for 2-3 years of WordPress.com to host my tiny-traffic blog and I had to pay for a higher tier to handle video (sidenote: fuck wordpress for offering a shitty watered-down WP version on WP.com, you know, literally the thing they complain about WPEngine doing). I'd love nothing more than to migrate away but I've already done a mess WP -> Hugo (or was it Jekyll? not sure) -> Ghost -> WP and I'd like to automate the migration as much as possible. Every other time I spent a while copy/pasting and hand-fixing posts. I know I won't get away from doing that completely but I'd like it be easier.
- jzb 2y ago
  Not the OP but I have migrated to Hugo as well. There's a number of tools to convert to Hugo from a WordPress XML export. I used wp2hugo, IIRC: https://github.com/ashishb/wp2hugo https://github.com/ashishb/wp2hugo Dead easy. Took an afternoon to do everything, including fiddling with DNS and trying different themes, etc.

zo1 2y ago

I think Matt should reach out to Elon Musk to assist him. And I don't mean that in a weird or snarky or "jabbing at Elon/Matt" kind of way. Clearly he is struggling to deal with a competitor and community wanting to impose their will on him, and make him behave like a "good boy" for their benefit (whatever that may be). Unfortunately he doesn't have the kind of "Fuck You" money that Elon has to deal with said interlopers.

Destiner 2y ago

all this WP drama makes me really grateful about deciding to go with a static site generator. Astro FTW!

pupppet 2y ago

Just love the way Matt keeps responding to everything in a passive-aggressive tone with a smarmy smile.

NKosmatos 2y ago

I feel sorry for Matt, someone close to him (family, friend, partner) should help him. It’s not good for him, not good for his company and for Wordpress. I’ve never used Wordpress and I prefer static sites where I have full control, but this doesn’t mean that I don’t recognize the usefulness end ease of it. Like many situation, this whole issue would be solved if a couple of the people involved sat down for a coffee, left their ego’s outside, had open minds, and having the willingness to compromise and being sincere ;-)

tootie 2y ago
I'm reminded of Tony Hsieh whose "eccentricity" lead directly to his early death.

tylershuster 2y ago

I don't understand how (if?) WordPress has popularity among serious professionals. Extending it without plugins, many of which are paid, is a nightmare. Adding custom fields is laborious, configuring post type display modes is a slog as well. HN seems to grumble about Drupal but even if your only requirement is a PHP server with a MySQL database connect, Drupal (8+) is just as simple to set up as WordPress and infinitely easier to configure. Older versions may have been less user-friendly but really, just click "Content->Add New->Page" and you're already running at the speed of WordPress.

akadruid1 2y ago
Wordpress is clunky but it never broke backwards compatibility. HN grumbles about Drupal because many got burnt by picking the wrong horse. Drupal was the biggest CMS in the world and like a safe bet until they told their users they would have to rewrite their 7 code to go to 8 and their users decided they would rewrite to WordPress[1]. Drupal never regained the trust they lost. They extended the life of d7 over and over but never made a compelling replacement. To this day, 7 is still more widely deployed than 8,9 or 10 ever were[2]. I think it's interesting to observe the fate that Python 3 narrowly avoided. Python 3 wasn't a compelling replacement until at least 3.5. In a nearly parallel universe they're all using torch.rb instead of pytorch. [1]https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/did-breaking-backwards-compatibility-kill-drupal https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/did-breaking-backward... [2]https://www.drupal.org/project/usage/drupal https://www.drupal.org/project/usage/drupal
- tylershuster 2y ago
  That's a fair argument. Maybe I'm just biased because I started with Drupal 8.
- Nectar0516 2y ago
  Honestly, py3 wasn't a compelling replacement until distros started setting dates to remove py2.
tootie 2y ago
It's the same way products like salesforce become popular. Network effects. As much it's an architectural nightmare, it is a thing that everyone is familiar with. When you are looking at ecommerce tools, email marketing, analytics, etc they all have some kind of one-click integration with wordpress. If you need developers, wordpress freelancers are a dime a dozen. It's just the thing everybody knows.

gigatexal 2y ago

Good. As I’ve said in other threads. There are other projects, other CMSes that are perfectly capable of taking over. Let the Wordpress monopoly die and with it this crazy man’s tirades.

gjvc 2y ago

some good news for a change

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

kmeisthax 2y ago

> Then yesterday happened. Automattic announced that it would restrict its contributions to the open source version of WordPress. The company would now only put in about 45 hours a week total — down from nearly 4,000 a week — so as to match the estimated hourly contributions of WP Engine. This action is blamed on the “the legal attacks started by WP Engine and funded by Silver Lake”, which I think is a gross mischaracterization. WP Engine definitely did not start this. WP Engine owns several WordPress plugin developers. Does plugin development not count now?

burnte 2y ago
> WP Engine owns several WordPress plugin developers. Does plugin development not count now? Mullenweg stole the Custom fields plugin from WPEngine. So no, plugin development doesn't could when he can steal the plugin away from you.
- pacifika 2y ago
  You can install all plugins via GitHub if you want.

