Tag Archives: Automattic

WP Engine and Automattic Trade Cease-and-Desist Letters

[ad_1] If you follow WordPress at any level, it’s hard not to have heard about the drama surrounding Matt Mullenweg’s attack on WP Engine at the tail end of WordCamp US, something that marred what otherwise seemed like a very lovely event. If you haven’t heard anything about his comments yet, the short version is that he attacked WP Engine for allegedly free-riding on WordPress and not pulling its weight when it comes to contributions, going so far as to call WP Engine a “cancer to WordPress.” ‘Wait, what?!’ Here’s the full context: He also claimed that WP Engine confuses users about what “WordPress” is and doesn’t deliver the “real” WordPress experience because it disables post revisions by default. A lot of this has already been hashed out on Twitter/X, so I won’t spend too much time pointing out that… I’ve never met a WordPress user who has been confused about the difference between WP Engine and WordPress, but nearly every single new WordPress user is confused about the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org. We even have a post about it, as does every other WordPress blog. So…a weird hill to die on for the guy behind WordPress.com. 🤷‍♂️ WordPress.com has an $18 per month plan that doesn’t allow users to install themes and plugins, which seems like a bigger limitation than WP Engine disabling revisions by default (and then letting users enable revisions if they talk to support). Matt says that WordPress.com can’t afford to let people install plugins/themes on this plan, but many other WordPress hosts seem to have figured out the economics. 🤷‍♂️ What’s new, though, is that WP Engine doesn’t seem to be taking Matt’s comments lying down: WP Engine sends a cease-and-desist letter On Monday, September 23, WP Engine responded with a cease-and-desist letter…and let’s just say that there are some very interesting allegations in the letter. You can read the full text here, but let me cover what I think are the highlights: As far as I can tell, WP Engine seems to be accusing Matt of allegedly extorting them for money, with him making his comments at the WordCamp US Q&A contingent on whether or not WP Engine played ball: In the days leading up to Mr. Mullenweg’s September 20th keynote address at the WordCamp US Convention, Automattic suddenly began demanding that WP Engine pay Automattic large sums of money, and if it didn’t, Automattic would wage a war against WP Engine. The letter includes screenshots of text messages between Matt and various high-level executives at WP Engine, including one that seems to imply he threatened to “proceed with the scorched earth nuclear approach to WPE.” The implication in the letter is that this is how Matt would proceed if WP Engine did not meet his/Automattic’s financial demands. I mean, let’s be real, some of the text messages are kind of ridiculous and bring to mind some type of Mafia shakedown. What’s crazy to me here is that WP Engine alleges the demands were to contribute money to Automattic/WordPress.com – not even to the non-profit WordPress Foundation.  Based on Matt’s Reddit comment, this amount was to be 8% of WP Engine’s total revenue (around $32 million based on 2024 numbers), though Matt also claimed that they could make this contribution via “people” as part of Five for the Future commitments. A lot of these problems come back to the longstanding issues with Matt holding positions as both the CEO of Automattic and the “benevolent dictator” of the open-source WordPress project. When he calls WP Engine a cancer, is he speaking as the CEO of a for-profit competitor to WP Engine or is he speaking as a representative for the open-source WordPress project? Who knows! Automattic and Matt Mullenweg fire back Not to be outdone, though, Automattic then responded with its own cease-and-desist letter regarding alleged unauthorized trademark usage. Matt (or someone else with access) also surreptitiously updated the WordPress Foundation trademark policy, specifically calling out WP Engine. You can see those differences here, which display what is quite honestly an impressive level of pettiness. And on a somewhat related note, people also noticed that the WordPress Foundation filed two trademark applications back in July – one for “managed WordPress” and another for “hosted WordPress.” So yeah…lots of drama. As things are going, it seems like this might expand from regular ‘ole internet drama into real lawsuits, so I’m sure that I’ll be covering this more in the future. What do you think, though? Let us know in the comments, or get in on the action on Twitter/X. … Don’t forget to join our crash course on speeding up your WordPress site. Learn more below: Was this article helpful? No Thanks for your feedback! Or start the conversation in our Facebook group for WordPress professionals. Find answers, share tips, and get help from other WordPress experts. Join now (it’s free)! [ad_2] Source link

