The END of WordPress?

Automattic will lose this fight, WPEngine may get some scrapes, but they’ll come out on top. Also, going off a lot of the court records and screenshots of conversations of different key players, what Matt is doing could possibly be a considered a conspiracy and a crime.

The situation is complex. I watched the interview. According to Matt, he claims that WPEngine has modified core WordPress, so it is a different experience from the actual platform, "like modding core WordPress." His point is that they shouldn't use this language to claim it is vanilla WordPress. This is also true for other open-source platforms, such as Android, licensing, and Google, for example.

It also doesn't seem like they're taking him seriously when he expressed his concern, stating, "probably his fault; might not be a leader who should lead the platform."

It is everyone's fault, but Matt should not have banned them. He will lose the battle. He should have at least warned customers that WPEngine is violating their terms and given them at least three months to make a decision. If they had the intention, WPEngine had his communication widgets blocked anyway, so direct communication would have been out of the question.

What is OPEN SOURCE 😂

Full stack bootstrap forever. Most real developers never liked Wordpress now I see why smh

Really good content!

i hope you become the next ceo, that was the most optimistic and hopeful speculation i have heard this week

Old news click bate.

Great analysis of a very dynamic situation. I've been using WordPress to make a living for the last 12 years and have a lot of respect for both Matt Mullenweg and WP engine. Seems like much of this could've been handled and off-line conversations between them.

There were no gen Z people because no one likes PHP nowadays and WP is PHP

What if WP Engine bought Automatic?

WP Engine's hosting is ridiculously overpriced and they've messed up the Genesis framework. I wouldn't touch either of those products with a barge pole

I love WP Engine is destroyed. Woooho!! bye bye woke staff

The real competition for WordPress are the React type stacks on free tier Oracle hosting.

Dorik is my go-to now. I still have half of my clients on WP.

BS clickbait title

I've developed and host about 200 WordPress sites - none of then on WP engine.
The problems with WordPress is it's been pushing towards being usable by non-web developers - to reach a bigger, more naive audience, to make more money selling useless plugins. WooCommerce has also been complicating its structure to make plugin development much more difficult and pushing people towards the WooCommerce plugins on a monthly or annual license.
Over the past 5 years this drive has become almost intolerable and I'm frequently looking for similar frameworks for rapid development.
Classic press is/was a fork after the ridiculous and entirely hated blocks editor but it didn't seem to have the critical mass required for self perpetuation - despite the most popular plugins unsurprisingly being Classic Editor and Classic Widgets. Classic Press almost managed it though.

WP Engine is in a slightly different position to those disgruntled by the money grabbing directions of WordPress. WP Engine already has a loyal customer base and can fairly easily replicate everything available from WordPress. Including a soft fork of WP Core and a plugin repository.

Maybe if we're very lucky they could, take the reigns into driving WP Core the direction is should be heading in. Designed by developers, for developers.

Freedom!

It's simple, tech giants want WP down, and most know that. Especially they want woocommerce down. You have to understand, it's more than 40% of the world wide sites.

well you cannot do marketing with 0 or free, so important to donate.

sponsorship is ad bro

Thanks for the video. As an “older” person just now arriving to the world of website design, I chose to dive into WP because of the freedom it offers and to avoid the ongoing price hikes and limitations from GoDaddy (whose hosting and website builder were all I’d ever known). My husband and I run a small business and a nonprofit, and can’t afford to hire a web designer. Plus, I love a new challenge and the creative side of me has really enjoyed exploring all I can do with WP. Admittedly this issue is way more complicated than I understand, but if I could say something to Matt, I would simply tell him my story and remind him of why he started WP in the first place. Sometimes when organizations grow to the size of the beast that is WP, they lose sight of the bigger picture (the forest and the trees). They get hyper focused on what they believe to be an important mission but in reality it will ultimately harm their overarching goal. They choose to die on a hill they should have walked away from. Christian, you are just the person to take this marketing concept and run with it. (I mean, you already do really!) It’s shocking to me that there were not tons of young people at WordCamp. They would be wise to wake up and look for more people like you to help them reach their goals instead of drilling down on what feels like the status quo. Matt seems to need to help people catch his vision but this is not the way to do so. As many commenters have said, it seems childish and unprofessional.

As a Marketer and Web Developer, Wordpress’ issue is NOT a marketing issue. Sure, it may not market to the DIY crowd specifically in the way Wix and Squarespace etc do, but they have something much, much stronger, with designers and developers around the world opting for and recommending WP for their clients and the wider business space. Go into any business-centric group and the near daily “what platform should I use for my website?” Is 90%+ in favour of WP.

