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Happy weekend! It's January 18 and we're covering the FTC's action against GoDaddy, an intervention in the WP Engine vs Automattic legal battle, and more.
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1. FTC Takes Action Against GoDaddy for Alleged Lax Data Security
GoDaddy made headlines this week after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission ordered the hosting company to implement a robust information security program to settle charges that it failed to secure its services and protect its customers from attacks.
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According to the FTC's complaint, GoDaddy's unreasonable security practices included failing to use multi-factor authentication (MFA), manage software updates, log security-related events, segment its network, monitor for security threats (including by failing to use software that could actively detect threats from its many logs), and use file integrity monitoring.
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Duncan Riley at SiliconANGLE highlighted some of GoDaddy's "more dubious moments in security, or more specifically lack thereof," including a November 2021 breach affecting 1.2 million managed WordPress customers and an October 2019 incident involving the exposure of 28,000 hosting accounts.
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"All the company gets for the 'alleged lax data security' is a reprimand," noted Cybernews's Ernestas Naprys in his report.
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GoDaddy addressed the FTC's investigation in a blog post, stating that the company had engaged multiple independent security firms, including Mandiant, to strengthen its network security. The company also noted plans to implement additional improvements beyond those mandated by the settlement.
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2. Developer Files to Intervene in WP Engine vs. Automattic Feud, Cites Financial Ruin
Web developer Michael Willman has filed a motion to intervene in WP Engine and Automattic's legal dispute, claiming he has lost clients and struggled to pay his mortgage and employees since their feud went public last September.
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Posting in the r/WPDrama subreddit, where he is a moderator, Willman said, "I'm representing myself, and as my family and I are forced to live in a travel trailer, we can just park it in California for the duration of the trial. I could be bankrupted by court costs if the court decided this is frivolous and awards them, but I'm willing to take that risk."
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Willman failed to consult with Joost de Valk, Karim Marucchi and Sé Reed before naming them in his court filings as potential members of a proposed WordPress Governance Oversight Board.
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3. Fork or Fiction? Governance Advocates "banned" in Latest Dispute
WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg again took to WordPress.org last week to falsely claim community members are forking WordPress, this time also using the platform to announce plans to deactivate the accounts of five past and present contributors who've called for governance reforms.
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In a video published yesterday, Michael Paulson aka The Primeagen, described Mullenweg's actions as "the pinnacle of insanity."
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As TechCrunch's Paul Sawer noted in his report about Mullenweg's "sarcasm-laden blog post," Joost de Valk and Karim Marucchi haven't announced a fork. "In a statement sent to TechCrunch, de Valk reiterated that at no point were they planning to fork WordPress, with Marucchi conveying the same message on X," Sawer wrote.
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Despite Mullenweg's threat to disable all five WordPress.org accounts, de Valk and Marucchi's accounts remain active. Sé Reed, Heather Burns and Morten Rand-Hendriksen, on the other hand, have been banned.
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- Chris Lewis, Managing Director of Wholegrain Digital, a digital sustainability pioneer, has criticised the decision to shut down the WordPress Sustainability Team, describing it as "regressive and extremely jarring" as wildfires continue to rage in California. "Climate change and events should focus us all on making the world a more sustainable place," Lewis said. "In this case, reducing the environmental impact of the core code behind the circa 500 million websites (roughly 43% of the internet) that use WordPress would set an example for the rest of the internet to follow. Sadly, this will now not be the case – which is not good enough." (Wholegrain Digital
- Matt Mullenweg compared WordPress to a park and upset business owners who believe their efforts to build and extend on the platform has made WordPress what it is today. Though as Mullenweg also posted, "They don't actually care about the core platform in a lifelong missionary way like I do, as evidenced by some trying to 'diversify' into Shopify right now." His tweet prompted Jeffrey Pearce, formerly of the Special Projects team at Automattic, to share an old WooVille comic that shows just how dramatically the WordPress ecosystem has changed in recent years (X | X)
- WordCamp Asia organizers have announced Zeel Thakkar and Pooja Derashri are the inaugural recipients of the Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship for WordCamp Asia, while Makarand G. Mane and Astha Jain have been awarded the event's Diversity Fund Scholarship for 2025. Both scholarships aim to support WordPress contributors from underrepresented communities to attend WordCamp Asia (WP-Content)
- Equalize Digital's Amber Hind has described the WordPress Android app as a "failure." In a blog post detailing her experience trying to use it to publish simple blot posts, she highlights major frustrations, including reliance on the XML-RPC protocol, frequent image upload failures, and lack of support for custom post types, taxonomies, or accessible alt text. "The mobile app feels like beta software. It has a decent visual appearance, and not much else going for it," she writes. Hinds's post caught the attention of Matt Mullenweg, who commented that there were a number of things to improve (Amber Hinds)