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Automattic is Migrating Tumblr to WordPress  – WP Tavern

[ad_1] Automattic announced last week its plan to migrate Tumblr to WordPress, a move described as “one of the largest technical migrations in internet history.” This move comes after Automattic acquired Tumblr in 2019, marking the company’s biggest acquisition at the time. During the acquisition, Matt Mullenweg had pointed out that “Tumblr and WordPress have always been very philosophically aligned.” An emerging Tumblr/WordPress plugin and theme ecosystem were on the cards, and Matt said that once Tumblr’s backend is on WordPress, the idea of plugins can be explored. After the acquisition, Tumblr faced tough times, with Matt revealing last year that it was spending about $30 million more than its annual earnings. The porn ban didn’t help matters, but the Twitter Exodus of early 2023 following Elon Musk’s acquisition of the social media site gave it a sudden boost.  The migration announcement post said, “We’re not talking about changing Tumblr. We’re not turning Tumblr into WordPress. That would defeat the purpose. We acquired Tumblr to benefit from its differences and strengths, not to water it down. We love Tumblr’s streamlined posting experience and its current product direction. We’re not changing that. We’re talking about running Tumblr’s backend on WordPress. You won’t even notice a difference from the outside.” Automattic reiterated that “The changes will be exclusively at the backend.” The migration though not easy – with Tumblr hosting over half a billion blogs – will be a win-win situation for both WordPress and Tumblr. Automattic believes that “Tumblr will benefit from the collective effort that goes into the open source WordPress project. And WordPress will benefit from the tools and creativity we invest into Tumblr and contribute back to WordPress.”  Men Wanted for Hazardous Journey Automattic is actively seeking experienced PHP programmers to undertake this migration project. Matt compared this to the famous British explorer Ernest Shackleton’s recruitment ad for his Antarctic expedition, which read, “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.” The advertisement continues, “If you’re an experienced programmer… if you’re a SQL‑slinger… if you’ve worked on other big audacious projects like this… if Gordian knots tremble in your presence, we want to work with you!” “We’re already seeing interesting candidates apply and resume review is underway for full-time roles. All relevant experience is welcome, particularly those who have worked on other large migrations or are just excited about working on a challenge of this size.” – Bob Ralian, Tumblr Migration Lead Interested candidates can apply through the website giving a brief introduction about themselves. The post does not give any details about the remuneration or the application deadline.  Community Response  Matt tweeted “I’m excited about this one.”, while Eric Karkovack of Speckyboy quipped “Will there be a project status blog? If so, I’d recommend calling it “Tumblng Into WordPress”.” Platform Lead Engineer at Pew Research Center Seth Rubenstein tweeted, “This is so exciting. I hope this means it becomes easier to create Tumblr themes in the future; especially, dare I say, if they’re just block themes…” Courtney Robertson, Open Source Developer Advocate at GoDaddy, also hopes to see more “ block themes supporting post formats SOON.” Head of WP Relations at Elementor, Miriam Schwab dubbed it “The ultimate “data liberation” project” while Developer Advocate WPEngine Damon Cook speculated, “I wonder if there will be outcomes from this large migration that could overlap and help solve pieces of the Data Liberation project.” Product Designer Yash Bhardwaj was excited ”This will go down in history books similar to some ancient empire conquering another.”  Nick Weisser of Openstream is optimistic “This would represent a significant increase in the market share of #WordPress, pushing it from around 43% to over 60%?” I’m sure no one foresaw these developments when Jeff Chandler wrote “WordPress To Be More Tumblr Like” in 2010. Category: News, WordPress [ad_2] Source link

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Pedraum Pardehpoosh Joins Automattic as VP of Product – WP Tavern

