#189 - WP Engine Banned Again, WordPress 6.7 Beta 1 Released

Issue #189 | October 1, 2024 | Reading time: 20 mins

Hello!

Last week WP Engine was banned from accessing WordPress.org’s resources which restricted plugins and theme updates for WP Engine and Flywheel users. This ban was temporarily lifted until October 1, UTC 00:00, and now the ban has been reinstated. Additionally, WordPress 6.7 Beta 1 and WooCommerce 9.3.3 have been released.

Don’t forget to subscribe and listen to the podcast version of this newsletter, where you can hear more details and discussions about these topics and more.

See you next week!

Team WP-CONTENT.CO

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📰 WORDPRESS & AROUND

All the updates around WordPress and its closely related technologies

WP Engine banned, reprieved, banned again

Two days after the initial ban which restricted plugin and theme updates for WP Engine and Flywheel users, WordPress.org temporarily lifted the ban until October 1, UTC 00:00, and was banned again after that time period.

WP Engine has implemented a solution against this restriction as announced on X,” We are pleased to report that our solution has been fully deployed and regular workflow practices have been restored to our customers around the globe.”

What’s new in Gutenberg 19.3:The latest version introduces a new zoom-out mode, which is out of its experimental phase, the option to swap the position of the “Publish” and “Cancel” buttons, the ability to drop multiple images to the image block, and so on.
WordPress 6.7 Beta 1 released: The beta 1 is now available for download and testing. WordPress 6.7 introduces the new Twenty Twenty-Five theme, various media improvements, improved data views, and much more.
Call for contributors: Designer Learning Pathway: The Training Team is seeking contributors to help with content creation for the upcoming Designer Learning Pathway. They are seeking contributors with expertise in scriptwriting, voice recording, video editing, content creation, and reviewing.
Charitable contributions: Matt has publicized his non-profit donations for the past 12 years.
Where is Lee Wittlinger?: Matt calls out Lee Wittlinger’s silence and lack of public engagement and also issues an open invite to debate on the matter publicly.
Highlights from Matt Mullenweg’s spiciest Word Camp presentation at WordCamp US 2024: An overview of the key points from Matt’s presentation at WCUS2024 where he discusses WP Engine, Silver Lake, how WordPress growth had slowed in the last 18 months, and so on.
Ajmer in India to host its first WordPress event ‘WP Campus Connect’: Ajmer, a city in the Indian state of Rajasthan, is all set to organize its first-ever WordPress event – WP Campus Connect. This month-long initiative in October aims to empower students across multiple campuses by introducing them to the powerful tools and opportunities that WordPress offers.
Quarterly WordPress Event Sponsorship report, 2016-2024 Q3: The report shows the total amount of sponsor invoices generated to date for WordCamp and WordPress events, including the Community Summit fund and the Global Sponsorship fee. For Global Sponsorship Automattic and Bleuhost have sponsored $1,500,000 or above, Bubblestorm Management and GoDaddy have sponsored $1,000,000 or above.
Google updates its spam policies document: Google has updated its spam policies documentation as part of a routine refresh while also adding more details around the site reputation abuse policy and expanding and clarifying other areas of its search spam policies and guidelines.

