Oliver Sild, CEO of Patchstack, shared on X  an email he received from WordCamp Central explaining why Patchstack’s application to sponsor WordCamp Europe 2025 was rejected.

The email, written by Felipe Santos, detailed a shift in the sponsorship process. It stated that “the Community team is transitioning from a first-come, first-served model to a new approach. While the sponsorship process will remain familiar, we are placing greater emphasis on contributions and the relationships companies maintain with the WordPress project. We recognize that this shift may feel frustrating, but sponsoring WordCamps is a privilege, and we aim to increase expectations in this area moving forward.”

Santos suggested that Patchstack pledge to Five for the Future as it “would be an excellent way to demonstrate commitment and build trust within the community.” He added that they will re-evaluate Patchstack’s eligibility “once significant contributions have been established.”

Sild countered that “the tier we applied to still has 6 spots open. I know companies who were accepted for sponsorship after we were rejected who also don’t have five for the future.”

Patchstack is a leading name in WordPress security with a mission to make open-source safer and raised $5 million in its Series A funding round last year.  They published 76% of all known WordPress-related security vulnerabilities and became the largest CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) Naming Authority by volume in 2023. Their Zero-Day Bug Bounty Program awarded the highest bounty in WordPress history – $14,400- to John Blackbourn, who exposed a critical vulnerability in the LiteSpeed Cache plugin last month.

Sild also shared that Patchstack contributed to Five for the Future till the person who pledged the hours via Patchstack left the company. Sild also highlighted Patchstack’s other contributions – reporting vulnerabilities in plugins and ensuring the security of the ecosystem, and running a managed VDP platform built in collaboration with the European Union. 

He continued, “Over 50% of all new security vulnerability disclosures in the WordPress ecosystem were found & reported by our community of security researchers. All of the validating, triaging and coordination was done by our team for the WordPress ecosystem for free. That’s 4566 individual vulnerabilities in 2024 alone.”

Interestingly, there is nothing about contributing to the Five for the Future mentioned in the WordCamp Sponsorship Handbook, WordCamp Sponsorship Agreement or WordCamp Europe’s Call for Sponsors page. Sponsorship packages are still open for the 2025 event at the time of publishing this article.

Sild’s post sparked widespread criticism about the rejection and the community soon came out to support Sild. Simon Harper, owner of SRH Design shared, “It is ridiculous to think that Oliver, the Patchstack team and volunteers have “not contributed enough” to WordPress.

Taco Verdo of Emilia Capital was disappointed, “Sometimes I really don’t understand what we’re doing in the WordPress community team… :(“

Francesca Marano,  Head of Partnership at Patchstack, dubbed it “Another sad day open source”. She shared, “As someone who was active for a long time in the community team and was around when the Five for the Future program was created, I am surprised and saddened by a few things: 1. Not having the change publicly discussed in the community make blog. 2. Not having the criteria added to the sponsorship page (Still shows only GPL) 3. Relying on FFtF data, which has been unreliable since the beginning. I was still active in the team when we started discussing how to improve the program,”

Todd E Jones, founder of Copyflight, tweeted, “Right now I fail to see how A8 has real concerns for security or accessibility. Dismissive of experts in both areas.”  Web developer Robert DeVore also shared his thoughts, “Without programs like Patchstack, the WordPress ecosystem would be a wasteland (worse than it is now). Anybody who doesn’t see that is a blind idiot.”

Co-founder of Nevma, Takis Bouyouris, had this to say: “The #WordPress Community needs to stop being ridiculed like this. Once we had hard and fair rules in @WCEurope. Observe the GPL, observe the CoC. Now contributing to the community becomes some convoluted madness where you cannot contribute unless you contribute enough based on a vague and untrustworthy metrics.”

WPTuts tweeted, “Sadly, this seems indicative of WordPress (as a project/company) at the moment: hell-bent on alienating the community and contributors who have made WordPress what it is today and are a significant reason for its success and popularity. Unless you tick those boxes, you’re out!”

Matt Mullenweg termed the email “crappy” and promised to look into it. He commented, “I agree that’s a crappy email to get, and it’s also not 100% accurate. Thanks for raising this issue, I’ll look into it. Thank you for all you and your colleagues do trying to make WordPress and its plugins and themes better.”

WordCamp Europe has faced criticism in the past for diversity issues in speaker lineups and organizing teams, but this marks the first major controversy regarding sponsorships. The WordCamp Europe Organizing Team shared that they have no information on this as WordCamp Central handles the sponsorship application processing.

(I’m waiting to hear from the Patchstack team and WordCamp Central and will update their responses).

Update: Oliver Sild expressed disappointment, stating: “Right now, the last thing we’ve been told is that we’re not eligible to sponsor any WordPress events. Honestly, it’s a pity, because for us WordCamp EU has been our “home base” and it has been a our annual tradition for years to bring the entire team together. We had 20 people in Torino for a full week. We had to change the plans for this year and we’ll organise this year gathering elsewhere – so our presence at WCEU will definitely be smaller. Our team is involved with organising WordCamps in Poland, Lithuania, and across Europe – I’m sure they’ll continue to contribute. We have been also reached out by so many people who hope we’ll organise a side-event for WCEU or even start a new developer focused conference. We are seriously thinking about both.”

Oliver also mentioned learning that some companies were selected to sponsor WordCamps despite not contributing to the Five for the Future initiative. Despite Patchstack’s direct inquiries, they received no further clarification or explanation about the decision to reject them or the comment from Matt about the email not being “100% accurate.”

