Tag Archives: Engine

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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Is This A Better Host Than WP Engine?

[ad_1] Rocket.net is a relative newcomer to the WordPress hosting space, but it has made strides to win over the type of user who has usually looked towards companies like Kinsta or WP Engine. In this Rocket.net review, we tell you all you need to know about this new hosting offering. 🚀 So, what makes Rocket unique? Is there anything? 🤔 And, more importantly, should you use them over some of the more established companies in the WordPress hosting space? We’re going to find out in the following Rocket.net review. Here’s what’s to come: What is Rocket.net? Rocket.net launched in 2020 in the middle of the global pandemic, which perhaps didn’t naturally feel like the best time to start new projects of this magnitude, but nonetheless. 🤷‍♂️ There are a couple of differentiating factors that make Rocket’s offering unique when compared to some mainstays of the hosting industry. First off, Rocket hosts only WordPress websites, and it does so on 18 different tiers – in terms of features and pricing. Secondly, although Rocket.net is a new provider, the platform’s founder, Ben Gabler, has more than 17 years of experience in the web hosting industry. He regularly consults and speaks on topics that influence web hosting solutions, such as cloud computing, content delivery networks (CDN), web application firewalls, site security, performance, and more. As you’ll discover in this Rocket.net review, Gabler has brought all this knowledge and experience to the project. No surprise Rocket offers this many performance, security, and custom-made features that make your WordPress site work faster and more reliably. Rocket is also the first managed WordPress host that integrates with Cloudflare Enterprise across all its plans. Typically, users would source this feature separately from their hosting arrangement. Enterprise CDN from Cloudflare would cost over $200 a month on its own. Value offering Rocket’s primary value offering comes down to these: Security: Rocket prioritizes security over everything else. All users get an SSL certificate, SSH access, SFTP, and on-demand hack and malware removal. Site speed: Rocket offers site optimization solutions across all its plans. Users get access to a CDN with over 200 global locations, WAF for traffic control, and database and font optimizations. They even offer edge network through direct peering relationships with ISPs to help connect website visits to content directly. Instant support: You’ll get round-the-clock live chat and email support on all plans. Automatic WordPress management: Rocket offers a range of automatic or WordPress-native site management solutions. Users get automatic compressions through a GZip alternative, Brotli Compression. Additionally, plugin, theme, and core WordPress updates happen on autopilot. Complete control: Users can use Git for version control, site staging for managing feature and function additions to their sites, on-demand backup, hands-free migrations, and more. Throughout this Rocket.net review, you’ll see how this offer plays out for users…starting with what most of you probably want to know: Rocket.net review: features and pricing ⚙️💵 Rocket’s catalog of hosting plans is rather uniform and only differs in a couple of key areas. We’re going to discuss those first: What to expect from Rocket’s hosting plans? Rocket’s Managed Hosting plans are not all that hard to understand: ✋ First of all, the platform hosts WordPress websites only. To say this another way, if you’re planning to host a website built on any other script or engine, Rocket is not going to be a solution for you. With the system narrowed down to WordPress, you can predict that your experience across Rocket’s tiers of hosting is going to be pretty much the same, except for differentiators like: 🔢 The number of WordPress websites you want to host 🚦 Traffic volume you expect to get every month to your sites 💾 Disk space you need for file and data storage 📡 Bandwidth for how much network transfer you’ll need each month 📍 If you need to store and manage multiple websites from a single location You can settle for Rocket’s lowest price tier if you need only a little of these things. However, you’ll pay more if, for instance, you need a lot of bandwidth and disk space as well as expect a ton of traffic. That being said, these have been only the “managed hosting” plans that Rocket offers. There are also higher-level tiers for agencies and enterprise hosting. In practice, however, although Rocket calls those plan categories “Agency” and “Enterprise,” they are just loose expressions to mean they accommodate sites and users with bigger demands. As we’ve found out in this Rocket.net review, those top-tier options only help you increase coverage if you need significantly more traffic, network load, disk space, and websites. So, for example, users on those plans would typically want to remove any traffic cap and expand their network load to allow, say, 1,000 GB (1TB) or higher. The features all Rocket.net hosting plans get As we’ve mentioned earlier in this Rocket.net review, the platform provides common security, site speed, automation, and storage features across all plans. So, regardless of your plan, Rocket offers you the following: ✅ Enterprise-level CDN ✅ Web application firewall (WAF) ✅ Automatic WordPress plugin, theme, and site updates ✅ Around-the-clock customer support ✅ ISP direct peering ✅ Automatic WordPress database defragmentation ✅ Daily backup, on-demand backup, and 14-day backup retention ✅ Hack and malware removal ✅ Free SSL ✅ All PHP versions, including legacy options ✅ Site staging and SSH access ✅ File compression ✅ Version control with Git ✅ Cron jobs ✅ Built-in visitor analytics ✅ Secure file transfer protocol (SFTP) Just to reiterate, you get this set of features regardless of the hosting plan you get and its price. Your choice of exact hosting plan will depend on the volume of traffic you’re expecting and the number of sites you want to host. Which brings us to: The price of Rocket.net WordPress hosting As we’ve found when writing this Rocket.net review, Rocket actually offers 18(!) different pricing tiers of their hosting. This all depends on your needs and whether you’re