🗣️TALK OF THE TOWN

WP Engine banned from WordPress.org

WP Engine’s ban from WordPress.org: A deep dive into the chaos: The ban from accessing WordPress.org’s resources has resulted in theme and plugin update restrictions. Flywheel which is owned by WP Engine has also been affected. WP Engine on X has called this move a misuse of power.
Morten Rand-Hendriksen on X also expressed a similar opinion, “Nobody deserved this. Nobody had any say in the matter. This is what power left unchecked brings to fore: collateral harm, liberally distributed, without care…” Hendrik Luehrsen voiced, “ A8C will pursue litigation against anyone using the ‘WordPress’ trademark in brand, service, or product names and A8C is attempting to trademark ‘Managed WordPress’ and ‘Hosted WordPress.’:. Nyasha Green also expanded on how Matt could do anything he wants, “ A few months ago several of yall told me that questioning Matt was WRONG and he could do whatever he wanted.”
Several community members expressed their support for Matt. AJ Chadha said, “ I stand by @photomatt and Automattic”. Paramount Tech Network voiced, “Whoever is connected to #WordPress in any form will definitely agree with me that @photomatt creation of WordPress revolutionized how people build websites. Because of Matt Mullenweg many of us has built a striving business. We all should give back to the community. Matt is right”.
A few community members do acknowledge WP Engine not contributing back but aren’t fully supportive of the path took by Matt. Varun Krishnan says, “ You take an Open-source project, reap profits to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars and not contribute enough…..Not saying that Matt Mullenweg is completely right and I think this public dispute hurts the spirt of WordPress and the community.” Matteo Collina expressed, “ it seems to me that WP-Engine is not contributing *at all* to the development of WordPress or the running of the Foundation…..I also think that @photomatt should have just gone straight to lawyers – if WP-Engine has breached the trademark and needs a license, it’s a legal matter to dispute”.
Troy Dean expressed his thoughts on the current situation as,” The only damage being done by Matt Mullenweg’s current tantrum is to the hundreds of thousands of website owners currently hosted on WP Engine……I predict many people will abandon WordPress as a platform entirely as a result of this.” Lisa Graglia expands on how Matt has a valid point, “ WP Engine does uniquely profit, in a massive way, off the reputation of the WordPress trademark. AND they have incredible employees who truly care about the community. Both can be true.”
Katie Keith highlighted the recent update to the WordPress Foundation regarding the trademark policy, “interestingly, it looks like the WordPress Foundation have updated their trademark policy to make it tighter and specifically use @wpengine as an example of what not to do.” Robert DeVore highlighted a specific change on the WP Engine website with regard to the Axelerant partner page, “ Axelerant partner page on the @wpengine website has been updated between Sunday and today to change the text to “WP Engine”. Matt Russell on X notes how DreamHost, a vendor recommended on wordpress.org also uses the same language, “ Heres Dreamhost.com – a vendor recommended on http://wordpress.org with the same sort of language in their pricing models.”
Amid the growing conversation, Sridhar Katakam posed a thought-provoking question on X: “To those considering switching away from WordPress, what CMS are you looking to move to?”. Brian Coords also said,” Not me hurriedly working on my new “Laravel for ex-WordPress Developers” course !!!”.
Alex Standiford provides a comforting perspective on WordPress’s future,”In the worst case scenario, WordPress won’t just evaporate overnight, and probably won’t at all. You will have time to pivot if you need to.”

Some writings/discussions on the subject:
Matt talks about WordPress situation

Matt Mullenweg vs… Everyone?

WPE & Trademarks

WordPress files to trademark ‘Managed WordPress’ & ‘Hosted WordPress

Transparency, contribution, and the future of WordPress

The Automattic-WP Engine debacle and clarity of concepts

WordPress vs WP Engine

WordPress drama: From the sidelines

This might be the end of WordPress

The WordPress interview (We were both wrong)

The WCUS closing I wish we’d had

WP Engine must win

The litigation disaster tourism hour: WordPress shenanigans

🚨WEB SECURITY & VULNERABILITIES

A collection of web security and vulnerability news and updates for the past week

90,000 WordPress sites affected by Arbitrary File Upload and Authentication Bypass vulnerabilities in Jupiter X Core WordPress plugin

An unauthenticated arbitrary file upload and a limited authentication bypass to account takeover vulnerabilities were recently patched.