Patchstack also signed up for Five for the Future. They will  sponsor 3 contributors for a total of 4 hours per week across Community, Documentation, Meta and Training teams.

Full Text of the Email Received by Oliver Sild & Team: “Hi Francesca and Oliver, Thank you for your patience as we continue to refine our approach to WordPress event sponsorships. I understand your interest in learning more about the process and what steps might strengthen future sponsorship opportunities. To provide some context, the Community team is transitioning from a first-come, first-served model to a new approach. While the sponsorship process will remain familiar, we are placing greater emphasis on contributions and the relationships companies maintain with the WordPress project. We recognize that this shift may feel frustrating, but sponsoring WordCamps is a privilege, and we aim to increase expectations in this area moving forward. For instance, I noticed that Patchstack has not yet made a pledge to Five for the Future, a program that enables companies to contribute to the WordPress project through dedicated volunteer hours. Taking this step would be an excellent way to demonstrate commitment and build trust within the community. WordPress thrives because of its contributors and your participation would make a meaningful impact. Once significant contributions have been established, we are happy to re-evaluate your eligibility for financial sponsorship of WordPress events. Thank you for your continued interest in supporting the WordPress community. If you have any further questions or need assistance with the next steps, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I hope that helps and Happy New Year! — Felipe Santos [email protected]”

WordPress.com has introduced Studio Sync, a new feature for its local development app, Studio. Launched last year as a free, open-source tool for Mac and Windows users, Studio now integrates seamlessly with WordPress.com through this update.

Studio Sync allows developers to effortlessly synchronize local, staging, and live environments with just a few clicks, bridging the gap between local development and live site hosting. The feature also supports team collaboration, enabling multiple developers to connect their local Studio sites to a shared WordPress.com site. 

Currently Studio Sync is available only to users with WordPress.com Business or Commerce plan. Interested users can check the documentation to learn more about this feature. 

After releasing Studio, WordPress.com had released the Studio Assistant – a multilingual, AI-powered chatbot that simplifies development tasks through an intuitive chat interface.

The Themes and Hosting teams has unveiled their representatives for 2025. 

Themes Team Reps 

In November, the Themes Team announced their search for community members familiar with WordPress theme development to serve as representatives for 2025. The call for nominations was open to everyone, allowing individuals to nominate themselves or others.

Interestingly, several comments on the announcement post suggested re-nominating the 2024 representatives. After consulting with current and former team representatives, the Themes Team decided to retain the existing team reps for another term:

• Alexandru Cosmin from Romania is sponsored by Extend Themes as a part-time reviewer. He released his first WordPress theme in 2008, and since then, has played diverse roles—serving as a reviewer, developer, and team representative.
• Ganga Kafle from Nepal is a full-time WordPress contributor sponsored by Rank Math. Active in the community since 2012, he is an organizer for WordCamp Asia 2025 and a moderator for WordPress-related podcasts like Go With WP.
• Shiva Shanker Bhatta from Nepal is the founder/CEO of AF Themes. With over a decade of experience in WordPress, he focuses on themes, plugins, and community contributions.

In 2024, the Themes Team closed a total of 39,796 tickets, with Alexandru Cosmin, Ganga Kafle, and Shiva Shanker Bhatta collectively handling 1,708 reviews. Ganga Kafle and Alexandru Cosmin were the top reviewers last year.

Hosting Team Reps

After a Call for Nominations, four candidates were proposed for the Hosting Team Rep positions: Matthias Pfefferle, Javier Casares, Zunaid Amin, and Lucas Radke. However, Matthias and Javier declined the opportunity. Following an anonymous survey, the team announced the following representatives for 2025:

• Zunaid Amin from Bangladesh is joining as a new Hosting Team Rep. He is a WordPress Engineer at Rocket.Net.
• Lucas Radke from Germany is the Product Manager at WordPress VIP. He is continuing as Hosting Team Rep.

Automattician Alex Shiels of the Meta team has announced the resumption of WordPress.org services after the holiday break of two weeks. Users can now register new accounts, submit plugins, themes, and photos, and review plugins once again.

Last month, Matt Mullenweg declared WordPress.org’s first-ever holiday break. He said, “In order to give myself and the many tired volunteers around WordPress.org a break for the holidays, we’re going to be pausing a few of the free services currently offered.” 

Initially, WP Engine was the sole exception, retaining full access to WordPress.org. Later, user registrations were reopened to support WordCamps following a ticket raised by Joost de Valk of Emilia Capital on WordPress GitHub. The ticket highlighted that a WP.org account is required to purchase WordCamp tickets.

Matt did not share a specific date for resuming the services, stating, “I hope to find the time, energy, and money to reopen all of this sometime in the new year.”

To create a new account, users must provide their email address and a username. The registration form includes three checkboxes: confirming acceptance of the Privacy Policy (mandatory), subscribing to the WordPress Announcements mailing list, and the infamous pineapple pizza. Only accepting the Privacy Policy is required to proceed.

Nick Hamze has called for making WordPress themes exciting and the web weird again. “WordPress desperately needs your creativity, your weird ideas, your willingness to break the visual rules. The future of the web shouldn’t be a monochrome landscape of identical layouts.”, he said.

He believes there are plenty of good themes in the Repository but no great themes with “designs that break the mold and spark excitement.” 

We need more themes that make people say “Wow!” or “That’s different!” rather than “That’s clean and professional.” The web needs more personality, more risk-taking, more fun.