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WP Engine Launches Faust.js, a New Headless WordPress Framework – WP Tavern

[ad_1] WP Engine has launched Faust.js, a new headless framework that is open source and designed to work in any Node hosting environment. The framework is built on Next.js, which can handle both static site generation and server side rendering. It uses GraphQL for data fetching and is the only framework that allows developers to query the WPGraphQL API without having to know GraphQL queries ahead of time. Faust.js was in its earlier stages when WP Engine hired WPGraphQL creator and maintainer Jason Bahl. The company has been heavily investing in headless infrastructure development, hiring more engineers for projects aimed at reducing the friction of using WordPress as a headless CMS. This is the main thrust of the new framework – to allow developers to build scalable, better performing sites with modern frontend tools while preserving WordPress’ rich publishing experience. Faust.js includes content previews, support for custom post types, and built-in authentication to support paywalls, e-commerce, membership sites, and other functionality that has traditionally been difficult for headless sites. How does Faust.js differ from existing headless solutions like the React-based Frontity framework? Developers building headless sites are curious after Automattic acquired Frontity and the framework’s maintainers exited to work full-time on Gutenberg. Using a community-supported headless framework can be a risky bet for enterprise clients when its creators and maintainers are no longer able to contribute. “Frontity and Faust are similar, the main difference is that Frontity focuses on providing a framework on-top of React where Faust is primarily built with Next.js support in-mind,” Faust.js creator William Johnston said. “This small distinction is meaningful and means when you are using Faust you can take advantage of all the amazing benefits of Next. It also lets Faust focus specifically on how to make Headless WordPress a better experience, without having to come up with a comprehensive solution for front-end, node-base, static/server-side applications.“ When asked how Faust stacks up to Frontity in a comment on Reddit, WP Engine developer relations engineer Kellen Mace highlighted a few other major differences between the frameworks. Frontity only works with the WP REST API and Faust uses WPGraphQL “for more efficient queries.” “Technically, Faust is built in ‘layers,’ so even if you choose to build your frontend app using SvelteKit, Nuxt, etc. you can still leverage several of the tools Faust provides,” Mace said. “We’ll have more documentation coming out on using it with other JS frameworks in the near future. Using it with Next.js gives you the most ‘bang for your buck,’ however.” Johnston confirmed that certain elements of Faust (the core/React pieces), are already working with the React-based GatsbyJS framework. Faust is less opinionated about the frontend and is more centered around making the WordPress publishing experience better. A demo of Faust in action is available at developers.wpengine.com. The framework, which includes NPM packages and a WordPress plugin, can be found on GitHub, but its maintainers caution that there will be breaking changes in the future. Developers who are interested in learning more about Faust.js can check out the documentation or listen to the most recent episode of the DE{CODE} podcast where Johnston discusses headless WordPress and introduces the framework. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link

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WP Engine vs SiteGround for WordPress Hosting: An Honest Comparison

