#198 - WP Engine V. Automattic Preliminary Injunction Hearing, DreamHost Removed From WordPress.org’s Recommended Hosting Page

Issue #198 | December 3, 2024 | Reading time: 15 mins

Hello!

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Today, we cover the WP Engine v. Automattic preliminary injunction hearing, DreamHost’s removal from the recommended hosting page, and new projects from the community.

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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🗣️TALK OF THE TOWN

WP Engine v. Automattic: Judge signals support for WP Engine in preliminary injunction hearing

Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín indicated she might grant a preliminary injunction in the ongoing case between WP Engine and Automattic & Matt Mullenweg. The judge found WP Engine’s proposal too vague and asked both parties to refine it and submit their proposals by December 2, 2024. She also emphasized that no further wrongful conduct should occur in the meantime.

📰 WORDPRESS & AROUND

All the updates around WordPress and its closely related technologies

DreamHost removed from WordPress.org’s recommended hosting page

DreamHost has been removed from WordPress.org’s recommended hosting page. The update was made by Samuel Wood (Otto), “Tech Ninja” for Audrey Capital, and the page now exclusively lists Pressable, Bluehost, and Hostinger as recommended hosting providers.

Mary Hubbard commits to transparency in first call with WordPress community: Hubbard stressed that building trust within the community would take time and committed to transparent decision-making and clear communication. She shared what she believes are the three biggest challenges facing the WordPress community: the decline in new attendees at WordPress events, the commercialization of WordPress and how the community fits into this, and the need for innovation.
WP Engine Tracker website gets a new activity log listing: It now shows which hosts the websites that left WP Engine have moved to and when they left. As of today, 24990 domains have left WP Engine since September 21.
BuddyPress 14.3.1 fixed two bugs: The bugs fixed in the maintenance release were related to WordPress 6.7 compatibility and BP Legacy Theme Pack.
According to W3Techs, WordPress is now used by 43.67% of all websites: It was at 42.81% this time last year.
More WooCommerce extensions to be rolled into WooCommerce core: Core Product Manager for WooCommerce, James Kemp shared this on X and asked the community which extension they want to see in core next. He had earlier shared that he would be “driving the “more in core” initiative, to make sure our base plugin has all the essentials you’d expect from a modern ecommerce platform.”
WooCommerce 9.5 RC1 to be released on December 4: WooCommerce 9.5 release is scheduled for December 16 and WooCommerce 9.5 Beta is now available for testing.
State of the Word Tokyo 2024 on December 16: This year, State of the Word will broadcast live from Tokyo Node Hall, in Tokyo, Japan. You can now request a ticket to be one of the 300 members attending in person.
Authenticated RCE patched in Rank Math SEO plugin: In the version 1.0.231 and below, the plugin is vulnerable to an .htaccess overwrite vulnerability that can lead to remote code execution. Please update the plugin to the latest version or at least to the version 1.0.232.
ChatGPT Search fails attribution test: OpenAI’s ChatGPT Search is struggling to accurately cite news publishers, according to a study by Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism. The report found frequent misquotes and incorrect attributions, raising concerns among publishers about brand visibility and control over their content.
Google Search Console recommendations now fully live: Google launched it as an experimental feature back in August and has now fully rolled out the feature to all profiles within Google Search Console.
Google faces £7 Billion UK class action over search monopoly: Google is staring down a £7 billion ($8.8 billion) class action lawsuit in the UK, accusing the tech giant of abusing its search dominance to harm consumers and stifle competition.

💵 INVESTMENTS, ACQUISITIONS & PARTNERSHIPS

1Password joins the Rails Foundation as a core member: Jason Meller – VP, Product Management, will join the Rails Foundation’s board of directors. He said, “1Password is joining the Rails Foundation for three reasons: Rails is where the future is, Rails is where the community is, and Rails is where the challenge is.”
ClikIT acquires Infinite Uploads & Big File Uploads: ClikIT purchased the two plugins from UglyRobot, LLC, which also owns and operates DocsBot AI and is owned by Aaron Edwards, the former CTO at WPMU DEV. Existing customers will not notice any changes in billing, their portal, support emails, or even the description on their credit card statements.
BlackRock marks down its investment in Automattic by 10%: BlackRock has cut the worth of its stake in web hosting provider Automattic by 10%, the asset manager said in its latest quarterly disclosure report. BlackRock, which invested in Automattic during its Series E round in 2021, valued its investment in the WordPress hosting company at $37.5 per share, down from $41.7 per share earlier this year.

👥 COMMUNITY NEWS

Updates and News from the WordPress Community

Speed Build Challenge between Matt Mullenweg and Jessica Lyschik on December 06, 2024

Jessica Lyschik had earlier challenged Matt Mullenweg to a Speed Build Challenge at WordCamp Europe and he had accepted. You can watch it on Jamie Marsland’s X channel.