[ad_1] Last week, Automattic announced Pedraum Pardehpoosh as its new Vice President of Product. Though a new face in the WordPress arena, he brings extensive tech experience from both startups and major corporations like Walmart, Apple, and Airbnb. In the announcement, Automattic shared, “As VP of Product, Pedraum will oversee product excellence across Automattic, beginning by immersing himself in the open source WordPress ecosystem that drives innovation for 43% of the Internet.”  I’m thrilled to be joining Automattic. My top focus will be to understand the WordPress ecosystem deeply, first and foremost. After that, I hope to help foster a culture of product development, befitting a company of Automattic’s stature. With so much talent and so many great ideas that go along with that, I expect the top challenges will be prioritization and focus. – Pedraum Pardehpoosh Automattic’s product portfolio includes WordPress.com, Woo, Jetpack, WordPress VIP, Simplenote, Longreads, The Atavist, WPScan, Akismet, Gravatar, Crowdsignal, Cloudup, Tumblr, Day One, Pocket Casts, Newspack, and Beeper.  Pedraum’s appointment comes during an exciting time for Automattic as they migrate Tumblr to WordPress. The company is actively hiring for this migration and other roles, with open positions listed here. [ad_2] Source link

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Automattic Will Migrate 500+ Million Tumblr Blogs to WordPress

[ad_1] If you like ambitious projects, I think this news tidbit will be right up your alley. In late August, Matt Mullenweg and Automattic announced plans to migrate all of the existing Tumblr websites to WordPress. Given that Tumblr hosts more than  half a billion blogs  (yes – that’s a “B”), I think this might just be one of the largest migration projects ever undertaken. This journey started back when Automattic acquired Tumblr in 2019 for a fairly paltry sum of under $20 million (the exact amount wasn’t released). I say fairly paltry because Yahoo had acquired Tumblr for $1.1 billion back in 2013 (yes – that’s also a “B”), so there was a pretty hefty drop-off in the valuation. When Automattic made the acquisition, Matt had already hinted at the end goal of migrating Tumblr to WordPress: “WordPress is an open source web operating system that can power pretty much anything, including Tumblr.com, but it’s also a large property so will take a bit to figure out and migrate.” Almost exactly four years later, it seems that the time has finally come to launch the migration. It’s important to note that, for now at least, the migration is about migrating the backend of Tumblr to WordPress. Active Tumblr users will obviously be wary of the switch, but Automattic said the following about the migration: “We’re not talking about changing Tumblr. We’re not turning Tumblr into WordPress. That would defeat the purpose. We acquired Tumblr to benefit from its differences and strengths, not to water it down. We love Tumblr’s streamlined posting experience and its current product direction. We’re not changing that. We’re talking about running Tumblr’s backend on WordPress. You won’t even notice a difference from the outside.” Automattic reiterated on X/Twitter that “the changes will be exclusively at the backend.” If you think it would be fun to work on such a large project, Automattic is actively looking for experienced programmers to help with the move, especially those with strong PHP knowledge. You can check out the dedicated application form here to learn more and submit yourself for consideration. … Don’t forget to join our crash course on speeding up your WordPress site. Learn more below: Was this article helpful? No Thanks for your feedback! Or start the conversation in our Facebook group for WordPress professionals. Find answers, share tips, and get help from other WordPress experts. Join now (it’s free)! [ad_2] Source link

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Automattic Acquires Social Image Generator Plugin, Plans to Integrate with Jetpack – WP Tavern