Privilege escalation vulnerability patched in Houzez Theme: The vulnerability was patched recently and all users are to update to the latest version.
20,000 WordPress sites affected by Privilege Escalation vulnerability in WCFM – WooCommerce Frontend Manager WordPress Plugin: The vulnerability which makes it possible for an authenticated attacker to change the email of any user, including an administrator, which allows them to reset the password and take over the account and website was patched recently.
Critical RCE flaw in GNU-Linux systems: The vulnerability affects various UNIX-based operating systems, including but not limited to, Linux and macOS. The vulnerability can be exploited by sending a specially crafted HTTP request to the CUPS service.
Cloudflare adds security.txt setup wizard: Cloudflare has launched a setup wizard allowing users to easily create and manage a security.txt file for vulnerability disclosure on their websites.
WordPress vulnerability report — September 25, 2024: Weekly report from SolidWP
Wordfence Intelligence Weekly WordPress Vulnerability Report (September 16, 2024 to September 22, 2024): There were 26 vulnerabilities disclosed in 21 plugins and 3 themes.

🔌 NEW PLUGINS & THEMES

Be one of the first ones to explore some fresh plugins and themes

EliteGrove theme

A theme designed for businesses, consulting firms, law practices, and educational institutions.

Profiler theme: A theme suitable for portfolio websites.
Illume theme: A multipurpose theme.
Quick Assist AI plugin: AI-powered assistant for troubleshooting issues, SEO recommendations, and ideas to enhance your website’s performance and user experience.
User Login Status plugin: A plugin to easily view which users are online/offline and log them out en-masse directly from the Users admin table.

👥 COMMUNITY NEWS

Updates and News from the WordPress Community

The 2024 Tidelift state of the open source maintainer report is now available

The report covers the most important headlines from their third state of the open source maintainer survey. A few of the findings include 60% of maintainers are (still) not paid for their work, the more maintainers are paid, the more improvements they make to their projects, and more.

WooCommerce 9.3.3: Dot release: This release includes two fixes which affect CSV imports, and shipping address validation.
All new Site Mailer from Elementor: A new plugin to manage your website’s transactional emails. The plugin promises high deliverability, no Integration or SMTP plugin needed, 30-day log retention, and more.
Announcing Solid Mail: SolidWP has rebranded the WP-SMTP plugin to Solid Mail and now includes integrations with 3rd-party email service providers, email logs, and a quick connect configuration wizard.
Introducing WP Third Parties: WP Third Parties from Felix Arntz is a collection of classes and utilities that can be used to efficiently load third-party libraries into your WordPress application.
Launch of Social Web Foundation: Leaders of the open social networking movement have formed the Social Web Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to making connections between social platforms with the open standard protocol ActivityPub.
The second batch of tickets for WordCamp Asia 2025 will be available next week: The second batch of tickets for WordCamp Asia 2025 will be released on October 3, 2024.
Fluent Forms reaches a new milestone: Fluent Forms is now powering half a million websites since its inception in 2018.
NSquared is celebrating their 10-Year Anniversary: NSquared the creator of popular plugins such as Draw Attention, Simply Schedule Appointments, Plugin Detective, and more is celebrating their 10th anniversary, with their journey being started in 2014.
Tutor LMS lifetime plans are back: The Tutor LMS lifetime plans have been relaunched. With this users have unlimited access to all features and updates, priority customer support, and access to all features and future updates.
Help support HeroPress: You can donate to HeroPress to help keep the platform running, allowing it to continue sharing powerful stories from the WordPress ecosystem. Also, HeroPress is turning 10 this year.
Automattlees & PupPress: The community needed something to lighten the mood.
Zstandard compression is now available on Cloudflare: Zstandard compresses data up to 42% faster than Brotli while achieving nearly equivalent data compression. Additionally, Zstandard outperforms GZIP by approximately 11.3% in compression efficiency, all while maintaining similar compression speeds. Gijo Varghese on X announced that Zstandard is enabled for all FlyingCDN users.
Highlights from the 2024 Rails Community Survey: A total of 2,709 developers participated in the 2024 Ruby on Rails Community Survey. The survey reveals that 70% have been developing with Rails for 7+ years, and more than half of those surveyed have over 10 years of experience, Stimulus.js is the most popular JavaScript library/framework alongside Rails and so on.
The Periodic Table of WordPress Plugins has been updated: Pascal Birchler has updated the table and the changes include LiteSpeed Cache crossing the 6+ million active installs mark, Image Optimizer from Elementor having over 700k installs since its launch in January 2024, and Hostinger Tools having more than 2+ million active installs within less than a year.
Jetpack updated with enhancements for a faster WordPress experience: The latest update comes with several block optimizations, reduced option calls, and so on.
James Giroux on personal opinions: James Giroux expresses frustration about the idea that agreeing with colleagues or teammates is being criticized.
Josh Betz on WordPress Longevity: Josh Betz tweeted that Matt Mullenweg is focused on the long-term sustainability of WordPress rather than just maximizing short-term profits for Automattic.
Daniel Schutzsmith banned from Make WordPress Slack: Daniel Schutzsmith was banned from Make WordPress Slack without any notice or warning.
What is the next step for WP Engine?: Lilly Crick on X raises concerns about the public relations and communications strategy of WP Engine and contrasts their silence against Matt Mullenweg’s frequent public statements.
Kathy Zant warns Advanced Custom Fields users: Based on the ongoing WP Engine and WordPress battle, Kathy Zant reminds ACF users that there are no security updates available via the standard update pathway.
How did WordPress and WPEngine get here?: Charlie Dolan provides more insight into the ongoing WP Engine and WordPress issue via an X thread.
Arslan Ahmed receives the Yoast Care fund for his contribution to the WordPress community: Arslan Ahmed, a member of the WordPress Community Team is the latest recipient of the Yoast Care fund.

