{"id":4598,"date":"2024-11-17T21:51:53","date_gmt":"2024-11-17T18:51:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maniainc.com\/technology\/?p=4598"},"modified":"2024-11-29T15:50:18","modified_gmt":"2024-11-29T12:50:18","slug":"wordpress-vs-wp-engine-feud-should-you-move-your-site-away-from-wp-engine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maniainc.com\/technology\/wordpress-vs-wp-engine-feud-should-you-move-your-site-away-from-wp-engine\/","title":{"rendered":"WordPress vs. WP Engine Feud: Should You Move Your Site Away from WP Engine?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\tThis is post 6 of 18 in the series “WordPress Guides and Tutorials 2025”<\/em>\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t

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In-depth WordPress Guides and Tutorials for the year 2025 and beyond. In this series, we share what we have learned over the 5 years we’ve been developing WordPress sites. We cover crucial topics such as WordPress Security, improving WordPress Site Speed, WooCommerce optimization, finding the Best WordPress Hosting, and so much more. We’ll update this series frequently, so consider bookmarking it.<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/label>\n\n\t\t\t

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  1. Get Reliable Cloud Hosting from Cloudways – Our Recommendation<\/a><\/li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
  2. Why You Should Install WooCommerce Applications Separately from WordPress Content Sites<\/a><\/li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
  3. Choosing the Right Web Hosting Provider: A Comprehensive Guide to Finding Your Perfect Match<\/a><\/li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
  4. WordPress Starter Kit and Blogging Guide: How to Start Your New Site on a Strong Footing<\/a><\/li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
  5. How to Speed Up a WordPress Site for Technical and Non-Technical Users<\/a><\/li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
  6. WordPress vs. WP Engine Feud: Should You Move Your Site Away from WP Engine?<\/span><\/li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
  7. Free and Paid Ways to Secure WordPress: Essential Tips for Securing Your WordPress Site<\/a><\/li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
  8. How to Optimize WooCommerce for Speed and Security<\/a><\/li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
  9. Mastering Server-Level WordPress Optimizations: Proven Strategies for Blazing-Fast Performance<\/a><\/li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
  10. How to Create a Custom WordPress Website Without a Web Developer (for Less than $5)<\/a><\/li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
  11. How to Optimize Your WordPress Theme (Free or Paid) for Speed, SEO, and User Experience<\/a><\/li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
  12. Why Your WordPress Multisite Is Slowing Down \u2014 and How CPU-Optimized Hosting Can Fix It<\/a><\/li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
  13. Easy and Quick WordPress Optimizations with One-Click and One-Plugin Solutions<\/a><\/li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
  14. 5 Reasons Why Your Website Needs Managed Cloud Hosting (and Why We Think Cloudways is the Best)<\/a><\/li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
  15. Maximize ROI for your SMB Website with Cloudways’ CPU-Optimized Servers + Lightning Stack: Scale for Long-term Growth at an Affordable Price<\/a><\/li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
  16. How Cloudways CoPilot Makes WordPress Server Troubleshooting Easier and Saves You Hours (at a Fraction of the Cost of Hiring a DevOp Engineer)<\/a><\/li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
  17. The Ultimate Server-Side Caching Guide for WordPress: Redis, Varnish, and Cloudflare Enterprise Explained<\/a><\/li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
  18. How to Monitor and Maintain a High-Performance WordPress Server (Without the Guesswork)<\/a><\/li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/ol>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n

    The WordPress ecosystem is undergoing an unprecedented feud pitting WordPress\u2019s founder Matt Mullenweg, WordPress.org, and WordPress Foundation against WP Engine. WP Engine is a venture capital-backed WordPress hosting company that has seen its business come under threat after Matt Mullenweg called it a \u201ccancer to WordPress\u201d. In this article, we look into the WordPress vs. WP Engine Feud and answer the question of whether you should move your site from WP Engine if you are a customer.<\/p>\n