Where they are falling down is the ease of use and functionality. But it’s not a contributor issue, it’s a vision issue (otherwise it would have shifted a decade ago). It is unnecessarily cumbersome to use for an entry-level product and falls well short of a complete system. Their userbase growth is declining because their window of being the best product in class is shrinking. Wix and Squarespace etc can easily serve entry-level businesses (who then may stick with the respective platforms longer than they should) and options like Headless and full custom now offer a better path for the big players.

Has anyone heard of AspirePress? They are trying to fix this problem by mirroring the WordPress plugin/theme directory, and federating it! Look it up!

Very thoughtful and informative. After watching your video, I agree, companies need to do more brand awareness marketing for WordPress.

While you are largely right that marketing is the issue, I have to admit that if WordPress doubled down on improving the user interface and the overall user experience, more old dogs like me, as well as hip and cool Gen Z people like you, would start shouting their name from the rooftops all over the world. I tried Squarespace for a while, and although I didn't like it, and quickly returned to WordPress as a result, the interface was so much more modern and easier to navigate. Why is this not possible in an open-source ecosystem? WordPress has felt stuck in the last few decades. It's only because I have the freedom to create completely bespoke websites using no-to-minimal code page builders like Oxygen that I'm sticking around. If WordPress stays stuck in the 20th Century for much longer, I might move to Webflow.

It's strange, though. Despite the lack of innovation, I was happy with WordPress simply because I had the freedom that Squarespace couldn't offer, but this recent debacle has just sullied everything. 😞

Drupal is more powerful anyway, without the add-ons being "owned" by single developers.

Yes and no, I agree with you, WordPress has the huge advantage of being open source especially for developers and tech-savvy people, but unfortunately that's it for the rest of humanity. Websites are evolving and everyone wants to be able to build them, that's why other site builders are so successful, precisely because they offer many advantages over WordPress, from custom crm/cms visual builder to better store integration, ... . And if more and more people turn to alternatives, then I can see the end of WordPress slowly approaching, even if I don't hope for it.

If Wordpress powers 43% of the web, how can this be the end of Wordpress?. Because its not

Long live WP! Thanks for the update man! Keep up the good work!

Capitalism, always making money off open source.

Former WP Engine employee here, in this video you dedicated a segment to WordPress servicing companies not advertising outside of their own ecosystem. While it's true there's a heavy amount focused towards people and companies already in, or looking at, WordPress as a CMS, a lot of WordPress hosts bring in a ton of customers from outside the WordPress ecosystem, particularly harder to reach segments such as government, education, and enterprise.

When sales teams are reaching out to potential customers they may sometimes be just selling hosting for WordPress, but often times they are selling WordPress as a CMS itself. This is true of WP Engine, and it's competitors (including WordPress VIP). I know because I've talked to people at multiple companies in the space who have faced the challenge of evangelizing WordPress to the business segment.

WordPress did not just take over 43% market share of the Internet organically, it comes from significant investment and outreach from many hosting, development, and Agency companies who have put their name behind WordPress.

Thanks for your video!

When I was in college with no money, WordPress is what got me, through. My first introduction to WordPress led me into web development, and I started my business from that. I have made small donations to individual developers and not directly to WordPress. However, its on my todo. It does not seem Matt handled it right, but for a company making 100s of millions, the least they could do is donate a little bit seen as their entire business model runs on the platform. They don't need to donate what Matt is asking, but it shouldn't get to this point where he is trying to force their hand. It looks bad overall on both sides since WPEngine donating now could set a precedence that no one wants. All in all, WPEngine could do better before it got here.

Matt’s kept WordPress moving at a snails pace for years!! GET RID OF HIM ASAP along w Newsom Harris Biden Pelosi ha

Switching from WordPress to another platform is too costly for most businesses. Take a breath and stop the overreaction; the feared 'doom' isn't coming.

You're a smart dude and you did a really good job in explaining what exactly the issue is with WP. We need young people like you who does positive contribution to society. Thank you.

I think the entire community should pitch in for a Wordpress Superbowl Ad. As a community of "creatives" I'm sure they could come up with something...

SoyPress😂

SOYCAMP😂

INCREASE THE DOSE MORE SOY…😂

AI 👉WILL DESTROY SOYPRESS😂

If I have to pay for it, I'll go back to hand coding.

I've been building out my own blogging system for the past few months with a view to migrate my customers over to it and away from WordPress. This news just helped speed up that process.

so its about money . yes bluehost dodaddy make shit out of money there . 5% kinda good its save alot .more over maybe wordpress AI are possible now does not need to maintain .wordpress on black box environments update all the files dont need programming there in next 10 years

I can still download Wordpress and can use it.

Wordpress is not easy for the new gens! You have to be a bit of internet geek to understand it.

And... after weeks of speculation and heated discussions within the WordPress community, a California district court has issued a preliminary injunction in favour of WP Engine against Automatic.

This is probably just the beginning.

BS Click-bait.