[ad_1] Automattic has acquired the Social Image Generator plugin, a commercial product that automatically creates social share images for WordPress content from a set of fully customizable templates. The plugin launched in February 2021, with a starting price of $39/year but is now closed to new sales. Daniel Post, the plugin’s creator, is joining Automattic to continue developing it as a new addition to Jetpack’s social media tools. Automattic is always on the prowl for companies that are doing something interesting in the WordPress ecosystem. The Social Image Generator plugin expertly captured a new niche with an interface that feels like a natural part of WordPress and impressed our chief plugin critic, Justin Tadlock, in a recent review. “Automattic approached me and let me know they were fans of my plugin,” Post said. “And then we started talking to see what it would be like to work together. We were actually introduced by Chris Coyier from CSS-Tricks, who uses both our products.” The Social Image Generator plugin has always been a commercial-only product, which tends to limit a plugin’s reach within a market that has been so heavily trained on the freemium model. Its acquisition will undoubtedly get it into the hands of more WordPress users. “I briefly considered building a freemium plugin but I decided to focus on paid licenses to make sure I could provide great support to all users and, frankly, to see how well it would be received compared to a freemium plugin,” Post said. Current customers will be able to continue using the plugin “without any changes in the near term,” according to the announcement on the Jetpack blog. Those who have strong opinions about the long-term future of the plugin are encouraged to schedule a session with Jetpack Customer Research to open a dialogue. “I look forward to the future functionality and user experience improvements that will come out of this acquisition,” Jetpack General Manager James Grierson said. “The goal of our social product is to help content creators expand their audience through increased distribution and engagement. Social Image Generator will be a key component of helping us deliver this to our customers.“ I would not be surprised to see this plugin available on one of Jetpack’s paid tiers in the near future, alongside the Publicize module’s other paid features (scheduling social media posts, tracking and viewing sharing history, and re-sharing existing content). Social Image Generator makes WordPress content more engaging on social media, has built-in support for WooCommerce, and can be extended for use with other plugins. It’s a strategic acquisition where Automattic gains an engineer as well as a new way to make Jetpack subscriptions more compelling. “We are still figuring out our exact approach, but the initial plans are to integrate the Social Image Generator features with the existing Jetpack social tools like Publicize,” Post said. “The ability to see exactly what your social media post will look like before publishing it right from your WordPress site is incredible, and a big reason why I’m so excited about this acquisition.” Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link

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Weekly WordPress News: Automattic Acquires Frontity

[ad_1] Hey, WordPress fans. We are checking in with your latest dose of weekly WordPress news. This week, Automattic acquired Frontity, an open-source React framework for WordPress-powered websites. The Frontity founders will apply their expertise to the Gutenberg project full-time. Beyond that, WordPress 5.8.1 release candidate is out and available for testing. This release features 41 bug fixes on Core, as well as 20 bug fixes for the Block Editor. We also have a lot of news, tutorials, and roundup posts for you. Let’s get to all of this week’s WordPress news… WORDPRESS NEWS AND ARTICLES TUTORIALS AND HOW-TOS RESOURCES [ad_2] Source link

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Automattic Acquires Frontity, Founders to Work Full-Time on Gutenberg – WP Tavern

[ad_1] Frontity co-founders Pablo Postigo and LuisHerranz Automattic has acquired Frontity, the company behind an open source framework for building WordPress themes with React. The acquisition comes more than a year after the company raised €1M in funding in a round led by K Fund, with Automattic covering 22%. Frontity co-founders Pablo Postigo and Luis Herranz and their team will no longer be developing and maintaining the framework. Their new focus will be on contributing to the WordPress open source project and improving the full site editing developer experience. “After a series of conversations, Automattic offered to sponsor our team to work directly on the WordPress open source project,” Frontity’s founders said in the announcement. “In particular, to contribute our expertise in developer experience, frontend tooling, performance, and UX to the WordPress core itself, instead of doing so only for an external tool.” In a separate FAQ document, Frontity clarified that this acquisition does not mean the framework will be merged into WordPress, nor does it mean the team plans to bring React into the WordPress PHP or full site editing themes. The founders intend to apply their expertise to the Gutenberg project full time: Even though Frontity is a React framework, it doesn’t mean that we are going to push React to the WordPress frontend. We will look at the Gutenberg and full site editing space to identify those areas in which our work could have the most significant impact, and work closely with the WordPress community to help improve its developer experience. WordPress is already the best content platform on the web. We want to help it become the best development platform on the web. In addition to putting the Frontity team on improving developer experience, Automattic is also investing in other ways that expand its support of the Gutenberg project. The company has recently hired a new head of developer relations who is building out a team tasked with improving the developer experience with Gutenberg and full-site editing. Birgit Pauli-Haack is a new member of that team and Automattic is also sponsoring her curation of the Gutenberg Times publication and the Changelog Podcast. Frontity Framework Will Transition to a Community-Led Project As the result of the acquisition and the team’s reassignment to working on Gutenberg, Frontity’s founders are transitioning the framework to be a community-led project. The team has prepared to leave the project in “a stable, bug-free position,” with documentation regarding what features they were working on. The framework is used by many companies and agencies, including high profile sites like the TikTok Creator Portal, popular Catholic news site Aleteia, and Diariomotor, a popular Spanish automotive publication. “As far as we know, Automattic is not using Frontity Framework in any of its products,” Frontity CEO and co-founder Pablo Postigo said. “But we know there are a lot of Automatticians who have been following our progress closely.  “We are aware that WordPress VIP does recommend Frontity for decoupled solutions, too. We are sure our experience and knowledge might be of help for this team as well.” The departure of Frontity’s founders and team introduces some uncertainty into the future of the framework. When asked if it can survive as a community-led project, Postigo was optimistic but not certain. “We still think that Frontity Framework is the best way to run a decoupled WordPress site with React and that this will be the case for a long time,” Postigo said. “It is still too early to know what will happen. Frontity has a great community behind it, there are a lot of great projects which are using the framework in production, and there’s also a nice group of really active contributors. We feel really positive about the future of the framework.” Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link