According to him, great themes should:

• Have a distinct point of view
• Embrace specific aesthetics boldly
• Design for specific use cases
• Break some rules thoughtfully

Hamze’s call comes amid growing uncertainty about the future of WordPress themes. While the repository now hosts over 13,000 free themes, recent community discussions have often cast a grim outlook.Some of the discussions/articles published on the fate of themes include:

• The Theme Is Dead, Long Live the Theme
• WordPress Themes Are Dead
• The End of WordPress Themes is in Sight
• Will Page Builders & Full Site Editing Be the Death of WordPress Themes?
• Is WordPress Theme Business Dead?
• WordPress Themes Are Dead. Long Live WordPress Themes!

Vova Feldman of Freemius too recently highlighted the stagnation in the WordPress theme market: “The WordPress Theme Market is in big trouble! Over the past six years, the annual single-site pricing for themes has shown little to no growth. In fact, the average price has decreased by 9%, dropping from $55.78 in 2019 to $50.75 in 2024.”

Many will remember the excitement generated by the Ollie theme, but it faced pushback from the Theme Review team. Though Matt Mullenweg, Josepha Haden Chomphosy and Justin Tadlock supported the theme, in the end, it was featured on the repository only after dropping its innovative onboarding features.

Accessibility Challenges

Amber Hinds, CEO of Equalize Digital (the team behind the Equalize Digital  Accessibility Checker plugin) noticed some accessibility issues with Hamze’s post and she drew attention to them. She said, “WordPress themes need more #a11y and expected interfaces that convert. Not “weird” designs that confuse people or kill time on site.”

Matt Mullenweg joined the conversation and replied, “You’re tipping into net negative contribution territory. Like at what point do you say a Rothko painting isn’t high contrast enough?”

However, this sparked backlash. Katie Keith of Barn2Plugins questioned, “Why would the leader of the WordPress project say something so disrespectful to one of the community’s top accessibility experts simply for highlighting some accessibility issues? THAT is tipping into net negative contribution territory.”

WordPress developer Earle Davies also shared his thoughts, “Wonder why accessibility in WordPress sucks? When experts highlight accessibility flaws, it’s considered a net negative contribution by the leader of the project. No surprise a8c employees argue why they choose design >accessibility. WP/GB accessibility sucks. Indisputable fact.”

Accessibility Expert Alex Stine tweeted, “Matt has always taken this stand-offish approach to accessibility and I quit trying to figure out why.” He also said, “Accessibility and inclusion are important. Sure, themes should be eye popping fun. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be accessible too.”

Accessibility Advocate Anne Bovelett added, “If a theme is not accessible by contrast, it may look like a Porsche Carrera to the site owner and a good part of the visitors, but it will be a Porsche with windows that can’t be seen through from inside nor outside with doorknobs that won’t budge, to a large percentage of visitors.” She also shared her YouTube video showing examples of how many people experience the web and suggested organizing Design Days like Core Days. 

Designer Brian Gardner had this to say: ” I’m all for creative WordPress themes—whether bold and quirky or plain but practical. As far as I’m concerned, they should ALL be accessible. At a bare minimum, every theme should pass basic color contrast requirements.”

“Rothko should be fine as long as no one needs to access the painting to order medical supplies or pay their water bills. Although, a text/audio alternative to the painting is very beneficial for those with low or no vision.”, tweeted Steve Jones, Co-Owner and CTO at Equalize Digital.

Jenni McKinnon, CEO of WP Pros(e) asked, “If the Rothko painting was on a website, then wouldn’t the WCAG point to what is (or isn’t) “high contrast enough?”” while Courtney Robertson of GoDaddy emphasised: “Democratizing publishing is for all. WordPress must ensure no one is excluded from creating or consuming content.”

Kevin Geary of Digital Gravy also does not support Nick Hamze. He said, “WP “themes” are dead. It’s a dead concept. If you don’t realize this, you’re completely out of touch with how sites are built and managed. It’s especially antithetical to the fundamentals of a block editor….WP needs actual leadership and real improvements to the software. We’d all LOVE a “sanitized and professional” wp-admin right about now. “Weird themes,” not so much.”

According to Carolina Nymark of Yoast (former team representative for the Themes Team), “Themes can be art and experimental and still be accessible and high quality. You just have to decide that is what you want to build.” And for WordPress developer Brian Coords, “True creativity often thrives within constraints. Weird for weirdness sake is not art or self-expression. Creating something meaningful that inspires a shared experience between people (regardless of how they navigate the web) should be the ideal.”

Discussions are still going on about accessibility. Meanwhile, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) fined AI accessibility startup accessiBe to pay $1M for misleading advertising. 

The Indian WordPress community is set for an exciting start to 2025, with three WordCamps scheduled for January, as per WordCamp Central. India has a thriving WordPress community and  according to the WordPress Meetup global trends report (January 2023 to June 2024), published by the Community Team, Indian cities Ahmedabad and Mumbai recorded the highest engagement for in-person events.

WordCamp Ahmedabad

The fifth edition of WordCamp Ahmedabad will take place on January 3 and 4, 2025, at the AUDA Auditorium in Shela, Gujarat. The first day is dedicated to WordPress contribution and Showcase while the schedule for the second day features a single track of sessions, covering topics such as WordPress contributions, digital marketing, accessibility, and AI.

The event’s mascot, Wapuu, is inspired by Gujarat’s International Kite Festival—Uttarayan—symbolizing the limitless possibilities of WordPress. Adding to the excitement, the organizers have announced a Social Media Contest with prizes for the best photo, reel, and group selfie, encouraging attendees to share their experience creatively.