    What Caused the WordPress vs. WP Engine Feud?<\/h2>\n

    The #WordPressvWPEngine<\/a> feud and consequent drama between WordPress and WP Engine started in September this year; when Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress, and the owner of Automattic and WordPress.org, called out WP Engine for using the \u2018WordPress\u2019 trademark to enrich themselves; without meaningfully contributing back to the WordPress community and it\u2019s open-source development.<\/p>\n

    Essentially, Matt singled out WP Engine<\/a> as a \u201ccancer to WordPress\u201d for making \u201cbillions\u201d on top of WordPress but doing so little to give back. Matt\u2019s reaction, as per reports, was triggered by a failure in trademark licensing talks between himself and WP Engine.<\/p>\n

    Matt then went on to call out WP Engine for removing \u2018post revisions\u2019 for their entire user base, saying that this broke WordPress\u2019 promise to its users to keep their content safe. In a recent blog post, Matt also called out WP Engine for removing the \u2018WordPress News\u2019 dashboard item after things got increasingly heated between the two entities.<\/p>\n

    WordPress vs. WP Engine: Isn\u2019t WordPress Open-Source?<\/h2>\n

    Yes. WordPress, the content management system (CMS) is open-source and licensed under GPL version 2 which essentially allows anyone to \u201cview, modify, distribute, and edit\u201d its source code.<\/p>\n

    Theoretically, this means that any individual, company, or entity can make any changes whatsoever to the core WordPress code and use it commercially. In practice, however, the feud between Matt (and his companies) and WP Engine has cast doubt on that.<\/p>\n

    \"WordPress
    The WordPress vs. WP Engine Feud will be instrumental as a benchmark for how companies and business entities can brand themselves around WordPress and related terms and abbreviations. Source: DII.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    The Trademarked \u201cWordPress\u201d Term<\/h3>\n

    Until now, what one couldn\u2019t do is use the trademarked term \u201cWordPress\u201d for commercial purposes without approval from Automattic – the company that owns the trademark. Automattic is owned by Matt Mullenweg, as is WordPress.org, the company that provides the functionality behind WordPress\u2019s plugins, themes, and functionalities. Automattic has recently also applied to trademark<\/a> the terms \u201cManaged WordPress\u201d and \u201cHosted WordPress\u201d.<\/p>\n

    In simpler terms, there is the WordPress source code – which makes up its crux, normally referred to as \u201ccore WordPress\u201d which in itself, is not very functional and relies on WordPress.org. For WordPress to work optimally, it requires plugins, themes, and other assets or resources and these are channeled via WordPress.org.<\/p>\n

    Understanding What is What in the WP Engine vs. WordPress Feud<\/h2>\n

    It is essential to note that only WordPress’s source code or \u2018core WordPress\u2019 is open-source. The plugins, themes, and resources are provided as per their authors\/developers\u2019 terms; even as most themes and plugins are also provided as open-source by their developers. Devs do this mostly out of goodwill.<\/p>\n

    The \u201cWordPress\u201d term, however, is trademarked as we\u2019ve seen, while the connectivity or infrastructural support offered through WordPress.org is proprietary. What this means is that WordPress.org can choose to deny any company, individual, or entity back-end access to WordPress resources, and that\u2019s exactly what Matt and WordPress.org did to WP Engine.<\/p>\n

    How Matt Mullenweg and WordPress.org Cut Off WP Engine\u2019s Access to Back-End Resources<\/h2>\n

    When things got legal and WP Engine sent a \u2018cease-and-desist<\/a>\u2019 letter to WordPress\u2019s founder Matt and his company Automattic, Matt replied by denying WP Engine back-end access to WordPress.org\u2019s resources. This meant that anyone hosting their site with WP Engine could not update plugins or themes in their site’s back-end (via WordPress.org) and could only do this manually by downloading the plugin\/theme from the WordPress repository, and uploading them to their site.<\/p>\n

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    Today in Matt destroys the WordPress community: you can’t add plugins directly from the .org repo if you have a WP Engine site. And I can confirm that this is happening.https:\/\/t.co\/vRd7jliVsM<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/9XGAtXhUoN<\/a><\/p>\n

    \u2014 Jacob Martella (@ViewFromTheBox) September 25, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n