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Automattic Invests $30M in Titan, a Business Email Startup – WP Tavern

[ad_1] source: Titan.email Automattic has invested $30 million in Titan, a professional email suite aimed at businesses and companies offering white-labeled email solutions for customers. At WordCamp India 2021, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg said that the company had just made “a pretty large investment” in the India-based startup and stated that it “will be a big part of how WordPress.com offers email going forward.” The Series A investment in Titan is Automattic’s largest to date and values the company at $300 million. Although Automattic has gained notoriety for its “no offices or email” approach to business, most of the working world has not yet transitioned away from relying heavily on email. “I think email is definitely on its way out, between things like P2 and Slack, which is a work place chat tool,” Mullenweg said on Glenn Leibowitz’s podcast in 2015. “Email just has so many things wrong with it. I’ve never heard anyone who’ve said they love email, they want more of it–have you?” Six years later, email is still a reliable source of misery for most working people, but Titan aims to transform it into a more meaningful communication channel for businesses with help of Automattic’s investment. It includes features like scheduled send, follow-up reminders, smart filters and custom folders, email templates, and white labeling with deep integration for various platforms. WordPress.com’s marketing has increasingly been aimed at small businesses over the past few years with a strong push for users to make money by selling things through their websites. It’s easy to see how Titan makes sense as a supporting product that legitimizes any business with a custom branded email address. Customers who have registered, transferred, or mapped a custom domain through WordPress.com are offered a three-month free trial of Titan-powered email services. Setting up custom branded email addresses separately would be a much more inconvenient process and most customers with custom domains are likely better off rolling email services into their existing WordPress.com setup. This strategically enables WordPress.com to be more of a one-stop shop for business needs. People are often reluctant to change their email providers so Titan has the effect of making WordPress.com’s products a more sticky subscription that would require some effort to reproduce elsewhere. “We need an alternative to Google and Microsoft, which have started to monopolize email,” Mullenweg told Bloomberg. “Of about 6 billion email accounts in the world, only a fraction are small business email accounts and they need a product that’s focused on their needs,” he said. After just two years, Titan has more than 100,000 small business customers. In addition to its relationships with WordPress.com, HostGator, NameSilo, and other web providers, Titan aims to grow its customer base by partnering with popular hosting companies, domain registrars, and site builders. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link

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Automattic Releases Quadrat, a Block-Based Podcasting WordPress Theme – WP Tavern

