In the last few months, there’s been tension between WordPress, the most popular website platform on the internet, and WP Engine, the platform dedicated to WordPress website hosting. With the last few days seeing a dramatic escalation of the situation, and as a website agency partnered with both organizations, MyWork is naturally following events very closely, and we want to ensure our customers are kept up to speed as things evolve.
What’s been happening:
On September 25, 2024, WP Engine was banned from accessing WordPress.org’s resources, including the plugin and theme directories, job boards, and other features that are typically available to WordPress hosting providers. WordPress co-founder, Matt Mullenweg, criticized WP Engine for prioritizing profits over open-source values.
WP Engine fired back, accusing Automattic (WordPress’s parent company) of attempting to extract millions in fees for using WordPress trademarks, despite WP Engine claiming fair use.
This dispute might head toward legal action, with accusations of unfair business practices and trademarking issues being thrown around from both sides.
What does this mean for the rest of us?
These developments could have significant consequences for businesses and developers using WP Engine as their hosting provider, particularly as the ban disrupts access to essential WordPress resources. It’s an evolving situation, and we can only speculate on the outcomes at this stage.
The bottom line is, don’t panic, your website won’t suddenly go offline. Most of the current complications arising from the ban revolve around automated processes for updates to things like plugins and core updates, and some reduced performance issues. At MyWork, our priority is on ensuring our clients’ websites continue to operate to the highest degree, and we have already successfully tested workarounds to overcome for limitations that have come into play recently.
Ultimately, this is one of the many benefits of engaging a website agency like MyWork to help maintain your online presence.
- If situations like this arise, we’ll keep you informed.
- If automated updates stop working, we’ll do them manually for you.
- If there is a resulting performance issue, we’ll apply a workaround.
It’s all part of our ongoing commitment to our customers.
If you don’t currently have a website partner and are seeing reduced functionality in your WP Engine hosted website, we’d encourage you to reach out to our team as we’d be happy to assist.
Being optimistic, hopefully WordPress and WP Engine come to an amicable resolution, and the resulting impact to developers and customers are minimal, if any.
We’re staying tuned, let’s see what happens.
** Updated 27/09/2024 – Even a day after the original publication of this article, we’ve found this morning that all websites hosted on WP Engine cannot access their WP Admin. We’re already working with our WP Engine contacts on a workaround for this.