The WordPress Morph
The leading Content Management System (CMS) for websites worldwide, WordPress enters a new phase as intellectual property lawsuits between billion-dollar companies disrupt the global ecosystem powering 42% of the web. Moving into 2025 the greater WordPress Community has begun to fracture into disparate camps of companies, contributors and industry leaders over licensing and governance of the Free and Open Software System (FLOSS). Service disruptions have occurred for some WordPress web hosts and plugins due to lawsuits and related Internet battles, along with the increasing security alerts requiring updates and backups for millions of websites lest they get hacked or simply crash.
What’s the Word?
Most WordPress websites will continue on through 2025 with little notice, but serious issues endanger the stability and security of a typical WordPress website. Just imagine if 1 of 10 traffic signals in a major city lost power and another 1 of 10 signals flashed wildly and incoherently beyond control … Chaos could ensue.
In short (almost) a tech company CEO has claimed all rights to WordPress copyright and trademark, overriding the nonprofit foundation supposedly shepherding the project, demanding license payments and reparations from competing companies. Suddenly, those companies and individuals who freely contribute to the development and maintenance of WordPress are being banned from the project, lawsuits have been filed with court actions following, forks of the software are threatened.
See #WPdrama for all the deets or Google WordPress in the news for headlines like “Mullenweg Says Lawsuits Could End WordPress”
As a former contributor to the WordPress project myself, some of us encountered corporate sway in our volunteer work years ago, tried to confront and correct that influence, hit the wall, and exited as longtime contributors. Now, tech companies, developers, agencies and others involved with WordPress are shocked that the WordPress.org hub at the center of everyone’s work is held hostage by the behemoth arm of WordPress.com — a separate commercial operation taking control away from others in the WordPress community of contributors and users.
Options Anyone?
While most WordPress sites may be fine for some time—ongoing corporate warfare could bring buggy software, hacked plugins, or broken hosting in the messy rout. Already agencies are adopting Contingency strategies for their clients to protect from loss or failure of WordPress services. Beyond standard failsafe practices for backups and security, it’s challenging to guarantee nonstop WordPress with a muddled roadmap to some unknown future after 24 years of nearly seamless operation.
What’s the average user of a WordPress site to do?
Going forward it’s imperative to have an operating plan for continuous service, along with re-engineering and migration options. Luckily, with WordPress as free and open source software (FLOSS) under the General Public License (GPL), we can continue using it unimpeded. Except for a gaping dependency: Security Updates.
WordPress websites should rely upon Managed Hosting for core system and related software updates. Despite that safety net, some WordPress Community factions are considering emergency strategies to cover any worst-case scenario of WordPress.org shutting down global hub services maintaining the software. Active administration, smart maintenance, and redundant backups are called for to keep WordPress websites healthy and online. While good hosts and agencies will keep atop of it all to keep websites afloat, too many users risk annoyances and problems beyond their control.
Word & Image is charting a clear path for WordPress clients, exploring a range of directions for various use cases. Already we offer and/or recommend the following:
- Classic Editor & Widgets — core plugins to maintain standard content without new Gutenberg layouts
- Elementor — best web creation alternative to the shaggy Gutenberg system + affordable managed hosting
- Static HTML — legacy content can live on without WordPress with basic hosting
- Drupal CMS — normally Drupal is for enterprise web, but Drupal CMS is a new UX for AX that rocks!
We’ll blog our explorations as we go, morphing through the digital chaos, putting Content and Creators first.