[ad_1] Trying to choose between WP Engine vs SiteGround to host your WordPress site? WP Engine and SiteGround are two of the bigger names in the WordPress hosting space and both offer quality hosting products. However, they do so at different price points and with slightly different features, so you’ll want to make sure you’re picking the right host for your situation. That’s what we’ll help you understand in this post – both hosts can be a good pick; it’s just about matching the right host to your needs and budget. Keep reading to learn whether SiteGround or WP Engine is better for you… WP Engine vs SiteGround Comparison Summary If you’re in a rush, here are the basic conclusions of our comparison: Taking price out of the equation, WP Engine is the overall best host out of these two. However, SiteGround is still a good bit cheaper than WP Engine (though some recent changes have made the gap smaller). Because of its lower prices (and still quality service), SiteGround is probably still the better option for most “regular” WordPress sites including low-traffic blogs, portfolio sites, brochure websites, etc. SiteGround is also better if you’re just launching your first WordPress site because you’ll get everything you need for a cheaper price. For “serious” websites like high-traffic blogs, eCommerce stores, or membership sites, then WP Engine is probably the better choice because it can better stand up to resource-heavy sites and offers useful features that SiteGround doesn’t. Detailed WP Engine vs SiteGround Comparison Now, let’s go more in-depth by comparing SiteGround vs WP Engine in five key areas: Customer satisfaction Features Performance Support Pricing 😊 Customer Satisfaction Let’s kick things off with a basic question – which host has more satisfied customers? When in doubt, the wisdom of the crowds is usually a pretty good starting point. To get a good understanding of how people feel about a host, we aggregated reviews from several different platforms/surveys including Trustpilot, WhoIsHostingThis, CodeinWP’s hosting survey, and Review Signal. We then averaged out the overall rating from each site (this data is current as of April 2021). The idea is to get an overall picture of how people feel about each host. Here’s the overall satisfaction for each host, standardized to a score of 100: Overall ⭐ CodeinWP WhoIsHosting Trustpilot Review Signal WP Engine 84 ⭐ 89 82 88 77 SiteGround 86 ⭐ 86 96 94 68 Overall, that’s pretty dang close, and you can see that customers are about equally as satisfied with WP Engine as they are with SiteGround. The scores are also pretty good in general, which shows that customers at both hosts are pretty happy. Interestingly, though, the scores are moving in opposite directions from when we first collected this data in early 2020. That is, WP Engine has improved from its older 75% while SiteGround has dropped a bit from its older 89% (perhaps because of its pricing changes). ⚙️ Features Now, let’s compare some key features in a table: Feature WP Engine SiteGround Custom hosting dashboard ✅ ✅ WordPress autoinstaller ✅ ✅ Automatic WordPress core updates ✅ ✅ Server-level caching ✅ ✅ Free SSL certificates ✅ ✅ Staging ✅ ✅ Email hosting ❌ ✅ Automatic daily backups ✅ ✅ On-demand backups ✅ ✅ Built-in CDN ✅ ❌ (has a Cloudflare integration) Free migrations ✅ ✅ Safe automatic plugin updates ✅ (higher-tier plans) ❌ Elasticsearch ✅ (eCommerce plans) ❌ Multisite support ✅ (higher-tier plans) ✅ Local development tool ✅ ❌ Pre-installed WP-CLI ✅ ✅ As you can see, the main “feature” advantage that SiteGround has over WP Engine is that SiteGround offers free and unlimited email hosting (e.g. create a you@yoursite.com email address). WP Engine does not offer email hosting, so you’d need to use a third-party service like Google Workspace or MXroute to add email hosting, which is a small added fee. Other than that, WP Engine is the winner in terms of advanced features because it has some useful options such as: A built-in CDN (SiteGround advertises a CDN, but it’s really just a Cloudflare integration). AI-powered safe plugin updates with automatic rollbacks. Elasticsearch, which is great for WooCommerce stores or other search-heavy sites. Multiple staging environments (Staging & Development). Easy local development and push to live hosting with Local. * Not all of these features are available on the entry-level WP Engine plan – more on pricing later. Additionally, one thing that I didn’t add above is that all WP Engine customers get free access to the Genesis Framework and all StudioPress child themes, which is a nice little bonus. 🏎️ Performance To assess a host’s performance, we like to rely on Review Signal’s performance benchmarks as they implement rigorous testing in several different areas. SiteGround is a regular participant in the benchmarks, but WP Engine has unfortunately not participated in the past couple of years. In the 2020 benchmarks, Siteground earned Top Tier status (the highest designation) in both the <$25 and $25-$50 per month tiers. WP Engine last participated in 2018 and only with its enterprise plan, but it also earned Top Tier status in the 2018 benchmarks. Anecdotally, I’ve also tested these hosts several times myself and found that SiteGround offers excellent performance for the money, but WP Engine holds up better in load test situations. Based on their prices, this is kind of what you’d expect. So I would sum it up like this: SiteGround offers good performance for its price and will be plenty fast for most “regular” WordPress sites. For example, low-traffic blogs, portfolio websites, simple brochure websites, etc…all of those will load fast on SiteGround and you won’t benefit that much from WP Engine. WP Engine is better for high-traffic and/or high-resource sites. For example, high-traffic blogs, eCommerce stores, membership sites, etc. 💬 Support Both WP Engine and SiteGround offer 24/7 support on all plans. For WP Engine, you can get support via: Live chat and ticket on all plans. Phone support on the Professional plan and above. SiteGround

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WP Engine Makes Local Pro Free for All Users – WP Tavern

[ad_1] WP Engine announced today that Local Pro, the commercial upgrade for its local WordPress development product, is now free for all users. Beginning with version 6.0, all features that formerly required a paid subscription are now available with a free Local account. These include Live Links Pro, Instant Reload, Link Checker, and MagicSync. “We believe Local Pro features benefit a broader WordPress developer community and we want to deliver the full value of Local to more developers than ever,” WP Engine Senior Vice President Seth Halpern said. “We want to empower the freedom to create on WordPress by making all Local features available for free.” WP Engine’s recently published research estimates the WordPress economy at $596.7B. The company may be in a better position to gain customers for its hosting products if they make Local completely free, as the tool was designed to seamlessly connect with WP Engine and Flywheel’s hosting. It is currently used by more than 300,000 developers. Over the years Local has gained popularity due to how easy it makes setting up WordPress development and testing environments. Version 6.0 also introduces Local’s new Cloud Backups add-on, which will allow users to backup to Google Drive or Dropbox. Cloud backups can be restored from the Tools tab. The 6.0 release post details a few features that have been moved to new locations in the interface: MagicSync is now a global preference, and the default push/pull experience can be toggled in the Preferences menu.  Live Links Pro, now Live Links, will be accessible for all users by connecting your Local account. Link Checker and Instant Reload have been moved to the Local Add-ons Library.  Xdebug Add-ons have moved from the Utilities tab into the Tools tab within Local. Existing Local Pro subscribers will have access to priority support until September 1, 2021. After that time, dedicated ticket support will be discontinued in favor of directing users to the community forums and help docs. WP Engine is offering customers full or prorated refunds, which will be sent out before July 31, 2021. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link

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