Tokkemon 2y ago

Just this week I needed to completely revamp my personal website. I went with Squarespace because it's quick to spin up and I don't have to fiddle with tons of plugins and a complicated theme ecosystem. I just need a website that works. I used to use Wordpress for all my previous iterations, but now, it's done. Sad to see it become obsolete by not fixing them broader business and user-friendliness problems.

system2 2y ago
Good luck migrating to another platform when they jack up the prices. You can pick any host for wp and migrate within minutes. With closed systems like wix and Squarespace you are locked in forever.

_zagj 2y ago

A silver lining is that if fewer sites use WordPress, the web won't look nearly as homogeneous as it does now.

mrkramer 2y ago

Automattic vs. WP Engine will be ultimately decided in court but this sort of reminds me of Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc.[0] when Oracle got mad because of Google cashing out hard with Android. It's all about money for Matt....not about WordPress or open source community. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_....

lakomen 2y ago

TL;DR? I don't like drama. Why is it in trouble just now and it has not been an ongoing process?

tommek4077 2y ago

No it is not. Outside this strange bubble on hacker news, no ine really cares or has ever heard of the creator. They just use wordpress.

joshchernoff 2y ago

Good many then these stupid bot will leave my server alone always looking for wp-config FML.

tchbnl 2y ago

Please take your meds or seek immediate professional help, Matt.

wwarner 2y ago

I’m not a WP user, and I don’t want to ruffle feathers, but I can read and I think WP .com might not be getting the credit it deserves for contributing 4000+ hrs/year to WP development. Some of the contributors to WP are the very best open source developers out there; they look at kernel performance, image encoding corner cases and php, and land fixes. Not sure if Mullenweg is communicating that as clearly as he could, but it’s true. Without contributions like that, I doubt WP would be as well known as it is.

elendee 2y ago
yep I think it's nuts. I have a plugin in the WP directory, and when I first uploaded it kind of blew my mind the service they provide for free. An SVN repo that gives you instant visibility to tens of millions of site owners. Imho Matt has set expectations too high over the decades and now everyone thinks Wordpress grows on trees.

MiddleEndian 2y ago

Sometimes my friends ask me why I don't use a CMS for my personal site instead of just writing articles as pages on a Ruby on Rails site. Aside from finding CMSes to be overly heavy and restrictive, this is why. You never know when they're gonna go off the rails (pun intended). If I can't just do everything in vim/notepad++ and a terminal I'm not super interested. Same reason why I'm skeptical of game toolkits like Unity.

gtsop 2y ago
This argument can't hold, how do you know rails isn't going to flip, how do you know linux won't flip. How do you know vim won't flip? I'm sure you have tens if nit hundreds of technologies in your stack that are open source and you never imagined they were going to flip. I have rearly used wp for clients, but i was never under the impression it could go sideways just like most stable software i use.
- MiddleEndian 2y ago
  That's a fair counterargument. The biggest thing in that category was Mysql "flipping" with the Oracle purchase. But people quickly migrated to postgres (which more-or-less is the same for smallish projects) and MariaDB as a Mysql fork exists as well. And I'm sure some people just kept using Mysql as well without having to do anything. For all the tech I listed here, I think Rails is the one that would be hardest to a drop-in replacement for. Everything else is "generic." Text editors (not that I particularly care if a text editor is updated frequently (or at all most of the time)) and nix-like environments are basically hot swappable. But IME when something has some sort of custom environment and that's the only way to deal with it (dashboard, special IDE, etc.) that's when you have the biggest risk of having a bad time.

system2 2y ago

People keep saying "FORK FORK FORK". You have to remember, that all hosts that are deploying WordPress rely on the main provider. Thousands of hosting companies use WordPress deploying after registration and auto-updating the installations. How are you planning to make this kind of a major change? All the plugins that are in wordpress.org. How will you inform every WordPress site owner to go through this type of transition? I think this "fork" idea comes from a bizarre cancel/woke culture influence.

mildweed 2y ago

All the small/medium branding agencies surviving on Wordpress should devote 10% of their devs’ time to core. Community: rebuilt.

silexia 2y ago

WordPress is amazing and we should all support open source Matt over dark finance backed companies.