WordCamp Kolhapur

The first edition of WordCamp Kolhapur is scheduled for January 11 and 12, 2025, at D.Y. Patil School of Engineering and Management, Kasaba Bawada, Maharashtra. As a debut event, it has generated significant interest.

A few sponsorship slots, including Silver, Bronze, and Micro levels, are still open, and limited no-swag tickets are available for those interested in attending.

WordCamp Kolkata

WordCamp Kolkata will return for its third edition on January 18, 2025, at Viveka Tirtha, West Bengal. Previously held in 2019 and 2022, this edition promises an enriching experience.

The event will feature sessions on eCommerce, translation, accessibility, and design, along with workshops on Gutenberg, WP-CLI, headless WordPress, and core contributions, conducted across two tracks.

The event is still accepting Sponsors and Media Partners.

With these three events on the calendar, January 2025 promises to be a remarkable month for the WordPress community in India.

The WordPress Community Team has proposed hosting women-centric events on International Women’s Day through local WordPress communities to celebrate, empower, and inspire women. These events are envisioned as platforms where women can connect, share experiences, and enhance their skills in an inclusive and supportive environment.

These events could take various forms, such as networking sessions, workshops, talks, learning activities, or mentorship opportunities. Local communities interested in organizing such events can apply through the  Creative WordPress Events Form. Approved communities will receive a dedicated website and a stipend of $100 – $500 USD to support the event.

The team is also seeking volunteer designers to create a banner and logo for the event, as well as a sticker sheet featuring female Wapuu designs.

Pooja Derashri shared the vision of the team regarding this event: “By organizing women-centric WordPress events on International Women’s Day, we can spark meaningful conversations and encourage more women to join, lead, and contribute to WordPress. It’s an opportunity to strengthen our community and amplify women’s voices in open source.”

The WordPress community has a history of organizing women-only events/initiatives. Notably, WordPress 6.4 and WordPress 5.6 were led by teams composed of women and underrepresented gender groups.

Chris Christoff of the Plugins Team has published the roadmap of Phase 2 of the Plugin Check plugin. According to the statistics shared at this year’s State of the Word, 41% fewer issues were reported per approved plugin after launching the Plugin Check tool, enabling the team to approve 138% more plugins each week and significantly reducing the review queue length. 

In the words of David Perez, “Plugin Check is a tool for testing whether your plugin meets the required standards for the WordPress.org plugin directory. With this plugin, you will be able to run most of the checks used for new submissions and check if your plugin meets the requirements.”

David Perez also shared that the Plugin Check plugin significantly reduced the time for reviews, bringing the average wait time down from 37 weeks to 9 weeks, even as plugin submissions have almost doubled.

In Phase 1, Plugin Check was released to the community as a plugin available through WordPress.org. It currently has 2000+ Active installations. In October this year, it became a requirement for new plugin submissions to the Plugin Directory and for relisting plugins that were removed due to security issues.

Phase 2 of Plugin Check will expand its coverage to include updates made by plugin authors to plugins already listed in the Directory. Planned improvements for the second phase include enhanced documentation, more intuitive messaging, a revamped UI, conditional rule application, the addition of an experimental checks feature, easier output customization for better integration, and retroactive directory integration.

The Plugins Team revealed that the Plugin Check project also aims to help plugin authors keep up with the latest best practices by allowing them to quickly scan their plugins for performance improvements and best practice opportunities. The PCP team will also collaborate with other teams to support plugin authors.

Currently, Plugin Check evaluates plugins based on best practices across five categories: General, Plugin Repo, Security, Performance, and Accessibility. The Plugin Team encourages all plugin authors to integrate Plugin Check into their development workflows. 

Specific rollout timelines and processes for Phase 2 will be shared in a future Make Plugins post as its release approaches. Those interested in contributing to the plugin can do so on its GitHub repository.

Details on the specific timeline and processes for Phase 2 will be shared in an upcoming ‘Make Plugins’ post as the release date approaches. Those interested in contributing to the project can do so through its GitHub repository.

Also check out Pascal Birchler’s post on Why you should start using Plugin Check.

WordCamp Europe has released tickets for the 2025 edition of the event scheduled for June 5-7 in Basel, Switzerland.

There are two types of tickets: the General ticket, priced at €50, and the Micro-Sponsor ticket, which costs €250. Both options include access to all sessions and Contributor Day on June 5, though separate registration is required for Contributor Day.

The Micro-Sponsor ticket, priced closer to the actual cost of attendance, is a great way to support the event if you’re able to contribute more. Tickets are refundable, and you can transfer ownership by editing the attendee details using the link provided in your purchase confirmation email. To purchase tickets, you’ll now need a WordPress.org account.

WordCamp Europe 2025 Diversity Scholarship

WordCamp Europe 2025 is introducing a Diversity Scholarship, an initiative previously exclusive to WordCamp Asia. This program has been extended to the Europe event following recommendations from members of WordPress Community Support PBC and Queeromattic to allocate surplus funds from the 2024 flagship event budgets toward DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging) initiatives.

To qualify, applicants must be active contributors to the WordPress project, have never attended a flagship WordCamp (Asia, US, or Europe), require financial assistance to attend, and belong to an underrepresented demographic among open-source contributors. Applicants should also demonstrate a commitment to using their experience to help grow their local WordPress community or the WordPress community in Europe.

