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WordPress vs. WP Engine legal dispute – what you need to know Background
WordPress vs. WP Engine legal dispute – what you need to know

WordPress vs. WP Engine legal dispute – what you need to know

WordPress vs. WP Engine legal dispute – what you need to know

WordPress vs. WP Engine legal dispute – what you need to know

WordPress is a web content management system used by around 478 million websites across the world. WP Engine is one of the biggest third-party developers of WordPress plugins.

The legal dispute between WordPress and WP Engine

It is reported that WP Engine is suing WordPress co-founder and Automattic (owners of WordPress.com) CEO Matt Mullenweg for attempted extortion.

This is in response to comments he made about WP Engine not contributing enough to the WordPress project, which started as an open source – free with code anybody can edit – that started back in 2003. He has also argued that the ‘WP’ in their name leads people to think they are part of WordPress itself.

A statement on WordPress.org has addressed their thoughts on WP Engine in more detail.

WordPress retaliation

Over the weekend, WordPress took the most popular WP Engine plugin (Advanced Custom Fields, or ACF) and renamed it to ‘Secure Custom Fields’ – essentially making it a WordPress-controlled plugin. They were able to do this via citing terms and conditions that all plugin developers are tied to.

How will this affect my website?

Any sites that update Advanced Custom Fields will end up with Secure Custom Fields instead.

As things stand, it is the same plugin with only a minor security update and the obvious name change, so functionality will be unaffected. If your website uses it and you have automatic updates enabled, you will find that it has probably changed to ‘Secure Custom Fields’ already.

What do I need to do?

At this stage, anybody with a website that uses Advanced Custom Fields has a choice.

You can leave it and let the plugin become ‘Secure Custom Fields’, but it will now be maintained by WordPress themselves. We think it may evolve to become part of WordPress itself and cease to be a separate plugin.

Alternatively, you can use WP Engine’s advice to download a new version of ‘Advanced Custom Fields’ from them and replace the old plugin on your website. This only needs to be done once, because the new version of Advanced Custom Fields will update automatically from WP Engine, the original developers, whenever you click ‘Update’ (or if you have automatic updates enabled).

It is uncertain what will happen with either of these plugins – the new ‘copy’ or the original – and this kind of activity within the web development world highlights why it is important to have your website managed by a company who have their ear to the ground. Engage Web is keeping a close eye on the situation, so we can make a decision about any websites we manage.

Other WP Engine plugins

WP Engine has other plugins too. These plugins may also be affected at some point in the future, and this could of course depend on how the legal dispute progresses.

They are WP Migrate Lite, WP Offload Media Lite, WP Offload SES Lite, Better Search Replace, Frost, Genesis Blocks and Genesis Custom Blocks.

All of WP Engine’s advice on the matter, including an additional update management plugin that ensures other free plugins are updated from their server directly, can be found here.

Will this affect WP Engine premium plugins?

No. If you use any of WP Engine’s premium plugins (for example, Advanced Custom Fields Pro), they are updated directly from WP Engine’s servers anyway, so they are unaffected by the ongoing dispute.

What is Engage Web doing?

For a lot of our clients, we manage the updates of both WordPress and plugins. This ensures that their websites remain functional and secure. Our plan of action for this particular situation is to replace ACF on sites using it with the newest one.

We have chosen to do this because we are unsure of what WordPress plans to do with the ‘new’ version of Advanced Custom Fields, now known as Secure Custom Fields.

If you want the peace of mind your website is being kept up to date and in line with current regulations, get in touch with our team today.

Nick Arkell

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