- What is WordPress? WP Munich's Hendrik Luehrsen attempts to explain the complex structure of the WordPress ecosystem, highlighting the interplay between its open-source ideals, centralized decision-making, community-driven contributions, and commercial interests — with the help of SEO expert Jono Alderson's mind map visualizing what is (and who owns) WordPress (WP Munich | MindMeister)
- WP Shout's Martin Dubovic muses on the potential implications of Automattic scaling back its contributions to WordPress.org, including the possibility of a split between WordPress.com and the open-source project. Dubovic notes that Automattic, which holds exclusive commercial rights to the WordPress trademark, could create a better forked version that's still called "WordPress." Drawing a parallel to Android and Google, he says, "While Automattic's announcement specifically mentioned making 'WordPress.com much closer to a core WordPress experience,' the reality might be quite the opposite – creating a premium WordPress experience that leaves the open source version behind." (WP Shout)
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- The 200th release of the Gutenberg plugin was released this week, eight years after the first commit in February 2017. It introduces improvements to the Style Book, a new starter pattern UI, component library enhancements, and code quality improvements (Make WordPress Core)
- WordPress 6.8 Design Lead Tammie Lister said the design focus for the upcoming release would focus on "polish and fix" and clearing "needs design feedback" issues in Trac (Make WordPress Design)
- The WordPress Training Team is seeking feedback on a proposal to introduce deputy team reps (Make WordPress Training)
- The Core Performance Team is seeking nominations to replace outgoing reps Emily Clarke (10up) and Felix Arntz (Googe) (Core Performance)
- Automattic's Anne McCarthy is seeking help with the Source of Truth document they compile for every major WordPress release as well as other tasks after their contribution hours were reduced to zero (nomad.blog)
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- Writer Jyolsna J E has left WP Tavern for health reasons, posting on X, "It's been an amazing ride, and I'm super thankful for the experience. Time to focus on my health. Thanks for all the support!" Jyolsna joined the WordPress news site last August (X)
- Do the Woo is celebrating 7 years. Earlier this week, host Bob Dunn announced two new shows, Woo Accessibility Insights and WP Behind the Build, as well as changes to the podcast's roster of hosts (Do the Woo)
- Gutenberg Times' founder Birgit Pauli-Haack also marked the publication's 7th anniversary (Gutenberg Times)
- The first episode of Steve Burge's new PublishPress podcast features Chris Hardie, a former Automattic software engineer who bought a local newspaper (YouTube)
- In a recent interview, Carole Olinger, Head of the CloudFest Hackathon, emphasized the event's commitment to collaboration over competition. In 2024, Olinger's leadership drove significant progress in diversity and inclusion, with 33% of attendees identifying as female or non-binary, representing 26 countries (CloudFest)
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→ Business, Enterprise & Products
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- group.one has acquired GTmetrix, a website performance monitoring tool. The purchase aligns with the hosting and digital marketing services provider's commitment to enhancing the WordPress ecosystem, according to group.one, and follows the company's past acquisitions of WP Rocket, Imagify, and Rank Math SEO (group.one)
- Elementor held its inaugural web.fwrd showcase this week, announcing Editor V4, a major overhaul of its editor, and shared hosting and accessibility updates. The company also launched AI Site Planner, Send (an email and SMS solution), and HelloBiz (a theme for business builders). During a segment on Elementor and WordPress, Miriam Schwab, Head of WordPress Relations, highlighted the company's investments in the project, including full-time contributors to the Plugin and Theme review teams (YouTube | Elementor | The WP Minute)
- Kestrel has acquired 11 WooCommerce extensions from 99w, a web development agency. As part of the acquisition, 99w founder David Allsop has joined Kestrel, a venture founded by the co-founders of SkyVerge. Since its launch in early 2024, Kestrel has amassed a collection of 47 plugins for WooCommerce (Kestrel)
- Human Made has been accredited as a Living Wage Employer (Human Made)
- Among Newspack's 2024 highlights was the launch of a small advisory board comprising publishers to inform the future direction of the Automattic-owned platform (Newspack)
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→ Plugins, Products & Themes
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- OG premium themes pioneer Brian Gardner called on designers to prioritize accessibility (Brian Gardner)
- WooCommerce's upcoming developer office hours session will focus on the future of the eCommerce platform's themes (Woo Developer Blog)
- WordPress.com launched a Fediverse Reactions block and the ability for comments to federate (WordPress.com)
- Google's Felix Arntz demoed a new AI Playground feature in his AI Services plugin, which makes AI centrally available in WordPress (YouTube)
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- WordCamp Europe 2025's call for speakers closes on January 31 (WordCamp Europe)
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✈️ Rich Tabor traveled 92,000 miles last year (rich.blog)
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🙂 Nathan Wrigley launched The Nice Show with WS Forms's Mark Westguard (WP Builds)
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📢 Kevin Geary argued trademarks are antithetical to the spirit of open source (X)
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📈 David Darke shared the highs and lows of scaling an agency (WP Tavern)
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🧱 Dan Maby stopped using the block editor after a speed build challenge (Dan Maby)
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🤖 Keanan Koppenhaver says AI leading to faster WordPress development is overblown (Webmasters.FM)
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