[ad_1] A few weeks ago, Automattic released Quadrat on the WordPress.org theme directory. It is now the company’s fourth block theme. Like its predecessors, it is a child of Blockbase, a project that serves as a foundation for the work of Automattic’s Theme Team. After spending a couple of months diving deep into the world of block themes, I was beginning to feel a little burned out. When I wasn’t sleeping, eating, or doing yard work in my off-duty time, I was building or exploring one project or another. Soon, it all had become a blur. I knew I needed to take a small break, and I have not touched themes for a couple of weeks since, at least not outside of work. However, Quadrat appealed to the theme developer within me. I am not sure if it was the soothing color scheme or just seeing the work the professional designers had put into it, but it offered a pathway for easing myself back into the block theme world. Outside of the work by Anariel Design with Naledi and Clove, most block themes have felt more like proof of concepts or starting points. Quadrat can now be added to the list of those with some personality. It does not push any particular boundaries, but it is a well-designed blogging and podcasting theme. Mostly, I am just a fan of the color scheme — sometimes you just need something other than black, white, and gray to get yourself out of a funk. One of the other reasons I have been following the work of the Quadrat theme was because it was the first showcase of header patterns I had seen. Kjell Reigstad shared what this system would look like in June. The goal is to include the patterns shown in the video in core WordPress, so they are not currently included in the theme. However, there is still an open ticket for header patterns in Quadrat. The only real trouble I ran into with the theme is with fully aligned blocks in the content. There is an overflow issue in version 1.1.1 that creates a horizontal scrollbar. Horizontal scrollbar appears with full-width Cover block. Quadrat includes nine custom patterns. The focus for most is on podcasting, but some are general-purpose enough for other use cases, such as “Media and text with button”: Media and text with button pattern. The development team missed a prime opportunity with its podcast-related patterns. Instead of integrating with a podcasting solution, they are simple, static blocks from core WordPress. For example, the Latest Episodes pattern is a two-column layout that features Image, Heading, and Paragraph blocks. That is acceptable as a base pattern for users without a podcasting plugin. However, it may be practically useless for those with one enabled. Or, it creates unnecessary work because users must manually update their page content anytime they publish a new episode. Latest Episodes block pattern Given Automattic’s recent bet on Castos as part of a $756K pre-seed fundraising round, it would make sense to integrate with the podcasting company’s plugin, Seriously Simple Podcasting (SSP). If the development team wanted to take the Latest Episodes pattern to the next level, they would create it with the Query Loop block and display the latest podcast episodes from the plugin. For users without SSP installed, simply fall back to the current pattern. Or, offer both. Right now, it is little more than eye candy and not nearly as useful as it could be for real-world use cases. I often talk about the need for theme authors to elevate their game. Not only would such integration be beneficial to podcasters, but it would also showcase the power and flexibility of the block system. All of this is to say: If you are going to build a podcasting theme, build a podcasting theme. Quadrat appears to be one. However, when you peek behind the curtain, it is just a well-designed blogging theme. It has the potential to be so much more. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link

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Automattic Acquires Pocket Casts – WP Tavern

[ad_1] Automattic has acquired Pocket Casts, a popular podcast listening, search, and discovery app for Android and iOS. Australian co-founders Russell Ivanovic and Philip Simpson are staying on to continue leading Pocket Casts as a part of the acquisition. The app allows users to keep all of their podcast subscriptions together in one place and sync between platforms. Previously a commercial-only app, Pocket Casts has been free since it switched to the freemium model in September 2019. Its creators have been monetizing the app through its Pocket Cast Plus tier, which gives users access to desktop apps, cloud storage, watch playback, and themes and icons for $9.99/year. In May 2018, Pocket Casts was acquired by public media organizations NPR, WNYC Studios, WBEZ Chicago, and This American Life. BBC Studios also held a small ownership stake in the platform prior to Automattic’s acquisition. Despite being widely regarded as one of the best podcasting apps available, NPR’s financial statements and auditor’s report from 2020 shows a net loss of more than $800K. The board governing the company met in December 2020 and agreed to sell Pocket Casts. No financial details of the acquisition were disclosed but Automattic may have gotten a bargain on Pocket Casts if its other owners were also losing money. After acquiring Tumblr and Day One, Automattic is starting to gain a reputation for buying up apps that people love to use and giving them a fighting chance at financial stability and longevity. The company has also demonstrated a growing interest in podcasting-related technologies with its recent investment in Castos and partnership with Spotify’s Anchor podcast creation platform. Acquisition announcements often include assurances of no changes for current customers but Automattic’s post made no promises and did not share many details regarding its plans for Pocket Casts. Integration with WordPress.com may be on the horizon but it’s currently in the exploration stage. “As part of Automattic, Pocket Casts will continue to provide you with the features needed to enjoy your favorite podcasts (or find something new),” Automattic’s Head of Apps Eli Budelli said. “We will explore building deep integrations with WordPress.com and Pocket Casts, making it easier to distribute and listen to podcasts. We’re thrilled that we can continue to give our users a multitude of ways to tell and engage with stories that matter.” Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link

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