🔖 INTERESTING READS & PODCASTS

More posts and podcasts from the WordPress Community you don’t want to miss

WordPress Photo Directory: Changing the guidelines for excellence: From Sam Alderson
Growing Together: The story of Bluehost and WordPress with Newfold Digital’s Mike Hansen: From Comparably
Best tools to add videos and GIFs to your website: From WPBakery
Local vs XAMPP: Which should you use for Local Development?: From Torque
Misconceptions about Matt, open source, and contributions: From Brian Coords
Isla Waite, Bet Hannon and Ryan Bracey on what to expect from WP Accessibility Day 2024: From WP Tavern Jukebox
We are WordPress: From Ollie
Community governance – WordPress vs Drupal: From Joeri Poesen
Marketing WordPress: 0.75% for an (updated) future: From WP BizDev
How accessible are WordPress forms to screen reader users?: From Easy A11y Guide
Jesus take the keys from Matts hands: From TheWPGirls

🛠 GUIDE ZONE – HOWTO’S and MORE

Handpicked fresh guides from WordPress circle

Use WordPress to create a one-page site: From Learn WordPress
What WordPress developers need to know about the blocks property in theme.json: From Kinsta
How to fix a slow admin backend on WordPress: From Jetpack

📆 SAVE THE DATES

Do not miss a WordPress event ever again

WordPress Accessibility Day on Oct 9-10, 2024: The schedule is out.
WordCamp Youth Hackathon Skopje on October 19, 2024: An exciting event designed to inspire young people aged 14 to 17 in the world of WordPress.
Rome Core Days on November 8-9, 2024: This will be a two-day event dedicated to WordPress Core developers with round tables, open discussions, and contribution rooms. The schedule is out.
WordCamp Kerala on November 9, 2024: The call for sponsors, speakers and volunteers is out.
WordCamp Romania on November 14-15, 2024: Tickets are out.
WordCamp Malaysia on November 22-23, 2024: Tickets are out.
WordCamp Netherlands on 29-30 November 2024: The call for sponsors is out.
WordCamp Asia on February 20-22, 2025: The venue will be the Philippine International Convention Center, Manila, Philippines.
WordCamp Europe on 5-7 June 2025: The event will be held at Basel – Switzerland’s Capital for Art and Culture.
WordCamp US 2025 on August 26-29, 2025: The event is in the early planning stages.

🎁 WORDPRESS DEALS OF THE WEEK

Again, these are the best deals of the week, handpicked by yours!

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4 Months free offer on hosting plans of WP Engine (Coupon Code- FREEDOMTOCREATE)
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15% off yearly plans at Videvo (Coupon Code – WPV15)