The scholarship covers travel expenses to Basel from the recipient’s home city, accommodation during the event, and a ticket to WordCamp Europe 2025. However, it does not include airport transfers, meals, or other incidental expenses.

Applications for the scholarship will be accepted until January 31, 2025.

For more details, visit the WordCamp Europe website.

Last year’s event in Torino, Italy, saw nearly 3,000 attendees, and the 2025 edition is expected to draw between 3,500 and 4,500 participants.

The Training Team has launched a new course on Learn WordPress specifically for designers: Beginner WordPress Designer. This learning pathway is crafted to help designers new to WordPress gain the skills needed to create professional websites.

The course covers essential topics such as building a style guide, understanding block themes, and adopting a block-first approach to design. It also teaches best practices in web design, theme customization, layout composition, and working with media blocks.

This learning pathway is free and open to everyone and consists of 24 lessons organized into 6 sections, requiring approximately 4 hours to complete:

• Introduction to designing with WordPress
• Getting to know WordPress
• Web design best practices
• Customizing themes and templates
• Layout composition
• Working with media blocks

Lesley Sim, Co-founder of Newsletter Glue tweeted, “This looks so good and so useful.”

Learn WordPress is an educational initiative by the Training team aimed at helping users of all levels improve their WordPress skills.

On Christmas Eve, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg took to Reddit, causing quite a stir by asking what kind of drama he should create in 2025. He posted, “What drama should I create in 2025? I’m very open to suggestions. Should we stop naming releases after jazz musicians and name them after Drake lyrics? Eliminate all dashboard notices? Take over any plugins into core? Change from blue to purple? I think we can brainstorm together and come up with way better things than I could on my own. Also, Merry Christmas! ”

What drama should I create in 2025?
byu/photomatt inWPDrama

The post quickly amassed over 500 comments. However, the community was far from being amused, and a good portion of the replies urged him to stop posting, step down, seek professional help, or take a break and avoid creating any drama. “For someone in your position, creating extraneous drama for these people is not only disrespectful, it’s outright psychopathic to the extent that it affects their ability to work and be productive.”, read one comment from Stubby_Shillelagh.

Redditor WillmanRacing referenced a Sherman Act violation, suggesting sarcastically, “I have a fantastic idea for some drama we can get up to. Why don’t we create a charitable foundation governing our open source software product, instead of our for-profit company. Why don’t we also operate our main website as its own separate entity, with employees and volunteers provided by yet another entity. Then, why dont we have all of these entities take action against one of our competitors and their entire customer base, refusing to do business with any customers until they stop working with our competitor. Why don’t we ban ALL of those people from our services, and try to compel them to use our service instead?” 

Many expressed frustration and hoped for a return to normalcy. One Redditor shared, “I’ve been a huge fan of WordPress for the longest time, and I hate to see all this drama happening. Learning WordPress is actually how I landed my first official programming job. I really hope everything will get back to normal soon.”

Responding to calls for taking a break, Matt quoted Shakespeare’s Macbeth: “Life’s but a walking shadow, A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Matt also hinted that some exciting things are on the way. He said, “I’m really excited for people to experience Phase 3 of Gutenberg, things like real-time co-editing done completely peer-to-peer with WebRTC.” 

Another person chimed in, “Matt is doing to WordPress.org what broadcom is doing to VMware. WordPress used to be such a happy place with a rich thriving developer community, but now everyone is scared shitless that Matt will do a rug pull because he feels like it.”

It (WordPress) has a very special place in my heart, as well. I think WordPress’ brightest days are ahead of it.

– Matt Mullenweg

Matt was also criticized for not grasping the gravity of the situation. One Redditor said, “How can you write such a post in a time like this? The WordPress community needs stability and a leadership to trust again. It doesn’t matter if you want to be funny, this is not the right time. Do you think people see this post and think, “yeah, that’s a project I want to contribute to?” Contributors are leaving, even getting banned. Clients are worried. Users looking for alternatives. A court is involved. But your actions don’t really look like you get the seriousness of this. It’s really sad to watch.”

Another Redditor too shared this opinion and Matt replied, “I hope you see how much this is unique to WPE and not something that has happened before or since with others. Silver Lake holds things for 4-6 years and then flips and moves on. Myself and many others are in this for decades. We have seen their type come and go in the past.”

When a Redditor asked about choosing Shopify or sticking with WordPress, Matt recommended, “Use WordPress if you value freedom, autonomy, and want to be in complete control of your digital future. Shopify can be expensive but a good proprietary solution if you want to do exactly what they offer and not color outside the lines too much.” Most of Matt’s comments in Reddit were downvoted. 

Some supported Matt’s recent actions. “Thanks for your “drama”. Had it been successful, this would have set the best precedent ever for the all the hyper-capitalist leeches leeching off the free work of others. But everyone is selfish, and short-sighted. They should have taken the opportunity to back you, and dealt with you later, but alas. All fools.”, read one comment.

Another one said, “If you want to make the change you claim you want to see and Matt take a more ethical stance on his business practices, then maybe give WordPress back to the people for free as it was intended. Until then we should appreciate the guy who brought us to the dance. Does not mean we need to like him, more successful people are not liked, something very sad about watching a group of people attack a man who gave 50% of the net to the world for free.”