WordPress Youtube channel now has 56K+ subscribers: It is headed by Jamie Marsland.
GridPane is not shutting down: The confusion was caused by the decision to pull their existing plans off the market. CEO Patrick Gallagher has stated they are not shutting down but will shift focus in 2025 to look more and more like a fully managed WordPress hosting solution and less and less like a collection of tools.
Crowdsignal adopts Gutenberg block editor for building better surveys, polls and quizzes: Stefan Velev thinks it’s the first time seeing Gutenberg outside of a WordPress website.
WordCamp Asia seeks host city applications for 2026: WordCamp Asia, one of WordPress’s premier flagship events, is seeking a host city for its 2026 edition. Previous editions were held in Bangkok and Taipei, with Manila set to host in 2025.
WPCampus is seeking new board members: WPCampus welcomes people who want to change the world, people who want to be involved, people who want to learn something new, and people who want to share their experiences with a community. The closing date for applications is December 6, 2024.
Juliette Reinders Folmer completed one year as the maintainer of the PHP_CodeSniffer project: She has published an overview of the year for the funders of the project.
Jonathan Desrosiers celebrated his 6th commit-iversary: He also crossed a quarter century as a contributor. On being asked why he continues to contribute, he said, “Regardless of your personal opinions about what’s happening in our community, the people who would suffer most if we stop maintaining the software are the users (ourselves included), bloggers, site owners, and business who depend on us to continue contributing.”
Taco Verdo has joined Emilia Capital: He was previously with Yoast.
Mathieu Viet leaves WordPress: The BuddyPress lead developer said, “While Mr. Mullenweg’s first attacks made me leave this community and stop contributing to WordPress® open source projects (including BuddyPress®), the latest one (
making the premium code of a plugin marketed by the attacked competitor available for free) convinced me that disapproving and condemning them as a former contributor was not enough. Indeed, I have also decided to stop using WordPress® to power this website.”
WordCamp Nepal returns to the capital city, Kathmandu, after a decade: The event has been scheduled for March 21-22 March, 2025
The first WordCamp Larissa is over: The event had 242 attendees from 12+ cities across Greece and abroad and 50% of attendees were first-timers at a WordCamp. The surplus of €2,340.94 from WordCamp Larissa 2024 “returns” to WordCamp Central.
WordCamp Delhi is over: 300+ people attended the Contributor Day and their Dilli Wala Wapuu attracted the community’s attention.

🚀 NEW PROJECTS

Query Loop Filter plugin from Human Made: Built on WordPress’s Interactivity API, this plugin allows you to add filtering functionality to your Query Loop block effortlessly. Available on GitHub now.
Nag Me Not plugin from Dave Grey: It helps to declutter your WordPress dashboard. A browser extension is in the works.
Robert DeVore released four new plugins: Bluesky Feed for WordPress® integrates your Bluesky feed into your WordPress website, while Stats for WordPress® plugin tracks your site’s traffic, referrers, and most popular pages – all without paying unnecessary fees or handing over your data to shady third-party services. The Move Content Updated Link plugin improves the visibility of the “Content Updated” link in the Gutenberg editor by repositioning it to the top right of the screen and Media Copyright Scanner plugin identifies potentially copyrighted images within their WordPress® Media Libraries.
Disable Auto-Sizes plugin from Mukesh Panchal: It disables the automatic addition of the auto value in the sizes attribute for <img> tags.
WP Mayor’s BLINK initiative: BLINK is all about creating connections and discovering new collaboration opportunities. Think of it as “HARO” for the WordPress community.

🔖 INTERESTING READS & PODCASTS

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

Starting – and continuing – a conversation about Indigenous representation and perspectives in WordPress: Gina Bearne shares her experience organizing the inaugural WordCamp Canada and encouraging important conversations within the WordPress community about the value of Indigenous perspectives.
How we saved over $36,000 translating our plugins using ChatGPT: Zack Katz shared how they successfully translated GravityView into 23 languages. While the project could have cost around $40,000, they managed to accomplish it for just $50.
How Libra was killed: David Marcus, CEO & co-founder of Lightspark, shared his thoughts on X.
Blueprint Block Editor for WordPress Playground: A demo of Ajit Bohra’s first version of the Blueprint Block Editor. From Gutenberg Times.
Steve Burge on transitioning WordPress to the SaaS market: Steve, the creator of popular WordPress plugins like PublishPress, MetaSlider, and TaxoPress, shares his journey, including his latest venture into SaaS with Logtivity. From WP Tavern.
Q & A with James Kemp, Core Product Manager for WooCommerce: The episode from Do_the Woo includes insights on rolling popular plugins into the core WooCommerce product, the timeline for a new product editor, and the status of the settings refactoring project.
Breaking bias: Strategies for a more inclusive tech industry: Michelle and Samah of Underrepresented in Tech dive into the Harvard Business School article “5 Strategies for Overcoming Unconscious Bias in the Tech Industry”.

🛠 GUIDE ZONE – HOWTO’S and MORE

Handpicked fresh guides from WordPress circle

Advanced WordPress development: how to build your next project with wp-scripts: From Kinsta
Snippet: How to disable the Font Library: From WordPress Developer Blog
Use static variables in plugin bootstrap files: From Tom McFarlin

📆 SAVE THE DATES

Do not miss a WordPress event ever again

WordCamp Netherlands on 29-30 November 2024: The schedule is out.
WordCamp Asia on February 20-22, 2025: Tickets are out now.
PressConf 2025 on April 23-26: A conference for WordPress Professionals and the tickets are now available.
WordCamp Europe on 5-7 June 2025: WordCamp Europe 2025 is looking for speakers and sponsors

🎁 WORDPRESS DEALS OF THE WEEK

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

EXCLUSIVE DEALS

4 Months free offer on hosting plans of WP Engine (Coupon Code- FREEDOMTOCREATE)
10% off on monthly & annual plans at SureTriggers (Coupon Code- WPCONTENT10)
15% off yearly plans at Videvo (Coupon Code – WPV15)