What is happening?

In short, WP Engine – one of the largest hosts of WordPress websites in the world – is in a bitter dispute with Automattic (the creators and maintainers of WordPress.org and therefore the WordPress software) over a trademark dispute.

Who is in the right?

It’s very complicated, and at risk of being drawn into an expensive lawsuit all I will only say is that both sides have points worth discussing.

WordPress is open-source, meaning that it is largely maintained by a community of enthusiasts and volunteers from all around the world (alongside the support of Automattic). Hosts usually operate in a symbiotic relationship with WordPress, donating money to WordPress.org in order to maintain the software that they profit from – they also donate the time and resource of their developers to spot and fix bugs in the code and help promote the use of WordPress to the wider world.

Automattic claims that WP Engine has broken that relationship by not contributing enough to the community whilst also trading under the WordPress name (“WP”) in a way that they claim could be confusing to less tech-savvy customers. WordPress strengthened their copyright notice to include a clause requiring a payment for the use of the WP name in licensing agreements (specifically pointing to WP Engine as at fault) – WP Engine have yet to pay this fee.

WP Engine argue that they do contribute to the community by being principle sponsors of major events like WordCamp and other WordPress enthusiast shows, alongside their support for WordPress as a major hosting provider. They also point to the many organisations that have “WP” in their name and do not pay for licencing.

So why does this matter?

The issue escalated this week when Automattic/WordPress.org shut off direct access to their services for all WP Engine hosted websites worldwide.

That sounds serious!

At the moment, it doesn’t appear to be very serious. The WordPress websites on WP Engine are largely unaffected by this change. It simply means that some plugins (the software people use to build functionality on top of WordPress) cannot be updated directly from the WordPress dashboard. Developers have to update these software packages manually which is a bit more time-consuming. WP Engine have already implemented a workaround for this for many customers.

Will this affect my website?

Currently, not really. The only serious concern would be security plugins which need to be kept up to date to keep on top of threats as they appear. The above solutions however do solve this issue and WP Engine themselves have security solutions that they provide on top of WordPress which are unaffected by this change.

Should I move from WP Engine?

At the moment, there doesn’t appear to me to be an urgency to make this decision, however we will of course monitor this situation as it develops. If you have concerns about your website hosting please do contact us at info@plmr.co.uk and we would be happy to provide advice and support.

How is this going to end?

Unclear! Many assume that this will work itself out over the next few days once the lawyers from both sides hash out a (no doubt very expensive) solution. It will be up to WordPress and WP Engine to put their heads together to solve this – millions of user websites rely on these services every day and this uncertainty has a damaging affect not just on some hosts but the entire WordPress community. In short, if they don’t fix this quickly, WordPress’ CMS dominance may come to an end…