The community also offered Matt various suggestions, both serious and playful:

• Provide steady leadership.
• Listen to the community.
• Show restraint and consider how his actions affect the rest of the community.
• Publicly promise that no plugins from the Repo will be taken over.
• Endorse a successor to WordPress
• Federate the Repos and take the hosting costs off Automattic.
• Introduce a built-in way to create a simple contact form 
• Hand over WordPress.org to a community-run group.
• Make Gutenberg absolutely awesome.
• Offer WordPress with three options right out of the box: Classic only, Gutenberg only, or both.
• Name WordPress releases after meteors/poets/songwriters.
• Charge $.05 per request to anything at WordPress.org

Regarding the ongoing drama, Matt said, “We’ll look back on the WPE drama next year as something that seemed like a big deal at the time but isn’t that notable in the grand arc of history.”

 He signed off, saying, “I really do enjoy talking with people on the internet, even if we don’t always agree, and I appreciate everyone taking the time to share their perspective. Forums like this is how I got my start as a teenager. If you think Reddit is spicy, you should have seen Usenet and IRC back in the day! I hope you all have an amazing Christmas and very happy new year.”

The discussion spilled over to Twitter, too. Ryan Duff dubbed it “Just another day of very unhealthy and toxic behavior from WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg.”

Takis Bouyouris tweeted, “Either Matt has crossed some sort of personal Rubicon, or it is hard to imagine how such pettiness could have been the attribute of one who lead the project for so many years. Being lonely at the top, detached from reality and without healthy consult is a sign of a fading ruler. The Autumn of the Patriarch, by Gabriel García Márquez is a great novel on the topic.” 

Duane Storey tweeted, “Matt looking down at the #WordPress community on Reddit this Christmas eve, wondering why we are all still singing and enjoying ourselves without our WordPress.org toys.”

Kellie Peterson exclaimed, “What fresh hell? This is what Matt Mullenweg is doing on Christmas Eve. He could be spending it with his alleged many godchildren, his mother, and his sister but instead he’s sowing chaos.”

Joost de Valk, co-founder of the Yoast SEO plugin has called for Breaking the Status Quo of the WordPress world. This comes in the wake of Matt Mullenweg’s announcement of a holiday break for WordPress.org and the ongoing Automattic-WP Engine legal dispute.

de Valk said, “We, the WordPress community, need to decide if we’re ok being led by a single person who controls everything, and might do things we disagree with, or if we want something else. For a project whose tagline is “Democratizing publishing”, we’ve been very low on exactly that: democracy.”

Referring to Mullenweg as a BDFL (Benevolent Dictator For Life), de Valk argued that Matt is “no longer Benevolent, and because of that, speaking up in public is a risk.” 

de Valk acknowledged that due to Yoast’s contributions to WordPresss, he “did get some say in where WordPress went, though never officially, and never when it went in directions that Matt disagreed with. Over time, that influence became less as Matt tightened his grip on the project. I think that tightening was in part a cramp. Wanting to control more what people were working on, because the project wasn’t progressing fast enough in the direction he wanted it to go in.”

I think it’s time to let go of the cult and change project leadership. I’ve said it before: we need a “board”. We can’t wait with doing that for the years it will take for Automattic and WP Engine to fight out this lawsuit.

– Joost de Valk

He said, “I’m still, to this day, very thankful for what Matt has created. I would love to work with him to fix all this. But it’s clear now, that we can no longer have him be our sole leader, although I’d love it if we could get him to be among the leaders.”

He put forward 5 steps that must be taken fast: 

• A WordPress foundation-like entity consisting of a board with people from diverse backgrounds leads the project.
• WordPress.org and key community assets are transferred to the foundation.
• The WordPress trademark is made public domain or managed for free use.
• Companies and individuals can sponsor the foundation, receiving perks like listings on a hosting page.
• Small teams are formed for Architecture, Product, Events, etc., with proper governance.

He also suggested “Federated and Independent Repositories” to decentralize the official WordPress repository. He said, “Matt might not agree to my first five points above. However, we can still work on the Federated and Independent Repositories without his permission because, frankly, we don’t need it.”

He revealed that he’s already in talks with other community figures like Karim Marucchi, CEO of Crowd Favorite. He is also willing to take up the mantle of the movement if needed. 

He said, “I’m here, and willing to lead through this transition. I do have the time, the energy and the money needed to fund myself doing it. I’ve worked in this industry and this community for close to 20 years and it’s very dear to me. Thanks in large part to the WordPress project, I have the privileged position to be able to drop and/or delegate some of the stuff I’m working on and start working on this.”

Karim Marucchi’s Vision For a New WordPress Business Roadmap

Karim Marucchi of Crowd Favorite backed Joost de Valk. He said, “the current situation has jeopardized the very fabric of this ecosystem.”

We need to prevent a single entity from doing to WordPress what befell other open-source projects that shrank or died while protecting one party’s market position.

– Karim Marucchi

He proposed five essential critical paths to concentrate on:

• Securing the supply chain & start modernization 
• Convening, defining & creating the Commons 
• Defining the roadmap as “the” Open-Web’s Operating System.
• Open Source as a hub for innovation
• Focusing on leading data ownership, privacy, and accessibility

de Valk and Marucchi will get together with other community leaders in January 2025 to decide the way forward. 

Response From Matt

Matt commented under de Valk’s blog post: “I think this is a great idea for you to lead and do under a name other than WordPress. There’s really no way to accomplish everything you want without starting with a fresh slate from a trademark, branding, and people point of view.”

Response From the Community 

Joost de Valk found support from other community leaders too. 

Brian Gardner of WP Engine supported de Valk, tweeting, “Cosign. (My personal op and b/c I WordPress.)”

WP Engine also came out in support. 

