If you’re hosting your website with WP Engine, you should have received several emails from them in recent days regarding an ongoing public disagreement between WP Engine and Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of Automattic.
WP Engine is one of our preferred hosting providers, and for good reason. They provide best in class security, functionality, and have proprietary features like EverCache and LiveCart not found elsewhere.
Automattic is the parent company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, WordPress VIP, and WordPress.org—the latter being the open-source platform many associate with WordPress website content management system itself. The current dispute revolves around WP Engine’s decision to disable the revisions feature by default, which reduce database bloat and improve website performance, has drawn criticism from Mullenweg. He has also raised concerns about WP Engine’s being in violation of WordPress trademarks by having WP in their name (like thousands of other companies). This even though Automattic was one of the original investors at WP Engine and long time friendly ally. He suddenly is taking issue with it.
This has resulted in Cease and Desist orders from both sides. Those are listed below
As of now, the situation appears to be heading to court.
In the meantime, some actions have been taken by Mullenweg, including restricting WP Engine’s access to certain WordPress.org servers. This has impacted the ability of thousands of websites hosted on WP Engine to receive automatic security updates and patches through their platform. This could, unfortunately, leave these sites vulnerable to security risks, including hacks and malware, as well as potential stability issues. Matt Mullenweg has betrayed the trust of everyone of those website owners who choose WordPress as their content management system.
Our Commitment to Our clients
For all of our clients who host with WP Engine… your websites are secure, fully patched, and regularly updated. They will continue to be.
Our long term approach to managing updates has always been independent of WP Engine’s automatic update system. So our client sites sites are not really affected by this. You can rest easy knowing that your site’s security and performance are in good hands.
You may notice some slowdowns in certain sections of your WordPress admin dashboard, but this is a minor side effect, and we are closely monitoring the situation to ensure your site continues to run smoothly.
Automattic has also restricted dashboard access to installing plugins, but that can easily be circumvented by downloading them from WordPress.org directly and manually uploading them.
If you have concerns, please let us know. If you want to move to a different host… we will help with that also.
Not a Client? We Can Help
If you’re currently hosting with WP Engine but are not yet one of our clients, and you’re concerned about your site’s security and maintenance during this time, feel free to reach out. We can step in to make sure your website remains secure, up-to-date, and fully functional.
