WordPress.org bans WP Engine, blocks it from accessing its resources

Aatube@kbin.melroy.org to Technology@lemmy.world – 268 points – WordPress.org bans WP Engine, blocks it from accessing its resources | TechCrunch
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The blocked resources in question? Automatic security and features updates and plugin/theme repository access. Matt Mullenweg reasserted his claim that this was a trademark issue. In tandem, WordPress.org updated its Trademark Policy page to forbid WP Engine specifically (way after the Cease & Desist): from "you are free to use ['WP'] n any way you see fit" to a diatribe:

The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/26/wordpress-vs-wp-engine-drama-explained attempts to provide a full chronology so far.

Edit:

The WordPress Foundation, which owns the trademark, has also filed to trademark “Managed WordPress” and “Hosted WordPress.” Developers and providers are worried that if these trademarks are granted, they could be used against them.

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Would it be wrong to hope they manage to commit some gross act of mutual destruction, and that the outcome would be that I never have to deal with Wordpress ever again?

That would be great but the reality is that client’s mindsets need to change. I tried to explain to a client that Wordpress is not a good fit for their complex web application and yet they didn’t wanna switch to anything else. People are way too worried about new tech and wanna stick with whatever they know, even if it causes massive problems.

Wordpress is not a good fit for their complex web application

Seriously. People want to shove everything into Wordpress then get cranky when you can't make Wordpress into a ecommerce store, marketing platform, personal blog, file sharing service, and NFT marketplace.

And then it gets hacked because they needed 14 SEO plugins, 2 different form plugins, and were not going to pay for managed updates because that's easy they can do it themselves.

If you're trying to turn WordPress into an application, for christs sake go use Django, Laravel, or Rails. Don't send a CMS to do an applications' job.

Shit you don't even need a CMS at this point. I moved off WordPress to Hugo and SFTP and i'm happier than a pig in shit. Shit loads fast and no external threats.

Wordpress is the Excel of CMSs. It can do just about anything, but at this point it barely manages content well.

That's a great analogy actually. You can do almost anything with it but what the vast majority of people choose to do with it is wrong.

Just like how people insist on using Excel as a database or Excel as a form.

I haven't done web work for well over a decade and recently was surprised to learn that Wordpress is still very relevant. I remember back then, seeking alternatives as we expected it to become more of a legacy thing a few years down the track, so we were on the lookout for future-proofing client sites with a better foundation. At that point it was a decade old and annoying af because it morphed into a messy way of doing websites because people misused it's original purpose. Brain had to think like a blog and then trick it into doing what you want, kind of like using tables to structure pages before CSS-P saved the day.

This year I stopped to let my clients pick the CMS. I tell them you wouldn’t ask a carpenter to make a chair, but restrict them to only use metal.

Wordpress is not a good fit for virtually any modern application. It's designed as a blogging platform and basically no one makes blogs anymore. That functionality kind of got eaten up by Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn, so no one needs blogs.

Instead of letting WordPress die the death it most definitely deserves they shoehorned in functionality, which would be fine if it wasn't such a bodge job.

I have off-and-on searched for alternative software for personal blogs that can be self-hosted and it doesn’t seem like there are many options anymore. The only ones I’ve seen are WriteFreely and FlatPress. Are there any other options you’re aware of?

Depends on if you need a CMS, or if you can use a static site generator.

For a CMS, I'm still a fan of Ghost and it has (mostly) not enshittified to the point it's unpleasant to use.

If you don't need the whole CMS thing, there's an awful lot of options. (And hosting them is super simplified since you can just stuff the output into a S3 bucket/Cloudflare Pages/Github Pages/a dozen other providers for basically free.)

There's Contao, Drupal, Blogger, Shopify, Wix, Squarespace...

Shopify seems like it was purposely designed to be as dreadful as possible. They seemed to go out of their way to make dumb decisions.

Is contao still around? I used to use it back in the early 2000s

It moved to symfony starting with contao 4. You can now either use it as a self-managed CMS or add it to an existing symfony application to add CMS functionality. Great stuff.

Most of the community is German speaking though, keep that in mind.

Any suggestions for a free easy to use alternative to wp?

There really isn't one that's a true alternative to WP.

There are plenty of nice static site generators, but those are significantly harder to use and not just drag and drop, they also don't have the huge plugin marketplace that WP does.

Everyone loves to complain about WP (rightfully so in some cases, it has its own problems), but will suggest alternatives that are nothing like it.

I use WP to post weekly (sometimes more frequently) updates about my new releases and events happening in my shop (a game shop). It works for what I need, I just wish I could find I build a theme that displayed the way I want it to display.

Good luck! Not sure if you have time, but to their credit, they do have a handbook on making themes. Since WordPress 5.0 block editor, which a lot of people apparently abhor, themes are mostly HTML templates (with a lot of WP-specific invis comments) and CSS styles.

Thanks. I really know nothing about that kind of stuff. I have tried and only make things worse.

After December 2018, which is when WordPress 5.0 released?

No idea. I only started to use it in 22 I think. I have seen a lot of themes that look great, but every one of my posts has an image attached and the theme I use will not display a thumbnail when on the main page, only the title of the post and a snippet of the text.

I have one that you may not like, but fits your description.

I don't know what wordpress is, so I would suggest just not bothering at all with whatever that is. Maybe use wordpad.

that's a local text editor. CMSes are for e.g. hosting blogs

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