Michele Butcher-Jones of Can’t Speak Geek also shared her thoughts:

Katie Keith of Barn2Plugins shared, “Wow, I never expected someone as high profile as  @jdevalk to speak out so openly against the current leadership of WordPress. However, I completely agree with his analysis of the situation and his proposed solutions.”

WordPress Core Committer Tonya Mork said, “I’ve been mostly quiet, other than publicly pausing my WordPress Core contributions. That ends today. I stand with  @jdevalk and @karimmarucchi for the “hold this community together” effort. Publicly sharing my support.”

Taco Verdo of Emilia Capital had this to say:

Daniel Schutzsmith, Jon Brown, Karissa Skirmont, Blake Whittle, Duane Storey, Vova Feldman and Takis Bouyouris also came out in support of de Valk.  

Andrei Lupu was, however, against the development. He said, “Let me nuke my WP career with an honest question: why would we follow a board of people who sold their products when they peaked? No one is perfect and I’m not sure if switching from one person’s vision to multiple people fighting for influence of a “board” is a good thing.”

@ViaEth also supports Matt. “All of this started after WPE couldn’t continue to leech off the #WordPress branding. All of these blog posts and whining just proves @photomatt right. Companies want to suck WP dry if this was purely about altruistic reason they would just fork the codebase and fuck off.”

Jesse Nickles, an SEO enthusiast, also does not believe in de Valk. He said, “Despite my desire to want to give you another chance as a “thought leader” or whatever else, 2 things are seared into my memory… first, the fact that Yoast SEO was always, and still is, one of the most dishonest and tricky plugins in WordPress history.”

Morten Rand-Hendriksen published After WordPress. According to him, there are two paths forward for the WordPress community:

• Mullenweg releases his iron grip on the project, brings in proper governance, creates a more equitable ecosystem economy, and steps into a role of visionary leader instead of micromanager. 
• The community organizes, takes every lesson learned over the past 20+ years, combines with a vision for what the world will need going into the next 10 years, and builds a new platform to stand on.

For the first time, Matt Mullenweg has announced a holiday break for WordPress.org services. In his blog post, he said, “In order to give myself and the many tired volunteers around WordPress.org a break for the holidays, we’re going to be pausing a few of the free services currently offered.”

The paused services include new account registrations on WordPress.org, plugin reviews, and new submissions to the plugin, theme, and photo directories.

During this time, WP Engine will retain full access to WordPress.org. Matt explained, “As you may have heard, I’m legally compelled to provide free labor and services to WP Engine thanks to the success of their expensive lawyers, so in order to avoid bothering the court I will say that none of the above applies to WP Engine, so if they need to bypass any of the above please just have your high-priced attorneys talk to my high-priced attorneys and we’ll arrange access, or just reach out directly to me on Slack and I’ll fix things for you.”

Matt has not provided a specific date for resuming these services, stating, “I hope to find the time, energy, and money to reopen all of this sometime in the new year. Right now much of the time I would spend making WordPress better is being taken up defending against WP Engine’s legal attacks. Their attacks are against Automattic, but also me individually as the owner of WordPress.org, which means if they win I can be personally liable for millions of dollars of damages.”

He concluded the blog post by saying, “If you would like to fund legal attacks against me, I would encourage you to sign up for WP Engine services, they have great plans and pricing starting at $50/mo and scaling all the way up to $2,000/mo. If not, you can use literally any other web host in the world that isn’t suing me and is offering promotions and discounts for switching away from WP Engine.”

The official WordPress Twitter account echoed the announcement: “In order to give tired volunteers around WordPress.org a break for the holidays, we’re going to be pausing a few of the free services currently offered…And to be super clear for the court so we’re not held in contempt, none of this applies to @wpengine.”

Some have applauded the much-needed break for volunteers, while others expressed concern over the indefinite suspension of services. 

WordPress User Registration Reopened to Support WordCamps 

Since a WordPress.org account is mandatory to buy WordCamp tickets, the temporary suspension of new user registrations had raised concerns, as it restricted new users from buying tickets for upcoming WordCamps, including major events like WordCamp Europe, Asia, Pune, Kolhapur, and Ahmedabad, where tickets are already on sale.

Jeff Chandler commented on the issue, saying, “If the requirement is not removed, at the very least, for WordCamp sites with events coming up and they suffer because of it, that’s going to be such a huge blow to current and future event organizers and to the community itself.”

Joost de Valk of Emilia Capital raised the issue in WordPress GitHub and Dion Hulse reenabled the registration if the referrer is WordCamp. “Login: Enable user account creations when the referer is WordCamp. This allows for WordCamps tickets to continue to be bought. Per Matt.”, reads the Trac message. 

Dion Hulse then enabled user registrations for upcoming ‘nextgen events’.

Discussions are continuing in Reddit too.

Lena (Eleni) Stergatou has been awarded the first-ever WordCamp Europe Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship. This prestigious scholarship, previously exclusive to WordCamp US, was recently extended to include WordCamp Asia and Europe following the latest meeting of the WordPress Foundation Board.

The scholarship honors Kim Parsell, a beloved member of the WordPress community and regarded as one of the first “women of WordPress.” Affectionately referred to as #wpmom, Kim was a passionate WordPress contributor and advocate for women in technology.

In their announcement, the WordPress Foundation stated, “Lena’s dedication to WordPress translations, core, plugins, and more truly embodies the values that Kim held dear.”

Hailing from Greece, Lena is a devoted WordPress and BuddyPress enthusiast. She has been working as a “Code wrangler”, “Happiness Engineer” and translator (in Greek) with WordPress multisite since 2008 and since 2010 with BuddyPress. She currently develops web services for the Greek educational community at the Computer Technology Institute (CTI Diophantus).

Her WordPress profile reads, “I’m familiar with WordPress core and ways to extend it, have an eye for problems on large-scale multisite installation, have fixed numerous outdated themes and edited plugins in order to make them work as they should in multisite WordPress.

I‘m used to answer questions about WordPress usage, write manuals and FAQs (in Greek language). I love to debug, fix broken things, extend functionalities and share them with others.

This love led me to participate in the WordPress and BuddyPress community, by contributing with new plugins, “resurrect” broken plugins, bug fixes and contribute to Greek translations as Locale manager in WordPress Greek team.”

Lena is an active contributor to the WordPress Community, Core, and Polyglots teams.

The scholarship covers travel to the host city, hotel accommodation for the event duration, and a WordCamp ticket. It does not include airport transfers, meals, or other incidental expenses.

WordCamp Europe 2025 will be held from June 5–7 in Basel, Switzerland.

Support Inclusion in Tech (SiNC) has announced the expansion of its grant program to now include applicants from North and South America. SiNC was proposed by Winstina Hughes in 2022 to mitigate the financial stress of underrepresented groups seeking to participate in WordPress events and was first tried in WordCamp US 2022. 

Originally launched in June 2024 to honor Pride Month, the Grant program offers four grants of $240 USD each, to individuals across Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, and South America.

“We believe that a truly inclusive WordPress community requires a global perspective,” said Winstina Hughes, founder of Support Inclusion in Tech. “By expanding our grant program, we are taking a significant step towards ensuring that everyone, regardless of their geographic location, has the opportunity to contribute and thrive within the WordPress ecosystem.”

Eligible applicants include those who have contributed to the WordPress community through local meetups, WordCamps, or code contributions. Starting January 2025, applicants can choose to be included in a public directory, with grant selections to follow in March 2025 via a random name picker.

The WP Community Collective has announced that it has incorporated as a California membership nonprofit for mutual benefit. Sé Reed, President & CEO of WPCC, shared, “A lot is said about (and to) the #WordPress community. But for the most part, the community has been spoken for and not had a voice of its own. That’s why we founded @thewpcc.” 

The organization is also finalizing its designation as a 501(c)(6) nonprofit organization, a federal classification that defines it as an association with a common business interest. This will provide WPCC with greater flexibility in projects and funding. 

WPCC is also planning to create a charitable nonprofit subsidiary. This subsidiary will focus on supporting important projects like the Accessibility Fellowship and efforts to promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) in the WordPress community. 

Membership in WPCC is now open to individuals with a minimum contribution of $5. Members should adhere to the organization’s Code of Conduct and Conflict of Interest policy. In addition, WPCC plans to introduce membership tiers for businesses and organizations, along with scholarship memberships, in early 2025. They also launched a dedicated Slack instance for its members. 

Earlier this year, the WPCC faced a challenge when its fiscal host, the Open Collective Foundation (OCF), dissolved unexpectedly. As a result, the WPCC had to move its funds to a temporary host. Unfortunately, those funds cannot be used for the new nonprofit structure, but the organization remains focused on moving forward. They are working on new initiatives and building partnerships to expand opportunities for contributors around the world.

The WPCC is committed to being transparent with its finances. You can support the organization by making a contribution here.

The controversial mandatory pineapple pizza checkbox on WordPress.org’s login form has been made optional. This decision follows a Twitter poll conducted by WordPress.org, in which 81.2% of respondents voted against making the checkbox mandatory. Additionally, 58.3% of respondents declared that pineapple on pizza is not delicious.

The checkbox initially replaced one from October, which required users to confirm, “I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way, financially or otherwise,” before accessing their accounts. This earlier requirement was removed following a court ruling.

Former WordPress Plugin Review Team representative Mika Epstein advocated for the change by opening a Trac ticket to make the “Pineapple is Delicious” checkbox optional. The proposal quickly gained traction, with Matt Mullenweg expressing his support, stating, “I’m supportive of this change.”

Earlier, Matt had expressed his willingness to meet with people to discuss specific proposals and changes, responding to calls for reforms in the governance of the open-source project. The Repository had published an open letter written by a group of WordPress professionals urging Matt to work with the community instead of continuing to act unilaterally.

In response to the change, Jeff Chandler tweeted, “The stupid Pineapple checkbox when logging into WordPress.org is now optional.” CEO of ClikIT Blake Whittle remarked, “Not of any community doing. Only because Matt is supportive of the change on his personal website.” Accessibility Expert Alex Stine added, “Matt said yes, change goes live.”

One Reddit user humorously quipped, “The Pineapple is dead! Long live the Pineapple!”

Earlier, Patricia BT had suggested an alternative in the Make WordPress #community-team Slack channel. She said, “Could the .org login box be changed to something a bit more serious? Maybe something like “I adhere to the Community Code of Conduct” so everyone is following the code. I understand the pizza joke and I am relieved that the legal implications of the previous one are gone (see my concerns about legal implications on my blog), but the WordPress community must look a bit more serious and not have newcomers scratching their heads… We are the community and people (meetup attendees, end-users, customers, etc) ask us (who are more involved here) about what is happening and they need trust.”

Dion Hulse of Automattic also chimed in. He said, “Rather than having a checkbox that must be checked every time without thought, it’s probably better to figure out if the policies are in a format that can be linked to / agreed to, and enable that functionality.”